Science Friday - Your Questions About The Updated COVID Vaccines, Answered

Episode Date: September 18, 2024

SciFri producer Kathleen Davis talks with Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett-Helaire, assistant professor of immunology and infectious diseases at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health to help answer our listeners’ top questions about the updated COVID-19 vaccines.This Q&A, which includes questions from our audience members, has been adapted from our interview with Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett-Helaire. It has been edited for clarity and brevity.If I’ve already had COVID and it wasn’t so bad, why should I even bother with this new booster?There’s always a chance that COVID-19 will cause more than the sniffles, or that you could end up in the emergency room—especially for older people. Why take that chance when you have the option to go to your local CVS and, in many cases, get a free vaccine that has been proven to decrease your chances of more severe disease?My hope is that as time progresses, people become more comfortable with the idea of getting seasonal vaccinations for COVID-19 along with flu.  Is the new COVID-19 vaccine one shot?Yes.Read the full Q&A at sciencefriday.com.Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

The latest round of COVID shots are now available, but with each round of new boosters, uptake is lower. My hope is that as time progressed, people become more and more comfortable with the idea of getting seasonal vaccinations for COVID-19 along the flu. It's Wednesday, September 18th, and you're listening to Science Friday. I'm Cy Freight producer Shoshana Bucksbaum. In the past few weeks, the latest versions of the COVID-19 vaccine has, have been approved from Moderna, Pfizer, and Novobax. It's been almost four years since the release of the original mRNA vaccine, and since then there have been several rounds of boosters.

It's sometimes hard to keep up. Just 22% of eligible adults got the last round of updated vaccines, and just 14% of kids got theirs. That's according to the latest data from the CDC. As we ride out the end of this crushing summer COVID wave, we thought that right about now might be a good time, time for a refresher on COVID vaccines. So we put out a call to our audience on social media and newsletters to answer your most pressing questions about them. Here's SciFire producer Kathleen Davis

with more. Joining me to help answer those questions and more is my guest, Dr. Kizmikia, Corbett Iler, Assistant Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Thank you so much for being here today. you so much for having me. Well, we are very excited to have you here. So I think at this point, it's very possible that most people listening to this have gotten COVID at least once over the past few years. And some people might be listening and thinking, you know, COVID wasn't so bad. Why should I even bother with this new booster? What do you say to those people? What I say to people is that there is always a chance that COVID-19 will cause more than the stifles.

There's always a chance that you could end up in the emergency room. There's always the chance that you could end up hospitalized, especially for older people. And so what I say is that why even take that chance when you have the option to go to your local CVS and in many cases get a free vaccine that has been proven to decrease your chances of more severe disease. And so my hope is that what will happen is that as time progressed, people will become more and more comfortable with the idea of getting seasonal vaccinations for COVID-19, along with flu. I want to ask you about the federal bridge program, which recently ended, and so that means that people without insurance can't get this latest round of COVID vaccines

for free. How significant is this change in your opinion? Well, so, you know, aside from standing on the mountain tops and shouting about vaccines, I am a proponent of health equity. And one of the parallels with inequities in health disparities, particularly COVID-19 and other diseases, is that there are correlates with how much income people have and don't necessarily have the needs to spend $150 every season at CD. to get their vaccine. And so I think it is absolutely unfortunate that we've come to this point where we've almost dismissed what the outcomes of COVID could be. And I mean that from like a governmental standpoint, from a regulatory standpoint. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, seasonally flu would kill what 50,000 people in this country. And it was almost like, oh, okay, just dismiss it. Another flu season. And,

And, you know, if we can prevent that, one death prevented is enough for me. And so hopefully we will try to, even if it's not a full on bridge program, hopefully we will try to make vaccines more accessible for everyone forever. So if someone's listening to this and they're thinking, I really got to get my button to gear and get this booster, can you make this like a family affair? Can you get a child, your child in your life, vaccinating? at the local pharmacy with you? Unfortunately, many pharmacies do not vaccinate children, particularly those under two years at age. And then even children under 12 and many pharmacies may have a hard time being vaccinated. So the best thing for you to do if you want to get your child vaccinated is to contact your pediatrician or contact for a local, like publicly subsidized health department.

