Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea … 
One of my two favorite rock groups … since everyone is interested.
And once a century is better than yearly. I’ll possibly support that idea, as long as it occurs at the turn of the century … only.
Thankfully, I’m boosted … as long as an infection counts. 
In particular, I saw an interview recently that cautioned against too frequent boosters / vaccines, because at some point repeat exposure results in boosting your regulatory or suppressor T cells that cause your body to not attack the virus if it later shows up. This is along the same lines as allergy immunotherapy, where repeated exposure to an allergen can sometimes be used to condition your body’s immune system to ignore it. Obviously this is not such a case we want!
There are also some Covid stats out there suggesting that the most boosted people are more at risk for bad covid outcomes than the less boosted (after the initial antibody boost wanes), which might reflect this, bias in the sample of the most at risk getting extra boosters, or many other possible confounding factors.
Broadly tho, the point was that we don’t give vaccines more than about yearly for a good immunological reason, not just convenience.
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Hmmm. You got me looking at my vaccination record card. I went almost exactly eleven months between vaccination and booster, in early March 2022.
Guess that might be OK . . . . I hope.
But a second booster in 2022 could be a bad idea.
Maybe that was Fauci’s problem. He was double boosted. Now he has COVID-19.
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I cant help but think back to all the misinformation over the past couple years (that was thankfully censored) about how artificially keeping your immune system on high alert for a long term was not how it was designed to operate. Especially when there is nothing in your body for the response to fight. It’s essentially like repeatedly yelling fire when there is no fire, to the extent that no one listens and the fire trucks refuse to respond when one day there actually is a fire.
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Vaccines for kids, your tax dollars are lying with statistics. They compared annualized death risks from flu, etc, but cumulative covid deaths for all time. As well as picking the larger of “with vs from covid” deaths.
When the data is annualized and only includes deaths where the virus was the underlying cause, COVID-19 does not rank as a leading cause of death for young children. For kids under one year old, it ranks 9th, behind influenza and pneumonia, heart disease and homicide. Accidents are about 25 times as likely to kill an infant than COVID-19, according to the CDC data.
The CDC did not respond to multiple requests for comment when asked why it presented this misleading data and how that study made it though the agency’s rigorous review process.
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Following up on the above, a UK study of covid risks for death in kids. They chased down everyone and interviewed them, etc.
Findings: There were 185 deaths during the 22-month follow-up and 81 (43.8%) were due to COVID-19… Of the COVID-19 deaths, 61 (75.3%) had an underlying condition, especially severe neurodisability (n=27) and immunocompromising conditions (n=12).
Over the 22-month surveillance period, SARS-CoV-2 was responsible for 1.2% (81/6,790) of all deaths, with an infection fatality rate of 0.70/100,000 SARS-CoV-2 infections in CYP aged <20 years estimated through real-time, nowcasting modelling and a mortality rate of 0.61/100,000.
Interpretation: COVID-19 deaths remain extremely rare in CYP, with most fatalities occurring within 30 days of infection and in children with specific underlying conditions.
So less than half the deaths in kids were due to covid (vs incidentally with covid), and of those, 3/4 were in kids with serious existing health issues. If you’re one of those, sure you’d due well to get a vaccine.
With the risk of death in kids found at a few in million in aggregate, that’s is only somewhat higher than bad vaccine effects. Throw in lower risk groups like younger age (vs older teens) and healthy (vs neurological problems, which seem especially bad for covid outcomes), and you have a hard time justifying a universal kids vaccine recommendation ala the FDA.
Worth noting the US is the only home country of Pfizer and also the only of the major western countries pushing their vaccines for kids. UK says “2 doses are being offered” to kids 5-15, rather than “you’re a heartless deplorable if you don’t stick 3 shots in each kid and $100 of taxpayer in PFE’s pocket apiece. Don’t delay, citizen”.
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the FDA considers new vaccines and says
selecting an updated vaccine is complex, the staff said, because there are “multiple uncertainties, including the future course of virus evolution, the lack of clinical efficacy data compared with earlier prototype vaccines, and potential manufacturing issues that might arise related to producing an updated vaccine formulation.”
So we have no good data but we have a hunch maybe it increases antibody levels, plus Biden says he owes Pfizer so we’re gonna endorse it anyway. Speaking of which, here’s over $3B of your taxpayer dollars walking out the door to buy kids vaccines and O-specific vaccines for something 2-3 variants old (“Omicron classic”) that most people already got exposed to.
The U.S. government will pay the companies $3.2 billion upon receipt of the first 105 million doses.
And if you think slow walking their data into the 2020 election was sold cheap, don’t forget the government can buy more and blow up to $10B on this round of extra vaccines.
