Vaccine choices

One week ago, I had a Covid booster shot.  This was my sixth Covid vaccination, my fourth booster, my second "bivalent" booster.  

I scheduled it for when I did, knowing full well that it was designed to meet the variants current in October 2022, when I had my first bivalent vaccination, and that updated vaccine would be available in September.  

It was a difficult decision, but it had been over ten months since my last booster shot, and I will be leaving for a month in Europe a week from Sunday.  The shot I received a week ago will reach its maximum effect on my immunity in another week -- two days before my departure.  On the other hand, I had a mild case of Covid, of whatever flavor, two months ago, which supposedly reinvigorated my immune responses.

The variant now predominant in the United States is the new EG.5 mutation.  One of its features is a change in its structure that helps it to evade the antibodies developed in response to prior vaccines and from exposure to prior variants.  Nevertheless, experts so far have seen no reason to believe that it is more contagious than prior variants, nor more serious in its effects.  It's just there, with our having less ready-made immune protection from it.

It's hard for a layman to decide how to respond, especially when experts so far have little data on which to rely.  Within minutes of receiving the vaccine, I was already second-guessing my decision not to wait until after I had returned from Europe, when the updated vaccine would be available.  I now won't be able to receive the new vaccine before mid-December.  

The day after I received my vaccination, the New York Times quoted Dr. Eric Topol of Scripps Research in La Jolla, California:

“My main concern is for the people at high risk,” Dr. Topol said. “The vaccines that they’ve had are too far removed from where the virus is right now and where it’s going.”

Well.  Thanks, Doc!  I'm certainly old enough to be at "high risk."  And I already find myself blaming "long Covid" from my May infection for my recent lack of blog productivity!  

Of course, life is full of hazards, and we can't escape them all.  But I think I'll go back to wearing masks.  Maybe not as compulsively and automatically as I did before the first vaccine was released, but at least in seriously crowded indoor contexts.