And they will point you in the right direction. I personally, I have, what is he now, 15-month-old. or one-year-old, and he's getting his booster on next Friday. I want to get to some questions from our listeners. Let's play a voicemail that we received. Hi, this is Alan from Boulder, Colorado. And my question is that I had COVID at the beginning of July, so about two months ago. And I was wondering, when is the best time for me to get this new booster to best protect against the inevitable Thanksgiving and Christmas?

is COVID surge. Yeah, great question. So the CDC recommends that if you know that you have had a COVID infection in recent months to wait at least two to three months until getting your vaccine booster. So if he had a infection, I think he said in July, then that would be around October, which is perfect timing for him to be protected for the holidays. And then, you know, the other question is for those who didn't have a. COVID infection in the last wave. If they want to be optimally protected for the holidays, when should they get their booster?

So first of all, I always like to warn people about restricting themselves on timing so strictly, understanding that Thanksgiving is only a hop, skip, and jump maybe what, two months away now? And so if you were to get boosted today, you

would have a lot of antibodies waiting to protect you against the COVID-19 virus come Thanksgiving. But optimally, about two to three weeks before any major surge would be the best way to protect yourself. So what about for folks who are over 65? Go today. I always like to tell people for people who are over 65, or even for us who have older people in our lives who we love and hold dear to our hearts,

grandmothers, aunts and uncles, make it a date. My grandmother gets so excited for one of her 30 grandchildren to pick her up, get her vaccines, and go out to eat after. And so, you know, make it a date, spend time with your grandparent and help them get vaccinated. So it's been recommended that people over 65 can get a vaccine twice a year. Is that accurate? Previously, it has been twice a year. But the one thing that is important is that CDC and the FDA, they continuously review. the epidemiology, so how the virus is transmitting, how well the vaccines are protecting, and they make

continuous recommendations. So to say that someone 65 may have to get a vaccine in six months from now may not be necessarily true. I always remind people that right now we're in this moment where we are following the COVID-19 waves and our regulatory agencies are making recommendations in real time based on real data. And so keep watch out in six months, but worry about your vaccine and your booster for this fall right now. So we got a question from Michael, and it sounds like there might be some nuances here. And Michael wonders why everyone is not currently being advised to be on a twice a year schedule because we are currently seeing this summer and then later a winter wave. Is that something that has an easy answer? That does have a fairly easy answer.

So in the review of the data at the time of the beginning of that wave, around the time also, I believe it was like the JN1 variant started to circulate. In the review of that data, people under the age of 65 were still being very well protected against severe disease and actually even some very mild disease at that time. And so there was no reason to ask for them to get boosters because their fall vaccine was doing just okay at protecting them against severe disease and mild disease. So a question that we've gotten a few times from listeners, that is also a question that I have, is that we're hearing a lot about updated vaccines. Is that different from a booster? Is that the

same as a booster? That is a very good and nuanced question. So booster, think about that term as your everyday language when you're talking to your friends and talking to me because I'm your friend too. And think about updated vaccine as the more official term. And they are essentially interchangeable. I do want to remind people that to say that it's a booster means that you would have gotten COVID-19 vaccines previously. But if you have not, that does not mean that you cannot go and get your updated vaccines. So there is a little bit of nuance, but I would say that for most people,

you can use them interchangeably. Kind of adjacent to that question. We got a question from Wanda from Canton, Michigan, and she asks, what are the pros and cons of available vaccine options? We've got the two MRNA vaccines, Moderna, Pfizer, and then we have protein-based Novavax. I've read about the benefits of mixing and matching

and matching vaccines, is there any merit to that? There have been a couple of studies that have looked at responses of mixing and matching various vaccines. I would say that overarchingly, those studies are very what we would call nitpicky, meaning that they look at very specific antibody responses, and they're not necessarily gauging on a population level what protection looks like. And so any vaccine that is approved to be a booster, whether it be Novavax, Moderna or Pfizer in this country, is a very, very good vaccine for you to get.

You know, there are pros and cons when you think about the protein vaccines have tended to have less reactogenicity. What that means are basically those little mild side effects, the soreness in the arm, the redness in the arm, the fevers that you get after your vaccine. But other than that, any vaccine is a good one. People think of me as the Madonna girl, right? Because my teen helped develop the Moderna vaccine. And my last two boosters this year and last year were Pfizer. So you're not loyal to the Moderna brand.

