Why It Makes No Sense to Wait to Get a Booster Shot
With the emergence of the new Omicron variant dominating the Covid headlines, it was easy to miss a seemingly small, but in its way consequential, shift in the CDC’s guidance with regard to booster shots: the agency now says that all vaccinated U.S. adults should get a booster shot, while it had previously said simply that healthy adults under the age of 50 could get a booster shot if they decided it was necessary.
Even had Omicron not emerged, the shift in guidance was sensible, if belated. But of course, the CDC’s recommendations are just that: recommendations. Lots of Americans, even if they’re already vaccinated, will undoubtedly ignore the new guidance, or simply decide to put off getting boosted until it seems especially urgent to do so. And that response is not entirely unreasonable: after all if it were really important for everyone to get boosted, wouldn’t the CDC have said so a month ago?
I understand that impulse to hold off on getting boosted and just kick the can down the road. I had originally intended to put off my booster shot until it seemed really necessary — meaning until it became clear that the protection afforded by the original 2-dose vaccine had really faded away.
I was thinking, in an odd way, of immunity as something to hoard: if I held onto my original vaccine-conferred immunity…
