{"id":1712927,"date":"2022-10-27T08:27:58","date_gmt":"2022-10-27T12:27:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1712927"},"modified":"2022-10-27T08:39:58","modified_gmt":"2022-10-27T12:39:58","slug":"new-studies-show-omicron-covid-boosters-no-better-than-original-vaccine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/new-studies-show-omicron-covid-boosters-no-better-than-original-vaccine\/","title":{"rendered":"New Studies Show Omicron COVID Boosters No Better Than Original Vaccine"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">22<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fnew-studies-show-omicron-covid-boosters-no-better-than-original-vaccine%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1712927&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/justthenews.com\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/social_media_share\/public\/2022-10\/walensky-califf-fauci-cdc-fda.Drew%20Angerer.Getty%20Images.jpg?h=199d8c1f&#038;itok=LWWwfZ9Q\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" alt=\"image\" \/><\/div>\n<p>Less than two months after the <a href=\"https:\/\/justthenews.com\/government\/federal-agencies\/eight-boosted-mice-fda-panned-omicron-jab-approval-based-irrelevant\">FDA used mouse data<\/a> to give emergency use authorization to bivalent COVID-19 boosters, the real-world performance of the shots that target the ancestral strain and Omicron BA.4\/5 subvariants is undermining the feds&#8217; one-size-fits-all messaging.<\/p>\n<p>New preprint studies by researchers at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biorxiv.org\/content\/10.1101\/2022.10.22.513349v1\">Columbia University<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biorxiv.org\/content\/10.1101\/2022.10.24.513619v1\">Beth Israel Deaconness Medical Center<\/a>, not yet peer-reviewed, found that the bivalents showed no meaningful improvement over the original monovalent boosters that targeted the Wuhan strain alone.<\/p>\n<p>CDC Director <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/media\/releases\/2022\/s1022-covid-director.html\">Rochelle Walensky got infected<\/a> by COVID this past weekend, just a month after taking her bivalent booster. The new boosters are &#8220;formulated to better protect against&#8221; newer variants, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/media\/releases\/2022\/s0901-covid-19-booster.html\">she said when recommending them in September<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Ironically, this is probably the peak vaccine efficacy (peak Ab),&#8221; University of California San Francisco epidemiologist <a href=\"https:\/\/vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com\/p\/bidens-bivalent-booster-blunder\">Vinay Prasad wrote in his newsletter<\/a> Wednesday, referring to Walensky&#8217;s ill-timed breakthrough.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Their entire vaccine policy seems to be interested in giving Pfizer and Moderna a perpetual market share for a yearly vaccine,&#8221; he said. &#8220;But seems to have no interest in generating credible randomized control trial evidence to inform the public.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;[A]nyone billing these bivalent vaccines as &#8216;better&#8217; or &#8216;improved&#8217; is simply not telling the truth,&#8221; Hawaii family physician <a href=\"https:\/\/doctorbuzz.substack.com\/p\/the-left-and-the-right-have-lost\">Buzz Hollander wrote in his newsletter<\/a>, which was picked up by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.realclearscience.com\/2022\/10\/22\/the_left_and_right_have_lost_their_minds_over_covid_860478.html\">RealClearScience<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;So let&#8217;s not pretend; because if the Wuhan\/BA.4-5 bivalent data ends up as mediocre as the early returns on the Wuhan\/BA.1 booster, people are going to wonder why they were sold a &#8216;better&#8217; product after so little study,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Around 3-5 weeks after a bivalent booster, meaning a fourth shot in an mRNA series, vaccinees &#8220;had similar neutralizing antibody titers as those receiving a fourth monovalent mRNA vaccine against all SARS-CoV-2 variants tested, including BA.4\/BA.5,&#8221; the Columbia study found. The original boosters actually produced &#8220;slightly higher&#8221; titers against three related viruses.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;These findings may be indicative of immunological imprinting, although follow-up studies are needed to determine if the antibody responses will deviate in time, including the impact of a second bivalent booster,&#8221; according to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biorxiv.org\/content\/10.1101\/2022.10.22.513349v1.full.pdf\">paper<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Until more data are available, regard the bivalent booster as equivalent to a booster which augments and broadens immunity, without specific anti-BA.5 properties,&#8221; <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/EricTopol\/status\/1584647419652116481\">Eric Topol<\/a>, head of Scripps Research Translational Institute, tweeted Monday. <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/EricTopol\/status\/1584650643913945088\">He had previously worried about &#8220;the potential for imprinting&#8221;<\/a> based on repeated jabs with the original vaccine.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Our data show that BA.5 NAb titers were comparable following monovalent and bivalent mRNA boosters,&#8221; the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biorxiv.org\/content\/10.1101\/2022.10.24.513619v1\">Beth Israel researchers wrote<\/a>. Both led to &#8220;preferential expansion&#8221; of original-strain antibody titers and &#8220;lower BA.1, BA.2, and BA.5&#8221; titers.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Spike-specific CD8+ and CD4+ T cell responses,&#8221; which improve long-term immunity, &#8220;increased only modestly&#8221; in both boosters, which &#8220;did not substantially augment T cell responses.&#8221; The findings are consistent with those reported Oct. 6 in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nejm.org\/doi\/10.1056\/NEJMoa2208343\">New England Journal of Medicine<\/a> for Moderna&#8217;a BA.1 bivalent, the paper says.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Our findings suggest that immune imprinting by prior antigenic exposure may pose a greater challenge than currently appreciated for inducing robust immunity to SARS-CoV-2 variants,&#8221; the researchers wrote.