My understanding is that the NHS isn’t perfect, but is pretty good at prioritization. If they’re not making the booster available to all, my interpretation is that they don’t think it passes their QALY bar.
Is your view that they’re wrong and the death/suffering avoided by additional covid vaccination is pretty high, that individuals should be much more willing to pay for their own protection than the NHS is, or something else?
For some extra context, the NHS offers a free seasonal flu vaccine to vulnerable groups (similar eligibility to the Covid booster), and healthy adults can choose to purchase a seasonal flu vaccine at a pharmacy for about £10. Some people do this, and some employers pay for their employees to get vaccinated. So there is precedent for this kind of thing, and although I doubt it would get rolled out this year, this is a good time to plan for next year.
Many individuals are not subject to the same tight resource constraints of the NHS, so I don’t understand why we wouldn’t expect a fraction of individuals to be willing to deploy their own resources to pay for a booster? The efficient frontier for them is simply different.
My understanding is that the NHS isn’t perfect, but is pretty good at prioritization. If they’re not making the booster available to all, my interpretation is that they don’t think it passes their QALY bar.
Is your view that they’re wrong and the death/suffering avoided by additional covid vaccination is pretty high, that individuals should be much more willing to pay for their own protection than the NHS is, or something else?
For some extra context, the NHS offers a free seasonal flu vaccine to vulnerable groups (similar eligibility to the Covid booster), and healthy adults can choose to purchase a seasonal flu vaccine at a pharmacy for about £10. Some people do this, and some employers pay for their employees to get vaccinated. So there is precedent for this kind of thing, and although I doubt it would get rolled out this year, this is a good time to plan for next year.
Many individuals are not subject to the same tight resource constraints of the NHS, so I don’t understand why we wouldn’t expect a fraction of individuals to be willing to deploy their own resources to pay for a booster? The efficient frontier for them is simply different.