That was just what was available at CVS for me. So why not? Right. And so regarding Novavax, because it is a little bit different, would that potentially offer more protection if you've had Moderna or Pfizer shots before? No. Okay.

So our next question is one that we do frequently get from listeners. And I think it's as important as ever to clarify, is it possible to overwhelm or confuse our immune system with too many vaccine doses? Can that be bad? The way that I like to think about overwhelming my immune system is that for every single thing you come into contact with all day, every day, your immune system is learning about that thing, whether it be the bacteria on your desk or, you know, some virus that someone sneezed on you on your commute to work on the train. Your body is learning. And so the immune

system is great and not being overwhelmed. There have been terms thrown around such as like immune exhaustion and that does happen. But in this case, it's not necessarily a thing because you aren't getting vaccinated every day. You're getting vaccinated six months to a year apart depending on your age. And that's enough time to let your immune cells settle down and allow yourself to be boosted again. So overwhelm is not necessarily something we should really think about in this case. As far as confusion, in science we call that immune imprinting or even more technically original antigenic sin. But I love that someone called it confusion.

I'm going to start using that, which basically means that you start to teach your immune system about the virus so much that it's like, I don't want to learn anymore. I'm just going to go back and start doing the thing I did when I got my original vaccine. making a lot of antibodies towards the original strain. And sure, I'll still protect, but maybe I'm not making as many antibodies to the vaccine that I just saw. So you still get boosted, but there is some phenomenon towards your body leaning towards wanting to continue to protect you against the older viruses. Still boosted, still protected. But inside of your body, your cells are like, eh, I like the old virus better.

Let me go make more antibodies to that. So a question we got from Wendy from Sonoma, California is, are the OTC rapid COVID tests still accurate given the number of variants? Yes. I also want to remind people that COVID tests are also regulated heavily continuously. So if they were not accurate, they would not be on your shelves. I have a personal question. So I have COVID tests in my bathroom that are probably about two years old now.

Do those still work? I mean, should I throw them out? They probably are expired. The longest that I've seen one is a year. So I would check the expiration date and for sure, if one is expired, do not use it. So every time we talk about vaccines on the show, there are always some people who are worried about side effects or potential harms that getting COVID vaccines may cause. How can people weigh potential side effects versus the benefits of getting the booster? So this is absolutely something that we all need to heed, especially when I say we, I'm talking about scientists, health care practitioners, and doctors, and that people really do have this real fear. And to be frank, there are anecdotal, small amounts of rare cases where people have contributed a long-term effect, which is a vaccine injury to the COVID-19 vaccine. Oftentimes it's something like tingling.

in your extremities or people have even said that they, like, are really tired all the time following getting a COVID-19 vaccine. But the cases are very rare. And there have been no correlation with any long-term side effects at mass at all. For the long-term side effects that have been correlated, there have been instances of a particular side effect in young boys when getting. the vaccine, but that's just about it. Overarchingly, these vaccines continue to save lives, have saved millions of lives, and they continue to keep people from getting really severely ill with COVID-19 infection. The one thing that I just want to end with the vaccine injury note is that do not be ashamed that you feel that fear. I find when I come in contact with people, especially

because of who I am, they don't feel like they can say that they're afraid of the vaccine because of something that they heard that did, that it did to someone somewhere. I think that is a real concern, especially because we are asking of you to get vaccinated at this point every year. And so just lean into that fear in a way that allows you to gather information, asking questions of people that from trusted sources, asking your doctor, and asking your friends about their experiences with the vaccines as well. Well, that's a great note to end on.

Thank you so much, Dr. Kizmikia Corbett-Layer, assistant professor of immunology and infectious diseases at Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Really appreciate your time here today. Thank you. Now go throw away those old tests. All right. I will. And I'll always thank you.

of you when I look at those expiration dates. That's just about all the time we have for now. Lots of folks help make this show happen, including Jordan Smudjick, Charles Berkwest, George Harper, John Dancosky. Tomorrow, the latest in antimatter research, plus the secret interspecies social lives of birds and why it's important for seasonal migration.

I'm sci-fry producer Shoshana Buxbaum. We'll catch you next time.