GLP podcast: COVID shots in 2025. Who needs a booster and why?

Cameron English, Liza Lockwood | July 31, 2025

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Five years after COVID-19 began to turn the world upside down, controversy continues to rage around the life-saving mRNA vaccines that significantly stemmed the death toll of SARS-CoV-2. While the COVID shots have been thoroughly studied and carry very few side effects for most people, the public’s confusion persists due to unclear messaging from health authorities and politicians throughout the pandemic, as well as disagreement among legitimate experts in recent years about who needs booster doses.

The conversation was further complicated by updated vaccine guidance issued by the FDA and CDC in May, which recommended that only high-risk groups receive annual COVID boosters, revising the previous guidance that all Americans over the age of 6 months receive the shot each year. While the new recommendation makes a certain degree of sense, some physicians have noted that it introduces new questions for patients, doctors, and pharmacists that federal officials have yet to answer. Vaccine expert Dr. Paul Offit outlined several such questions recently, including this one:

“I am a pharmacist who gives dozens of Covid-19 vaccines every day. Am I supposed to determine whether someone is in a high-risk group before I give the vaccine? And how could I possibly know whether people are telling the truth. Will I get into trouble if I give a Covid vaccine to a healthy young person?”

To help cut through the confusion, emergency medicine physician Dr. Liza Lockwood answers the most common questions about COVID-19 vaccines: how do they work, and why do they only protect against severe disease and death—as opposed to preventing infection and transmission? Are the new guidelines from FDA/CDC justifiable?

Join Dr. Liza Dunn and Cam English on this episode of Facts and Fallacies as they discuss they break down the latest science around COVID vaccination: