Originally Posted by
dr dre
I would say early to mid March.
I agree. The 'mid-to-late March' bit was an error on my part.
Israel found a 4th shot to be ineffective, and the European Medical Agency has said more than 3 shots can be harmful to the immune system.
I did say 'potentially'. The Israeli study found the fourth dose was ineffective at preventing symptomatic infection with Omicron, despite a significant increase in antibodies. However, the study was very small and did not answer the question of protection against serious illness, particularly amongst those with compromised immune systems (
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel...d-as-it-seems/). The EMA's Marco Cavaleri said that "
While use of additional boosters can be part of contingency plans, repeated vaccinations within short intervals would not represent a sustainable long-term strategy" because it hypothetically increases the risk of overloading people's immune systems (https://www.reuters.com/business/hea...es-2022-01-11/). The comment was related to the long-term use of successive boosters, not specifically to a second booster (ie fourth dose). The point being that much of this stuff is at the cutting edge of science and the jury is still out on many questions. As Cavaleri said, more data and research is needed to support decisions one way or the other. Clouding the issue further is the fact that current vaccines were not designed to target the Omicron variant and thus require the use of a booster to provide protection. The picture might well change again if Pfizer has an Omicron vaccine available in March, as has been claimed (https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/10/covi...-in-march.html), or if yet another variant emerges.
I think it's fair to say the next few weeks will be 'interesting', particularly if the current outbreak continues to grow, as I suspect it will.