The campaign for the “second booster” is starting: After the STIKO had already launched the recommendation issued to give a new booster vaccination to employees in medical facilities in addition to people over 70, residents of nursing homes and patients with immunodeficiency from the age of 5 years, the Systemmedien now increasingly to bang the drum.
While members of vulnerable groups should receive the second booster three months after their previous booster vaccination, it is six months for medical staff – but this period can be reduced to three months in “justified” cases. Only for people who fell ill with Covid after their first booster is no further vaccination recommended.
The STIKO justifies its recommendation with the rapidly declining protection of the vaccination, especially against omicrons, and accepts the fleeting and inadequate effect of the mRNA vaccines without criticism. The data situation is “limited”, but it can be assumed that there are no decisive differences to the first booster. While some media are at least honest enough to point out that data from Israel show only a small benefit of the fourth vaccination, others go all out: After Marco Cavalieri from the EMA warned that constant boosters overload the immune system, one does the MDR as if these concerns were completely exaggerated: “experts” could refute that, one reads there. They refer to Christine Falk, the President of the German Society for Immunology, who believes that “a fourth dose will not damage anything”. Incidentally, Falk recently advertised at the hearing on compulsory vaccination in the Bundestag for the legal obligation to vaccinate and claimed: “Three immunizations with the vaccines approved in Germany offer long-lasting protection against serious illness.” How does that fit into the justification for the fourth vaccination?
The article also refers to Karl Lauterbach, who welcomes the new STIKO recommendation for the fourth stitch as the “right step”. A day before publication of the recommendation, he himself tweeted the sobering data from Israel, but nothing stands in the way of a permanent booster program, at least for risk patients.
Fourth stitch for all will come
The statements made by Timo Ulrichs, member of the “Corona Expert Council”, who has just announced on NTVthat this is only a first step and that the second booster can actually be recommended for the general population. After all, the capacity for renewed mass boosters is there (no wonder: hardly anyone wants to be vaccinated anymore).