<\/p>\n<p>Robert Malone, a pioneer in mRNA vaccine development, invoked immune imprinting to explain the greater susceptibility of multi-boosted U.K. healthcare workers to Omicron reinfection in a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/doi\/10.1126\/science.abq1841\">study published this June in Science<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;All over the world, we are seeing these datasets that show that, unfortunately, the people that are dying and being hospitalized are overwhelmingly the highly vaccinated,&#8221; <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.ph\/f6z0A#selection-1543.0-1684.0\">he told EpochTV<\/a>. &#8220;It is not those that have natural immunity.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Pfizer and Moderna left out the &#8220;numeric values of antibodies generated in people&#8221; in their press releases on the performance of their new boosters, Prasad wrote. &#8220;No one has clinical data&#8211; i.e. is there a reduction in hospitalization? Severe disease? And if so, we don&#8217;t know which people (how old) have a further reduction in severe disease or hospitalization from this vaccine.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Even if the bivalents meaningfully increased neutralizing antibodies, that wouldn&#8217;t say much.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Answering questions from the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fda.gov\/advisory-committees\/advisory-committee-calendar\/vaccines-and-related-biological-products-advisory-committee-june-28-2022-meeting-announcement\">FDA&#8217;s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee<\/a> June 28, Pfizer Vice President for Viral Vaccines Kena Swanson admitted &#8220;there is no established correlate&#8221; between antibody levels and protection from disease. The FDA didn&#8217;t convene the committee to vote on specific Omicron boosters.<\/p>\n<p>The FDA itself may be boosting vaccine hesitancy \u2014 and giving credence to the hypothesis that repeated jabs are actually worsening immune-system response to COVID \u2014 by openly discussing the possibility of more boosters.<\/p>\n<p>Peter Marks, director of the agency&#8217;s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, told <a href=\"https:\/\/www.statnews.com\/2022\/10\/21\/fdas-vaccines-chief-sees-possibility-of-more-covid-boosters-sooner-than-hed-like\/\">medical publisher STAT<\/a> he lies awake at night &#8220;worrying that there is a certain chance that we may have to deploy another booster&#8221; in less than a year &#8220;at least for a portion of the population, perhaps older individuals.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Even as he said he wasn&#8217;t trying to &#8220;diss the current mRNA vaccines,&#8221; including the new bivalents, Marks said they don&#8217;t cut it when it comes to long-term immunity.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We need to look at other other types of vaccines&#8221; that might restore public confidence in vaccines, he added.<\/p>\n<p>The FDA and CDC didn&#8217;t respond to queries about the divergence between their portrayal of the new boosters versus their real-world performance.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The feds require far less rigorous evidence to approve new COVID shots, whose price <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/business\/healthcare-pharmaceuticals\/pfizer-expects-price-covid-vaccine-110-130-per-dose-2022-10-20\/\">Pfizer said it plans to quadruple<\/a>, than to simply remain neutral about low-cost COVID therapeutics such as ivermectin, <a href=\"https:\/\/justthenews.com\/politics-policy\/coronavirus\/tuefederal-health-authorities-scorn-ivermectin-despite-abundant\">falsely portrayed by the FDA<\/a> as dangerous to humans despite a sterling safety profile and Nobel Prize for its inventor.<\/p>\n<p>In a new study published in a <a href=\"https:\/\/jamanetwork.com\/journals\/jama\/fullarticle\/2797483?utm_campaign=articlePDF&#038;utm_medium=articlePDFlink&#038;utm_source=articlePDF&#038;utm_content=jama.2022.18590\">Journal of the American Medical Association publication<\/a>, Duke University medical researchers concluded ivermectin was not useful for outpatients with mild to moderate COVID.<\/p>\n<p>They found a &#8220;median time to recovery&#8221; of 12 days in the ivermectin group, which had 10 hospitalizations or deaths, and 13 days in the placebo group, which had 9 hospitalizations or deaths.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>While a <a href=\"https:\/\/cdn.jamanetwork.com\/ama\/content_public\/journal\/jama\/939016\/joi220112supp3_prod_1666033255.71042.pdf\">comparison chart<\/a> shows time to recovery was slightly better in vaccinated participants, who accounted for 47% of the study population, corresponding author Susanna Naggie told Just the News there was &#8220;no statistical difference in the treatment effect of IVM at this dose and duration for vaccinated or unvaccinated persons.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Asked about the feds setting a lower evidence bar for bivalent boosters than for ivermectin, Naggie said the former were &#8220;authorized similar to new flu vaccines every year &#8230; based on the known safety profile and the benefit that has been shown, particularly for the prevention of hospitalization and death, with the prior vaccine, both primary and monovalent booster.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The COVID vaccines&#8217; effectiveness against hospitalization and death &#8220;have remained quite high and thus are the basis of the FDA authorizing the bivalent boosters,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Less than two months after the FDA used mouse data to give emergency use authorization to bivalent COVID-19 boosters, the real-world performance of the shots that target the ancestral strain<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1712930,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[547],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1712927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-bongino-report"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1712927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1712927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1712927\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1712930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1712927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1712927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1712927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}