01The shot cut hospitalization by 55 percent last season, measured across 26,073 hospitalizations. The measured harm in her age and sex band is 0.15 cases per 100,000 doses.
02Michigan and the national wastewater levels are both at the bottom of the CDC scale. The rise is in the West and South. So six weeks of waiting costs very little right now.
03The fall shot is built on XFG, which is most of what the CDC is currently sequencing. What is on pharmacy shelves today is built on LP.8.1, which did not appear at all in that latest sample.
04She is about ten months past her last dose. Whatever that one was doing, it is done. There is no protection being preserved by waiting, only a better match being waited for.
What flips this
A rise in Michigan's numbers, or someone in her building or her household getting sick, before the fall doses land. If that happens, take whatever is available that day and stop optimizing. The waiting argument only holds while the local number stays where it is.