The newer variants, called BQ.1 and BQ.1.1, are spreading quickly, and boosters seem to do little to prevent infections with these viruses, as they are excellent evaders of immunity…
The most recent boosters are “bivalent,” targeting both the original version of the coronavirus and the Omicron variants circulating earlier this year, BA.4 and BA.5. Only about 12 percent of adults have opted for the latest shot.
In an interview, Dr. Peter Marks, the Food and Drug Administration’s top vaccine regulator, acknowledged the limitations of the available data on the updated boosters.
“It’s true, we’re not sure how well these vaccines will do yet against preventing symptomatic disease,” he said, particularly as the newer variants spread…
Diminishing returns from tinkering with the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines call for a new approach to protecting Americans altogether, Dr. Moore and other experts said. A universal vaccine that targets parts of the coronavirus that do not mutate would be ideal, for example. A nasal vaccine might be better at preventing infections than an injected one.
“Chasing variants by tweaking the mRNA vaccines is not a sustainable strategy,” Dr. Moore said. “There’s a need for better vaccine designs, but that needs a change of attitude at the government level.”
… Recently, Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna reported that their bivalent shots yielded antibody levels in study participants that were four to six times higher than those produced by the original vaccine. [Which means nothing wrt immunity—Nass.]
But the companies were measuring antibodies against BA.4 and BA.5, not the rapidly accelerating BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 variants. A spate of preliminary research suggests that the updated boosters, introduced in September, are only marginally better than the original vaccines at protecting against the newer variants — if at all…
“It’s not likely that any of the vaccines or boosters, no matter how many you get, will provide substantial and sustained protection against acquisition of infection,” said Dr. Dan Barouch, head of Beth Israel Deaconess’ Center for Virology and Vaccine Research, who helped develop the J.&J. vaccine…
In recent research, Dr. Barouch’s team found that BQ.1.1 is roughly seven times as resistant to the body’s immune defenses as BA.5, and 175 times more so than the original coronavirus. “It has the most striking immune escape, and it’s also growing the most rapidly,” he said. BQ.1 is expected to behave similarly…
The new bivalent booster increases antibody levels, as any booster would be expected to do.
But the fact that the dose is bivalent may not mean much. In August, a modeling study by immunologists in Australia suggested that any booster at all would confer additional protection, but that a variant-specific shot was unlikely to be more effective than the original vaccine…
Studies have shown that most of the antibodies elicited by a vaccine targeting BA.5, for example, still recognize only the original virus.
That’s because of a phenomenon called “immune imprinting,” in which the body preferentially repeats its immune response to the first variant it encountered, despite being alerted to a newer variant…
There may be ways to circumvent immune imprinting — perhaps with a second dose of a bivalent vaccine that builds on the immune response after the first, much as the second dose of the initial vaccine series cemented protection.
“What we need to do right now to get us through the next few months when I think we are in yet another wave of incipient wave of Covid,” Dr. Marks said. “And then we need to look forward, and lean into how we’re going to do things differently moving forward.” [This is the Dr. Marks, chief of vaccines at FDA, who admitted that FDA authorized an earlier booster as a “stopgap measure” because he didn’t know what to do then, either. He has apparently been reading Sheryl Sandberg’s book on leadership for women, titled “Lean In”—let’s hope this helps him grow a pair so he stops ordering new boosters whenever he doesn’t know what to do.—Nass]
The F.D.A. authorized the boosters for use at least two months after a previous dose or infection. But boosting again so soon may backfire, some studies suggest. [Weaken the immune response is what is unsaid.—Nass] Lengthening the interval between boosts to five or six months may be more effective, giving the immune system more time to refine its response.
Whatever the timing, adding yet another shot to the regimen seems unlikely to motivate Americans to opt for the immunization.
“Each new booster we roll out is going to have a lower and lower uptake, and we’re already pretty close to the floor,” said Gretchen Chapman, an expert in health behavior at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
The Biden administration may have no choice but to promote boosters given the lifting of other precautions, Dr. Chapman said. But most people make decisions based on what others in their social network do, or what their political and community leaders recommend, not on esoteric scientific data, she noted.
“We should not spend a lot of political capital trying to get people to get this bivalent booster, because the benefits are limited,” she added. “It’s more important to get folks who never got the initial vaccine series vaccinated than to get people like me to get their fifth shot.”
The Biden administration may have better luck persuading people to get boosters if other vaccines, such as Novavax or J.&J., were available for that purpose, she added. That may be particularly true for people who have hesitated to get a booster shot because they have had a strong reaction [note the missing word “adverse” or “side effect” or “serious”—Nass] to an mRNA vaccine.
Even from a scientific perspective, it may make more sense to diversify the body’s antibody response with different vaccines than to continue to roll out versions of the mRNA vaccines, some experts said.
Dr. Marks said the F.D.A. may recommend Novavax as a second booster after reviewing the data. Until then, that vaccine is authorized only as a first booster for people who are unwilling to, or cannot, get an mRNA vaccine…
[Only about 35,000 Americans opted for the Novavax insect - baculovirus - never - used - before - quillaja adjuvanted vaccine by October 19, 2022. Which means that every Novavax-vaccinated person has cost the US taxpayer many thousands of dollars.—Nass]
If this woman at Carnegie Mellon is a scientist, we are in serious trouble. She notes, “It’s more important to get folks who never got the initial vaccine series vaccinated than to get people like me to get their fifth shot".
Uhh, why? The initial vaccine was coded for the Wuhan strain, which is now, for all practical considerations, extinct. She is suggesting taking an mRNA product that will abundantly code for the most toxic spike protein simulacra of all the SARS-2 variants, yet the that virus is no longer with us.
If this woman at Carnegie Mellon is a scientist, we are in serious trouble. She notes, “It’s more important to get folks who never got the initial vaccine series vaccinated than to get people like me to get their fifth shot".
Uhh, why? The initial vaccine was coded for the Wuhan strain, which is now, for all practical considerations, extinct. She is suggesting taking an mRNA product that will abundantly code for the most toxic spike protein simulacra of all the SARS-2 variants, yet the that virus is no longer with us.
How could those 8 mice have been wrong?
Or were they rats? I forget