Pfizer vaccine - Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association

Study compares decline in effectiveness for Moderna, Pfizer, Janssen vaccines; and mortality consequences

Public Health Institute — Sun, 14 Nov 2021 12:10:06 +0000

As COVID-19 breakthrough infections continue to emerge in some vaccine recipients and health authorities are developing policies around booster vaccinations, national data on COVID-19 vaccine breakthrough infections is inadequate but urgently needed. Now a study from the Public Health Institute, the Veterans Affairs Medical Center and the University of Texas Health Science Center, published today in the journal Science, has analyzed COVID infection by vaccination status among 780,225 Veterans.

Researchers found that protection against any COVID-19 infection declined for all vaccine types, with overall vaccine protection declining from 87.9% in February to 48.1% by October 2021.

The decline was greatest for the Janssen (Johnson & Johnson) vaccine, with protection against infection declining from 86.4% in March to 13.1% in September
Declines for PfizerBioNTech were from 86.9% to 43.3%
Declines for Moderna were 89.2% to 58%.

While most previous studies have focused on the PfizerBioNTech or Moderna vaccines, the Science study is the first to compare protection declines across the three main vaccine types, and the first to show the comparably dramatic decline in effectiveness for the Janssen vaccine. Declines were assessed over the period February 1, 2021 to October 1, 2021, reflecting the emergence and dominance of the Delta variant in the U.S. Patterns of breakthrough infection over time were consistent by age, despite rolling vaccine eligibility, implicating the Delta variant as the primary determinant of infection.

Importantly, vaccination of any type was protective against death among individuals who did become infected. The relative benefit of vaccination for protection against death was greater for persons under 65 but was also very strong for persons over 65.

The study showed that the risk of death from COVID infection was highest in unvaccinated Veterans, regardless of age and comorbidities. While some breakthrough infections resulted in death, vaccination remained protective against death in those who became infected during the Delta surge.

For those under 65 years old, vaccines overall were 81.7% effective against death.

Protection against death was greatest for the Pfizer vaccine, at 84.3%.
Moderna was the next most effective, at 81.5%.
Janssen was 73% effective.
For those 65 and over, overall vaccine effectiveness against death was 71.6%.

Moderna was 75.5% effective.
Pfizer was 70.1% effective.
Janssen was 52.2% effective.

“Our study gives researchers, policy makers and others a strong basis for comparing the long-term effectiveness of COVID vaccines, and a lens for making informed decisions around primary vaccination, booster shots, and other multiple layers of protection, including masking mandates, social distancing, testing and other public health interventions to reduce chance of spread,” said Dr. Barbara Cohn of PHI, the lead author of the study. “For example, the CDC recommendation for boosters for all Janssen recipients over 18 is supported by our results. And, given the declines in vaccine protection and the dominance of the more infective Delta variant, we urge swift action to promote primary vaccination, boosters and to also encourage masking, social distancing and other layers of protection against infection. This is supported by our finding that breakthrough infections are not benign, but also by the strong evidence that vaccination still protects against death even for persons with breakthrough infections, compared to persons who become infected and are not vaccinated.”

The FDA authorized Pfizer boosters for some groups in September and Moderna and Janssen boosters in October, and the CDC has made similar recommendations, including supporting a “mix and match” approach that allows people to choose any of the three vaccine boosters regardless of which they were given initially.

Source: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-11-decline-effectiveness-moderna-pfizer-janssen.html

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Can vaccinated people still spread the coronavirus?

The Conversation — Thu, 11 Mar 2021 01:44:22 +0000

Editor’s note: So you’ve gotten your coronavirus vaccine, waited the two weeks for your immune system to respond to the shot, and are now fully vaccinated. Does this mean you can make your way through the world like the old days without fear of spreading the virus? Deborah Fuller is a microbiologist at the University of Washington School of Medicine working on coronavirus vaccines. She explains what the science shows about transmission post-vaccination – and whether new variants could change this equation.

1. Does vaccination completely prevent infection?

The short answer is no. You can still get infected after you’ve been vaccinated. But your chances of getting seriously ill are almost zero.

Many people think vaccines work like a shield, blocking a virus from infecting cells altogether. But in most cases, a person who gets vaccinated is protected from disease, not necessarily infection.

Every person’s immune system is a little different, so when a vaccine is 95% effective, that just means 95% of people who receive the vaccine – but who would have gotten ill if exposed to the virus before – won’t get sick. These people could be completely protected from infection, or they could be getting infected but remain asymptomatic because their immune system eliminates the virus very quickly. The remaining 5% of vaccinated people – if exposed to the virus – could become infected and get sick, but are extremely unlikely to be hospitalized.

Vaccination doesn’t 100% prevent you from getting infected, but in all cases, it gives your immune system a huge leg up on the coronavirus. Whatever your outcome – whether complete protection from infection or some level of disease – you will be better off after encountering the virus than if you hadn’t been vaccinated.

Vaccines prevent disease, not infection. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, CC BY

2. Does infection always mean transmission?

Transmission happens when enough viral particles from an infected person get into the body of an uninfected person. In theory, anyone infected with the coronavirus could potentially transmit it. But a vaccine will reduce the chance of this happening.

In general, if vaccination doesn’t completely prevent infection, it will significantly reduce the amount of virus coming out of your nose and mouth – a process called shedding – and shorten the time that you shed the virus. This is a big deal. A person who sheds less virus is less likely to transmit it to someone else.

This seems to be the case with coronavirus vaccines. In a recent preprint study which has yet to be peer reviewed, Israeli researchers tested 2,897 vaccinated people for signs of coronavirus infection. Most had no detectable virus, but people who were infected had one-quarter the amount of virus in their bodies as unvaccinated people tested at similar times post-infection.

