If anyone is interested, Israel did a pretty big Covid booster study on their over 60 population (n-1.1 million). Interesting read:
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Seems pretty clear…boosters good, boosters necessary for the over 60 cohort. Just watch our FDA ignore this and base the cutoff at age 65 (said the 64.8 year old).
The approach being taken by the powers that be regarding “authorizing” us to get a booster is enough to convince me to turn libertarian.
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I think I was offered a third Moderna today; I suspect we have a great excess of vaccine in SW Oregon.
I don’t want to go for it several reasons. Firstly I’m only 4.5 months out from my second dose (Israel were vaccinating way in advance of the US - the test population were vaccinated in February). Secondly I got Moderna, not Pfizer; Pfizer were first up with the “we need a booster” line, so I naturally assume their vaccine is not as good and therefore may need refreshers far more often. Good for the bottom line, bad for me.
Thirdly the CDC guideline, accepted by Pfizer, is 8 months, not 5.
Fourthly, and the tie breaker for me, I want the JnJ vaccine because it is the only single dose vaccine available in the US so it is obviously better than the ones that require multiple doses.
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What is the reasoning there – that a one-dose vaccine is “better” than a two-dose vaccine? I don’t think I’ve heard that before.
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John,
There is another tactic. Along the lines of civil disobedience.
I think at this point, first vaccines are easy to get. And the booster is basically the same as a third vaccine, from what I have read.
If the FDA says you can’t get a booster, just show up and say your name is Smedley F. Hoogenslogger, and say you are getting your FIRST vaccine. And you forgot your ID.
And in most states, no ID is needed!
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That a vaccine that has received emergency approval from the a single (consistent) regulator authority and that requires only a single dose to provide the required level of protection is better than one that requires two doses. Less cost to our health case system (one dose rather than two), less record keeping for everyone, quicker protection. This is particularly true in the case of JnJ rather than Pfizer; for all three vaccines available in the US people are considered fully vaccinated 2 weeks after the final dose. In the case of Pfizer that means an extra three weeks wait after starting to receive the vaccine.
JnJ wins hands down so far as I was concerned. Unfortunately I was not offered it here (it was Moderna, which actually requires a further week.)
Oregon requires name and address. I’m the only person where I live with my name, and even if that wasn’t the case I wouldn’t take someone else’s vaccine, even if they were religiously against it.
Getting a booster does not seem to be an issue for me. The point here is that I don’t want to get repeated boosters when I don’t need to; my first and third reasons.
How many people get flu vaccine boosters? I got my 'flu vaccine in July, almost 2 months ago, my doc asserts that he doesn’t offer 'flu vaccines until October, “in case there is a spring surge” [in the 'flu] and felt that waning 'flu vaccine effectiveness justified delaying vaccination. The CDC recommends a variety of vaccines, but the two of them are only recommended for people over the age 65; the ones that produce “a stronger immune response”. Boosters would also give a stronger immune response, but for most people the response over the entire season is sufficient.
No doubt some powerful people are getting COVID-19 vaccinations every couple of months just as some powerful people are pretending COVID-19 isn’t the most serious problem we face today while relying on treatments that are not readily available to the general populace. Just because they have money and power doesn’t mean they know what they are doing. Advice from groups of independent people following a rigorously enforced scientific method is better.
I was initially very much in favor of getting a booster, but thinking about it carefully I decided I didn’t want to get one every few months. I don’t have a compromised immune system (which would justify repeated shots), if anything I seem to have better immunity than the population around me. (That may be because they frequently can’t afford medical care.)
I’m also somewhat annoyed that the highly expensive vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer don’t provide longer term coverage; like getting a paint job on your car and having the paint start to peal off after less than a year.
I agree; a booster is just another vaccination. It doesn’t make any sense to me to use the same vaccine, beyond the fact that this is what Pfizer tested. It would surely not be surprising if Pfizer had announced that a course of the Astra Zeneca vaccine significantly increased protection if given 8 months after their own vaccine! Oh, let me think about that, maybe that would be surprising?
So I’m figuring that if I wait until 8 months (December for me) better research will be available. We will know if JnJ decreases in effectiveness as rapidly as Pfizer does (it’s a pity it’s so much in a manufacturer’s interest to say its vaccine sucks). With any luck a third party will have tested different vaccine “boosters” and the many interested parties will have permitted that to be published. Plus maybe more (different) vaccines and more types will be available in the US.
Here’s the WHO explanation from January.
The mRNA (nucleic acid) vaccines were very good as a rapid response, but we don’t send out SWAT teams to do CSI.
I was not suggesting taking someone else’s vaccine. I was saying to use the name of a person who did not exist, because they would not have a record of a vaccine.
And no state has a totally accurate record of everyone’s address. There are some addresses with many people living there, subletting, living as guests, etc.
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But that would not be my name! I think the question is clear enough; I was asked for my name, not one I made up!
