More on the conundrum that's been created by denying boosters to the
under 50 crowd:
The dilemma facing the FDA is that the immunity many people have gotten from getting vaccinated or infected has been wearing off. At the same time, the most contagious version of the virus to emerge yet — the omicron subvariant BA.5 — is making people even more vulnerable.
So as COVID is starting to become more serious than a cold or flu again, most people younger than age 50 aren't eligible for fourth shots — second boosters — to protect themselves. In response, the FDA was considering opening up eligibility for second boosters for all adults.
But letting more people get boosted with the original vaccine now could interfere with plans to boost them with updated, hopefully more protective vaccines in the fall to blunt the toll of the winter surge.
More importantly:
If the bivalent boosters can be accelerated, the FDA would skip opening up fourth shots of the original vaccines this summer and just wait for the new double-barreled omicron vaccines in the fall.
The possible shift is provoking mixed reactions.
Some think it is the smartest strategy. Three shots are still protecting most younger, otherwise healthy people against serious illness, they say. And boosting people again now, and then so soon again in the fall, could confuse people, potentially eroding their willingness to get any boosters, according to some experts.
What should have happened is the regular boosters should have opened for people under 50 back in the spring, but once again the administration gambled on the summer being fine (instead of the ~3000 weekly deaths we're now seeing in late July) so now they're rushing to a Fall 2022 solution.
"I think this is the right call," Dr. Celine Gounder, a senior fellow at the Kaiser Family Foundation, said during an interview with NPR. "If you get a booster now with the original formulation of the vaccine, this may in fact be counter-productive. It may prevent the second booster dose given this fall from taking and from you developing an immune response to that booster."
But others aren't so sure. They say the new vaccines may not be significantly better.
"People should not regard them as some sort of magic bullet that gives them super-strong protection," says Dr. John Moore, an immunologist at Weill Cornell Medicine. "These are not going to be magic bullet game-changers because they're not that much better than the already available vaccine boosters.
...
"I don't see the benefit waiting for a BA.5-specific booster since BA.5 may be in the rearview mirror and well past us by the time that's available," says Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the Baylor College of Medicine National School of Tropical Medicine.
People younger than 50 should at least have the option to protect themselves now, especially with BA.5 already surging, some say.
They've put us in a no-win position but I think if they gave me the option to booster now, I would with the hopes that I'd be eligible for another one 4-6 months from now.
Still masking everywhere, regardless.
risk
No sense in changing the plan when they hit late July to say the new vaccines wouldn't be available until mid September. I'm in isolation enough and continue mask wearing in everything but my severely limited social situations that I'm not the big concern. I actually planned the timing of my last vaccine to get my 5th, semi annual, (immuno suppressed) poke right about a week ago. No one is pushing for this or flu or pneumonia but I'll be damned if everyone isn't pushing me for a shingles vaccine. I'll wait for my PCP to join the fray before I do though. I'm much more concerned about an updated pneumonia vaccine than anything else behind COVID and possibly the flu.