One reason I keep doing this is that some people just don’t give up on trying to justify the epidemic restrictions and now talk about putting them in place for relatively minor threats like monkeypox or a pretty standard flu strain. We can’t be that dumb.
Proponments keep trying to portray the CV-19 vaccines as massively effective against infection. They aren’t, and they have only minor effectiveness over time against serious disease or death. This is not atypical for a respiratory virus vaccine. The flu vaccines are at best modestly effective. So here is a study trying to tell us that the new formulations of the CV-19 vaccine are effective against the latest strains and we should all get one, every year. Don’t do it, don’t let your children do it. It is pointless, it is not effective, the virus is not threatening to your health at this point. This is a test-negative design, which assumes in the first place that there is no difference in among people who seek a CV-19 test and the general population While admitting that the older versions of the vaccine have no effectiveness at this point, it claims the new ones do, but inadequately adjusts for the most important confounder–prior infections–how many, when, which strain? And while I don’t always view this as a serious limitation, the study was funded by Pfizer and the authors have financial links to Pfizer. Time to forget the CV-19 vaccines, except perhaps for some seriously vulnerable elderly persons. (JAMA Study)
The vaccine safety nuts lie a lot, so they should consider going to work for Little Timmy Walz. One of the lies is that CV-19 vaccines were causing issues to pregnant women and their babies. This study shows that there was no increase in birth defects among babies born to mothers who were vaccinated during the first trimester of their pregnancy. (JAMA Study)
There has been some concern that a CV-19 infection might be associated with more substantial development or incidence of other diseases, including Type 1, or juvenile diabetes. This study suggests that infection is linked to a higher rate of Type 1 diabetes among those aged 1 to 16. (JAMA Study)
Retrospective reviews of CV-19 vaccine safety and effectiveness continue. This study of children aged 5 to 15 in the United Kingdom found minor effectivenss initially, but no effectiveness within 20 weeks. Serious CV-19 disease among vaxed or unvaxed children was extremely rare. Heart inflammation, as usual, appeared to be the one serious adverse event from the vax. (Medrxiv Paper)
This is a topic I think definitely deserves much more attention. I always doubted that the actual mRNA in the CV-19 vax would cause significant problems, but they are encapsulated in lipid nanoparticles and it wasn’t clear to me that adequate research had been done on what happened to those nanoparticles as they broke down and release the mRNA. This field is called pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics, and studies what occurs as substances are introduced into the body–how long does it take for them to break down and or be cleared from the body. These lipids can themselves induce an immune response, primarily from antibodies, as the particles are a foreign substance to the body. The authors found that the nanoparticles could persist for some time before being completely cleared, but that the concentration peaked within a day and fell rapidly thereafter. (Medrxiv Paper)
Another study on vaccine safety from the UK is found in Nature Communications. The risk of hospitalization following vaccination was evaluated in 5 to 17 year olds. No increased rate of adverse events was found in children aged 5 to 11, but in 12 to 17 year-olds there was an increased rate of heart inflammation and a potential signal for increased epilepsy events. CV-19 infection was associated with greater risks for multiple events. (Nature Study)
File this under the nature knows best heading. A study of antibody responses up to two years post CV-19 infection shows a lingering strong response, particularly to spike protein. This appears to be a much stronger response than vaccination generates. (Nature Article)
