Letter to the editor: Booster shots are not so common

I’m writing to address incorrect assumptions in the editorial “Booster shots are as common as vaccines themselves.”

Children do not, as was claimed, get periodic boosters for measles and mumps. They get one combined shot of measles/mumps/rubella at 12 to 15 months, and a second shot entering kindergarten — but the second shot is, technically, not a booster. It’s meant to address primary vaccine failure in the 2% to 10% who fail to produce measles antibodies after the first shot. You can read about it in a May 2004 study published in The Journal of Infectious Diseases.

Boosters are given to address secondary vaccine failure — waning immunity.

Five additional doses of tetanus/diphtheria/pertussis vaccine have been added for children over the years because of secondary vaccine failure rates of 27% within one year and 66% within two to four years, as shown in a June 2015 study published in the journal Pediatrics.

But pertussis vaccination, even with repeated boosters, does not prevent transmission, as discussed in a November 2013 FDA news release.

Yellow fever and meningitis vaccines currently are not recommended for U.S. adults, so they are not examples of commonly given boosters.

The bottom line: We cannot assume covid-19 boosters are a given — especially when second shots carry higher risk of more serious adverse reactions, while those rates for boosters are as yet unknown.

Alison Fujito

McCandless