Here is an interesting tidbit buried deeply in an article highlighting the push for booster shots based on a new study out of Israel;
Monday, an international group of scientists led by Dr. Philip Krause, deputy chief of the FDA’s vaccine regulation office, and including his boss, Dr. Marion Gruber, published an essay in The Lancet that questioned the need for widespread booster shots at this time.
Krause and Gruber had announced their retirements from the FDA on Aug. 30 — at least partly in response to the booster announcement, according to four scientists who know them. Gruber, who will remain at the agency until later this fall, is
listed as a participant in Friday’s meeting.
The Lancet paper argues that vaccine-based protection against severe covid is still strong, while evidence is lacking that booster shots will be safe and effective. University of Florida biostatistician Ira Longini, a co-author on the Lancet paper, said it would be “immoral” to begin widespread boosters before the rest of the world was better vaccinated. As the disease continues its global spread, he noted, it is likely to develop deadlier and more vaccine-evasive mutants.
Longini was also skeptical of an August study, which Israeli scientists are to present to the FDA on Friday, that NIH officials had touted as strong evidence in support of boosters. On an Aug. 24 call with Israeli officials, Fauci urged them to publish that data, and a version
appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday.
That study found that people receiving a third dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine were 11 times more likely to be protected from covid infection than those who had gotten only two doses.
But the study observed people for less than two weeks after their booster vaccinations kicked in. Biostatisticians felt it had irregularities that raised questions about its worth.
“I don’t want to say the study isn’t correct, but it hasn’t been reviewed and there are possible biases,” said Longini,
who helped design the 2015 trial that resulted in a successful Ebola vaccine and now works on global covid vaccine trials.