Sunday, November 27th, 2022, 6:12 am
No Clinical Trials
Filed under: Description:
This covid winter should be better than last
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser
www.nytimes.com/2022/11/22/us/politics/fauci-covid…
www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/11/22/covid-biv…
Combination of infections and vaccinations,
enough community protection that we’re not going to see a repeat of what we saw last year at this time
Re bivalent effectiveness
It is clear now, despite an initial bit of confusion
United States
Nearly $5 billion to buy 171 million bivalent boosters
(Pfizer BioNTech, Moderna)
Hobson’s choice
Dr. Ashish K. Jha, White House’s Covid-19 response coordinator
Still heavily promoting vaccination
Nothing I have seen in the subvariants makes me believe that we can’t manage our way through it effectively, especially if people step up and get their vaccine
So far, 35 million people, (11% of over 5s) one bivalent shot
www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7148e1.htm?s_cid=…
Effectiveness of Bivalent mRNA Vaccines in Preventing Symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 Infection — Increasing Community Access to Testing Program, United States, September–November 2022
This is the clinical trial, previous work had only been based on antibodies
Benefits are mentioned, adverse reactions are not
Any adverse reactions not reported
v-safe
www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7144a3.htm?s_cid=…
Systemic symptoms
Fatigue (30.0%–53.1%)
Headache (19.7%–42.8%)
Myalgia (20.3%–41.3%)
Fever (10.2%–26.3%)
Reported inability to complete normal daily activities
10.6% among aged over 65 years
19.8% among aged 18–49 years
Bivalent boosters provided significant additional protection against symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection
Relative vaccine effectiveness (rVE) of a bivalent booster dose,
compared with that of more than 2 monovalent vaccine doses,
30% and 56% aged 18–49
with relative benefits increasing with time since receipt of the most recent monovalent vaccine dose.
Staying up to date with COVID-19 vaccination, including getting a bivalent booster dose when eligible, is critical to maximizing protection against COVID-19
350,000 tests at almost 10,000 retail pharmacies between Sept. 14 and Nov. 11
Relative risk given
Absolute risk not given
What about protection from severe disease?
Paul Offit, director of the vaccine education center, professor of pediatrics, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
The only reasonable goal is to prevent serious illness,
We are still waiting for one shred of evidence that this bivalent vaccine or any bivalent is better than what we had
Virus continues to evolve
This should be a cautionary tale for what happens when you try to chase these variants
Celine Gounder, infectious-disease specialist, Kaiser Family Foundation
It doesn’t show the bivalents are better than the original boosters
(but still advocated the bivalent shot)
Pei-Yong Shi, virologist, University of Texas Medical Branch
difficult to measure how well the updated boosters were working because so many people now had some immunity from earlier infections,
including people who were never vaccinated or boosted.
John P. Moore, virologist, Weill Cornell Medicine
Are the boosters working better than the original shots?
Personally, I doubt there would have been much, if any, difference, but we may never know
Dr. Roby Bhattacharyya, infectious disease physician, Massachusetts General Hospital
This winter should be better than last
we’re a more immune population
China
www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-daily-covid-cas…
www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/11/24/iphone-f…
Record high COVID-19 infections
Rigid zero-COVID policy
Cities nationwide imposing localised lockdowns
Mass testing, masks
No furlough scheme