Under this agreement, the U.S. government also has the option to purchase up to 195 million additional doses, bringing the total number of potential doses to 300 million.
bump
FDA approves vaccines for muppets under 5
“Elmo not feeling so good,” Elmo reportedly said just moments before collapsing.
Officials concluded the cause of death to be “unknown” although medical examiners claim he died of massive heart failure due to Myocarditis - a disease almost never observed in 3-year-olds like Elmo.
“It’s important to remember that our friend Elmo’s death had nothing to do with the COVID vaccine, which is safe and effective,” said Big Bird to reporters. “There is growing evidence that Myocarditis is caused by climate change. That’s why you need to eat bugs and stop using SUVs, kids!”
I mean, climate change does cause myocarditis, I just saw the headline last week.
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Pregnant women should definitely consider being up to date on their vaccines. Mortality was meaningfully higher during covid times, and (as described elsewhere) covid during pregnancy has been associated with neurological issues and heightened miscarriage risk, while having a recent vaccination can allow maternal antibody protection to be extended to the baby after they’re born.
In the US, maternal deaths increased substantially (33.3%) after March 2020, corresponding to COVID-19 onset, a figure higher than the 22% overall excess death estimate associated with the pandemic.4 Increases were highest for Hispanic and non-Hispanic Black women.
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Vaccines and boosters seem to be reducing the risk of long covid. The newer variants seem less bad on that front, and on a cautionary note, the bad health conditions that put you at risk for covid generally were also associated with more likelihood of long covid.
The prevalence of long COVID varied across the pandemic waves, from 48.1% (95% CI, 39.9%-56.2%) in wave 1 to 35.9% (95% CI, 30.5%-41.6%) in wave 2 to 16.5% (95% CI, 12.4%-21.4%) in wave 3. The number of vaccine doses was associated with lower long COVID prevalence: 41.8% (95% CI, 37.0%-46.7%) in unvaccinated patients, 30.0% (95% CI, 6.7%-65.2%) with 1 dose, 17.4% (95% CI, 7.8%-31.4%) with 2 doses, and 16.0% (95% CI, 11.8%-21.0%) with 3 doses. Older age, higher body mass index, allergies, and obstructive lung disease were associated with long COVID.
I, at least, now have an excuse in writing. I wonder how long it will take trial lawyers to start trying to sue the Chinese lab where this started?
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A careful prospective study of heart risks in teens. 3% rate, way way more than the CDC story.
They did pre-shot baselines as well as multiple follow ups at several points after the 2nd shot, bloodwork and EKGs to look for indications of problems that might not give rise to physical symptoms, etc.
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I might wait for Novovax traditional booster if I can . But they’re even slower than JNJ
By “traditional” you mean not Omicron-specific? If BA.4 and BA.5 are the dominant strains and the efficacy of traditional vaccine against these strains is worse than the new vaccine (I don’t know the exact numbers), why would you want it?
The last evidence I saw with (early) Omicron specific boosters was pretty unimpressive compared to (yet another) Wuhan Classic shot. I haven’t seen any trials on BA5 specific boosters, but it sounds like they expect them to be ready in weeks at this point? If so, they must be giving them a pass on any testing if they’re going to roll them out in the fall.
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By “traditional” I mean protein tech like NovoVax not MRNA. Not sure if they’ll have an Omicron-specific booster in time, They were supposed to do a Flu+C19 combo.
https://www.clinicaltrialsarena.com/analysis/covid-19-influenza-combo-vaccines/
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NVAX for oldest kids closer
- Co announced that the Novavax COVID-19 Vaccine, Adjuvanted (NVX-CoV2373) has received expanded emergency use authorization (EUA) from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to provide a two-dose primary series for active immunization to prevent coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in adolescents aged 12 through 17.
- The FDA EUA decision was based on data from the ongoing pediatric expansion of the Phase 3 PREVENT-19 trial of 2,247 adolescents aged 12 through 17 years across 75 sites in the U.S., to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of the Novavax COVID-19 Vaccine, Adjuvanted. In pediatric expansion, the vaccine achieved its primary efficacy endpoint with clinical efficacy of 78.29% (95% CI: 37.55%, 92.45%) overall at a time when the Delta variant was the predominant circulating SARS-CoV-2 strain in the U.S. The efficacy analysis was supported by assessment of antibody titers that were shown to be higher in adolescents than in young adults.
- The next step for the vaccine is a policy recommendation for use from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Doses of the Novavax COVID-19 Vaccine, Adjuvanted are available for use in adolescents upon the CDC’s recommendation.
Edit: CDC approved.
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