Boosters - Full Speed Ahead?

Jeffrey I. Barke, M.D.

Pfizer and other major pharma houses are now pushing the idea of giving an extra dose of their vaccines to those who have already had their original shots. The press are calling them booster shots — but in reality they are an exact duplicate of what the first and second shots contained. In my view, they are an indication of the lack of efficacy of the claims made when the vaccines originally were introduced.

The data from these companies show that the efficacy of their Covid-19  vaccine drops precipitously after 6 months. In Israel, one of the most highly vaccinated countries in the world, the Ministry of Health has reported that the Pfizer vaccine is only 39% effective against the Delta variant of Covid-19. 

Here is the problem I keep having with the current conversation among the experts and the media.

If the original vaccines were so good — as most “experts” seem to agree — then why do we suddenly need boosters? Moreover, if the vaccines were also so good at preventing the disease from taking hold in a person’s body, why do vaccinated people have to wear masks or be wary of unvaccinated people? As I see all of this unfolding, it seems to me that the vaccines are not really as effective in preventing infection as they were originally touted to be. 

Meanwhile, more data is now indicating that natural immunity from having had Covid and beaten back its effects is far superior to the immunity provided by any of the vaccines. If that is true, why then is the government and its experts pushing to vaccinate Covid recovered patients as well as the unvaccinated? 

The questions about the vaccines keep piling up and the answers seem as slippery as the mud coursing down a hillside in a heavy rainstorm. Could it be that financial incentives are behind the push for getting more and more vaccines into arms? If “dollars” are really what the “booster” shot is all about, who will provide the “sense” to the American people?

Recently, the Food and Drug Administration’s vaccine advisory panel voted overwhelmingly against recommending the approval of a booster shot of Pfizer-BioNTech’s coronavirus vaccine for people 16-years and older. It said the data in hand did not justify Pfizer’s request to give boosters to everyone. The panel did, however, endorse an additional dose for those most vulnerable to the virus — the immune compromised and those above the age of 65. This decision dealt a major blow to the Administration’s plan for mass distribution of a third shot. 

Pfizer has said that the Covid-19 vaccine efficacy weakens over time and hence the need to give the immune system a boost. But recall that it wasn’t long ago that we were told that the vaccines were at least 95% effective in the clinical trials. It was encouraging news. The real world, however, is vastly different from carefully controlled tests. Real world data from a Kaiser Permanente study suggests protection against Covid-19 infection dropped from 88 percent in the first month after receiving the second dose to just 47 percent after five months. That is a significant difference. 

Moreover, two senior FDA officials who are expected to leave the agency soon and a dozen top researchers around the country argued that the booster shots aren’t needed for the general population. They argued that the potential side-effects from the extra doses could outweigh any benefits to the vast majority of citizens. They, at least, remembered that element of the Hippocratic oath that mandates “PRIMUM NON NOCERE” or “FIRST DO NO HARM.” 

The World Health Organization (WHO) has also weighed in on the booster issue. Director-General Tedors Adhanom Ghebreyesus from Ethiopia stated: “I will not stay silent when companies and countries that control the global supply of vaccines think the world's poor should be satisfied with leftovers.” His argument was not about the efficacy of boosters to those who have had the vaccine, but to the vast majority of people around the globe who have not had any shots. Rather than use the limited worldwide supply of vaccines to provide protection for a few with a third shot, his plea was to use that third shot for those who haven’t had their first. 

Ghebreyesus didn’t mention another problem which might go a long way to alleviating the Third World vaccine shortage. The United States long ago promised to share the vaccine technology so that other companies could begin manufacturing it for the millions who lack it. But the U.S. seems to be dragging its feet on releasing the necessary information. No sharing has occurred. Could it be that this is simply a continuation of what matters is dollars more than sense?

Meanwhile, Britain's vaccine advisory body has recommended against universal COVID-19 vaccination for healthy teens between the ages 12 and 15. The Brits believe that any marginal benefit is not worth the risk. Not surprisingly, this was despite a government push to proceed with a plan to jab as many young arms as it could reach. As a reminder, the CDC’s own data show that the survivability of Covid-19 in kids less than 18 years old is 99.997%. How many lives does that actually leave at “risk”?

To further complicate the vaccine and booster narrative, the state of Massachusetts reported over 4,500 new breakthrough cases for fully vaccinated people during one week in late September 2021. A breakthrough case occurs when someone gets Covid despite being fully vaccinated. We are seeing this across the county. I have seen it in my own practice — multiple cases of fully vaccinated patients getting Covid. This has included talk radio host Mark Larsen who mentioned that he is a patient of mine when he had me on his program to discuss his particular situation. We reviewed that he received Regeneron and that he is now recovering from a post vax covid infection. While hospitalizations from Covid are more likely in the unvaccinated, this may change as more and more people are vaccinated. In Israel, approximately 75% of all Covid hospitalizations are now in fully vaccinated patients! Can you say a pandemic of the vaccinated?

I should also point out that the US hospital data on Covid is very misleading. That data include a group that are in the hospital for medical issues unrelated to Covid, but eventually test positive for the disease. An article in The Atlantic recently pointed out that “almost half of those hospitalized with COVID-19 have mild or asymptomatic cases.” The article goes on to say that “...there are many COVID patients in the hospital with fairly mild symptoms [but] who have been admitted for further observation on account of their comorbidities, or because they reported feeling short of breath.” Finally, the Atlantic reports that “... roughly half of all the hospitalized patients showing up on the COVID-data dashboards in 2021 may have been admitted [to a hospital] for another reason entirely, or had only a mild presentation of [the] disease.”

So what to make of all this confusion? Here is my perspective. 

The various Covid-19 vaccines are not as advertised. That is, they help around the margins in preventing severe symptoms from the disease but do not prevent infection or the transmission of the virus. They are failing to deliver on what was promised. 

To reinforce this point, we are seeing more and more vaccine failures and significant vaccine injury numbers coming into the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). VAERS is a national vaccine safety surveillance program created as an outgrowth of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 (NCVIA) which provides immunity from liability for the vaccine manufacturers and is administered by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). 

The hard push to approve boosters confirms what many of us have believed all along: That the original vaccine efficacy claims were simply not as good as claimed. We would never vaccinate our way out of this pandemic. Rather we must refocus our medical resources on early treatment of those ill and on protecting the most vulnerable. 

There is some potential good news on the early treatment medications. Merck says its new Covid pill reduces hospitalizations and death by half for some patients. Merck is planning to seek emergency authorization. If all goes well expect this therapeutic to be available late 2021 or early 2022. 

There is also growing evidence of the efficacy of many of our repurposed medications and of monoclonal antibodies such as Regenerone. The public must have easy access to these medications and physicians must be advised on their use. Until this happens patients will continue to suffer and the vaccine push will continue to eat up valuable resources.