President Biden received his second booster shot on Wednesday, almost immediately after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced that additional booster doses of Pfizer BioNTech and Moderna mRNA vaccines were approved for people over 50-years old, and immunocompromised people. The CDC also updated their guidelines following the announcement.
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They have not recommended the shot yet for the general population.
Dr. Michael Osterholm, the Director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, talked to the Chad Hartman Show on WCCO Radio Wednesday. Osterholm says he believes the FDA approval makes sense given the data.
“I think everyone actually handled it as well as could be,” Osterholm says. “And what I mean by that is that we'd all love to have more data demonstrating, one the need for a fourth dose, and two that they're very effective. And we have some data for both.”
That data mainly comes from Israel according to Osterholm, where they’ve been in front of the U.S. when it comes to vaccinating people.
“They’ve been a bit ahead of us in terms of watching what happens after you get a dose of vaccine and then four, six, eight, 12 weeks later, do you still have the same level of protection you had in those first weeks after you've been vaccinated,” Osterholm explains. "We've seen with the Pfizer and Moderna (vaccines) that you get four to five months out and you start to see waning immunity.”
Osterholm says that despite that waning immunity, it’s still important to remember that it does not mean the vaccines don’t work.
“What's happening is that they still are preventing severe illness, hospitalizations and deaths,” says Dr. Osterholm. “And that is by itself a really important thing. But over time those numbers even start to drop a bit. These boosters are able to rise the antibody levels gain. The protection is there and at least for some months after that vaccine, you're even experiencing higher levels of protection than you were just before it. And so I think that you know, given the incomplete information we had from Israel, but surely pointing towards the importance of the 4th dose, I think they did the right thing.”
While the FDA is waiting on recommending the fourth shot for most of the population, Osterholm says there are two reasons why he believes getting the boosters is a good idea.
“The one bucket is it working or not, and does it actually prevent infection,” Osterholm asks. “We have been telling people for years get a flu shot each season. Even though some years it doesn't work all that well. But even not that well is better than zero so that you still get some protection. With these vaccines you don't need to wait to know that you do get additional protection with this dose.”
Additionally, Osterholm says we're now at a point where the vaccines have been proven to be safe.
“The bucket that I'd be most concerned about, and the one that would be reasonable to say I want to wait, is on safety. And yet we have the data on safety saying these are not any kind of a safety issue at all in terms of third, fourth, and fifth dose. And so at this point, I wouldn't wait. I didn't wait. I'm not waiting. And I think that's the message I want to get across to people is for safety. Get more information, but it's not about safety. That we got covered. It's all about just getting more protection.”
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