Less coronavirus virus means less chance of spreading it, and if the amount of virus in your body is low enough, the probability of transmitting it may reach almost zero. However, researchers don’t yet know where that cutoff is for the coronavirus, and since the vaccines don’t provide 100% protection from infection, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that people continue to wear masks and social distance even after they’ve been vaccinated.

New, more infectious, and transmissible variants of the coronavirus might limit the effectiveness of current vaccines. AP Photo/John Raoux

3. What about the new coronavirus variants?

New variants of coronavirus have emerged in recent months, and recent studies show that vaccines are less effective against certain ones, like the B1351 variant first identified in South Africa.

Every time SARS-CoV-2 replicates, it gets new mutations. In recent months, researchers have found new variants that are more infective – meaning a person needs to breathe in less virus to become infected – and other variants that are more transmissible – meaning they increase the amount of virus a person sheds. And researchers have also found at least one new variant that seems to be better at evading the immune system, according to early data.

So how does this relate to vaccines and transmission?

For the South Africa variant, vaccines still provide greater than 85% protection from getting severely ill with COVID–19. But when you count mild and moderate cases, they provide, at best, only about 50%-60% protection. That means at least 40% of vaccinated people will still have a strong enough infection – and enough virus in their body – to cause at least moderate disease.

If vaccinated people have more virus in their bodies and it takes less of that virus to infect another person, there will be higher probability a vaccinated person could transmit these new strains of the coronavirus.

If all goes well, vaccines will very soon reduce the rate of severe disease and death worldwide. To be sure, any vaccine that reduces disease severity is also, at the population level, reducing the amount of virus being shed overall. But because of the emergence of new variants, vaccinated people still have the potential to shed and spread the coronavirus to other people, vaccinated or otherwise. This means it will likely take much longer for vaccines to reduce transmission and for populations to reach herd immunity than if these new variants had never emerged. Exactly how long that will take is a balance between how effective vaccines are against emerging strains and how transmissible and infectious these new strains are.

[Research into coronavirus and other news from science Subscribe to The Conversation’s new science newsletter.]

This story was updated to clarify the explanation of vaccine efficacy.

Source: https://theconversation.com/can-vaccinated-people-still-spread-the-coronavirus-155095

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The post Can vaccinated people still spread the coronavirus? first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

EU leaders’ vaccine sniping backfires

Steerpike - The Spectator — Tue, 02 Mar 2021 11:34:14 +0000

The eyes of the world have been on Britain’s vaccination programme in recent months, as the UK government embarked on a dramatic push to get our population inoculated by prioritizing first doses. During this time, the naysayers have been plentiful – with some UK commentators and plenty of politicians abroad keen to cast doubt over the strategy.

What everyone agreed was that time would tell. But now it appears we have promising results, with a new pre-print of a study published by Public Health England today. The study shows that just one dose of both the AstraZeneca and Pfizer vaccines has significantly reduced Covid-19 infections among those aged 70 and over. And, the study suggests that one dose of either vaccine is more than 80 percent effective at preventing hospitalizations among the over-80s, three to four weeks after the shot.

This is, of course, very welcome news for the many vulnerable people who have already received their first shot in Britain. But it may leave some leading EU figures with red faces this afternoon. Ever since Britain approved the Oxford vaccine and began its one-dose strategy, flying ahead of other EU countries, there have been howls of anguish from EU leaders who have sought to undermine Britain’s programme and cast doubt on the efficacy of the Oxford shot.

With the news that both the Pfizer and Oxford/ AstraZeneca vaccine appear to be effective after one dose, Mr. S thought it worthwhile to revisit some of those comments now…

Emmanuel Macron

At the end of January, French President Emmanuel Macron made some remarkable statements about the efficacy of the AstraZeneca vaccine. Speaking to reporters, Macron even suggested that the shot was ‘quasi-ineffective’ on the elderly:

“‘The real problem on AstraZeneca is that it doesn’t work the way we were expecting it to. We’re waiting for the EMA [European Medicines Agency] results, but today everything points to thinking it is quasi-ineffective on people older than 65, some say those 60 years or older.’

French ministers are said to believe Macron could have a second career as an epidemiologist. Mr. S would recommend that he doesn’t give up the day job…

Clement Beaune

Macron was not the only critic in the French government. At the beginning of February, the French Europe minister, Clement Beaune, suggested that Britain was taking ‘a lot of risks’ by having a 12-week gap between difference doses. The minister then suggested that French citizens would not stand for this kind of gamble, even if the method had been approved by scientists.

Ursula von der Leyen

The European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, was not much more helpful. Despite essentially going to war with AstraZeneca to gain more of its vaccine doses, von der Leyen suggested at the beginning of February that Britain had compromised on ‘safety and efficacy’ by approving the vaccine so early. The fact that the European Medicines Agency (EMA) reached exactly the same conclusions as Britain’s healthcare regulator appeared to have passed the bureaucrat by entirely…

Handelsblatt

You could say that the true sniping against the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine was kicked off by the German financial newspaper, Handelsblatt, who claimed in a story in January that the shot was only 8 percent effective on the over-65s. The story did not appear to have aged well.

The Robert Koch Institute

Handelsblatt’s somewhat dubious reporting appeared to influence German scientists as well. In January, the European Medicines Agency approved the Oxford vaccine for use on all ages. The German government’s vaccine committee, however, pointedly refused to allow the vaccine to be given to the over-65s, citing insufficient data.

In the end, almost half of the EU’s members have restricted the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine and doses are being wasted across the continent as Europeans refuse to receive the Oxford jab. Now that we have data showing the efficacy of the shot, including on the elderly, that decision seems certain to have been proven unwise.

Source: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/eu-leaders-vaccine-sniping-backfires

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