Sure, giving a false name is bad. But so is the fact that vaccines are getting wasted. And the FDA is basically saying it’s better to throw out a vaccine than to let some people get a 3rd injection.
Yes 34 year old transplant patient, you can get one. Sorry 62 year old diabetic, you can’t. We’d rather throw yours away.
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Regardless of anything the FDA might have said that’s not the way this country has worked throughout the pandemic; I have consistently seen concerted efforts by people in health care to give out vaccines to anyone rather than waste the doses. This happened 12 miles from where I live.
Three months later, when I was waiting to get the vaccine from my doctor I actually got it from the same clinic in the article which was giving vaccinations to anyone who turned up. That was part of a federal government initiated scheme to get people in the poorest areas of this country vaccinated. Not that it worked very well; go to this web page:
Click on the “zip-code” tab, mouse around to the bottom left until you find the “97531” zip code (it’s very small, just above 97534 and 97523). This is where I live; vaccination rate 29%. I’m pretty sure quite a few other people did get vaccinated and gave a false name; there is a strong local belief never to give your name, our local police have a reputation for incarcerating people with expired dog licenses [story told to me years ago by a local businessman who was incarcerated for this reason when he was younger.]
This is, also, almost certainly the reason I can get a booster shot; my doctor has a supply and a trickle of people coming in for it. He certainly does not have sophisticated refrigeration systems. Lots of people are getting boosters, now. A month ago I talked to him about getting one, I would have got one yesterday if I hadn’t reached the conclusion that there was no immediate need (for me) and that I would be better off waiting until December, for all the reasons I stated before.
I don’t think there’s a strong scientific case for that.
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That was my experience with the initial vaccine doses back in late winter.,.patiently wait for the state “Phase finder” to tell me I was “authorized” to search for an open appointment slot, get lucky and find an opening, show up for my shots and not be asked for an ID. The whole thing was run on the honor system. And at the end of the day the staff was inviting all comers in to use up the opened vials.
If a similar system is used for the boosters, a citizen who wants the booster and “sneaks in” 2 months before their 65th birthday is not stealing a dose from anybody.
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Excellent Vox explanation; it also explains (right at the end) why I accepted the Moderna vaccine (the one that was in my hand) when I wanted the JnJ one; waiting four extra weeks for the Moderna to achieve full protection when I couldn’t actually get the JnJ one on any timescale would have been really dumb.
Particularly as I didn’t care about the efficacy measurement, as explained by the Vox video; everyone here should watch it, all the way through.
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Move to Oregon! Lots of people do; there is no income tax in WA, unlike OR, but there is no sales tax in OR, unlike WA, so people retire to OR. Just a few miles south, same mountains (well, up north; we have a whole set of interesting ones down south), all sorts of fun places to live, many filled with very independent people who, indeed, dress the way we please, smoke what we want to smoke, yet, most of the time, try to respect the way other people think.
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I know I’m going to touch upon a couple of things that were already mentioned, but these two talking points stood out to me on this thread:
JnJ is actually the one out of the 3 available vaccines that has the least efficacy in those they’ve administered it too (this was already shown in an above comment)
I’ve also seen people at my job fall victim to getting it on the back-end as the more recent new hires poured in at my job, and a large percentage (if not all of them) were out sick the next day because they could not get out of bed. This was only an experience I had with my second Pfizer dose, which from what I heard/read online was very common because your body is repeating the same grueling process all over again. The last point I’ll make to drive this home, is that they almost didn’t catch a bad batch of over millions of their doses. I’m very glad they did, but what if they hadn’t? Makes me weary about their ability to provide steady quality control, and if anything I would go with the safe assumption that their dose would probably be the most prime candidate for boosters.
Eric, I see what you’re trying to imply here and though it’s brilliant - it’s flawed. If down the line, these boosters become mandatory - John will not be able to argue that he did in fact already receive his. I mean sure, he could fudge his vaccine card - but a lot of companies and the government included (by me, at least, in NJ) are requiring you to sign up for an app called Docket and you must provide proof of full vaccination via that app. The app has government documentation that you’ve been vaccinated, because they caught a shady DR selling blank vaccine cards on e-bay for $10 a piece smh. The world we live in… I tell ya.
But yeah, that would be my only concern for him - that he’d potentially have to get 2 boosters, being the original booster was not properly documented and I don’t even know if that would be safe lol.
As far as boosters are concerned, I’m really just waiting for my employer to tell me my window is open and I can go to CVS and get mine. It may be blind faith, but if this is our road to recovery from this dumb virus then I’m all for it.
Good read, Chris. Thanks for sharing it.
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The NPR article’s choice of numbers is interesting; WaPo’s only number is actually an egregious misquote of the NJEM article. It’s difficult to chose between the two; the NPR article is basically a brief summary which can be criticized for solely being there to support a sensationalist headline. The WaPo article is Politico-style; concerning itself with the personalities and the form of the discussion to excess and ignoring the content.
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Over at TCOYD.org, Drs. Edelman and Pettus are urging all of us T1Ds to get the booster shot.
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