Episode Details

This covid winter should be better than last Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/22/us/politics/fauci-covid-winter-surge.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/11/22/covid-bivalent-booster/?utm_campaign=wp_to_your_health&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_tyh Combination of infections and vaccinations, enough community protection that we’re not going to see a repeat of what we saw last year at this time Re bivalent effectiveness It is clear now, despite an initial bit of confusion United States Nearly $5 billion to buy 171 million bivalent boosters (Pfizer BioNTech, Moderna) Hobson’s choice Dr. Ashish K. Jha, White House’s Covid-19 response coordinator Still heavily promoting vaccination Nothing I have seen in the subvariants makes me believe that we can’t manage our way through it effectively, especially if people step up and get their vaccine So far, 35 million people, (11% of over 5s) one bivalent shot https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7148e1.htm?s_cid=mm7148e1_w Effectiveness of Bivalent mRNA Vaccines in Preventing Symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 Infection — Increasing Community Access to Testing Program, United States, September–November 2022 This is the clinical trial, previous work had only been based on antibodies Benefits are mentioned, adverse reactions are not Any adverse reactions not reported v-safe https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7144a3.htm?s_cid=mm7144a3_w Systemic symptoms Fatigue (30.0%–53.1%) Headache (19.7%–42.8%) Myalgia (20.3%–41.3%) Fever (10.2%–26.3%) Reported inability to complete normal daily activities 10.6% among aged over 65 years 19.8% among aged 18–49 years Bivalent boosters provided significant additional protection against symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection Relative vaccine effectiveness (rVE) of a bivalent booster dose, compared with that of more than 2 monovalent vaccine doses, 30% and 56% aged 18–49 with relative benefits increasing with time since receipt of the most recent monovalent vaccine dose. Staying up to date with COVID-19 vaccination, including getting a bivalent booster dose when eligible, is critical to maximizing protection against COVID-19 350,000 tests at almost 10,000 retail pharmacies between Sept. 14 and Nov. 11 Relative risk given Absolute risk not given What about protection from severe disease? Paul Offit, director of the vaccine education center, professor of pediatrics, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia The only reasonable goal is to prevent serious illness, We are still waiting for one shred of evidence that this bivalent vaccine or any bivalent is better than what we had Virus continues to evolve This should be a cautionary tale for what happens when you try to chase these variants Celine Gounder, infectious-disease specialist, Kaiser Family Foundation It doesn’t show the bivalents are better than the original boosters (but still advocated the bivalent shot) Pei-Yong Shi, virologist, University of Texas Medical Branch difficult to measure how well the updated boosters were working because so many people now had some immunity from earlier infections, including people who were never vaccinated or boosted. John P. Moore, virologist, Weill Cornell Medicine Are the boosters working better than the original shots? Personally, I doubt there would have been much, if any, difference, but we may never know Dr. Roby Bhattacharyya, infectious disease physician, Massachusetts General Hospital This winter should be better than last we’re a more immune population China https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-daily-covid-cases-hit-record-high-2022-11-24/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=daily-briefing&utm_term=11-24-2022 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/11/24/iphone-factory-staff-offered-1400-leave-i

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