Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel has already announced “I still believe we’re going to need boosters in the fall of ’22 and forward.” Bancel’s call for continued booster shots may not be helpful at all, say some medical experts.
The Washington Post reported researchers found that vaccine boosters can actually dampen the body’s immune response. University of California/San Francisco’s Infections Disease associate division chief, Dr. Monica Gandhi says repeated vaccination boosters would not produce the right type of protections. Rather, it “trains your immune system wrong.”
“It doesn’t train your immune system to recognize a variant. It trains your immune system to recognize the old ancestral strain that the shots are made of. That concept is the ‘original antigenic sign,’ is that they call it, is what immunologists are expressing concern of” Gandhi told ABC 7.
“If we boost, let’s boost with a better vaccine, not the one against the original strain of the virus that emerged” she added. Gandhi also acknowledged what other skeptics have said, which is the vast amount of money the giant pharmaceuticals stand to make if booster shots are “necessary” over and over again.
“I think it’s hard to have a CEO dictate our policy and companies who stand and make money for it” added Gandhi. Fox News reports Moderna said commercial booster market sales could be up to $2 billion in the United States in 2022.
Chairman of Britain’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization told The Telegraph “we can’t vaccinate the planet every four to six months. It’s not sustainable or affordable. In the future, we need to target the vulnerable.”
Epidemiologist Hagai Levine of Hebrew University and chairman of the Israeli Association of Public Health Physicians, said an additional rise in antibodies from a second booster soon after an initial booster may prove unnecessary.