What I’m Doing About the New Covid Shot

We're all so done with Covid. But the research on reinfections is giving me hives.

I haven’t talked about Covid here in a while, because, let’s face it, nobody wants to talk about Covid anymore. Can’t we just will it away? Except it keeps rearing its spiky little head: We’re likely cresting the wave of this summer’s Covid surge, and my two best friends’ families were re-infected this month (they’re fine, phew).

Until recently, I didn’t worry much about getting reinfected myself. My first infection last March wasn’t fun — I had a 104+ fever for a couple of days and was tired for weeks — but research suggests that reinfections tend to be milder than initial Covid bouts. We’ve been taking precautions when they feel warranted, but for the most part, we’ve been out and about living our lives.

Yet when the new booster was approved by the FDA on September 11th, I immediately started researching how to get it. Why? For one thing, we are traveling to a science journalism conference in October as a family, and I want additional protection before we do. But more importantly, I recently stumbled across surprising data on Covid reinfections that made me feel twitchy. And I saw reassuring data on vaccine-related myocarditis risks, which eased my concerns about the vaccine for my 12-year-old son.

Here’s what I found out — and what our family is doing this fall.