I hope you were able to enjoy your summer with the appropriate restrictions.
First and foremost we have flu shots in the office!!! Call for an appointment.
Once again, people are making noise about the “Twindemic” of the flu and Covid just as they were last year. I don’t subscribe to scare tactics. The reason you should get a flu shot every year is because you don’t want to get the flu!
Amazingly, we are still discussing Covid because people still refuse to follow basic public health guidelines including getting vaccinated.
And so we are now in the 4th phase of Covid infections.
But let’s talk about booster shots: Is it politics, profit or really about protection?
Stay abreast of the information and make up your own mind.
I get a lot of questions about Covid vaccine booster shots. I hope this answers some of them.
Many healthcare practitioners and pharmacies have already been giving people third doses of vaccines, even if they are not among the immunocompromised — the group for which the shots are currently approved.
If you go to your local CVS they are happy to give you one. Even if they know nothing about you or your health conditions.
Just because you can get one doesn’t mean that you necessarily need to get it. At least not at this time.
FYI, the whole booster thing was a Pfizer idea and the notion of boosters was ‘rushed to market’ i.e the court of public opinion way before the jury is out.
We know that the Pfizer people said that their vaccine starts to wane and that people need boosters at 8 months. Hmm! 8 months, very specific! What about all the others?
Meanwhile we practitioners were advised that boosters should not start until September 23 2021 but only to those who are immunocompromised.
It seems that it is the usual theory that if some is good, more is better. Or is it just that some people had such a hard time getting the first one, getting one easy feels like winning a prize?
But let’s look at the opposite view. Just because immunity wanes around the 8th month doesn’t mean that by the 9th month you have no protection at all!
Yes, people who have been vaccinated are still getting Covid infections. And I told you very early in the year that just because you are vaccinated doesn’t mean that you cannot contract Covid or transmit it to others but the third dose will still not change that.
What does that mean?
Let’s look at the flu vaccine. Everyone who get’s the flu shot every year knows that it doesn’t guarantee they will not get the flu. But if they get the flu of a different strain they will still be protected to some extent and they will not get as sick.
Similarly with Covid, the people that got vaccinated are NOT dying, This is the main take home message: If you get vaccinated you will not die!
Does that mean exactly 8 months after your last shot you will die from Covid if you get it? Probably not!
One of the downsides of getting boosters too early is that now you will end up getting more shots per year than you really need with a shorter interval to the next shot.
But if you have it in your mind that you need booster shots every 6 months that is certainly your prerogative I just don’t recommend it.
For people who got the J and J they haven’t even had to take two shots yet, does that mean they are ahead or behind?
For people that got the mRNA vaccines they already got two shots and then they now get another one every 6 months? Do you get the same type or will mixing and matching give you stronger protection?
So what happened to all the concerns and reservations about taking the shots in the first place? All that has now gone out the window and now its "give me more and more".
Yes, I will be giving booster shots in my office because it has been recommended, but I will not be giving them to anyone who is not at least 8 months out from their last shot. Why?because I don’t think that it is necessarily in a person’s best interest, unless certain circumstances show it to be appropriate (like travel to a country without healthcare).
That’s my view on the booster shots.
There is no harm in boosting immunity, we do it every year with the flu shot and I think that is reasonable but if someone said you should get a flu shot every 4 months ‘just in case’ it would sound excessive. In fact why not get two at the same time so you can be bulletproof? Common sense says maybe not, right?
As it is, we do not know what the long term consequences of the mRNA vaccines are and we will NOT know until we get to the long term! They started being given in January, this is not long term.
This is one of the reasons that I think the vector vaccines have an advantage as far as immunizing children but that is a whole different subject.
A study out of England showed that AstraZeneca maintained its immunity longer than the Pfizer vaccine even though the original efficacy number for Pfizer was in the 90’s and AstraZeneca was in the 80’s. AZ is a vector borne vaccine like the J and J and they work in a manner that we have been very familiar with over many decades. (Hence less hesitancy with young children).
A study from the UK showed that Moderna vaccine creates twice as much antibody as Pfizer. We don’t know if that necessarily relates to stronger immunity but maybe that's why Pfizer brought up the whole booster issue.
Finally, this is from a Medscape article today on boosters:
(FYI The ACIP is the committee that makes the rules on immunization schedules, they and some of the FDA people are ticked off that the politicians announced the need for boosters before the scientific groups had had a chance to study the data Pfizer brought forward to support boosters).
“In Monday's ACIP meeting, Demetre Daskalakis, MD, who leads vaccine equity efforts at the CDC, cautioned that physicians who give extra doses of the vaccine before the FDA and CDC have signed off may be in violation of practitioner agreements with the federal government and might not be covered by the federal PREP Act. The PREP Act provides immunity from lawsuits for people who administer COVID-19 vaccines and compensates patients in the event of injury.
The ACIP signaled that it is considering recommending boosters for a much narrower slice of the American population than the Biden administration has suggested.
They said that so far, the data only point to the need for boosters for seniors, who are the patients most likely to experience breakthrough infections that require hospitalization, and healthcare workers, who are needed now more than ever and cannot work if they're sick.”
Sorry the email is so long but it only touches on the tip of the iceberg.
Knowledge is healthy but fake news is dangerous to your health.
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