The latest Booster shots, given six months after the completion of the initial vaccine regimen, are officially an option for millions of Americans. People now eligible for a third dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine include those 65 and older, those who live in nursing homes and those at high risk of severe disease owing to their jobs or medical conditions. Availability of these boosters comes after review by panels at the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Unusually, CDC director Rochelle Walensky did not completely agree with her agency's advisory group — she added the booster provision for workers at high-risk jobs. A stark divide exists in the United States: Regions where vaccinations are high have fewer hospitalizations. Two Post graphics and data reporters have mapped the relationship across the nation between vaccine rates and hospitalizations. In communities where few people are vaccinated, hospitals have 10 times the number of covid-19 patients compared to patients admitted in high-vaccinated regions. About 10 percent of the American population isn't vaccinated but is open ideologically to getting a shot. The "unvaccinated but willing" face barriers that don't come from their politics. Instead, they need help to secure appointments, obtain transportation or surmount other logistical hurdles. Others may be under a mistaken impression that vaccination costs money or requires official identification they do not have. Flu season is coming — which will probably further strain hospitals. But as that approaches, the number of first-time coronavirus vaccines given to Americans has been dropping. Daily first doses, measured by seven-day average, dropped to 272,000 on Friday, the lowest level it's been since July. "I'm trying to stay hopeful, so I won't use the term dire, but things are not good here," one professor of immunology in Alaska told The Post. Also coming, if you ask Stéphane Bancel, the chief executive of Moderna: the pandemic's end. Bancel told a Swiss newspaper this week a return to normal could occur in a year, given the pace of production of coronavirus vaccines. Bancel said "enough doses should be available by the middle of next year so that everyone on this Earth can be vaccinated." Whether that prediction will come true depends on if those vaccines will be delivered to the people who need them. Other important news A doctor in Michigan, who has lost so many patients to covid-19 he is already unable to recall some of them, says he still encounters covid denial from people on their deathbeds. Far-right Germans are campaigning against mask and vaccine mandates for an upcoming national election. New York's vaccine mandate for health-care workers begins Monday, and state officials are preparing for hospitals staffing shortages as a result. A worldwide lack of semiconductors is worsening as the pandemic causes production delays and other bottlenecks. At the U.N. General Assembly, several African nations voiced displeasure with the unequal distribution of vaccines worldwide. Hage Geingob, the president of Namibia, described the situation as "vaccine apartheid." |
Your questions, answered "I have been fully vaccinated since February, and assume I will need a booster shot soon. Will the booster rebuild my protective antibodies right away, or will this require a period of days or weeks?" — David in New Jersey Good question! Vaccines prime the immune system to defend against viruses. You're spot-on that one benefit of vaccination is the production of specialized antibodies. Many of you know this, but just a reminder, antibodies are molecules that bind to viruses. Once bound, so-called neutralizing antibodies disrupt a virus's ability to enter a cell or replicate. That's a strong defense against infection. But vaccine shots, even booster doses, don't instantaneously release a flood of these helpful molecules into your body. It's less like flicking on a lamp, and more similar to starting up an assembly line. How does that assembly line work? Although scientists still don't fully understand about the immune system, they do know this: The mRNA vaccines provoke human cells into creating a spike protein, a key piece of the virus. It's harmless when your body produces these proteins after vaccination. Spike protein production mostly happens, as Derek Lowe at Science magazine describes, in "the muscle tissue at the site of injection, the lymphatic tissue downstream in your armpit on that side, your spleen, and (for the first day or two) your liver." He notes, too, based on animal models, most of that spike generation happens within the first few days after the shot. In response to those proteins, the immune system begins to churn out antibodies. You can think of the vaccine's spike proteins almost like wanted posters, and the neutralizing antibodies as bounty hunters designed to react to the presence of viral outlaws. Recent booster shot results suggest a timeframe of weeks over which this process could occur. In a news release issued Tuesday, drug company Johnson & Johnson said antibody levels rise in weeks following a booster given at six months. One week after that booster, antibody levels rose on average nine-fold, and by the fourth week, levels had risen 12-fold, the company said. For mRNA vaccines, antibodies don't instantaneously leap to their highest levels, either. Studies suggest antibody levels for the Pfizer vaccine may peak two to four weeks after a first shot, or about a week after the second dose. Pfizer said earlier this summer a month after a third dose, antibody levels rose to three times as high as a month after a second shot. |
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