Effectiveness of vaccination when one misses or purposedly refuses booster shots

Factual Questions
1

Let me start this thread on a touchy subject by pointing out right away that I am and have always been strongly pro-vaccination. Until recently, I didn’t even realize that being anti-vaxx was a thing because it seemed such a no-brainer, a basic and clear risk-assessment case. Everyone gets their vaccine shots on schedule in our household, full stop.

Now, a little bit of background information. Two recent anecdotes which have prompted my question.

1 - A few months ago, our pediatrician told us that it was time for our youngest daughter to get her DTaP and Polio booster (tetanus-diphtheria-pertussis + polio, acellular) as she was soon turning 6. Indeed, her last shot was in December 2010. The schedule here for this particular vaccine is 2 month-old, 3 month-old, 4 month-old then 18 month-old and 6 years-old after which, you’re only supposed to take booster shots every 10 years.

With the pediatrician’s agreement, we decided to have her take the booster shot in August, a little bit ahead of schedule, like her older sister previously. So, I went to the chemist and was told that the vaccine was out of stock and that they didn’t know when it’d be available again. I called the pediatrician who told me that he could get a dose sent directly to his office. So, my daughter finally got her booster shot but I thought it was good thing that I had not waited until the last second to do it. I would never have thought that you could run out of such a basic vaccine in Western Europe.

2 - Anti-vaxxers have become alarmingly vocal in Europe, too. I was reading a French newspaper last Summer and stumbled on an article in which 3 out of 5 persons interviewed expressed mild to strong anti-vaccination opinions :eek:. One of them said that he “had been forced to get vaccinated earlier but (he) had let his vaccination status lapse on purpose because he didn’t want to get any more shots” :rolleyes:.

Finally, to the question proper.

What happens when you miss your booster shots?

I’m pretty sure that you don’t go from “fully protected” to “zero protection” overnight. I’d tend to think that you’re still equally protected in the weeks that follow a missed booster shot. But what about six months later? A year? Five years? After, say, ten years, do you still have some sort of immunity or are you no better off than someone who’s never been vaccinated? I suppose that the number of shots that you’ve received before missing the booster plays a role. And so probably do the particular disease you want to be protected from as well as the type of vaccine (cellular/acellular).

2

Effectiveness of partial vaccination varies depending on the particular vaccine and disease in question.

There’s evidence that just getting one dose of a rotavirus vaccine lowers the risk of hospitalization for rotavirus gastroenteritis almost as much as the two-dose series.

For a highly contagious disease like measles, partial protection may not be worth as much.

“Among the 110 California patients (in the Disneyland outbreak of 2014-2015), 49 (45%) were unvaccinated; five (5%) had 1 dose of measles-containing vaccine, seven (6%) had 2 doses, one (1%) had 3 doses, 47 (43%) had unknown or undocumented vaccination status, and one (1%) had immunoglobulin G seropositivity documented, which indicates prior vaccination or measles infection at an undetermined time.”

So, in that outbreak 11% of patients were partially vaccinated, 1% (one patient) was fully vaccinated, and the rest were either unvaccinated or had unknown vaccination status.

With a vaccine like the one for whooping cough (offering good but not great protection), expect partial coverage to be less effective than in the case of a vaccine that is highly protective against a disease.

3

That’s pretty much what I expected.

Thanks, Jackmannii that breakdown by disease is revealing.

Do you have information about the other ones like diphteria, tetanus and polio? Or mumps and rubella which are usually included in the same vaccine that provides immunity for measles?