Mark your calendars
Vaccine shots may need a boost
SO NOW booster shots are controversial? When did booster shots go sideways? Tetanus, flu, HPV . . . . Parents who lead their children into doctor offices at ages 2 and 4 and 15 aren’t met with booing protesters. Or haven’t been prior to 2021.
Sigh.
“U.S. health officials Wednesday announced plans to offer covid-19 booster shots to all Americans to shore up their protection amid the surging Delta variant and evidence that the vaccines’ effectiveness is falling,” the papers say. “The plan, as outlined by the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other top authorities, calls for an extra dose eight months after people get their second shot of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine.”
This makes sense. It’s the reason you’re supposed to get a flu shot each year. While vaccines do a marvelous job at protecting the body from hospitalization and death, they grow weaker as time goes on. Don’t we all?
At the moment, 39 percent of Arkansas is fully vaccinated against the covid-19 virus. That’s pretty far from what the state needs for herd immunity (think 70 or 80 percent for that).
At least with the third dose the U.S. shouldn’t run into the same supply shortages it did when vaccines were first made available to the public. America has a pretty solid production and distribution system now.
Doubtless you can recall the first few weeks after vaccines started rolling out across the state. It was like trying to find a limited edition collector’s item, calling around to different doctors and pharmacies, waiting in long lines, and praying your appointment didn’t get canceled.
But since the vaccines are available in just about every pharmacy now, when your eight months are up, you should be able to get that booster without much issue. Just check your vaccination card (which wasn’t made small enough to fit inside a wallet for some reason), find the date of your second shot, and mark your calendar.
This latest recommendation is only for the Moderna and Pfizer shots. Scientists are still trying to figure out if they’ll recommend a booster dose for the Johnson & Johnson shot since it uses a more traditional vaccination mechanism. Stay tuned on that front. (If you need an easy way to remember when third doses will probably start being given, just keep in mind it’s the week Arkansas will play Texas A&M.)
It’s probably not going to be difficult to convince most fully vaccinated people to get a third dose. Seems like everyone who wanted to be vaccinated at this point is, and they understand the necessity of the protection it’ll provide.
The real challenge remains the same: convincing people who haven’t been stuck to get it. As has been said about many other topics, you can’t reason somebody out of an opinion if they haven’t been reasoned into it.
It would be great to see everyone realize the vaccine doesn’t check your voting history before entering your body. No matter what party you donate to or what church you attend, the virus will be happy to call your body home and replicate so it can infect others.
THE WHO wasn’t enthusiastic about the plan for booster shots, arguing there are still poor countries who don’t have significant amounts of vaccine for a first dose yet. Fair point. As long as covid-19 has a safe haven to reproduce, it could spawn more variants. This is a global pandemic, after all.
But America is capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time. The U.S. has enough supply to provide a booster shot and send out vaccines to low-income nations. It’s not a choice of one or the other.
Nobody wanted to see America return to infection rates like last year, but that’s where the country is. It’s going to take some work to get back to normal, but the good news is that we know what works.