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June 2024

Another Jab’ll Do Ya…

A virus is a piece of bad news wrapped in a protein coat.”

–Sir Peter Medawar (British Immunologist and Nobel Prize Winner)

Yup, looks like we should roll up our sleeves again this Fall for another COVID booster. The CDC recommends that everyone, 6 months and older receive the updated vaccine that is under development as just reported in the New York Times.

Infections are now rising across the country and this is due to a new, quite different combination of three related CoV-2 variants competing for your attention. They are collectively referred to as FLiRT. The variants are pretty effective at evading prior immune defenses and can spread faster, as we are beginning to see. Across the US COVID-related ER visits increased 15% the week ending June 15, and deaths increased 17% compared to just the previous week. Hospital COVID data are harder to come by since a CDC reporting requirement ended in May.

People “…in general do not understand how much this current virus has mutated,” said Carol Hayes, American College of Nurse-Midwives liaison to the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. The Advisory Committee unanimously recommended this new round of shots.

But, again? Really?? Booster fatigue and COVID complacency seems to be a growing thing as the deep stress of the 2020-2023 pandemic fades in the review mirror. If we have been boosted a few times, and even had one or two mild COVID infections, is it really necessary to go through all this again?

Yes it is if you want to avoid serious illness. Please read on. True, at this point we all pretty much have some immunity to CoV-2 viruses, but the new boosters that keep rolling out give us important added protection to the novel virus variants that are regularly popping up like in a Whack-a-Mole game. What the boosters do is prevent you from getting serious disease that these new variants can visit on you! Realize that the vast majority of people across all age groups who were hospitalized with serious disease last fall did not get the updated booster for the current virus that was circulating.

In other words, the boosters greatly increase your chance to avoid serious illness and death that are still part of this continuing COVID tableau. Getting a shot is a heck of lot less nettlesome than being hospitalized with a serious respiratory illness. Let’s see….a prick or a ventilator???? It should be a pretty easy choice to make.

What about young people? Why vaccinate them if they don’t get very ill? Even though young adults and children do not get seriously ill as often as older people, don’t be distracted by the difference between relative risk and absolute risk (see a previous discussion on this topic here). Kids and young adults still have a real risk of serious COVID disease even if it does not happen with the frequency as it does for older people. But, that risk is absolutely real. Why chance it at all?

Also, children in particular are especially important spreaders of infectious diseases since they have the most intense social interactions of any demographic group. The intense interaction they have all day in school with classmates greatly increases their chance of infection, which they then bring home to vulnerable older people. It has been shown in epidemiology models and confirmed in real-life studies that preventing spread of infectious diseases in schools is one of the most important tools for protecting the larger population during an epidemic. Being vaccinated reduces kids’ viral burden if they do get infected and reduced viral burden means reduced virus spread. Vaccinated kids help reduce the spread of infectious disease. So, for a couple of reasons, CDC also recommends vaccinating kids this fall.

Get vaccinated.