The Pfizer CEO said on Today that you might be able to get the booster after three months.
That still means if you’re starting from scratch now we’re talking about early to mid April to complete the three shot regimen.
This is where the Pfizer CEO has a MAJOR financial conflict of interest and should not be the authoritative source of vaccination recommendations...
Controlling the pandemic has a number of levels based on priority:
1. Prevent deaths - initial vaccination is the most critical
2. Prevent irreversible health problems caused by severe disease and hospitalization - initial vaccination does a pretty good job at this
3. Reduce financial toxicity (i..e. unnecessary healthcare spending). - same as above, but boosters are critical
4. Prevent COVID from interrupting the economy by incapacitating workforce. - boosters definitely important
5. Prevent new variants from emerging - Would take global immunization, and the ship is largely sailed already
The evidence if more difficult to generate for mix-n-match because it's no longer happening in a controlled experimental fashion. That said, mechanistically exposing you to a different vaccine could generate more diverse immunity, so yes, in theory I'd expect better immunity against variants if you had multiple different vaccines. I also think that getting the
same vaccine 4x times is not the way to go, unless they produce sufficient clinical trial evidence that it is.
COVID will be the new Flu (and the flu can be pretty deadly...). We'll be exposed to multiple strains and we'll need periodic boosters. My annoyance is that as long as the pandemic is propelled by the unvaccinated, we'll have limited control in modulating the waves... So the timing of boosters and not the number that will be critical.
