Friday, September 2, 2022

There is a very interesting situation that has emerged from the White House particularly involving Ron Klain and Ashish Jha in the context of the BA.5 bivalent booster shot. The FDA has authorized and the CDC has approved the use of the bivalent BA.5 booster for individuals 12 years of age and older. The concern of Ron and Ashish is that we need to sell it to the American people in a manner in which they feel this is something “new and different” that they really should partake of. However, even though we all feel that people should be getting a booster shot, to sell it as something that is going to be much better than the prototype boost would be somewhat of a stretch since although one can project that there would be an advantage of a variant specific boost, early indications from an immunological standpoint indicate that although it is likely going to be somewhat better it is not going to be a lot better. In addition, there is the push back from some in the scientific community that we are doing this with very little human clinical data. One can extrapolate from clinical immunological data using a BA.1 bivalent variant boost where the data are plentiful. In addition, we have extraordinary amount of data on the safety of using this type of vaccine in billions of doses and billions of people worldwide. Also, the preclinical mouse data with the specific BA.5 bivalent vaccine indicates that it gives an anti-BA.5 response much higher then the prototype vaccine does. Ron and Ashish are struggling with ways to sell this and the latest thing they're trying to do is to say that it could be part of a yearly booster similar to what we do with flu. All of this is fine except that they're straining to get a message so that a lot of people will get boosted when in fact this is unlikely going to be the case. No matter what we say, the message will not change the facts and we're getting close to the line of overselling something. In one instance today, Ron was upset that Vivek had said that this was an updated “boost” instead of an updated “vaccine” because he felt people don't want this to be yet again another boost whereas if we sell it as an updated vaccine in the context of making it a yearly occurrence then that would be perceived as something that is truly new. PRESS: NPR with Rob Stein; MSNBC with Yasmeen Vossoughian; CNN with Ericka Hill; PBS NewsHour with Judy Woodruff;