The importance of what Dr. Monica Gandhi wrote this morning is hard to overstate.
Dr. Gandhi is an infectious diseases professor at the University of California, San Francisco who has been among the most reasonable medical voices about Covid – neither a conspiracy theorist nor a lockdown-loving screecher. In PANDEMIA I describe her as “the rarest of breeds,” a Covid centrist.
She was also very pro-mRNA vaccine.
This morning, in her weekly email newsletter, Dr. Gandhi wrote that:
And finally, Omicron exposure likely to combat other variants in future since the individual has seen the whole virus; otherwise, would recommend a booster with a whole inactivated virion vaccine like Covaxin/Ocugen (EUA pending at FDA since November 5). [Emphasis added.]
Covaxin is nothing like the mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna. It doesn’t hijack our cells and force them to make spike proteins. Instead, like many older vaccines for other viruses, it presents the body with a complete (but disabled) viral particle to allow our immune systems to build their defenses without the dangers of being infected.
