After five COVID vaccines of varying types in the last 3 years, I’m stopping.

How often and how frequently should we vaccinate? That billion-dollar question remains unanswered. BC, i.e. before COVID, vaccination was, at most, a twice-early event for influenza. Most other vaccinations were  recommended for anything between once for the childhood series  (measles, mumps, rubella) to every 5 or 10 years (tetanus and whooping cough). AC, after COVID, it seems that every time a new strain of COVID is discovered, some drug company somewhere adds it to the vaccine and recommends another new dose.

After five COVID vaccines of varying types in the last 3 years, I’m stopping.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m no vaccine denier. On the contrary, I am a public health academic who knows, without any doubt, that vaccination saves lives, and is important in the public health toolkit. Notwithstanding the erroneous statements by fake newsers, the incidents of vaccine toxicity are still extremely rare. 

However, like any invasion of foreign protein, our bodies need time to recover and replenish – especially our virus-fighting T and B cells. These cells are primarily formed in early age and replenished through synthesis in our bone marrow. – less so as we get older and exposed to more infections.  And as I get older my immune system is also going into old age immunosenescence, which has been shown to decrease vaccine efficacy.

I just want to give my T cells the chance to recuperate and regenerate. We know from studies in cancer and hepatitis that our immune cells get “exhausted” from multiple infections and vaccinations. In the case of Hepatitis C, our T cells mount a much more efficient response when they are not exhausted from multiple Hepatitis B immunisations.

With the efficacy of anti-virals, we have the opportunity to give our T cells a hand in fighting COVID and other deadly viral infections, just as antibiotics help to fight bacterial infection. Other windows of opportunity for enhancing my immune system are opening up all the time. For example, we now know that some T cells renew themselves, given a break from the fight. Also, in cancer patients, immune checkpoint inhibitors (anti-PD1s) have been used with good effect in increasing the efficacy of multiple vaccinations.

Pregaming with oral medication before vaccination can also help save our Ts. Pre-vaccination with the anti-diabetic agent, metformin, has been shown to improve flu vaccine responses and reduce T cell exhaustion without serious adverse events in nondiabetic older adults.

There is no money or kudos to be received for research showing that vaccine sabbaticals improve immune response, and such research will not result in new billion-dollar products on the market at the end. It is up to government-funded agencies to initiate this work now. Save our Ts.