What the...!?

Ok, I have enjoyed the peace and quiet of being a busy ID doc. A month or so ago, my wife asked me how work was, meaning rounds at the hospital. I responded, "I felt like an ID doc. I haven't felt that way for nearly two years."

We haven't had a Covid pt in several weeks (knocking on wood). We haven't missed it one bit.

Governor Murphy issued a booster mandate for docs and nurses. I had avoid the booster, because I knew the data. I knew the booster wouldn't help me much at all against omicron and I knew that some of the adverse effects were real. Anyhow, after the mandate, I got the booster, despite my misgivings. Two days later, I got a hive. I didn't think much about it. The day later another hive. Still, perhaps incredibly, I didn't put 2 and 2 together. Finally, about Day 6 after the booster, I got a hive on my lip and the dim lightbulb in my head finally went off. Since then, I have been getting hives every 2-3 days. I am confident they are secondary to the booster, which I didn't need or want. It's not life threatening, but these recurrent hives are annoying. Getting them because some government idiot made me? Well, that's really tough to tolerate.

I just heard that the FDA approved a second booster or 4th vaccine shot in total. This approval prompted me to re-activate this blog. I am dumbfounded. I have no idea why anyone who is under 65 yo and has a normal immune system would get a 4th shot. The data simply do not support it. The data didn't support getting a booster against omicron; they certainly do not support getting a 4th shot.

From the New England Journal of Medicine's article, "Covid-19 Vaccine Effectiveness against the Omicron (B.1.1.529) Variant" -

"Our findings indicate that vaccine effectiveness against symptomatic disease caused by the omicron variant is substantially lower than with the delta variant. After two doses, vaccine effectiveness waned rapidly, with very limited vaccine effects seen from 20 weeks after the second dose of any vaccine. Booster doses resulted in a substantial increase in protection against mild infection; however, waning of protection against symptomatic disease was also seen after booster doses."

"Among those who had received two BNT162b2 [Pfizer vaccine] doses, vaccine effectiveness was 65.5% 2 to 4 weeks after the second dose, dropping to 15.4% after 15 to 19 weeks and dropping further to 8.8% after 25 or more weeks."

Regarding the booster -

"2 to 4 weeks after a BNT162b2 booster dose, vaccine effectiveness increased to 62.4%. before waning to 39.6% after 10 or more weeks." (95% CI's removed from text)

Regarding the efficacy of a 2nd booster, this is from the NEJM's article, "Efficacy of a Fourth Dose of Covid-19 mRNA Vaccine against Omicron".

"Vaccine efficacy against any SARS-CoV-2 infection was 30% for BNT162b2 [Pfizer vaccine] and 11% for mRNA-1273 [Moderna vaccine]." (95% CI's removed from text)

Again, these data are from studies published in the NEJM, a "liberal" but still prestigious medical journal.

Scratchy