The Booster Trap

First, let’s clear up a misunderstanding.  Some people think that a COVID booster is different from a COVID vaccine, but that’s not true.  There is no difference between a manufacturer’s booster and its primary vaccine series.  Both come from the same vial.  There’s been no change in the formulas that were first authorized last year.  Pfizer and Janssen boosters are even the dosed the same as a single shot from the primary series.  Moderna boosters are half doses of a single shot from its primary series.  Either way, the booster shot is just more of the same.  If you want to fact-check me on this, read the FDA’s Fact Sheets for the Pfizer Purple, Moderna, and Janssen, the only available vaccines with boosters permitted in the U.S.

There are also those who believe that the vaccines available today are different that the vaccines that were given last winter, but that’s another misunderstanding.  The original vaccine was targeted against the Wuhan strain, but even though that strain is no longer present in the community, vaccines given today are the same as the ones first authorized.  There has been no change in vaccine formulas.  You can fact check me by reading the FDA authorization letters for the available vaccines (Phizer, Moderna, and Janssen) which detail their regulatory histories.

Why the push for boosters?  It turns out that the immune response induced by vaccine wanes significantly after 6 months.  The booster is thought to drive antibody levels higher, and, the theory goes, it’s the antibody levels that protect the vaccinated from infection.  Boosters have been authorized for all Americans over 18 years of age, 6 months after completion of an mRNA primary vaccine series (Pfizer and Moderna) or 2 months after the Janssen injection.   Janssen’s booster interval is shorter because Janssen has the lowest immunogenic effect of the three authorized vaccines.  Janssen-induced antibodies wane earlier.

Everything above this paragraph is an objective report of the current vaccine landscape.  Now I’m going to predict the future.  When I look in my crystal ball, here’s what I see coming.

Janssen will go from a single injection to a two-shot series, separated by 6-8 weeks.  Then Janssen’s booster interval will be set at 6 months, just like the other vaccines.  So far, only one booster has been authorized, but expect booster authorizations to go on an every six-month renewal cycle.  

The definition of “fully vaccinated” will change to include a current booster.  If it’s been more than six months since your last booster, your vaccination status will expire.   It will take a computer to keep up with everyone’s expirations, so vaccine passports will be tracked on your smartphone.  This passport will be connected to other data on your phone—where you go, what you tweet, who your friends are—to create a social credit score that will be used, along with your vaccine passport, to restrict or permit access to products, services, and transportation.  Since your financial institutions are probably already connected to your smartphone, it will only take the flip of a switch to turn off access to buying power.  That should incentivize citizens to maintain good scores.

And what about those boosters—will they ever change?  Probably.  The mRNA technology used in Pfizer and Moderna vaccines is a platform that can be adjusted rapidly to changing vaccination targets.  As the virus mutates, these vaccines can be quickly reengineered to respond to the changes, perhaps even without additional FDA submissions.  And it will be used for more than SARS-CoV-2.  Other vaccine targets can be loaded on the platform to create a vaccination cocktail tailored to the pandemic du jour.  And it will be used for more than vaccines.  Other gene therapies can be mixed into the brew, all for your safety of course.  You’ll be a much happier, more compliant, and easily manipulated citizen.  The possibilities are endless.

What do you think of my crystal ball?  Personally, I don’t like it very much.  It’s not a world where I want to live.  If my predictions become true, we lose the freedom to make personal choices.  Free will, the essence of humanity, will be gone.  That’s not for me.

We still have a choice.  We can choose to go down this road of boosters without knowing where the road will lead, or we can recognize that vaccination will not eradicate this virus, no matter how many boosters we take.  If boosters will not eradicate SARS-CoV-2, there must be another reason to inject the world with limitless mRNA sequences.

I don’t want to find out what that reason is, so I’m not going down that road.  My humanity is too valuable to me.