RELATED: Dr. Fauci Says Doing This Could “Defeat the Purpose” of Your Booster. A group of scientists, including two senior FDA officials and the World Health Organization (WHO), published a study in The Lancet on Sept. 13 indicating that booster shots are not yet needed for the general public. In fact, getting these jabs too soon could have negative consequences. According to the scientists, distributing boosters too early may lead to the potential for more vaccine-induced side effects, like myocarditis. Myocarditis is a rare heart inflammation condition that has affected hundreds of young adults, and it’s significantly more common after second doses of the mRNA vaccines than first doses. RELATED: For more up-to-date information, sign up for our daily newsletter. According to the study, COVID vaccine effectiveness against infection does appear to wane over time and in light of new variants, but the protection against severe disease persists. The scientists say this is because of the body’s complex immune system, which has other defense mechanisms besides antibodies that can protect people from serious illness. “Protection against severe disease is mediated not only by antibody responses, which might be relatively short lived for some vaccines, but also by memory responses and cell-mediated immunity, which are generally longer lived,” the scientists explained. The study noted that the effectiveness of most vaccines against symptomatic disease did appear to decrease against the Delta variant compared to the Alpha variant. However, “there is still high vaccine efficacy against both symptomatic and severe disease due to the Delta variant,” according to the study authors. The CDC reported on Sept. 1o that Moderna is 95 percent effective against hospitalizations amid Delta, while Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson are 77 percent and 65 percent effective, respectively. “Current evidence does not, therefore, appear to show a need for boosting in the general population, in which efficacy against severe disease remains high,” The Lancet study concluded. RELATED: Moderna Just Made This Major Announcement About Its COVID Vaccine.
