Tuesday the FDA’s advisory committee met to discuss fall boosters. Here are the highlights taken from STATnews:
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I’m happy to see the movement towards new boosters. I really want to get to the point where there is a standard schedule for boosters like we have with the flu vaccine. Otherwise I just feel a bit like randomly tossing a booster shot into my arm when I have no idea when/what the next wave will be is just shooting into the dark.
But to be fair, right now I’m somewhat wishing I’d gotten the booster at the 90 day mark instead of sitting here waiting to see if my infection + vaccine immunity holds from Christmas. That said, I’d put some vague hope in summer being low risk since we spend a lot of it outside and then be on board with a booster ahead/at the start of the school year to maximize protection then.
The reality is that it’s not the crowded indoor spaces (we generally avoid them except for church on Sunday) that keep getting us but the individual contacts 
- and when you are a large family the extra individual contacts are just baked into the cake.
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Okay, I have finally tested positive on a rapid test after having symptoms for 3 days, 5 days from exposure.
My DH can come out of isolation tomorrow with masking for the next 5 days. I think I will move back into my bedroom now that I know I have COVID.
Again, thank you for all of your help and advice!
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They are going to be with a large group from my church (95 people) and mostly attending events at the gathering, so I think we are good. Thanks for the offer though.
Have a great trip!
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The timeline in their slide shows the bivalent booster pencilled in for October, and I’m guessing they’ll have a phased rollout by age/risk level due to manufacturing capacities. So if you get a booster in the next couple of weeks, you would be 4 months out at the beginning of November, which is the current wait window for 2nd boosters for those eligible (vs 5 months for 1st booster). So that timing might actually work fairly well.
Going without a booster from now until October/November is a lot of exposure with waning immunity.
Yep. Unfortunately, that’s pretty much the way it is going to be with unmitigated wide spread of what is still a significant and adaptable virus. The virus is in control of the situation, not us. We’re giving it all the dice rolls it could possibly want to figure out how to evade immunity. Not a great “choose your own pandemic adventure” path, but it is what it is. At this point, it’s not showing any real signs of settling into any kind of predictable seasonality. It’s being driven primarily by mutation and to a lessor extent by probably 1-2 dozen other factors TBD.
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I’m most worried about my kids missing important chunks of school. I suppose one strategy it to vaccinate based on that.
Good point!
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YLE’s take on the VRBPAC meeting. Mostly what we saw in the STATnews reporting.
I thought this was worth highlighting.
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Oh, and just as a reminder, I don’t think there is ANY federal funding committed yet for fall boosters. So this may be between you and your insurance company. 
. Maybe? Cuz…
Previously, Moderna and Pfizer were only willing to sell vaccines to national governments, who had to queue up. We are not officially in the queue right now, as far as I can tell.
But obviously Moderna and Pfizer are taking direction from the FDA.
I don’t know where that actually leaves us.
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I have been debating getting a 2nd booster even though I’m below the target age group. I think this just pushed me over the edge.
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I thought that this might be helpful info:
Overall, 8 of the 20 at-home tests listed on FDA’s website had their shelf-life extended, and the 3- to 6-month extension appears to be typical.
Among those tests are the Abbott BinaxNOW and the iHealth test, two of the most popular rapid at-home tests, which received 3- or 6-month extensions, depending on lot number.
On a different note, I just got back from my trip to Sweden. While visiting family there I met their neighbour, a pediatrician who explained to me how Sweden wasn’t vaccinating healthy kids because the risks don’t outweigh the benefits. (Her opinion, not mine.) It’s interesting how different folks from different areas have different risk assessments. My kids’ pediatrician fully supported them getting vaccinated and boosted.
We flew Delta, and I am betting that at least some people on the plane back had Covid. There were people coughing all over the place and very few masks in sight. (Though one flight attendant was masked.) The child sitting behind my daughter yesterday was coughing and sniffling throughout the 7ish hour flight. Crossing my fingers here - we’ll need to take tests before heading out to some 4th of July parties this weekend and summer camp next week.
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Following the vote from their advisory committee, FDA is going with bivalent including BA.4/5.
However, worth noting:
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My concern about the above is the waffling between BA.1 and BA.4/5 could mean that manufacturing doesn’t ramp up until after BA.4/5 clinical trial data is available. With the original vaccines, the feds provided funding and assumed the risk of starting manufacturing in parallel with the trials and reviews. I’m concerned about how much they’ll need to phase a slow rollout of the new booster the more they waffle and don’t commit funding.
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Remember when we heard … it will take about 90 days from discovery of a new variant to the time when a modified vaccine is ready for arms.
That 90 days is looking more like 10-12 months now. The virus mutates much faster than that.
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Yeah, “100 days” is what I was hearing even quite recently. But that meant we had to be fully committed and pulling out all stops. Our commitment level has tanked. I’m not feeling great about October being a reality, TBH, at least not in any volume. I hope I’m wrong. I’m in the 50+ bracket with my second booster back on April 2nd. So October is 6 months out from that. I’m kind of feeling like it’s a coin flip if my next booster will be original formula.
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Everything these days is a coin flip or a dice role!
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A coin is just a two-sided die… 
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I’ve had a strange week and wondered what your opinions are on this - on Sunday I woke up with a sore throat and headache. As the day went on I started feeling a bit worse and had a low grade fever, so took two home Covid tests. One was positive and one was negative. So I did the drive through PCR test at CVS. Got the results back the next day and it was negative. Went to the dr on Tuesday. They gave me rapid tests for Covid, flu, and strep. I tested positive for all three! I don’t know what to think. Doesn’t the PCR test overrule any rapid test?