More info on the changing demographics of
COVID-19:
As the US mulls over its future Covid-19 vaccination plan, data from three large health care systems indicate that even though a small percentage of people under age 65 have gotten the new Covid-19 booster, people this age are not becoming severely ill and overwhelming hospitals.
“Even if they’re not getting boosted, young, healthy people are not getting super sick from this,” said Dr. Mangala Narasimhan, a senior vice president at Northwell Health, the largest health care provider in New York state. “We’re not seeing it. It’s not happening.”
...
Narasimhan and doctors at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City and Clalit Health Services, Israel’s largest health care organization, say the relative mildness of current Covid strains, along with a degree of immunity from previous vaccinations and infections, are going a long way toward protecting healthy young people, even if they don’t get the booster.
...
A report released by the CDC on Thursday analyzed death rates and vaccination status from September through December. It showed that people who were vaccinated – either with only the original vaccine or with an updated booster in addition – were better protected than those who were unvaccinated.
The updated booster helps protect against both the original strain of the coronavirus and more recent Omicron strains. It was particularly effective at reducing death rates in older people and less effective for younger people. For adults younger than 65, the bivalent booster offered at least three times better protection from death than just the original vaccine – but the difference in death rates was less than one in a million.
I'm sharing this mainly because I believe it's going to influence the next set of recommendations for upcoming vaccinations (rightly, so - to be clear).
There's some additional commentary and analysis by doctors for and against booster shots, of note:
Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said that although it’s “noble” to think that getting the booster will help protect others, the shot is much less effective at preventing transmission compared with the original vaccine at earlier points in the pandemic.
“Your chances of getting infected are altered very little with the [booster], so you can’t say with any scientific integrity that protecting others is why you should get it,” said Osterholm, who in a recent podcast emphasized the importance of getting boosted if you’re at higher risk for serious illness.
“My focus is on people who are 65 and older and those who are immune-compromised. That’s who I think really should get” the booster, Osterholm told CNN, noting that more people in those groups need to go out and get the shot.
And:
Booster dosing is probably best reserved for the people most likely to need protection against severe disease – specifically, older adults, people with multiple coexisting conditions that put them at high risk for serious illness, and those who are immunocompromised,” Offit, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote last month in the New England Journal of Medicine.
“In the meantime, I believe we should stop trying to prevent all symptomatic infections in healthy, young people by boosting them with vaccines containing mRNA from strains that might disappear a few months later,” he added.
Offit, who notes that he’s 71 and has no underlying health issues, did not get the new booster
That last sentence blows my mind. Offit has been on the front lines of vaccination for 30+ years and to hear him say he didn't get the bivalent booster is...bothering me. Broadly, I'm confused by the commentary as to what we're trying to accomplish here. Maybe after 26 years I don't understand public health anymore? I dunno.
