It probably should have been a monovalent BA.5 booster, Pfizer and Moderna and the FDA botched the process by not testing antibody levels for the bivalent shot.
But it also looks like people that had a BA.5 breakthrough infection this summer are vulnerable to get reinfected this winter -- antibody levels for them also look low for a new strain like BA.2.75.2.
So the bigger story might be that covid keeps mutating fast enough to reinfect people 2-3 times a year, and neither vaccines or infections will help us stay in front of that.
In the Table, why does working age covid mortality more than double between 2020 and 2021, while 85+ y.o. covid mortality actually _declines_ about 28%? (Remember, working age people were mostly vaccinated in 2021.)
Is 2020 the proper baseline for comparing mortality data with 2021, or is 2019 a better baseline?
What is the most likely reason for this data presentation format by the CDC?
Give the family credit for asking for an autopsy. Hope the coroner is competent enough to know to stain tissue samples for N-antibodies.
Oh, there was another today.
"Mississippi State on Wednesday announced that a freshman offensive lineman has died.
Samuel Westmoreland, 19, of Tupelo, Mississippi was an industrial technology major. Athletics Director John Cohen said the Bulldogs are heartbroken by the sudden loss of Westmoreland."
I just don't understand why the NIH and FDA are not requiring evidence before allowing these new drugs. The emergency is over and the expensive drugs didn't work particularly well.
And provisional data for 2021...(bear in mind that "involving covid" can mean "covid was incidental" or "caused by covid")...but let's focus on total mortality...
Dr. Prasad, given how compromised the integrity of public health has been shown to be lately, is it worth re-evaluating the "proven efficacy" of legacy vaccines?
I am one of those who has completely lost faith in what I once thought was rock solid: medical science.
Does anyone know whether the neutralizing antibody response was to the ancestral strain or a combination of the omicron BA.4/BA.5 and the original. If a combination response, what was the % of each. Was there an age-stratification to the differing antibody response. Did the frequency of prior vaccinations or duration from last vax influence the response. There are so many questions which need to be answered, but when human studies are done “at the speed of science” mistakes will be inevitable.
This doubling down on dubious medical claims re: vaccines plus the single-mindedness of going after those that don’t toe the party line is doing irreparable damage to our public health system. I will be hard pressed to trust anything that comes down from the CDC or FDA going forward. This makes me incredibly sad as I’m a nurse and my occupation’s reputation as being honest and ethical will become collateral damage.
Somewhere along the way, the Biden administration seems to have completely confused means vs ends. We should only care about vaccinations to the extent that they have proven efficacy and effectiveness against their target pathogen. Why they seem dead set on promoting these bivalent vaccines in the face of such weak evidence is beyond me. The only thing this press release is proving in my mind is that we need to firewall federal public health agencies from political pressure.
This is unconscionable that CDC is recommending-broadly- this shot without clinical efficacy data. Also-Pfizer is testing both a 30 mcg vaccine (the one the CDC approved) and a 60 mcg version. No mention of a monovalent BA4/BA5 booster being tested. The vax they approved has pediatric doses of Wuhan/BA4/BA5- what if they backed the wrong horse? They approved on mouse data and BA.1 data which is a come bet at the craps table if ever there was one. I would say the public is deeply suspicious, the uptake has been remarkably poor. When Marion Gruber and Philip Krause resigned everyone should listen….to not have convened the VABPRC and bypassed them completely is outrageous.
And now we know, the bivalent booster works about as well as the old shot:
https://medium.com/microbial-instincts/the-bivalent-booster-probably-wont-stop-you-from-getting-covid-this-winter-b1d47e34567e
It probably should have been a monovalent BA.5 booster, Pfizer and Moderna and the FDA botched the process by not testing antibody levels for the bivalent shot.
But it also looks like people that had a BA.5 breakthrough infection this summer are vulnerable to get reinfected this winter -- antibody levels for them also look low for a new strain like BA.2.75.2.
So the bigger story might be that covid keeps mutating fast enough to reinfect people 2-3 times a year, and neither vaccines or infections will help us stay in front of that.
Question and answer time
Why is there no 2019 mortality data on the graph in Figure 1 in this data release by the CDC?
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7117e1.htm
In the Table, why does working age covid mortality more than double between 2020 and 2021, while 85+ y.o. covid mortality actually _declines_ about 28%? (Remember, working age people were mostly vaccinated in 2021.)
Is 2020 the proper baseline for comparing mortality data with 2021, or is 2019 a better baseline?
What is the most likely reason for this data presentation format by the CDC?
Does anyone have an answer?
Tom, I live in Western Maryland below Chambersburg, PA. You live close enough for a friendly non contentious lunch sometime?
This looked medically interesting.
Healthy 42 y.o. fit optometrist suffers "Aortic Dissection after COVID-19 Vaccination".
Sad for the man, of course.
https://petermcculloughmd.substack.com/p/aortic-dissection-after-covid-19?publication_id=1119676&post_id=79782335&isFreemail=true
Vascular surgeons seem to be treating more of these than normal, a vascular surgeon tells me.
