Opinion: The booster isn’t perfect, but still can help against covid

Now comes the big hurdle: Thanksgiving and winter holidays in crowded indoor rooms, filled with family and friends. Those are conditions ideal for spreading covid-19. Everyone should consider common-sense precautions such as wearing masks in packed public indoor areas, trying to improve air ventilation and testing often. Meanwhile, preliminary scientific reports about the efficacy of the new bivalent boosters have carried a hint of disappointment. So are the boosters really worth getting? The answer is yes. The core issue is that the new bivalent boosters from Pfizer and Moderna are aimed at both the original pandemic virus and the omicron variant, BA.5, that was prevalent for much of this year. When the bivalent shot was formulated during the summer, BA.5 was raging, and the Food and Drug Administration urged the manufacturers to proceed based on extrapolations from limited human clinical trials.