How necessary are Covid-19 vaccine boosters?

WELL, the upcoming 15th General Election has certainly succeeded in one thing: completely dislodging Covid-19 updates as major news headlines.

The last time the Health Minister urged people to get booster shots was in August. Khairy Jamaluddin was reported as saying on Aug 11 that his ministry would not fix targets for the second vaccine booster until it had “clarity on what it is”.

And what is it now in mid-October 2022, two-and-half years since Covid-19 upended the world? We have had the Alpha, Beta, Delta and Omicron mutations of the virus. That was followed by BA.5, the hyper-transmissible but not so deadly Omicron cousin. The latest Omicron spinoffs are BQ.1.1 and BA.2.10 or XBB.

All this has become an unappetising alphabet soup of variants for the masses who, after living with the virus for so long, have become immune and even indifferent to what’s new with the disease.

But the hearing of the Special Committee on the Covid-19 pandemic at the European Union Parliament on Oct 10 piqued my interest when Janine Small, Pfizer’s president of international developed markets, was quizzed by Members of the European Parliament (MEPs).

Many pertinent questions were raised but Small’s answer to the one by Rob Roos from the Netherlands elicited the strongest reaction: He asked whether the vaccine was tested on stopping the transmission of the virus before it entered the market.

Her reply: “No. We had to really move at the speed of science to really understand what was taking place in the market, and from that point of view we had to do everything at risk.”

Mainstream media was quick to defend Small. AP, for example, said the company “had never claimed that its clinical trial, upon which the vaccine was authorised for use, evaluated the shot’s effect on transmission”.

This backtracking seems rather disingenuous because in November 2020, CNN reported Pfizer as saying that “A final analysis of the Phase 3 trial of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine shows it was 95% effective in preventing infections, even in older adults, and caused no serious safety concerns.”

The first Pfizer jab was given on Dec 8 to a British grandmother. Since then, the vaccine narrative that health authorities and leaders all over the world hammered into people’s heads was: Get vaccinated to protect yourself, your loved ones, and together stop the virus from spreading.

What’s more, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla tweeted on April 1, 2021: “Excited to share that updated analysis from our Phase 3 study with BioNTech also showed that our Covid-19 vaccine was 100% effective in preventing #Covid19 cases in South Africa.”

Presumably this was the Phase 3 trial that claimed 95% effectiveness in November which went up to 100% from what Bourla said was an “updated analysis” in April.

While there were voices of doubt calling for caution, millions of us, including the vast majority of doctors and health experts, believed the repeated assurance that the vaccine was effective in stopping transmission of the virus.

Unfortunately, the claim that the Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA vaccines stop transmission has had a terrible effect: it led to vaccine mandates that ostracised and demonised people who refused to take the jabs as stupid and irresponsible. Thousands around the world lost their jobs and were denied access to many places.

As one Facebook user said in a post: “I have never seen a vaccine like this one that discriminates, divides and judges a society.”

Even when the vaccines failed to stop infections, vaccination mandates continued with the narrative changed to “the main aim of vaccination is to prevent a severe form of the disease and death”.

As I said in my Dec 15, 2021, column, “Of Omicron and booster shots” (online at bit.ly/star_boostershot), we were told we must follow the science but I strongly felt we were being led up the garden path instead. At a helter skelter speed, I would add now, in light of what Small said.

After making a profit of nearly US$37bil (RM174.5bil) last year on the vaccine and another expected US$34bil (RM160.4bil) this year, Bourla irked the MEPs when he refused to face the EU special committee and sent Small instead.

And Small declined to disclose the details that were blacked out in the contracts Pfizer signed with the EU Commission or explain how the agreements were reached.

This led MEP Cristian Terhes from Romania to ask, “What are they hiding?” and Germany’s Christine Anderson to raise the suspicion of possible corruption.

We may not be part of the EU but Malaysians should also wonder since 61% of Malaysians were given Pfizer doses. The government has spent close to RM5bil on the vaccines. On Sept 13, Khairy said we would be buying more to fight new strains of the virus even though there was an excess of about four million doses, with some expiring by year-end.

Do we really need to spend more money on these vaccines when almost 85% of the population have been jabbed at least twice? The Klang Valley’s rate is 101%, according to the Health Ministry’s KKMNow website, but it still has the highest number of cases.

The time for relying on vaccines to manage Covid-19 is over. Unless you are very old and/or in ill health, catching Covid isn’t scary anymore because the variants have become milder and less severe, including the latest XBB. Hence, the uptake of the second booster is at a low 1.6%.

When the pandemic started, panicked governments that followed China’s lockdown methods saw their crippling effects on their economy and society. Desperate for a quick solution they signed billion-dollar contracts with the drug companies, despite the industry being notorious for having very unscrupulous and unethical players, among them Pfizer.

Since 2000, this Big Pharma multinational has paid more than US$10bil (RM47bil at today’s rates) in fines in several countries for various offences relating to safety, government contracts, false claims and many more. And yet, governments bought its vaccine without question.

So do we keep fattening the wallets of Pfizer and ilk?

If only more funds had gone into developing effective treatments for the small percentage of people who actually land in ICUs with severe Covid-19, the outcome could have been much better for the world.

And not all treatments need to be difficult or expensive. New studies show that just flushing the nasal cavities of Covid-positive patients with over-the-counter saline solutions decreases viral shedding and reduces the risk of severe illness and death.

We already know the risk of catching the virus is based on a person’s health, and the viral load they are exposed to and for how long.

According to the World Health Organisation’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts, spending a very short period of time in a poorly ventilated space is unlikely to pose a significant risk, especially if people are wearing masks. The risk goes up if you are in a poorly ventilated room with a lot of people for a long time.

So keeping our masks on in public indoor and airconditioned spaces is still the right thing to do, which is what the majority of sensible Malaysians have been doing even after the mask mandate was relaxed.

Just how diminished Covid-19 is as a cause of concern affecting national issues is clearly seen in this run-up period to GE15: It was never raised, unlike in recent state elections. Instead, the worry has been focused on the timing related to flood fears.

The views expressed here are entirely the writer’s own.