In this Substack, UK data showed that, for those under age 30, booster shots made COVID worse (higher severe COVID per million vs. unjabbed group). But even if booster shots merely failed to help, there’d still be adverse events associated with taking them.
Benefits
CDC gave a presentation in Nov 2021 regarding the 6-month effectiveness of boosters in terms of averting COVID hospitalizations. The data primarily covered Delta variant though:
This graph above shows the number needed to vaccinate (NNV) by age group. Notice how in those under age 30, it takes about 10,000 booster doses, just to prevent a single COVID hospitalization.
The “vaccine effectiveness” (VE) reported in the above presentation ran from about 85% to 91%. But against Omicron, VE is lower (purple markings added):
Disregarding this lower effectiveness of jabs against Omicron (because the evidence below is already damning enough), the only Omicron adjustment made was to account for the lower hospitalization rate seen in Omicron cases versus Delta cases.
This was done by applying the same adjustment factor utilized by Bardosh K, Krug A, Jamrozik E, et al. in their landmark paper questioning the morality of boosting those of college-age. The odds ratio for Omicron hospitalization versus Delta was 0.28.
Harms
Using the estimated rate of serious adverse events of special interest (serious AESI) from a reanalysis of the original Phase III clinical trials, the combined estimate — which reached statistical significance — was 12.5 per 10,000 given the primary series.
That’s one person put into the hospital with a serious adverse event for every 800 people who took the primary series. On a per-dose basis, it’s 1 per 1,600. If a million booster shots are given out, it suggests that 625 people will be put into the hospital with a serious adverse event.
Let’s now compare this to the expected number of Omicron hospitalizations averted by those same million booster doses.
Benefits and Harms in the same graph
Putting the expected benefits and harms together in the same graph reveals that there is no broad age group that is expected to receive “net benefit” from taking booster jabs during Omicron:
If the reduced VE for Omicron hospitalization were added into this graph, then the blue (benefit) bars would drop even lower, being only approximately half as tall as they currently are.
But even without that adjustment, in those under age 30, there are already 23 expected hospitalizations caused by serious adverse events for each expected COVID hospitalization prevented.
Reference
[pre-Omicron NNV-Hosp shows 10,000 booster jabs needed to prevent a hospitalization in the young] — CDC Presentation. Slide 37. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/meetings/downloads/slides-2021-11-19/06-COVID-Oliver-508.pdf
[Omicron booster shot VE-Hosp shows 6-month average 40% protection] — CDC Presentation. Slide 14. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/meetings/downloads/slides-2022-09-01/04-covid-link-gelles-508.pdf
[A good adjusted Odds Ratio for Omicron Hospitalization compared to Delta is 0.28; vastly expanding the NNV-Hosp] — Bardosh K, Krug A, Jamrozik E, et al. COVID-19 vaccine boosters for young adults: a risk benefit assessment and ethical analysis of mandate policies at universities. Journal of Medical Ethics. Published Online First: 05 December 2022. doi: 10.1136/jme-2022-108449. https://jme.bmj.com/content/early/2022/12/05/jme-2022-108449
[primary series jabs led to excess of 12.5 serious adverse events per 10,000] — Fraiman J, Erviti J, Jones M, Greenland S, Whelan P, Kaplan RM, Doshi P. Serious adverse events of special interest following mRNA COVID-19 vaccination in randomized trials in adults. Vaccine. 2022 Sep 22;40(40):5798-5805. doi: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2022.08.036. Epub 2022 Aug 31. PMID: 36055877; PMCID: PMC9428332. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9428332/