Hacker News Reader

Comment by namlem | Hacker News Reader

If rational minds were allowed to prevail at the FDA, we would have had an Omicron booster months ago.

Who is stopping you getting an omicron booster?

(I'm not aware of the current situation in the US btw, just know that it's perfectly possible to get a booster in the NL)

The OP’s point is that in US (and also almost certainly in Netherlands), you’re not getting the omicron booster, you’re getting original Covid strain booster.

OP is more interested in the reformulated vaccines from Pfizer/Moderna more specifically tailored to the Omicron variants rather than another shot with the original formulation which has showed waning efficacy against the newest strains.

It hasn't been approved, no one is making it.

Moderna has a candidate that'll probably land on the market sometime around september

Which is a pathetic turnaround for what was supposed to be a technology quick to iterate with. I'd love to know where the holdup actually is.

The hold up is with the FDA. The variant booster had been ready for months, it just takes a long time to approve.

The FDA.

I am fairly grumpy that we didn't get the Moderna SARS-CoV-2 vaccine for 2-5yos months ago. Waiting for Pfizer's data was such a strange policy choice. There may be something going on under the hood here I don't understand, but the behavior of VRBPAC has felt very strange to me.

Are you not concerned that a lot of European countries stopped giving that one to people under 30 for safety reasons? (https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n2477)

The risk was very minor, and was in hindsight not worth waiting for.

But now that the data is in, though, when your option is two vaccines, one with very minor risk, and one with even less risk, and they are both equally effective, it's obvious that you should prefer the latter.

If you look at the FDA press release it does seem like they seem to have mostly narrowed down the at-risk groups since, I guess they might've also tweaked dosages at this point.

https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/coronavi...

Not entirely sure about what this refers to, but..

1: The Moderna vaccine is separate from Pfizer/Biontech even if they share technological base.

2: Moderna was discontinued for younger people (below 30yos) in at least some European countries due to slightly higher risk of myocarditis (even if the Pfizer vaccine had slightly lower efficiancy).

Seems like both vaccines are allowed for smaller children in the US now. Over here they put the cutoff for the vaccine at 12-13yos iirc (my older kid got it but not my younger one).

It's only been two and a half years, we're still very early in this pandemic. I'm sure that a few more years, maybe a decade, when everyone who understands vaccines are confident that the entire category of COVID vaccines is safe and effective, we'll have a flu-like assembly line producing new vaccines for the deluge of new variants we'll be facing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com