COVID-19 booster shots are coming. And not without
controversy.
This is turning into a bigger mess by the day unfortunately,
but it does feel like the entire country is kind of walking
around trying to figure out what to get their boosters. So
clearly the fate of the economy is tied to this virus.
Here's where we stand in the fight against the Delta variant
in the booster shot debate and how we got here in the first
place.
The Delta variant first popped up in India in December 2020.
Back then it was known to scientist as the B 16172
variants. Now it's the dominant variant and more than a dozen
countries. The local officials have described the variant as
alarming,
very worrisome because this seems to be more contagious and
more pathogenic. It does seem to be a more dangerous variant.
And she says Delta now is the second most prevalent variant
here in the United States. And in the coming weeks. She
predicts it will eclipse the alphabet variant that's the B
117 variant first identified in the UK. This is now a new jersey
a pandemic of the unvaccinated.
It's more than 60% more transmissible than the original
Coronavirus. Symptoms from the Delta variant remained largely
the same coughing, trouble breathing, suddenly losing your
sense of smell or taste. But doctors have been reporting that
people infected with the Delta variant have been getting sicker
and more quickly than those with the regular Coronavirus. Delta
also appears to hit younger patients harder than the
original strain. what's worrying people the most though, what's
causing companies to scrap return to Office plants and mask
rules to pop back up is Delta's ability to break through
COVID-19 vaccines,
what we think is happening is that delta creates such high
viral loads early in the course of the illness that if you have
declining levels of circulating antibodies that can overwhelm
your initial defenses. It can overwhelm those circulating
antibodies, you get infected, and then you dependent upon
secondary immune cells you and I have talked about like memory B
cells and T cells to kick into that and fight that infection to
prevent you from getting sick from the infection. But it takes
a couple of days for those secondary immune cells to kick
in. So in the meantime, you've been infected, you might be
developing mild symptoms, eventually those immune cells
will kick in and those will those cells will prevent you
from developing severe disease from being hospitalized. But
you'll qualify as someone who's become infected with Covid at
that point, so this is really the debate among the public
health crowd. Because what they say is maybe we don't need
boosters because the vaccines are still doing their job in
terms of protecting people from getting hospitalized, developing
severe disease. For the unvaccinated. That Delta variant
remains extremely dangerous. For the vaccinated, it gets a bit
more complicated.
No vaccine has ever been 100% effective. The mRNA vaccines
from Pfizer and Moderna came close. Both vaccines surprised
everyone with how effective they were both in the mid 19th
percentiles, that's against the initial strain of the
Coronavirus. However, against the Delta variant the efficacy
dropped. One study showed that the two doses of the Pfizer
vaccine was 88% effective against the Delta variant. Still
based on the latest data, that means a fully vaccinated person
has a very, very small chance of getting infected by the Delta
variant. And when they do, they're still much more likely
to avoid getting seriously sick or hospitalized.
Here's where we stand with the booster shots from Pfizer
Moderna and Johnson and Johnson. Right now the CDC recommends
that people with compromised immune systems should get a
third shot of Pfizer or Moderna vaccines at least 28 days after
their second dose. The CDC and FDA are still weighing evidence
for rolling out booster shots for the rest of us about eight
months after the second dose of either mRNA vaccine. Pfizer's
booster shot could be ready by September 20, the previous
deadline set by the White House, Moderna his third shot might not
be ready by then, according to White House medical adviser Dr.
Anthony Fauci.
One of the reasons that we believe the boost works is that
you give the immune response of the second shot, enough time to
mature and make it ready so that when you give a boost that
really Jacks up the response a lot, so you don't want to make
it too soon. But there will be a range of when you can get it
even though optimally we'd like it to be eight months, I believe
people are going to be doing it at six months or so. Human
nature itself is going to tell you that people will be doing
that.
A booster from Johnson and Johnson would likely come later
since the initial one dose vaccine didn't roll out until 70
days after the other two vaccines. So where's the
confusion coming from? Some health experts feel there wasn't
enough data for the White House to announce booster shots. And
regulators like the FDA and CDC still need to approve them. The
FDA is meeting on September 17. To discuss Pfizer's booster,
the political pressure essentially to come out and say
we need boosters, and we're going to start making them
available September 20. And then of course, there's a caveat in
that line from the admin And all the administration's health
officials saying pending the FDA review of the boosters and
making them available through the normal regulatory processes,
but this is essentially backwards. Normally what happens
is it goes through the FDA, then it goes through the CDC. But
here you have the White House leading the charge saying we
need boosters, we're going to start making them available
September 20, as long as the FDA signs off, and that's the
pressure that people are worried about
getting Americans to receive full doses of COVID-19. Vaccines
proved to be a challenge. As of early September 2021, only about
53% of Americans were fully vaccinated. According to the
CDC, vaccination rates in other countries, in poorer regions of
the world remain much, much lower. The World Health
Organization wants Western countries like the United States
to slow down with its rollout of booster shots.
Some countries are now rolling out booster doses to fully
vaccinated people, when millions of people around the world have
not even received their first dose.
Before the Delta variant, life was getting pretty close to
normal, now, not so much. The Delta variant caused one company
after another to scrap the return to work plants, it's also
eating into the economic recovery. And now the White
House has a new plan to fight COVID-19 we remain at a critical
moment of critical
time, we have the tools. Now we just have to finish the job with
truth. With science with confidence.
The White House wants to do the following plus a whole lot more.
It wants to require all businesses that employ more than
100 workers to make sure their employees get vaccinated, or at
least get tested weekly, and wants all federal workers to get
vaccinated along with millions of contractors that work with
the federal government. It's also calling on all states to
have every school employee vaccinated.
While America is much better shape than it was seven months
ago, when I took office, I need to tell you a second fact. We're
in a tough stretch. And it could last for a while.
There's another Covid winter coming, and no one is quite sure
what to expect.
Are we gonna need boosters every year indefinitely? You know,
I don't think we can say that. I doubt it very seriously. You
know, I believe that the third boost of a two shot regimen,
namely what we're recommending for those who've gotten the mRNA
vaccine, we're noticing in clinical studies, that the level
of antibodies that that induces is very high. So what we're
hoping for is that that third shot really gets you up to such
a high level that not only is it highly protective, but it's very
durable. And so it's just evolving. We're in a state of
evolution. And the booster shot is the next phase. And like
everything else we do, we're going to prejudge and pre worry
and get concerned about it. But if we just let things take its
course, and we'll see how things go in progress with the changes
season and going into the fourth quarter of the year. My guess is
there will be a requirement for the third shot for the booster
just like there was for two vaccine shots. And the companies
that want to be vaccinated only will stay that way. And they'll
include that codicil and the ones that don't won't.
The only way that we'll get ahold of this virus or control
it is if companies employers get in the mix and begin to mandate
the vaccines, especially now that the Pfizer one has been
fully approved by the FDA. This is important, especially as we
think about the return to work policies, we need to make sure
and employers need to make sure that everyone feels safe and the
assurances can only come if you have high rates of the
vaccinated employees.