Covid Vaccination: A 2023 Update

As a review, I did recommend the mRNA vaccines, preferring Moderna over Pfizer, from January of 2021 through December of 2021. The original Covid was, indeed, a SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) virus and this catastrophic illness required both a preventive as well as a therapeutic approach that went far beyond CDC recommendations. This challenge required us to think and advocate for our own health, especially from March of 2020 through March of 2021 when the vaccine became more readily available.

We hoped the vaccine would “save the day”, and it did, for a few months, even. By September 2021, with rapid mutations clearly changing the landscape of infectious disease, a booster of the original vaccine was recommended as of October 2021. I was always quite hesitant about boosting immunity against a virus that no longer existed (original Wuhan strain) in the hopes that it would crossover effectively enough against upcoming variants.

I did recommend this booster just to a few of my older and immunocompromised patients. This might have been good advice; clinical research can be found to support and reject that advice. By December 2021, I called omicron a “Christmas Miracle” as it took over the country, eliminating delta, the last of the SARS strains of Covid. I stopped recommending Covid vaccination entirely in December 2021.

That was for two reasons: we were now dealing with a severe flu-like illness and not a SARS virus. And, most importantly, the booster, predictably, could compromise your immunity against future variants, and had little activity against this one. Our CDC and our government continued to promote an exceptionally profitable vaccine at the expense of human health. The facts, especially and vigorously, refuted the idea that the vaccine helped prevent the spread of transmission, which, of course, would be the only reason to mandate the vaccines. Yet they continued.

By September 2022 a “bivalent” vaccine came out, with absolutely no human testing, containing one valence of a virus that no longer exists (Wuhan) and one (BA.5) that would stop existing by mid-January 2023 (no one knew, for certain, at release date how long BA.5 would be around, but everyone knew it would be just a few months), so they had to fast-track the vaccine as everyone knew it would be ineffective if you waited for adequate safety testing.

In “Effectiveness of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Bivalent Vaccine” from The Cleveland Clinic ( https://academic.oup.com/ofid/article/10/6/ofad209/7131292 )  we have concrete evidence of what everyone with knowledge of immunology and vaccinology knew was most likely to happen. Proof, which confirms several other clinical research articles, that every dose of booster you add to your body increases your risk of getting Covid.

I know the slide is a bit fuzzy, but what it does is clearly document the cumulative incidence of Covid at the Cleveland Clinic from September 2022 onwards. The bottom line is 0 (zero) doses as lowest risk, and each line upwards is the increased risk from 1,2, 3, or 4 or more vaccine doses as the highest risk group!

In the Discussion section of the article they explain that there were too few severe illnesses to determine any effect with regard to severity, which is also why we should not be vaccinating, as it is not the same disease it once was:

“Ours is not the only study to find a possible association with more prior vaccine doses and higher risk of COVID-19. During an Omicron wave in Iceland, individuals who had previously received ≥2 doses were found to have a higher odds of reinfection than those who had received <2 doses, in an unadjusted analysis [21]. A large study found, in an adjusted analysis, that those who had an Omicron variant infection after previously receiving 3 doses of vaccine had a higher risk of reinfection than those who had an Omicron variant infection after previously receiving 2 doses [22]. Another study found, in multivariable analysis, that receipt of 2 or 3 doses of am mRNA vaccine following prior COVID-19 was associated with a higher risk of reinfection than receipt of a single dose [7]. Immune imprinting from prior exposure to different antigens in a prior vaccine [22, 23] and class switch toward noninflammatory spike-specific immunoglobulin G4 antibodies after repeated SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccination [24] have been suggested as possible mechanisms whereby prior vaccine may provide less protection than expected. We still have a lot to learn about protection from COVID-19 vaccination, and in addition to vaccine effectiveness, it is important to examine whether multiple vaccine doses given over time may not be having the beneficial effect that is generally assumed.

In conclusion, this study found an overall modest protective effect of the bivalent vaccine against COVID-19 while the circulating strains were represented in the vaccine and lower protection when the circulating strains were no longer represented. A significant protective effect was not found when the XBB lineages were dominant. The unexpected finding of increasing risk with increasing number of prior COVID-19 vaccine doses needs further study.”

We have a vaccine proven to cause an increased risk of the disease that it is supposed to prevent, and a government that pushes this vaccine every 3 months. With each dose causing more disease, profiteering on the front and back side of a disease. Do you, hopefully, begin to understand how a profit-driven disease-care system cannot work? 

At least not for you. Never follow recommendations blindly, never assume those recommendations are for your health. Never blindly believe in science, blind belief belongs elsewhere. Find people who are not part of the mainstream to guide you, question them too!

I hope this helps inform your decision making moving forward. 

Gary E Foresman, MD