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The True Solution to the Booster Debate
As with anything vaccine-related, look to Israel.
There has been a considerable amount of news this week surrounding the future of COVID-19 vaccines in the United States. On Monday, Pfizer announced that their vaccine had been shown to be effective for children between the ages of five and eleven. This finding places the Pfizer vaccine on the fast track to Emergency Use Authorization for those younger ages, with benefits for parent anxiety, child health, and keeping schools open. There was also the news last Friday that a government advisory panel was only recommending a vaccine booster for those over the age of 65 or with underlying health conditions. The implication was that the vaccines people have already taken will be enough to protect them from the Delta variant of COVID-19. But the announcement also touched off a fierce debate about the role of these vaccines in the country moving forward, one that is unpredictable and complex compared with most of the nation’s current conflicts.
Vaccine boosters are a fraught question for many reasons. Supporters argue that they may be necessary to curb reductions in efficacy over time. The COVID-19 vaccines were introduced and tested so quickly that there is some uncertainty over what the perfect dose is to maintain immunity for as long as possible. There is a chance that the ideal regime is three shots spread out over an extended period of time. A third shot (or second in the case of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine) may end up being vital to protecting the unvaccinated and finally curbing the impact of the Delta variant in hospitals and greater society.
But a wide variety of opponents have statistical arguments of their own. There are two key points of criticism. One is the possibility of side effects from a third shot, which may be damaging to recipients and harm the vaccine’s already fraught popularity among large swaths of the public. But more commonly, critics of a booster frame the question as one of international equity. Why should Americans receive a third shot when so much of the world has not yet received a first? The World Health Organization (WHO) has argued that the world’s richest countries owe the poorer countries hundreds of millions of vaccines and that the focus should be on distributing vaccine surpluses before worrying about boosters.
