As I understand it, the boosters do a much better job "training" (for lack of a better term) B cells.
That being said, I'm going off the preliminary study that shows that vaccine >= infection for older variants whereas vaccine + infection >> vaccine for omicron.
As an aside, I've got three shots of Moderna in me and I caught omicron during the covidtastrophe a few weeks ago. It was extremely mild but I'm now resigned to the idea that vaccines are an assurance against getting actually sick more than a silver bullet.
It sounds like you are under the impression that the boosters that exist now give no additional protection compared to the two-shot vaccine, beyond the very temporary antibody boost, right? I don't have a source right now, but I believe that impression is incorrect, isn't it? Yes, the booster does give a temporary antibody boost, but it also adds a level of increased long-term efficacy, even against Omicron.
That's fine but the booster has shown that it likely incurs much longer term stability to immune resistance to all current strains that we know about, including omicron. If you look up the history of vaccinations you will see similar results and why some are carefully spaced apart at certain intervals as they train the human immune system
From the article: this translates into vaccine effectiveness estimates against symptomatic Omicron infection of between 0% and 20% after two doses, and between 55% and 80% after a booster dose
What I'm wondering is: Is this due to the timing of a booster, since most boosters have been given in the last few months? Or is there some kind of cumulative impact on the immune system?
Eg, If I got a booster early, am I still as protected as they state above?
I think early data showed that you still get ~60% protection with the first shot (or was that for the Moderna vaccine?) Still, you get some level of immunity, booster only makes it higher.
Boosters are given to improve immune response so the idea is that you improve the immune response so vaccinated people generate more antibodies against an active infection and you get less breakthrough cases.
It's a matter of antibody levels. Antibody binding is worse for Omicron, so you need more of them. Booster shots provide you with such increased antibody levels.
Are they still gonna be high enough after a few months? Good question. Afaict, nobody knows yet.
(And this of course leaves aside the whole matter of T-cell immunity still providing protection against severe disease.)
It’s interesting to me that this story does not try to argue that vaccines and boosters inhibit infection or transmission. At one point this was a key benefit claimed by health authorities and the news media. I think it would be more credible to acknowledge this was wrong (if it was) and explain why the mistake happened.
The article does state that the new booster, like other vaccines, will make hospitalization and death less likely. As someone not at much risk for an Omicron death or hospitalization, I read this article wondering what the takeaway was. It was not very clear. Reading between the lines, it seems to be that older folks and others who are vulnerable should get boosters, including this new one. It doesn’t explicitly say that it is OK for me to skip it, since lack of the booster doesn’t increase (I guess?) my chance of infecting a vulnerable person. But I hate having to guess about these details. Every time I read a muddled article like this I’m less likely to read or trust the next Covid story. I used to be glued to the coverage but now I actively avoid it. I think the media and CDC have handled themselves pretty poorly in terms of clear and well grounded messaging.
I'm double-vaccinated, I'm just not boosted. (I'm similar to someone else in this thread in that I was waiting for more information before getting boosted and caught Omicron first). I think boosters are a good idea for the general population, I just think that there might be a difference between 2 doses once and repeated activation of the immune system. Also there's a difference between the risk posed by the original variant or Delta vs. Omicron.
Plus to be completely blunt, "not likely to trigger an MS relapse or have any impact on long-term disease progression" isn't language to inspire confidence. To be fair, I think we understand the vaccines pretty damn well, it's MS that I think we might not understand well enough here.
There is a more recent U.S. study [1], which comes to a different conclusion, and neither of these studies take into account boosters (or a longer delay between shots), which by all accounts improves vaccine effectiveness by ~10x.
Being vaccinated and then boosted offers as worst equal protection, probably better, against infection and disease, with much much lower risk of side effects, serious disease, long covid or death.
Yes, even for Omicron. Vaccinated people are far less likely to have severe cases at every age group — not being boosted means you’re less likely to avoid a case altogether but the T cell response is quite effective at helping you kick it faster.
The booster dose increases antibody titers significantly above what they were after the second dose (or first in the case of J&J) so someone who is boosted should be more protected than someone who got their second dose at the same time. Additionally, through the process of affinity maturation, the antibodies you have after a booster will be more likely to recognize Omicron because your immune system has learned to recognize more features of the virus spike protein and is more robust to mutations.
Thanks for this! Yes there is no doubt that there is an effect, of course, but it doesn't rule out the booster shot being possibly very helpful in strenghtening immunity
There are many additional variables though. How much time since your last shot, which vaccine, how long between jabs, which variant of the virus you are exposed to, the state your immune system is in.
If you’ve had two jabs, spaced 3 weeks apart, last jab was 6 months ago, and you get exposed to omicron, it is a much worse scenario than “20% more likely to get symptoms”. So there is a rational push for boosters right now.
I recently pondered the should I bother boosting thing. I had covid in 2020 and 2x pfizer. I decided to get a pfizer booster - seems a bit less side effecty than moderna, and while I wasn't really worried about getting omicron myself I figured I'd be less likely to pass it to family at Xmas (I'm in London with crazy infections presently). Also it renews the vax pass thing so it should be ok for summer in the EU who are talking about a 9 month validity from the last shot. Anyway... maybe get a pfizer booster.
(Random aside - it took me till now to figure my past injections hurt because I tensed the muscle - if you relax it you feel way less)
There was a period of time (around when Delta showed up IIRC) when the evidence was pretty compelling that infection plus one vaccine was substantially more protective than no infection and two vaccines.
Right now the evidence that boosters are more than a little bit helpful is rather lacking.
That being said, I'm going off the preliminary study that shows that vaccine >= infection for older variants whereas vaccine + infection >> vaccine for omicron.
As an aside, I've got three shots of Moderna in me and I caught omicron during the covidtastrophe a few weeks ago. It was extremely mild but I'm now resigned to the idea that vaccines are an assurance against getting actually sick more than a silver bullet.
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