Coronavirus: Vaccines

[Frater I*I]

If Sudafed is made from fetal cell lines, that means they are all going to have to give up crystal meth.

Whoa, whoa, whoa....let's not get too hasty here...you see the cooking process vaporizes all the fetal cells, so it's kosher...


I'll see myself out....

[Sam the Centipede]

My understanding is cause the Pfizer vaccine was the first on the market and intially used to vaccinate the seniors and high-risk people, those applications have reached the end of the first six months "guaranteed" to be most effective.

Sorry, I'm not sure what your sentence means. There's no "guarantee" of anything which I guess is why you used scare quotes?

Of course you're correct that Pfizer was first in major deployment and a lot of the recipients were in medical risk groups, but a lot were in occupational risk groups, such as health care workers.

But while antibody levels decline, they are not necessarily a reliable correlate of effective immunity.

Also too I understand that the Pfizer shot is seriously less effective against the Delta variant. All the reason to offer a booster to the first recipients. I guess once there is a fast, easy and cheap way to evaluate the remaining protection the boost can get applied selectively.

Mm. Not sure about that, I hear conflicting views and I suspect these measures are not reliable numbers (observational data i from the general population is much less robust than trials data).

The most recent expert opinions I heard were that all vaccines still provide excellent protection against serious disease (such as hospitalization or death) from all variants, which is the most important issue, and what matters mostfrom a public health perspective. But who knows? The received wisdom half a year ago seemed to be that the vaccines were providing sterilizing immunity, preventing most onward transmission, but now the received wisdom is the opposite. It really is very confusing!

There probably won't be an easy way of assessing an individual's strength of immunity. Measuring antibody levels in blood plasma is tedious and is only a small part of the story. Measuring B-cell and T-cell immunity is research lab work, not cheap, easy or scalable.

Even that is only part of the story. As immune memory cells mature over weeks and months they continue to generate diversity, which potentially enhances response against variants that the immune system hasn't yet encountered.

I'll certainly accept another dose (booster or third) when offered!

[Chilidog]

So, one of our biggest clients is requiring all their vendor and contractor personnel who visit their facilities to be vaxed.

In anticipation of that, we did an internal survey to find out who has been vaxed. The results were a bit surprising.

Two people who I was sure were not, were vaxed.

Two people I would have bet that they were vaxed, were not.

One person was just lazy.

One guy will probably wind up quitting as we won't be able to give him enough work to keep him on. It's too bad, as he is a nice guy who does a consistent job. I just thought that he was joking about all that prepper stuff, but apparently, he really does believe in the upcoming zombie apocalypse.

[Slim Cognito]

Yeah, all this latest booster info has me confuzzled. I was set to take Hubs for his booster as soon as I get back from my Philly trip. He's not technically immunocompromised, but he's had 5 or 6 heart attacks so clots are definitely a concern for us. (I know it's hard to believe, but we lost track)

I talked to the county health dept a few weeks ago and they said the recommendations for boosters, at that time, was eight months unless 'compromised, but they weren't going to question anyone. That would put Hubs about six weeks ahead but in the window for six months recommendation I've seen discussed but not approved. I guess we'll see what they're saying come the first week of October.

[Uninformed]

[AndyinPA]

My daughter and SIL will have my eight-year-old grandson first in line.

My granddaughter, who turned 12 on August 22, got hers on August 23. The grandson just turned eight on Friday.

[W. Kevin Vicklund]

[Estiveo]

Family Guy vaccine PSA.

[raison de arizona]

Nice!

[Volkonski]

[AndyinPA]

https://www.rollcall.com/2021/09/22/bre ... ng-months/

Mild cases of COVID-19 among vaccinated individuals are becoming increasingly common as the highly contagious delta variant barrels through communities, but physicians and public health experts say that shouldn’t be a cause for significant concern.

A breakthrough case of COVID-19 occurs when a person contracts COVID-19 at least two full weeks after the final dose of the vaccine. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tracks only breakthrough cases that result in hospitalization or death, as these incidences are both serious and very rare.

COVID-19 cases are up to five times more common in unvaccinated individuals compared with the vaccinated, according to the CDC. But state-level data shows that milder breakthrough cases that do not result in hospitalization are on the rise among the fully vaccinated as virus transmission increases and vaccine efficacy decreases. And they’re expected to keep increasing.

