I suspect that the answer to this question may depend on the situation where you are and your behaviour intentions after one and two doses.
I believe that the original clinical trials of the vaccines did not test different dose intervals. The idea that a longer gap might be helpful came, I believe, from other vaccines, where it’s been established that a longer gap sometimes improves long-term protection.
I think a reasonable current estimate is that one dose provides somewhat less protection than two doses.
If you are in a place where there’s lots of current infections, the short-term issue of getting more protection may dominate the decision, so pointing towards getting your second dose as soon as possible.
If you are somewhere with very low prevalence of the disease then it might be more worthwhile to try to optimise for longer-term protection, so could be worth digging into whether you believe that a longer gap is helpful.
You might also want to factor in your enjoyment of the next several weeks. If you’re going to hold off on social contact whilst in the gap between doses, but will feel happy meeting people once you’ve had both doses, then it’s reasonable for you to think how much extra enjoyment you’ll get by pulling the socialisation time sooner.
Another factor that potentially pulls in the direction of earlier second doses is the likelihood of booster vaccinations. I suspect it’s reasonably likely that we’ll be getting boosters or vaccines for new variants each year, like with flu. That tends to make me think that the longer-term effectiveness issue is less important than short term, because you’ll probably be getting more doses in the future that will help you with the long term.
I suspect that the answer to this question may depend on the situation where you are and your behaviour intentions after one and two doses.
I believe that the original clinical trials of the vaccines did not test different dose intervals. The idea that a longer gap might be helpful came, I believe, from other vaccines, where it’s been established that a longer gap sometimes improves long-term protection.
I think a reasonable current estimate is that one dose provides somewhat less protection than two doses.
If you are in a place where there’s lots of current infections, the short-term issue of getting more protection may dominate the decision, so pointing towards getting your second dose as soon as possible.
If you are somewhere with very low prevalence of the disease then it might be more worthwhile to try to optimise for longer-term protection, so could be worth digging into whether you believe that a longer gap is helpful.
You might also want to factor in your enjoyment of the next several weeks. If you’re going to hold off on social contact whilst in the gap between doses, but will feel happy meeting people once you’ve had both doses, then it’s reasonable for you to think how much extra enjoyment you’ll get by pulling the socialisation time sooner.
Another factor that potentially pulls in the direction of earlier second doses is the likelihood of booster vaccinations. I suspect it’s reasonably likely that we’ll be getting boosters or vaccines for new variants each year, like with flu. That tends to make me think that the longer-term effectiveness issue is less important than short term, because you’ll probably be getting more doses in the future that will help you with the long term.