When Should You Get The New Bivalent Covid-19 Vaccine Booster?

They say that timing is everything in life. That certainly applies to investing in the stock market, meeting your significant other, and deciding whether to wear pants. But should it apply to when you get the bivalent Covid-19 vaccine booster? Should you worry about getting it too early or too late? Or should you just get it as soon as possible? Well, getting it now versus later is a good idea with three possible exceptions. Here’s why.

Getting the bivalent is a bit like choosing to wear pants. You don’t want to have any should’ves, could’ves, would’ves in the future. You don’t want to be saying, “probably should have been wearing pants when I ran into my boss in the elevator” or “what could have happened had I been wearing pants while running into that beautiful person in the museum.” Similarly, you don’t want to be laying in the hospital thinking, “yeah, probably should’ve gotten the booster earlier.” At the same time, it is unlikely that you will end up regretting doing either thing too soon. There probably aren’t too many times in your life when you have said, “If only I hadn’t been wearing pants at the time.”

In a similar vein, let’s look at the current situation. It’s mid-October right now with November just over two weeks away. You may be able to lose a guy in 10 days. But it can take at least two weeks to get full immune protection from Covid-19 vaccination.

And what might happen in November besides National Fun with Fondue Month? The answer rhymes with “a bro bid 19 merge.” For the past two years, November has seen Covid-19 surges. Take a look at the steep upward curves in Covid-19 cases that occurred in November 2020 and November 2020. It’s probably no coincidence that November is when the weather gets much colder and drier and activities really move indoors. It’s also traditionally a heavy travel month. Such conditions can really promote the transmission of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). We’re already seeing upward swings in Covid-19 hospitalizations and cases in Europe. Throw in the fact that many people have ditched Covid-19 precautions such as face mask wearing as if they were micro-sunglasses or cheetah-print slip skirts and conditions are ripe for yet another Covid-19 surge next month.

So, in the words of 2Unlimited, y’all ready for this potential next surge? Probably not if you haven’t gotten the bivalent booster yet. Unless you’ve recently had Covid-19, your immune system is probably not that familiar with the most common circulating version of the SARS-CoV-2: the BA.5 Omicron subvariant. Over the past week, the BA.5 constituted 67.9% of all Covid-19 samples reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Previous Covid-19 vaccination probably have given at least some protection against the original SARS-CoV-2, the one that spread in early 2020. However, relying on just this protection can be sort of like your smartphone relying on an operating system from 2020 that hasn’t been updated since. Plus, your immune protection from Covid-19 vaccination seems to wane and weaken over time.

These new bivalent boosters are the first big update in the Covid-19 mRNA vaccines since, well, ever. As I described previously for Forbes, the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna bivalent booster vaccines are called bivalent because they contain messenger RNA (mRNA) for not just one type of spike proteins but two of them. These two types of mRNA will help your cells code for not only the original SARS-CoV-2 spike protein but also the spike proteins found on the surfaces of the BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron subvariants. If you recall, the spike proteins stud the surface of the SARS-CoV-2, making the virus look like the ends of those BDSM maces, you know the kind that you keep hidden in your closet and that you have to say, “hey, what is that, how did that get there” when your friends accidentally find them.

Now some have wondered whether getting the bivalent booster right now might be too early. One friend recently whether it would be throwin’ away your shot borrowing from that song “My Shot” from the musical Hamilton. (That song by the way was not about vaccination.) Their concern is that since immune protection may peak four to six weeks after vaccination and then start waning afterwards, vaccination now may leave you not as well protected January through March. Well, even though protection may start waning after about a month, it’s not as if such protection will disappear suddenly all at once like taking off a pair of skinny jeans. Instead, waning will probably be gradual, meaning that getting vaccinated now should still leave you with a fair amount of protection come the later Winter months.

The three possible exceptions are if you’ve just gotten a previous version of the vaccine such as the older booster, just had Covid-19, or have been told by your medical doctor to hold off on getting vaccinated for some reason. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has stipulated that before getting this new bivalent booster you should be at least two months out of previous Covid-19 vaccination such as getting the old booster. If you’ve recently had Covid-19, the CDC is recommending that you wait at least three months before getting the bivalent booster, as I covered for Forbes on October 7. That’s because it may take your immune system a little while to recover from fighting Covid-19. And you want your immune system to be ready for the vaccine and ready to generate a proper full response. There are situations where your doctor may tell you to wait for it, wait for it, wait to get your booster. For example, you may be getting some type of treatment that may be suppressing your immune system. In any case, make sure that you are getting advice from a real medical doctor first. Note that flashing a medical doctor’s badge doesn’t necessarily mean that the person is really a medical doctor, especially since medical doctors don’t typically carry badges. Your medical doctor should also give a clear scientific rationale for holding off on the Covid-19 vaccine. If the words “microchip” or “5G” enter his or her explanation, you may want to find another doctor.

As a reminder, getting the bivalent booster alone won’t mean that you are completely protected from getting Covid-19, that you don’t have to maintain other Covid-19 precautions to avoid getting infected. That would be like assuming that wearing pants alone would be enough for a date or a job interview. As long as the pandemic continues, consider vaccination to be only one layer of protection no matter when you time it.