NBC reports: Young, healthy people don’t need COVID booster

Submitted by Dave Hodges on Monday, January 16, 2023 - 20:56.

by Adan Salazar

Discussing a New England Journal of Medicine article authored by FDA vaccine advisory panelist Dr. Paul Offit, NBC covers his view the jabs should be reserved for older or immunocompromised people as their development is failing to keep up with evolving Covid variants.

From NBC‘s report, “Younger, healthy people don’t need another Covid booster, vaccine expert says,”

A key adviser to the Food and Drug Administration’s vaccine panel is questioning whether more Covid booster shots are necessary for healthy, younger people.

The evidence for the new versions of the vaccines for the omicron variant of the coronavirus, which the FDA authorized in August, is “underwhelming” and fails to show they are much better than the original shots, Dr. Paul Offit, a pediatrician who is a leading vaccine and infectious diseases expert, wrote Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Protecting people against Covid infection with the current mRNA technology may be a pipe dream, especially as new coronavirus strains emerge every few months, Offit, the director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told NBC News.

The updated boosters from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna are probably best reserved for people at high risk of severe illness or death from Covid — older adults, people with multiple coexisting conditions and those who are immunocompromised, Offit said.

Asking young, healthy people who have a lower risk of serious illness to get boosted with a variant-specific vaccine, followed by a different variant-specific formula a few months later, may not be practical, he said.

In his NEJM paper, Offit claimed the jabs offer some protection against severe infection, however went on to say boosting against specific strains that “might disappear in a few months” is essentially useless for young, healthy people.

Although boosting with a bivalent vaccine is likely to have a similar effect as boosting with a monovalent vaccine, booster dosing is probably best reserved for the people most likely to need protection against severe disease — specifically, older adults, people with multiple coexisting conditions that put them at high risk for serious illness, and those who are immunocompromised. In the meantime, I believe we should stop trying to prevent all symptomatic infections in healthy, young people by boosting them with vaccines containing mRNA from strains that might disappear a few months later.

To his credit, Offit, a staunch vaccine and social distancing advocate who frequently appears on CNN, has been against the FDA’s booster scheme since early on and has been appearing on mainstream media to promote his theory boosters don’t benefit young, healthy people.

On the other hand, Infowars has shown evidence from various sources that the jabs actually appear to be weakening, suppressing and destroying the immune system, making the boosters highly questionable even for elderly and immunocompromised individuals.

Entrepreneur Steve Kirsch argues Offit’s booster jab skepticism was evidence enough no one should be taking them, saying, “One of the world’s most respected vaccinologists admits that there are no benefits to the boosters. He’s not taking the boosters. Why should you?”