Rush to Get the New COVID-19 Booster

Today I got the fall 2025-2026 COVID-19 booster. Why so early?

You Have to Get Out Ahead of the Crazy

Normally, I’d say get both the flu and COVID-19 shots sometime early in October, so immunity would peak in the middle of winter. Right now, mid-September, is a bit early. Why the rush?

Because Kennedy and his new ACIP crew, packed with unqualified people, are forming up to withdraw the vaccinations completely. The WaPo ^[1] and Ars Technica ^[2] report:

Trump health officials plan to link coronavirus vaccines to the deaths of 25 children as they consider limiting which Americans should get the shots, according to four people familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe confidential information.

They apparently plan to do this at the 2025-Sep-18 meeting of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. Kennedy recently fired the ACIP members, replacing them with unqualified people more to his liking. They will have in their power to revoke recommendations and insurance coverage for the vaccines, as well as ask the FDA to ban the medications altogether.

The data they’re using is from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS, though really the “R” should stand for “Rumors”). The thing to know about VAERS: nothing in it is verified! Literally anybody can enter their story and claim it’s vaccine-related. (Why does that even exist? Sort of an early warning system, to tell you to go look at other data to see if it’s real, and no more than that.)

Four unnamed sources close to the situation told the Post that Trump administration health officials appear to be using information from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) to make the claim that COVID-19 vaccines have killed children. VAERS is a system in which anyone can report anything they think is an adverse event related to a vaccination. The reports are completely unverified upon submission, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention staff follow up on serious reports to try to substantiate claims and assess if they were actually caused by a vaccine. They rarely are.

So… vibes, basically.

This is… alarming.

And it’s not just alarming to me, but also to epidemiologists and physicians. Witness the reaction to epidemiologist Elizabeth Jacobs from a physician and clinical virologist:

Ok, that’s enough for me to act! I scheduled an appointment this very day. (The Weekend Editrix is, alas, in Japan now. When we video this evening, I’ll beg her to get a booster in Japan.)

What’s mNEXSPIKE?

Upon scheduling the appointment, I was informed that since I was over 65, I’d be getting the Moderna “mNEXSPIKE” vaccine. ^[3] Apparently this is a new and different thing for elders and those at higher risk for severe COVID-19, so let’s find out what it is.

We’ve known for some time now that the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are not just straight-up RNA sequences from the virus, but are particularly engineered to replicate fast and stimulate deep immune reactions. We’ve even analyzed, on this Crummy Little Blog That Nobody Reads (CLBTNR), those sequences to find about 11 different biohacks that were applied to the sequences. ^[4]

So it should come as no surprise that this has continued. ^{[5] [6]}

• Recommendation: It’s recommended for those over 65 or age 12-64 with at least one underlying condition that means COVID-19 would be especially bad news. It apparently induces even stronger immunity than the Moderna SPIKEVAX, q.v., so it’s appropriate for elders whose immune systems need stronger provocation.
• Design: Rather than reproduce (an engineered form of) the whole spike protein, it just contains 2 domains of the protein: the N-terminus domain and the receptor binding domain.
  • Proteins are made up of a chain of amino acids, and the way they fit together means you’ve got a nitrogen hanging off one end (N) and a carbon off the other (C). For the SARS-CoV2 spike, the N-terminus domain is involved in sticking to the target cell for infection.
  • The receptor binding domain is what binds to a receptor (ACE2, I think?) on the cell surface to get itself inside the cell.
  • Obviously those 2 areas of the protein are crucial for infection, and they’re where most antibodies tend to bind anyway. So mNEXSPIKE concentrates on just those areas.
• Dose: One of the reasons I’ve liked Moderna is that it’s dosed higher than Pfizer. Here with mNEXSPIKE, though, the dose goes down (50μg for SPIKEVAX vs 10μg for mNEXSPIKE). That’s because it induces such a stronger immune reaction, you just need less of it.

• Clinical trials: The Phase 3 NextCOVE study (NCT05815498, 11,454 persons) compared mNEXSPIKE with SPIKEVAX, head-to-head.

  The goal was to demonstrate “noninferiority”, i.e., get at least as good efficacy, and in fact get the lower 95% confidence limit of the efficacy difference between mNEXSPIKE and SPIKEVAX to be above -10%. That is, you want to see more efficacy from mNEXSPIKE, and you want to be very sure that the worst case is not too bad.

  • That goal was met: mNEXSPIKE has 9.3% (99.4% CI, -6.6, 22.8) higher relative vaccine efficacy relative to SPIKEVAX.
  • Specifically in seniors, it was even better: 13.5% [95% CI, -7.7, 30.6].
  • It also induced higher seroresponse rates and geometric mean neutralizing antibody titers.

So… yeah, this looks really, really good.

The Vax Experience

So here we are, at our local pharmacy, at the appointed hour for a same-day appointment. (And for that, I’m grateful.)