Burkhardt, a German pathologist, described one similar case at
"10. A crack in the wall of the aorta, lined by clusters of lymphocytes, leading to aortic rupture"
https://doctors4covidethics.org/vascular-and-organ-damage-induced-by-mrna-vaccines-irrefutable-proof-of-causality/
and this...
"An autopsy case report of aortic dissection complicated with histiolymphocytic pericarditis and aortic inflammation after mRNA COVID-19 vaccination"
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1344622322001420
At first the claim of a DOD contract for COVID-19 research being awarded in Nov. 2019 looked specious, so I checked.
https://greenpass.news/united-states-dod-issued-a-contract-for-covid-19-research-in-ukraine-3-months-before-covid-19-officially-existed/
Maybe vaccinated-but-otherwise healthy young men suddenly dying is one reason for hesitation?
https://www.dailyherald.com/news/20221017/west-leyden-student-dies-after-collapsing-at-all-state-choral-event-in-naperville
Give the family credit for asking for an autopsy. Hope the coroner is competent enough to know to stain tissue samples for N-antibodies.
Oh, there was another today.
"Mississippi State on Wednesday announced that a freshman offensive lineman has died.
Samuel Westmoreland, 19, of Tupelo, Mississippi was an industrial technology major. Athletics Director John Cohen said the Bulldogs are heartbroken by the sudden loss of Westmoreland."
https://citizenfreepress.com/breaking/miss-state-freshman-football-player-dies-suddenly/
I just don't understand why the NIH and FDA are not requiring evidence before allowing these new drugs. The emergency is over and the expensive drugs didn't work particularly well.
Don't hold your breath for the data; you'll be waiting a LOT longer than a masked Covidian unmasking and holding theirs for a selfie or group pic.
But at least the CDC was kind enough to publish mortality data in 2019.
1–4 3,830 24.0 3,676 23.3
5–14 5,450 13.3 5,497 13.4
15–24 30,154 70.2 29,771 69.7
25–34 58,844 128.8 59,178 128.8
35–44 80,380 194.7 82,986 199.2
45–54 164,837 395.9 160,393 392.4
55–64 374,836 886.7 374,937 883.3
65–74 543,778 1,783.3 555,559 1,764.6
75–84 675,205 4,386.1 688,027 4,308.3
85 and over 880,280 13,450.7 873,746 13,228.6
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db395-tables-508.pdf#page=3
And provisional data for 2021...(bear in mind that "involving covid" can mean "covid was incidental" or "caused by covid")...but let's focus on total mortality...
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7117e1.htm
US working age deaths in 2021, if I did my arithmetic correctly, amounted to 937,488 deaths.
US working age deaths in 2019, if I did my arithmetic correctly, amounted to 707,265 deaths.
That's an increase of 230,000 US working age deaths between 2019 and 2021, of which the actuaries say most are not due to covid.
Crickets from the CDC as regards any investigation of this or explanation for this.
God gave us 2 legs so we can walk away from this non-science rubbish.
Dr. Prasad, given how compromised the integrity of public health has been shown to be lately, is it worth re-evaluating the "proven efficacy" of legacy vaccines?
I am one of those who has completely lost faith in what I once thought was rock solid: medical science.
Is there no one that can stop the CDC from putting mRNA injections into the vaccine schedule for children? How can we protect our children from this?
Does anyone know whether the neutralizing antibody response was to the ancestral strain or a combination of the omicron BA.4/BA.5 and the original. If a combination response, what was the % of each. Was there an age-stratification to the differing antibody response. Did the frequency of prior vaccinations or duration from last vax influence the response. There are so many questions which need to be answered, but when human studies are done “at the speed of science” mistakes will be inevitable.
This doubling down on dubious medical claims re: vaccines plus the single-mindedness of going after those that don’t toe the party line is doing irreparable damage to our public health system. I will be hard pressed to trust anything that comes down from the CDC or FDA going forward. This makes me incredibly sad as I’m a nurse and my occupation’s reputation as being honest and ethical will become collateral damage.
Somewhere along the way, the Biden administration seems to have completely confused means vs ends. We should only care about vaccinations to the extent that they have proven efficacy and effectiveness against their target pathogen. Why they seem dead set on promoting these bivalent vaccines in the face of such weak evidence is beyond me. The only thing this press release is proving in my mind is that we need to firewall federal public health agencies from political pressure.
This is unconscionable that CDC is recommending-broadly- this shot without clinical efficacy data. Also-Pfizer is testing both a 30 mcg vaccine (the one the CDC approved) and a 60 mcg version. No mention of a monovalent BA4/BA5 booster being tested. The vax they approved has pediatric doses of Wuhan/BA4/BA5- what if they backed the wrong horse? They approved on mouse data and BA.1 data which is a come bet at the craps table if ever there was one. I would say the public is deeply suspicious, the uptake has been remarkably poor. When Marion Gruber and Philip Krause resigned everyone should listen….to not have convened the VABPRC and bypassed them completely is outrageous.