Update from my tweet from last week. Mutants and all, this is what is going on in the UK. Whatever the reasons for the drop, the more vaccinations, the more we sustain the drop and overcome this miserable virus.
Be focused. Be single minded. Let experts worry about the rise of the variants— for which the only practical and sustainable solution is to vaccinate as many people as possible with any one of the approved vaccines.
Do not worry about reports that the vaccines don’t prevent infections or mild disease from some mutant variants. They will work and prevent severe disease and deaths. The immune system works by memory. And vaccines provide it with information to prevent total surprise.
I’m not saying scientists should not be worried about mutant variants or learning about them. But this is for research into determining the extent & severity of threat, & what we can do. From a practical standpoint it doesn’t affect vaccinations or what the public should do now.

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More from @VincentRK

10 Feb
I would like to share the story of how a patient with cancer came up with the idea for a randomized trial, & how listening to him saved a lot of lives.

1/ In 2002, I had just completed a randomized trial with the notorious drug thalidomide for the cancer, multiple myeloma.
2/ Thalidomide would later be FDA approved on the basis of this trial. As a young investigator I was thrilled with the success and eager for the next exciting trial testing fancy new regimens.

But a patient with myeloma, Mike Katz, had other ideas.
3/ Mike was on national patient advocacy committees. He had battled myeloma for years and knew all of the recent advances. More importantly he attended numerous patient support group meetings and had his finger on the pulse of what myeloma patients were going through.
Read 17 tweets
9 Feb
Maybe now some people will believe when I talk about cross reactive immunity. There are many redundancies in the immune system. It takes a lot for a whole world to be taken by surprise like it happened with COVID. Which is why we don’t have a new pandemic every year.
I wrote this thread about vaccines. But it also holds true for natural infections. The dose of exposure and presence or absence of repeated exposure determines durability and robustness of the immune response.
And why I’m confident that vaccines specifically designed to combat COVID 19 will be effective in preventing serious disease against new mutant variants.

The mutations have to be severe enough to make SARS CoV-2 into a new virus altogether to reduce protection significantly.
Read 4 tweets
7 Feb
Mutants or not. This is what is happening in the UK since the start of COVID vaccination. Vaccines work.
So while we sequence and find a particular variant is dominant, the numbers that matter are total cases and deaths. The UK is doing well with vaccination and offers a preview of what is likely to happen in the US in the next month. nytimes.com/2021/02/07/hea…
Read 5 tweets
7 Feb
Reading this WSJ headline, there is an important clarification:

SARS CoV-2 and its variants are here to stay. But if we vaccinate 80% of the population, which is totally doable, then COVID-19 the disease is NOT here to stay.

1/ wsj.com/articles/as-va…
COVID-19 the disease has brought about utter chaos & turned the world upside down because of its ability to kill 0.5 to 1% of the people it infects, put ~10% of people it infects in the hospital, & leave some with long term consequences.

This won’t happen after vaccination.

2/
A respiratory virus that can easily spread is not enough to cause this kind of life-altering chaos. We already have the flu, the regular corona viruses, the rhino viruses and such.

SARS CoV-2 was new. It was new to the immune system and our bodies were attacked by surprise.

3/
Read 12 tweets
6 Feb
Our group has posted guidance for myeloma patients on COVID vaccination. I recommend the same for 𝙖𝙡𝙡 𝙘𝙖𝙣𝙘𝙚𝙧 patients. msmart.org @MayoMyeloma @MayoCancerCare
Which vaccine? Whichever approved vaccine you are offered.
Should I worry about which day of chemo or should I hold chemo?

No. These chemo drugs work for a long time and you can never be fully free from their effect. You may lose your spot in line or keep waiting for the “perfect” opportunity. Just get the vaccine when offered.
Read 7 tweets
5 Feb
Even yesterday I heard from a close friend who lost an elderly parent to COVID. They were just hoping to get vaccinated. But it was too late.

Every delay costs lives. There were over 3500 stories like this yesterday across the country.
15,000 across the world.
The new Administration took over only 15 days ago. They have a lot to deal with in terms of decisions that were already made. I have full confidence in their approach. I hope they can turn the vaccine situation around in a month.
But it’s not up to the federal government. It’s everyone from states to local governments to hospitals that have to gear up to 24/7 vaccination. Especially if J & J is approved and we have sufficient doses to dispense. Planning has to start now.
Read 4 tweets

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