Too Much Focus on Boosters, Says FDA Vaccine Advisor - MedPage Today

The question is, what do we want from this vaccine.

If what we want from this vaccine is protection against serious illness, the current two-dose vaccine strategy for mRNA vaccines, or the two-dose strategy for the J&J [Johnson & Johnson] vaccine, offers protection against serious illness, right up to the present time for all age groups.

If, on the other hand, the goal is to try and also protect against mild illness, which will fade over time, then you can argue for giving a booster dose, realizing that the protection against mild illness that you're getting from that booster dose will probably last for about 3 to 4 months.

What you saw was 95% efficacy against mild illness.

Neutralizing antibodies had to come down and therefore protection against mild illness also had to come down.

That's a vaccine that's working well.

What you want from these vaccines is, you want protection against severe illness.

For vaccines like the influenza vaccine or the rotavirus vaccine, or the pertussis or whooping cough vaccine, you get excellent protection against moderate-to-severe disease, but not very good protection against asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic effects.

If you look, for example, at Delta and Omicron in a home of unvaccinated people, it's really equally spread.

However, if you look at Delta and Omicron in a home where people are vaccinated or even vaccinated and boosted, you're much more likely to still get a mild illness with Omicron, than you would have with Delta.

And that's the problem with Omicron.

Even people who are vaccinated can have a mild illness.