"The redefinition undermines what most would colloquially understand as a vaccine"
It's very common for people outside of a profession to misunderstand terms from within that profession. That generally doesn't mean we get to redefine it on the fly. The Covid vaccines are vaccines because it is the correct and appropriate terminology to use within the fields that develop and administer vaccines. In terms of not being a "cure" and needing boosters, that is true to varying degrees for most vaccines. Flu vaccines - which for years have uncontroversially been called vaccines - are often less effective than the Covid vaccines.
And yet there was very few attempts to remedy this mischaracterization from the onset. Government willfuly led people to believe that the covid vaccine would be like any other - it would inoculate the population, and all this would blow over.
I recall when the first results came out and though they were good, they were never 100%. And I certainly understand that no one was able to predict the way in which variants would develop, and to what degree they would reduce the effectiveness of the vaccines. In the end, vaccines have been more about reducing hospitalizations and deaths (which they do really well) than reaching herd immunity, but how was anyone supposed to know that a year ago?
And yet the majority of reporting focuses on case numbers, as if this is the number we need to monitor to track our progress through the pandemic. And when that number increases rathee than decreases, despite high rates of vaccination, people are confused. And the government does nothing to correct thus.
Nothing wrong with needing boosters (eg you get one multiple years apart for MMR, you get one, what every decade with Tetanus?) , but every 6 months for only reduced risk of hospitalization is quite the stretch...
And my understanding is flu vaccines give great protection of getting anything from very specific strains, and lesser effects to varyingly differences in those strains[1]. This "vaccine" doesn't give great protection to any strain, unless "protection" just means you still get covid, but not hospitalized.
It's pretty disheartening to hear you essentially say that the professionals get to redefine words to benefit themselves to the detriment of the public...
"It's pretty disheartening to hear you essentially say that the professionals get to redefine words to benefit themselves to the detriment of the public..."
Never said any such thing, so feel free to be reheartened.
This is not how public health messaging works, or how media narratives in general function today.
The CDC, being a public health agency, had a definition of vaccine that was intended for the public's consumption. Scientists generally do not have to check the CDC website for terms of art regarding their profession.
There is/(was?) a general understanding that a 'vaccine' was an injection or spray or ingestable that primed the immune system to fight a potential 'real' infection of a disease. This priming meant that while you may come into contact with the disease, you would be exceedingly unlikely to develop symptoms.
Changing the public definition of the vaccine after the initial covid vaccines had already been released to allow 'vaccine' to mean any therapeutic that gave any degree of protection from a disease is an obvious bait and switch. Evidence of this definition being changed as a damage control measure due to floundering public trust is evident from emails made available through FOIA requests.
We are not going to pretend that updating that definition was a sincere miscommunication of the science when the text is so obviously not scientific. The political motivations and objectives are clear.
If this had been a single event we may still express doubt, but these language games that prey upon the public's preconceived definitions of common vocabulary have been rampant for years at this point. 'With-cause' being another recent instance.
When reporting covid hospitalizations the phrase "X people hospitalized with covid" was used. Last week we had Fauchi on air explain that although those people are in the hospital _with_ a positive covid test many of them are asymptomatic and are in fact at the hospital _because_ of something other than covid; they just happened to test positive as well. Yet for months these numbers stood without question or explanation allowing a narrative of 'high covid hospitalizations' to be pushed.
Effectively we are treating the public as if they are idiots for hearing the obvious common parlance meaning of such statements-- "hospitalized with covid" when instead they should read as lawyers questioning every word. This is governmental malpractice.
A small note on season flu vaccines. The public generally understands that scientists are playing a guessing game with the flu and some years they guess better than others. But on years where they do guess well, the flu vaccine operates as the public generally understands it in what I've written above. Not only has there been no messaging that these covid 'vaccines' are playing a similar guessing game there has in fact been the exact opposite messaging. We developed an 'alpha variant vaccine' now we are developing a omicron variant vaccine. These are being discussed like treatments that 'should work' similar to a flu vaccine on a good year.
It's very common for people outside of a profession to misunderstand terms from within that profession. That generally doesn't mean we get to redefine it on the fly. The Covid vaccines are vaccines because it is the correct and appropriate terminology to use within the fields that develop and administer vaccines. In terms of not being a "cure" and needing boosters, that is true to varying degrees for most vaccines. Flu vaccines - which for years have uncontroversially been called vaccines - are often less effective than the Covid vaccines.