“It’s likely that everybody will probably get infected with COVID-19 [at some point] because it’s an endemic respiratory virus. The goal is to make sure that at that time, that infection occurs after you’ve been vaccinated so it’s mild,” said Amesh Adalja, a doctor and infectious disease specialist at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

[Sam the Centipede]

https://www.rollcall.com/2021/09/22/bre ... ng-months/

“It’s likely that everybody will probably get infected with COVID-19 [at some point] because it’s an endemic respiratory virus. The goal is to make sure that at that time, that infection occurs after you’ve been vaccinated so it’s mild,” said Amesh Adalja, a doctor and infectious disease specialist at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

That seems highly plausible: there's so much of the virus around that eradication, even at a local level, is not possible. There will always be reservoirs to supply reintroduction.

So the big epidemiological question must be: how often will "mild cases" (which could mean feeling awful for several days and not feel at all "mild" to the victim) result in Long Covid with permanent damage?

Flu victims can often be sub-par for weeks or months afterwards nominal recovery, and that's going to happen with Covid, but it's the permanent damage that's most worrying.

[Lani]

So the big epidemiological question must be: how often will "mild cases" (which could mean feeling awful for several days and not feel at all "mild" to the victim) result in Long Covid with permanent damage?

Flu victims can often be sub-par for weeks or months afterwards nominal recovery, and that's going to happen with Covid, but it's the permanent damage that's most worrying.

Most people who have coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) recover completely within a few weeks. But some people — even those who had mild versions of the disease — continue to experience symptoms after their initial recovery.

These people sometimes describe themselves as "long haulers" and the conditions have been called post-COVID-19 syndrome or "long COVID-19." These health issues are sometimes called post-COVID-19 conditions. They're generally considered to be effects of COVID-19 that persist for more than four weeks after you've been diagnosed with the COVID-19 virus.

Much is still unknown about how COVID-19 will affect people over time, but research is ongoing. Researchers recommend that doctors closely monitor people who have had COVID-19 to see how their organs are functioning after recovery.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-con ... t-20490351

[RTH10260]

The CEO in interview with European (Swiss?) media

Stéphane Bancel on the pandemic
Moderna boss expects the corona pandemic to end in a year

Today, 7:16 am

Stéphane Bancel, CEO of the US biotechnology group, expects the corona pandemic to end in a year.

Older people as well as high-risk patients who were vaccinated at the beginning of the pandemic should now receive booster vaccinations.
According to Bancel, there will be enough doses by the middle of next year to vaccinate everyone in the world. From then on, Covid-19 will become normal flu.

The mRNA technology has huge potential, said Bancel to the "Blick". He has in mind, for example, that Covid-19 could be part of a combined vaccination with which one could be vaccinated against all respiratory viruses. Vaccination combinations against the coronavirus and flu viruses should also be possible, so that patients are vaccinated against several viruses.

Moderna will start the clinical trial for these vaccines before the end of this year, while the one for the flu vaccine is already underway. These combined vaccines are expected to hit the market in 2023.

The Moderna CEO replies to vaccine skeptics that their fear is unfounded. Clinical studies have clearly shown that the new technology does not interfere with the DNA. The mRNA vaccine consists of four nucleic acids that are biodegradable. Two hours after the vaccination, the lipid nanoparticles are no longer detectable.



original in German https://www.srf.ch/news/international/s ... einem-jahr

in an intro to the written interview:

Wie oft werden künftig Auffrischimpfungen gegen das Coronavirus nötig sein? Für Jüngere alle drei Jahre, für Ältere jedes Jahr, vermutet der Chef des Unternehmens Moderna, Stéphane Bancel.

How often will booster vaccinations against the coronavirus be necessary in the future? For younger people every three years, for older people every year, suspects the boss of the Moderna company, Stéphane Bancel.

[RTH10260]

similar prediction

Why Covid could become like the common cold — or not

Tom Whipple, Science Editor
Thursday September 23 2021, 10.30am BST, The Times

If the virus had a plan, it would not be to kill you. If this scrap of protein and nucleic acid could control its destiny it would want you sneezing and sniffling and superspreading indefinitely — something that is notoriously hard to do from a morgue.

