A data point of one, but I got a very mild case of Covid about a month after shot #4. Fever for two days, then mostly just bored from having to isolate. The Paxlovid did seem to help, and it was nice that it covered at 100%. I’ll begrudgingly thank either 45 or 46 for that one, lol. It would have otherwise been $900.
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Is Paxlovid available to everybody or only people in the high risk group?
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It’s only authorized for high risk. Practically, I think you can get it if you ask for it… some people were getting scrips for it “just in case” for upcoming international travel abroad where they might get covid but not have access to the US drugs. I think many docs aren’t being shy about giving this stuff out.
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Paxlovid covered at 100%? w/o Insurance like vax?
100% with insurance, without respect to the deductible. I don’t know about the uninsured.
Dr. said I fit the criteria based on age and hypertension. I’m 55.
You don’t really want it without a good reason. It has a list of drug interactions two pages long, and gives you a really bad taste in your mouth over the 5 day course.
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Maybe that is by design to keep you from losing your sense of taste. 
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Preliminary paper on booster duration shows much much faster waning of protection against O variants than earlier ones as provided by the current boosters. This includes waning protection from severe outcomes, not just getting sick enough to notice.
The half-life of protection against symptomatic infection provided by two doses was estimated in the range of 178-456 days for Delta, and between 66 and 73 days for Omicron. Booster doses were found to restore the VE to levels comparable to those acquired soon after administration of the second dose; however, a fast decline of booster VE against Omicron was observed, with less than 20% VE against infection and less than 25% VE against symptomatic disease at 9 months from the booster administration.
Conclusions This study provides a cohesive picture of the waning of vaccine protection; obtained estimates can inform the identification of appropriate targets and timing for future COVID-19 vaccination programs.
In short, if you’re high risk, you should be worried about O since the boosters we have now aren’t working particularly well or for particularly long. Taking preventive precautions is probably indicated, especially given the BA5 surges around the country right now.
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Here’s a lively interview with one of the experts on the FDA advisory panel who voted against authorizing the combo (Wuhan classic and also Omicron) vaccine boosters for the fall, something the Biden admin has been pushing for to look like they’re doing something as Omnicron’s new variants run around the country reinfecting everyone since prior vaccination or infection aren’t particularly protective.
First 45 minutes or so
Here were his reservations - .
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PFE and MRNA showed 1.5-2x higher O1 antibody levels compared to boosting with a 4th shot of the old vaccines. This is about as much as MRNA was better than PFE in the original trials, and the difference in health outcomes has been quite small. As such, it wasn’t clear this new O1 based vaccine would matter for actual health, especially since O1 is gone and we’ve got O.BA4/5 mostly now.
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the new combo vaccine tech, ie having two strains (Wuhan+O) in the same vaccine, hadn’t been studied widely before and could potentially have rare safety issues the way we saw unexpected myocarditis from the mRNA vaccines. Hence he wanted to see a compelling risk/reward benefit to approve the new approach, and didn’t think they had the data to justify that based solely on antibody measures.
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the drug companies could have tested how their O1 vaccine worked in generating antibodies against the now dominant O.BA4/5 and see if the new vax resulted in higher levels than the existing-vax boosted control group. But they didn’t - the data was only the O.1 antibody levels that this vaccine was specifically targeted to create. This seemed suspicious to him (**).
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both the WHO and the FDA seemed to be subtlety pressuring them to approve this, even if the data wasn’t compelling
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there’s a small but possible risk that boosting against similar strains can confuse your immune system via a mechanism called Original Antigenic Sin such that when given a new vaccine similar to a prior one, your immune system doesn’t make a response to the new antigen but just makes a lot more of the old one. Basically it can’t learn the new one if it had exposure to the prior old one, but could if it hadn’t been exposed to both. He was theoretically concerned that we might see a nastier version of O come along, and if we did O boosters now when they might only help a little, the Extra Bad O boosters we would really need in that case might not work on everyone who got this round. Obviously that would be a poor risk/reward trade off.
So we got the political outcome without compelling data. Par for the course for most of our pandemic responses.
