Until we have solid data on who needs them and how often, booster shots are going to be tough to distinguish from vaccine hoarding.

Nearly a year ago, the results from the Covid-19 vaccine trials were like a dream come true for health experts: The trials were huge and designed well, and the results were clear and persuasive. The vaccines were extremely safe and even more effective than expected. Only weeks after the data came in, the first health workers were rolling up their sleeves to receive the shots.

“I felt joy and elation when I got my first two doses of Pfizer,” Dr. Jeremy Faust, an emergency physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and an instructor at Harvard Medical School, told me. But he is a lot more wary of the pharmaceutical company’s next project: boosters. “I would feel very, very uncomfortable, given the data today, taking a booster myself at the age of 42, because I have not been shown what the benefit is,” Faust said. Read more at The New Republic.