But wait, I thought COVID is already over in Texas and everything is opening back up and no masks already. So why do you even need a booster now? Oh wait, maybe you are planning to travel outside of Texas where COVID is still active...
Perhaps more than groups than elderly patients. I know of folks with Lupus that take immunity system-type suppression drugs. So is "more spike proteins" better for those types of cases too I'm (we're) wondering. Their doctor (rheumatologist) indicated the vaccines would be more effective for others due to the suppression drugs. Maybe I'm not understanding all this tho.
So what are thoughts about England's plan to get as many single dosed residents as possible before doing the full 2-shot? While not peer reviewed, an Israel study is backing up that plan.
Not an immunologist, but my impression is that immunity formed against the viral vector is not a significant problem in practice. I’m not sure exactly why this is. Perhaps it attracts less attention from the immune system because the vector virus does not reproduce. Whatever antibodies that are created against the vector virus are not prevalent enough when the 2nd booster shot is given to successfully interfere with the vaccine. As for potential causes for AZ being a less effective vaccine, one reason that stands out in my mind is that it apparently does not use the pre-fusion stabilization modifications to the spike protein that most other vaccines used. That means it’s spike proteins can sometimes deform from their pre-fusion configuration thus hiding some of the more important epitopes for antibodies. This isn’t quite what you are asking for, but this table shows reactions to the Pfizer vaccine taken from the phase 3 trial and compared to reaction rates of placebo as well as other non-COVID vaccines like the new one for shingles and the flu. As the data shows, temporary vaccine side-effect reactions are actually somewhat more common for Shingrix than for the Pfizer COVID shot.
The data was just updated today and Florida is now up at ~40% B.1.1.7. Discussion and more charts: https://twitter.com/alexbolze/status/1367997024746971138?s=21
Yeah, I had forgotten that. Other than possible variants, etc., I do wonder about the clearly reduced efficacy curves for J&J though. Really they need to do side-by-side comparisons now! These appear to be the first dose numbers, strangely. Of course, second dose reactions are much more common. Fever goes up to 16%. Muscle and bone pain double in rate. The aggregate numbers (set which is the union of all reactions) are not given for Pfizer (they are for Moderna).