Op-Ed: Immunocompromised people shouldn't have to wait for COVID-19 booster shots (via latimesopinion)
The evidence is clear: Two doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine is highly protective for most people. But there are subpopulations for whom these powerful vaccines are demonstrably not yet working. It is likely that hundreds of thousands of fully vaccinated individuals in the U.S., if not more, remain at just as much risk of contracting COVID-19 as they were before they were vaccinated.
The good news is that the surgery was successful. The bad news is that the two doses of Pfizer vaccine that he got a few months later seem to have failed to work. More than a month after his second jab, Robert’s blood was tested for the presence of the antibodies the vaccine generates in most people. His antibody level came back at zero — completely undetectable. While it’s not completely certain that a failure to detect antibodies means zero protection against COVID-19, Robert’s doctors suggest that’s likely.
There’s a sensible medical explanation for this. As a transplant recipient, Robert takes powerful immunosuppressant drugs. Those drugs make him more susceptible to infection of all kinds, including COVID-19. They also — by design — make it harder for his body to generate any immune response. That’s a huge plus for his body’s response to Jennifer’s “foreign” kidney, but it’s likely the reason why his two vaccine doses failed to spark the immune response that generates protection.
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