Last night Dame Sarah Gilbert, the creator of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, said that, ultimately, this would be what the coronavirus would achieve.

“We already live with four different human coronaviruses that we don’t really ever think about very much and eventually Sars-CoV-2 will become one of those,” she said.


paywall https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/why- ... -w75kl88cm

[Volkonski]

[Sam the Centipede]

similar prediction

Why Covid could become like the common cold — or not


Last night Dame Sarah Gilbert, the creator of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, said that, ultimately, this would be what the coronavirus would achieve.

“We already live with four different human coronaviruses that we don’t really ever think about very much and eventually Sars-CoV-2 will become one of those,” she said.

There is another factor in this: the general level of immunity in the population. I don't mean "herd immunity", which is a specific epidemiological concept (when a large enough fraction of the population is immune so the reproduction number R is less than 1.0 and an outbreak will not become an epidemic, even without extra mitigating measures).

Consider young kids growing up now. With SARS-CoV-2 ubiquitous they are liable to be exposed early in life and experience only mild illness, whether vaccinated or not. Each few years, or more frequently, they will be exposed again during normal social and family interactions. They might become ill, or they might extinguish the infection before symptoms appear. In either case, the immune system will identify the threat and respond. Part of that response is a strengthening of immunity (more antibodies, more memory cells) — in other words, a natural booster.

A constantly refreshing immune memory could make it similar a common cold to most victims … if we're lucky!!

That's a way off, vaccination is still the best option.

[Jim]

similar prediction

Why Covid could become like the common cold — or not


Last night Dame Sarah Gilbert, the creator of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, said that, ultimately, this would be what the coronavirus would achieve.

“We already live with four different human coronaviruses that we don’t really ever think about very much and eventually Sars-CoV-2 will become one of those,” she said.

There is another factor in this: the general level of immunity in the population. I don't mean "herd immunity", which is a specific epidemiological concept (when a large enough fraction of the population is immune so the reproduction number R is less than 1.0 and an outbreak will not become an epidemic, even without extra mitigating measures).

Consider young kids growing up now. With SARS-CoV-2 ubiquitous they are liable to be exposed early in life and experience only mild illness, whether vaccinated or not. Each few years, or more frequently, they will be exposed again during normal social and family interactions. They might become ill, or they might extinguish the infection before symptoms appear. In either case, the immune system will identify the threat and respond. Part of that response is a strengthening of immunity (more antibodies, more memory cells) — in other words, a natural booster.

A constantly refreshing immune memory could make it similar a common cold to most victims … if we're lucky!!

That's a way off, vaccination is still the best option.

Well that and babies are being born today with antibodies...

They also assessed the presence of antibodies in the cord blood of babies born to these women at the time of birth. The research demonstrated that 99 percent of newborns had protective antibodies after their mothers received both vaccine doses, and 44 percent of babies had antibodies after one dose

https://news.weill.cornell.edu/news/202 ... eir-babies

[Sam the Centipede]

Babies and antibodies: the presence of antibodies does not necessarily mean the babies have long-lasting immunity because babies acquire those from the mother either via transfer through the placenta or via mother's milk.

These maternally derived antibodies protect the baby in early life. I guess a clever assay could identify the likely source: heavier IgG immunoglobulins probably came through the placenta, lighter IgA immunoglobulins via milk. IgA might be slightly more effective as they tend to be found in the mucosal membranes, and those are the usual entry points for the virus.

That immunity is gradually lost if the baby doesn't have its own specific memory B-cells which produce the antibodies, and those are not transferred from the mother. Remember, the body cannot deduce the genetic recipe for an antibody by being exposed to the antibody; it must be exposed to the antigen (parts of the virus or similar artificial molecules).

But even if the baby initially has no immune memory, this protection can mean it responds quickly to exposure and infection, with the antibodies knocking out most of the virus, dulling its impact, while the immune system recognizes the threat and creates memory cells of its own. So this immunity is definitely A Good Thing.

[AndyinPA]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... t-derailed

There are very specific, well-documented reasons that Americans are hesitant to take vaccines. They vary from the troubling way the medical system treats people of color, to vaccine misinformation campaigns overwhelmingly popular in conservative circles, to logistical challenges.