What should you do if offered yet another booster this fall? Maybe it’s not worth it for normal people. More recent studies have shown for example that those dying of covid now are largely the very old and those with compromised immune systems or multiple health issues. Certainly those groups should be considering additional boosters, prophylaxis with EvuSheld, prompt testing and treatment with Paxlovid if not counter indicated, etc.
** and suspicious to me also, since antibody titer studies are easy. perhaps they did do them and the new vax didn’t work or work well against the newer variants, and the drug companies decided reporting those results wouldn’t sell $billions in new vaccines to the credulous Feds and didn’t bother to say. You might recall Pfizer did this with their studies where they did booster efficacy and had compared if it helped or not depending on if you’d already gotten covid. Their data said the boost didn’t help if you’d already had it, but they only presented the data in aggregate for all people (with or without covid infection) in order to sell the boosters to more people and to sell the booster mandates more universally. Shady as expected.
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Can you not think of another reason? I’ll offer two options:
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President Joseph Robinette Biden would like to protect everyone from the
ChineseChina virus and is willing to do everything in his power to achieveathat goal. -
President Joseph Robinette Biden wants to reward
family membersPfizer for taking extreme risks in developing a vaccine that may be effective.
Please, no applause for my not identifying President Joseph Robinette Biden as Comrade, … or mentioning 10%, kickback, big guy, crime family, etc.
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Pfizer Omicron booster coming soon to an arm near you.
- Pfizer And BioNTech Submit Application To U.S. FDA For Emergency Use Authorization Of Omicron BA.4/BA.5-Adapted Bivalent COVID-19 Vaccine
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The FDA and vaccine makers say they are confident that shots targeting Omicron subvariants will work safely
Screw trials. Our new standard for approval is being confident about our guesses.
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what took them so long? mRNA tech was supposed to be quick to tweak.
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This was the guy quoted in the WSJ who didn’t think they had good enough evidence for the original O vaccines as part of the FDA advisory panel and blew the whistle on how the panel was pressured by the government to approve the new shots even though there was no evidence the boosters provided more real world protection, only somewhat higher antibody levels (which are a poor proxy).
“I’m uncomfortable that we would move forward—that we would give millions or tens of millions of doses to people—based on mouse data,” said Paul Offit, an FDA adviser and director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
The comparison with flu vaccines isn’t sound, Dr. Offit said, because flu viruses mutate so rapidly that shots from one year don’t offer protection for the next, while currently available Covid-19 shots continue to keep people out of the hospital.
And since they didn’t like what he had to say last time, they’re not bothering to invite any commentary on their new booster policy.
In addition to evaluating the boosters without clinical-trial data, the FDA won’t convene another element from its earlier Covid-19 vaccine reviews: a meeting of advisers who make recommendations whether the agency should authorize a shot.
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That’s a negatory, flyboy. Not only is the pattern full, but you have not yet received FDA/CDC 10% back to the big guy approval. What the heck is your problem. Pay up, or lose your freedom … slack a$$ smiley face
Mouse tested, human approved!
FDA approves PFE and MRNA combo boosters (BA5 + Wuhan classic formulation). Emergency use of course, age 12+. Here’s the little evidence they have -
For each bivalent COVID-19 vaccine, the FDA based its decision on the totality of available evidence, including extensive safety and effectiveness data for each of the monovalent mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, safety and immunogenicity data obtained from a clinical study of a bivalent COVID-19 vaccine that contained mRNA from omicron variant BA.1 lineage that is similar to each of the vaccines being authorized, and nonclinical data obtained using a bivalent COVID-19 vaccine that contained mRNA of the original strain and mRNA in common between the BA.4 and BA.5 lineages of the omicron variant.
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It’s an obviously an emergency until PFE’s financial results are reported. 
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Yup.
Rule #1: Always follow the money
Rule #2: See Rule #1…
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next stop kids for the BA5 + Wuhan new boosters.
- PFIZER EXPECTS TO SUBMIT REQUEST WITH US FDA FOR EUA OF BIVALENT COVID BOOSTER IN 5-11 YEAR OLDS IN EARLY OCTOBER
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They sure are soaking this emergency use thing for all they can get, arent they…
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Does the emergency end after the next election cycle?
Or does it continue ad infinitum?
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