As you can see, they did indeed trot out the mNEXSPIKE version of the Moderna vaccine for your humble Weekend Editor. It amazes me that we’ve gotten so good at engineering mRNA sequences for immune stimulation that you only need to give me 10μg IM to drive my aging immune system into staying on guard for the next 6 months.

And, as is now a CLBTNR tradition, here is my portside dorsal manipulator tentacle, dutifully and gratefully receiving the jab. By my count, that is my 11th COVID-19 shot, since starting way back in March of 2021.

Mission thus having been accomplished, I picked up a gyro/veggie/rice plate from a deli on the way home. Probably not gonna feel like cooking dinner tonight, and that’s fine.

The Weekend Conclusion

The Weekend Editrix is currently in Japan. I’ll have to ask her to ask around about the availability of the 2025-2026 COVID-19 booster there before she returns to the US.

Get yourself covered now, while it’s still possible.

As always, with COVID-19 vaccination blog posts, tune in tomorrow to hear about the (generally minor) side effects.

(Ceterum censeo, Trump incarcerandam esse.)

Addendum 2025-Sep-14: Sequelae

So here we are, 24 hours later.

The vaccine mNEXSPIKE is advertised as provoking a stronger immune reaction (so it’s given at a lower dose). And yes… yes, it does indeed do that. I had a somewhat difficult night, with about 1.5°C fever, extreme fatigue, and a headache that strobed every time I coughed. But, honestly, it was not as bad as getting a mild case of the flu.

And by this afternoon it’s not entirely cleared up, but well enough. And I can take some ibuprofen. It’ll be fine.

Absolutely worth it. I so very much look forward to not getting COVID-19 this winter.

You should, too.

Addendum 2025-Sep-20: ACIP Results

So, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practice finally met.

It was, in the words of one epidemiologist, a “goat rodeo”:

• They tried to rebunk the thoroughly debunked “turbo cancer” anti-vax conspiracy theory that mRNA vaccines somehow cause cancer.
• They tried to promote the exceptionally stupid proposition that COVID-19 vaccines cause “… changes in the immune system that cause other infections, autoimmunity, chronic inflammation, immune tolerance and impaired immune surveillance including immune fatigue or suppression.”
• They tried to say it caused multiple child deaths, using unverified VAERS reports that did not check out anywhere else.
• They subjected CDC scientists to the verbal equivalent of waterboarding, with questions that were wildly inappropriate, irrelevant, and disrespectful. (Like: “If a hippopotamus appeared in your lab…”)
• They listened to presentations from people with highly suspicious histories, such as El-Deiry, who has 75 of his publications flagged on PubPeer for data irregularities.
• They tried to blame Long COVID on vaccines, despite evidence saying the exact opposite (not to mention that most cases of Long COVID date from before the vaccines were available).
• They tried to impose a requirement for a prescription (just barely failed, on a 6-6 tie vote).
• When that failed, they imposed a requirement for “shared clinical decision making” with a healthcare provider.
  • An interesting loophole: a pharmacist counts, so if you ask a pharmacist for a vaccination, the requirement is met!
  • Interestingly, given the requirement for younger people to have a medical need, the Michigan Chief Medical Executive declared that not having the latest vaccination was itself a condition that constituted sufficient medical need to justify getting the latest vaccination. It’s come down to that, apparently.

In general, they entertained arrant nonsense, disinformation and outright lies, while showing little to no understanding of the principles of public health.

Still… they did not pull the authorization, so the vaccines are still available. While the “consultation with a health care practitioner” will almost surely be abused in red states to throw up barriers, at least the rest of us should not have too much problem getting vaccinated.

Still, I’m glad I got it done before the “goat rodeo”. And I’m glad the Weekend Editrix will be able to get it upon her return from Japan.

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Notes & References

1: LH Sun, R Roubein, D Diamond, “Trump officials to link covid shots to child deaths, alarming career scientists”, Washington Post, 2025-Sep-12.

NB: Regrettably paywalled; see archive version here. ↩

2: B Mole, “RFK Jr.’s CDC may limit COVID shots to 75 and up, claim they killed kids”, Ars Technica, 2025-Sep-12. ↩

3: Moderna Staff, “mNEXSPIKE, A NEW COVID-19 VACCINE “, Moderna web site, downloaded 2025-Sep-13. ↩

4: Weekend Editor, “Reading the RNA in the Pfizer & Moderna vaccines”, Some Weekend Reading blog, 2021-Apr-08. ↩

5: D Ernst, “FDA Approves Moderna’s Next-Generation COVID-19 Vaccine mNexspike”, Vaccine Advisor, 2025-Jun-11. ↩

6: Medical Letter Staff, “COVID-19 Update: mNEXSPIKE — A New Moderna mRNA Vaccine for COVID-19”, Med Lett Drugs Ther 67:1733, pp. 119-20, 2025-Jul-21. DOI: 10.58347/tml.2025.1733h. ↩