The Data for (and Against) Coronavirus Vaccine Booster Shots

Modest benefit, minimal risk

The COVID controversy du jour seems to center firmly around the booster shot.

Last week the Vaccine and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee at the FDA met to review data on the safety and efficacy of a potential third dose of the Pfizer vaccine.

I want to review the data we have available to inform decisions about dose three but first I want to clarify two things.

Number one, the boosters we are talking about are the exact same formulation as the original vaccine that have already been approved for use to prevent COVID-19. We are not talking about a modified vaccine designed specifically to generate immunity against the Delta variant. Those vaccines are in clinical trials but we have no efficacy data yet.

The second thing I want to point out is that a lot of the argument for boosters seems to center around the idea that immunity from the first two doses of mRNA vaccines is waning. There’s debate about whether the observed waning reflects an immune process or is confounded by the more virulent delta variant but I want to argue that this is actually immaterial.

The utility of a booster needs to be defined, like we do for all medical interventions, on the basis…