But population health researchers, whose work considers how society as a whole is fairing, said low vaccine uptake may be looked at another way: as the predictable outcome of a campaign subject to entrenched social forces that have diminished American health and life expectancy since the 1980s.



Woolf calls this “breakthrough without follow-through”. In that light, the plodding vaccination campaign could be seen as one more aspect of the American “health disadvantage”.

The phrase describes a paradox: the US houses among the most advanced medical and research centers in the world, but performs poorly in basic health metrics such as maternal mortality and infant mortality; accidental injury, death and disability; and chronic and infectious disease.

“So much of the whole issue of social determinants of health and the US ‘health disadvantage’ is rooted in a lack of trust and a lack of trustworthiness in many parts of our society,” said Laudan Y Aron, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute’s health policy center.

[Sam the Centipede]

Sort of relevant to the point made in that Guardian article: I remember someone describing one of the early lockdowns in Europe, when many offices, etc. closed or reduced to a skeleton staff, as "middle class people hide while working class people bring stuff to them". That had more than a whiff of truth!

It makes me wonder if some people are thinking "So the government and a health system that doesn't care about me and my chronic ill-health wants me to take a vaccine to protect all the rich people? No, why should I, it's not my problem."

But I think it's more just the Trump-induced denial of reality and reason, and the belief that "owning the libs" by contradicting them is more important that the safety of one's family and friends.

[raison de arizona]

Christian religious exemptions broken down by a pastor.


Neat vaccination map! You can drill down into whatever/wherever you want. You can also back it off and see the world.
https://covid-tracker.mckinsey.com/vacc ... 790&geo=US

[RTH10260]

Covid: Merck’s antiviral pill molnupiravir slashes chances of illness and death

Tom Whipple, Science Editor
Friday October 01 2021, 12.25pm BST, The Times

An antiviral pill cuts the risk of needing hospital treatment from Covid-19 in half and slashes the chance of dying, according to landmark findings that promise to bring the world closer to normality.

The potentially game-changing results offer the promise of a completely new way of treating the disease, and represent what scientists hope will be the first of many successful antivirals.

Until now, the only way of treating the disease was with steroids, such as dexamethasone and intravenous antibodies. Both are used in patients who are already very sick.

The new treatment, molnupiravir, created by the pharmaceutical companies Merck and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, targets the virus’s life cycle, interfering with its replication by introducing errors in its genome.



paywall https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/covi ... -vgx2m53v7

[RTH10260]

alternate fuller resource

Merck to seek emergency authorization for oral Covid treatment after ‘compelling results’ in trials
PUBLISHED FRI, OCT 1 20216:01 AM EDT UPDATED
Chloe Taylor

KEY POINTS

• A phase 3 trial of Merck and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics’ oral antiviral treatment molnupiravir showed it reduced the risk of hospitalization or death by around 50% in Covid patients.
  Merck plans to seek emergency use authorization in the U.S. and submit marketing applications to other global drug regulators.
  If authorized by regulatory bodies, molnupiravir could be the first oral antiviral medicine for Covid.

Merck and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics plan to seek emergency authorization for their oral antiviral treatment for Covid, after the medicine showed “compelling results” in clinical trials.

The drug, molnupiravir, reduced the risk of hospitalization or death by around 50% for patients with mild or moderate cases of Covid, the companies announced Friday. Molnupiravir is administered orally and works by inhibiting the replication of the coronavirus inside the body.

An interim analysis of a phase 3 study found that 7.3% of patients treated with molnupiravir were hospitalized within 29 days. Of the patients who received a placebo, 14.1% were hospitalized or died by day 29. No deaths were reported in patients who were given molnupiravir within the 29-day period, while eight deaths were reported in placebo-treated patients.

All 775 trial participants had laboratory-confirmed symptomatic Covid-19 and were randomly given molnupiravir or a placebo within five days of symptoms.

Every participant was unvaccinated and had at least one underlying factor that put them at greater risk of developing a more severe case of the virus. The most common risk factors included obesity, being over age 60 and having diabetes or heart disease.


https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/01/merck-t ... tment.html

[tek]

Until now, the only way of treating the disease was with steroids, such as dexamethasone and intravenous antibodies.

Spurious comma?