Our 80-year-old friend has a heart condition, and COVID.

She apparently contracted the virus from contact with a younger person. A day after that contact, she was notified that person had tested positive for COVID-19.

A couple days after that, our 80-year-old friend started feeling sick. She got pretty sick. Flu-like sick. And she got the treatment protocol that has been refined over the last year.

She was never hospitalized. And she's now on the upswing.

She was vaccinated late last winter. So it was one of the breakthrough infections that we're talking about these days, where someone vaccinated for COVID ends up getting it nonetheless -- typically months after taking the vaccines, when its effectiveness has begun to wane. 

And it was a case study on the weakness and strengths of those vaccines. She's in a vulnerable age group with a pre-existing condition. Yet, she didn't end up in the hospital, and seems to have had mild to moderate infection.

How might things have gone had she not had the vaccine? We'll never know. But she's glad she had it.

She's also a case study in why boosters are needed. And she'll be eligible for one in about October, if I remember her vaccination time frame right, under new booster protocol announced by the White House on Wednesday.

Reactions to news of the booster have been mixed.

Some, like me, were happy to learn Wednesday that beginning the week of Sept. 20, anyone over 18 who had their second Pfizer or Moderna shot at least eight months earlier can get a booster.

And there will be a well-established — by now — network of locations, including many pharmacies, across the nation offering the free boosters. The booster issue for Johnson & Johnson shots is still being considered, since they came in later.

The announcement by the White House will add to skepticism about the vaccines to people who are already skeptics. It will make people like me happy to know that boosters will soon be coming their way.

That’s especially true with the more contagious Delta strain spreading fast and the Black Hills experiencing a spike in cases coming off of the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. The state Health Department reported Wednesday 376 new infections in Black Hills counties. Pennington County led the state with 85 cases. Meade County had 52 and Lawrence County 41. 

I’m five months out from my second Pfizer shot on March 15, and recent research indicates that my protective antibodies are likely declining. So I’m ready for a booster now, but won’t be eligible until Nov. 15. My wife, who was working for a counseling agency when the shots became available and was eligible sooner than I was, will get her booster sooner than I do.

The same goes for our 80-year-old friend and her 80-something husband, who, being in an older age group, got their shots earlier than I did. The husband, by the way, tested negative for COVID a few days after his wife got sick, and has so far not shown signs of the infection.

They’re a bit of a case study in how the disease is progressing in our population. And like my wife and me, they'll get their boosters as soon as they are eligible.

Admittedly, the way the pandemic has been handled and explained by health professionals and government officials has sometimes been confusing, even seemingly contradictory. It hasn’t been perfect, for sure.

But perfection is an unlikely goal when you’re working with a new disease, an ever-changing virus and a large segment of the population who refuse to get vaccinated or wear masks at appropriate times. That helps the virus spread and shape itself into new and more dangerous variants.

Boosters are no surprise. And if there was a mistake made by some government officials and infectious-disease experts it was that they didn’t make it clear enough -- or sent mixed messages -- that boosters were not only possible but almost certain at some point. Some said it, but apparently worried that talking about boosters would discourage some from getting the initial shots.

Dr. Peter Hotez, co-director of vaccine development for Children Hospital of Texas, said Wednesday on CNN that the need for boosters at some point was always predictable. And last March John Beigel, associated director for clinical research in the Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases told the Washington Post: “As we know, covid is not going to go away anytime soon, and we know that the antibodies decrease over time, so that a boost will be needed at some juncture. I can’t predict when."

Others in the medical and infectious disease communities said the same. Maybe they should have said it louder or clearer.

But the boosters are no real surprise. They're part of the medical community's adjustment in this complicated battle against this difficult new disease.

And they probably won't be the last adjustment we'll have to make.

Infectious disease specialists, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, had been saying recently that the adjust to recommend boosters to the general population wasn’t need “right now.”  That’s because the vaccines, while allowing some breakthrough infections that were mild to moderate, were still highly effective in preventing more serious infections.

That all change, literally days ago, with data from Israel that showed that protection against serious infection was fading in vulnerable populations, including nursing home patients. That data prompted the CDC and the White House to come out with its booster statement and recommendation.

Fauci said today the booster recommendation is an effort to stay ahead of the virus, do as much as possible at this point to prevent serious infections, hospitalizations and deaths.

With that reality known, please, bring on the boosters.