Coronamonomania Lives Forever, Part 166

Lot of research to get to you.

This letter in the New England Journal of Medicine reports on the effect of a prior infection on subsequent infection by the later Omicron variants.  The study again comes from Qatar.  Effectiveness against symptomatic infection from prior non-Omicron infection was only 35%.  Effectiveness from a prior Omicorn variant infection was around 76%, but that may be affected by the obviously shorter duration of time from one Omicron infection to another, and may lessen with additional passage of time.  Being vaxed added only slightly to the protective effect.  But the study also indicates that the later Omicron variants are causing even milder disease than the original Omicron.   (NEJM Article)

Here is a systematic review of effectiveness of vaccines and boosters.  It covers 63 studies.  As seems common knowledge now, the effectiveness against infection for the original doses lessens quickly, with protection against serious disease decreasing more slowly.  The authors claim that boosters restore effectiveness but appear to ignore the likely waning, perhaps even more quickly, of that restoration.  (SSRN Paper)

And a similar meta-review examines the impact of prior infection, vax or both on risk of subsequent infection or serious disease.  As usual, the order runs like this, vax is the least protective, prior infection is more protective, both vax and prior infection offers slightly better protection.  (Medrxiv Paper)

This study looked specifically at vaccines and hospitalization risk, finding the usual lessening of protection after a few months, and claiming boosters revived protection, but also temporarily.  So how many boosters are people supposed to get.  (Medrxiv Paper)

A similar study comes from England during the Delta wave.  It found a very significant reduction of risk of being admitted to critical care among vaxed persons versus unvaxed ones, across all age groups.  It found a lower rate of lessening of protection than is typical in regard to infection or general hospitalization.  (Medrxiv Paper)

While this research was nominally about whether the Omicron variants result in less of a particular effect in the lungs in people who supposedly died from CV-19, what is really interesting is that in this autopsy based study, the number of deaths among the vaxed was roughly proportional to their presence in the population, and a large number of deaths called CV-19 ones, had no direct causal relation to the infection, in fact 18 out of 26 deaths were in that category.  That is basically two-thirds.  So when we say that a large number of deaths supposedly due to CV-19 really weren’t, we are likely talking about half or more of all the deaths.  (Medrxiv Study)

One concern about vaccines is whether they have serious adverse events, and if so, why.  This is a study of whether getting a booster is associated with hospitalization.  It compared hospitalization rates in persons who got boosted, with and without a prior infection.  The study was done in the VA and follows up on a study which found a temporary increase in hospitalization rates following the original vaccination in persons with a prior infection.  Presumably the antibodies and other immune response from the prior infection caused a stronger response to the vaccine.  A similar effect was not detected for the booster dose.  An example of why I keep emphasizing the need to safety studies to identify clearly if the person also had a history of CV-19 infection.  (SSRN Study)

This study is cited by people who want to say having a CV-19 infection isn’t serious, but getting vaxed is.  They claim it says there is no heart inflammation risk associated with CV-19 infection, whereas there is clear evidence of such risk, at least for young men (what is a man?) in regard to getting vaxed.  Unfortunately, that is not what the study says.  It says there does not appear to be a risk of cardiac inflammation in the longer term after recovery from infection.  During the acute phase, there is an association with such inflammation, as other studies have found, and other studies have also found a longer-term risk as well.  (Israel Study)

This “analysis” from Florida has been seized on by a couple of people on Twitter, not many, because anyone with a brain realizes how pathetic it is, to say that there is a substantial risk of cardiac death from the vaccines.  It uses what is called a self-controlled case series design, which is particularly inapt when death is the outcome.  All you really need to do is read the limitations section, and also recognize that it uses death certificate data, which the same people appropriately say can be wildly inaccurate in regard to CV-19 deaths, and it completely inadequately address confounding by prior infection.  The confidence intervals are absurdly wide because the number of events is so small.  And even with this pathetic design, the only supposed association it finds is among young men.  As I have said repeatedly, there is no reason for most younger adults to get vaxed anyway at this point, so why are we bothering to make up safety shit.  (Fla. Analysis)