A 67-year-old reader asks whether, after getting vaccinated and boosted, and having never had Covid-19 as far as he knows, he should get one of the updated booster shots.
First, if you really have serious concerns about getting a vaccination or booster, talk to your doctor, not your favorite senior political correspondent. I’m not a doctor, and I don’t play one on TV. With that in mind, here’s my best sense of where things stand.
I assume this reader did not have any serious reaction to the first shots or booster; if you had a severe allergic reaction to the first shot, doctors do not recommend getting a second one. Again, if you’re not sure if your past reaction counts as “severe,” or have concerns, ask your doctor.
The boosters are using basically the same ingredients and formulations as the first set of shots, but the new Covid-19 boosters add Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 spike protein components to the current vaccine composition. The list of ingredients in the booster can be found here. If you didn’t have a bad reaction to the earlier shots, you are not likely to have a bad reaction to the new boosters, but that’s not a 100 percent guarantee.
According to the CDC, as of a week ago, the most common variant of the virus is BA.5, which made up 87 percent of identified cases. This variant has steadily increased its share of reported cases since early July.
Neither the vaccines nor the new boosters prevent all infections and they do not prevent transmission of the virus. They do make symptoms less severe and aim to help you recover from infection more quickly, by giving your immune system practice at fighting off something similar to the virus.
I suspect the nation’s case numbers are getting less accurate over time. Many hospitals test all admitted patients for coronavirus even if they’re not experiencing any signs or symptoms of Covid-19 infection. This means anyone who tests positive is counted as a Covid-19 case, even if they’re in the hospital to treat a broken arm from a car accident or something completely unrelated to Covid-19. Should asymptomatic patients be considered Covid cases? Sure, but we don’t spend a lot of time worrying about pathogens that have no discernible effect on our health.
Meanwhile, lots of people who start to feel sick, buy a home test, and test positive never report their cases to doctors or public-health officials. So, we’re counting asymptomatic cases who show up in hospitals, while likely not counting quite a few mild cases in the general public.
This summer, a lot of people I know caught Covid-19, often after traveling on vacation. Maybe it was planes or airports, maybe it was crowded tourist destinations, or maybe it was just dumb luck. Just about all of the people I know had mild cases – cough, congestion, runny nose, sore throat, or fatigue, and the worst of it passed in a day or two. One person I know was treated with Paxlovid and it cleared up his infection pretty quickly.
I had planned on getting one of the updated boosters . . . except life threw a curveball at me recently. We came back from our vacation, my wife had a lingering cough, and eventually tested positive. (Her first test was negative.) This was in the final days before the kids went back to school, so she self-isolated from them and I became the household director of the getting-ready-for-school efforts. We weren’t that worried about our kids having a severe infection, we just didn’t want them missing those first few days of school.
Then shortly after she tested negative, she heard me coughing — and I cannot emphasize this enough — because while drinking coffee, it went down the wrong hole. She urged me to take one of our home Covid tests, and I told her she was being paranoid. To prove how ridiculous her concerns were, I relented, jabbed the swab up my nose, swirled it around until it felt like it was hitting brain matter, and waited for the test to prove how silly her worries were . . .
. . . and then the test showed the faintest pink line imaginable.
My wife theorized that a very faint positive result indicated I was either just finishing an infection or just starting one. Again, at no point in the preceding days had I felt sick or had any symptoms. Another test in the afternoon generated the same result — just enough of a line to dispel the idea that it was negative, but so faint when compared to the bright pink control line, it just barely counted as positive.
The following morning, I tested indisputably negative, meaning that for the preceding week or so, I had Covid and was completely asymptomatic. There were no signs the kids caught it either. Apparently, I’ve had BA.5 and fought it off, meaning my immune system is, at least for the next few months, well-practiced in fighting off that variant — making getting jabbed with the new booster less of a priority. That’s why I wrote “as far as he knows” above; I wonder how many people have caught BA.5, been asymptomatic, and never realized they’ve fought off the infection.
If I were 67, and didn’t have any good reason to not get an updated booster, I’d go and get it. Better safe than sorry. But all of us have different levels of tolerance for risk, and no one should get vaccinated or undergo any medical procedure against their will.
No need for the five stars, Vestigaliberal, just call them as you see them.