Originally published September 26, 2023 9:57 am PDT
On Tuesday, Minnesota Senator Tina Smith (D) announced that she tested positive for COVID-19.
Senator Smith has become infected despite being vaccinated against the disease, raising questions about the shot’s efficacy.
“I tested positive for COVID this morning after developing mild symptoms Sunday night,” Smith said in a post on X, formerly Twitter. “I’ll stay here in Minnesota while following CDC guidelines.”
The Minnesota senator even took the opportunity to encourage her followers to “look into getting their updated booster shot,” even though she herself became sick after receiving the jab.
In December 2020, Smith expressed gratitude after receiving the COVID shot, vowing to get more in the future.
In March 2022, Sen. Smith led a bipartisan group of senators urging Senate leadership to support “emergency supplemental resources for vaccine diplomacy.”
In a letter sent at the time, Smith and the group pressed Senator Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) “to provide emergency supplemental aide for U.S. global vaccination efforts.”
In July 2022, Smith tested positive for COVID, nevertheless tweeting that she was “incredibly grateful to be vaccinated and boosted.”
In March 2021, she told her followers to “[g]et vaccinated as soon as possible no matter which FDA-authorized vaccine you are administered. They are all safe and effective.”
However, an August 2022 publication in the peer-reviewed Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) revealed that the likelihood of being reinfected with coronavirus increases as the number of COVID vaccines taken increases.
The study also showed that those who received no coronavirus vaccines were less likely to be reinfected.
The JAMA publication reads, “The probability of reinfection increased with time from the initial infection (odds ratio of 18 months vs 3 months, 1.56; 95% CI, 1.18-2.08) and was higher among persons who had received 2 or more doses compared with 1 dose or less of vaccine (odds ratio, 1.42; 95% CI, 1.13-1.78).”
The study authors noted their surprise in finding that higher vaccination rates were associated with a higher probability of reinfection.
“Surprisingly, 2 or more doses of vaccine were associated with a slightly higher probability of reinfection compared with 1 dose or less,” they wrote.
The COVID-19 vaccine has been linked to 36,231 deaths and 209,910 hospitalizations, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).
