I'm not a virologist or vaccinologist. I'm addressing this issue as someone whose career has been focused on plasma cells, the cells that make antibodies, for over 20 years. 👇
1) When first exposed to an antigen, virus or vaccine, the immune system produces a primary immune response. On exposure to same antigen again, it produces a better, bigger, and more durable secondary response. Basic immunology. microbiologynotes.com/differences-be…
Sometimes the first infection gives a long enough exposure to the antigen to stimulate the secondary response. Sometimes it's not. Depends on the virus and duration of infection.
So even if someone had COVID, it's better to get the vaccine also to ensure a better, durable secondary immune response. More IgG producing cells, more long lived memory cells.
Given the rate of reinfections we are seeing, it is worrying that COVID doesn't seem to produce an enduring immune response in everyone.
It's possible that 2 vaccine doses given too close to each other may also not produce a durable secondary response. (Why some need boosters).
2) If someone has not yet had Covid, then between getting immunity from the vaccine versus virus, even if the virus induced response is for argument sake better, it is much more risky to acquire immunity that way. It is far safer to get it through a vaccine.
3) Testing for antibodies and then deciding who to vaccinate and who not to is not realistic when we have 70 million eligible left to vaccinate in the US.
4) The virus is also mutating. The more infections we have, the more risk of mutants. Hence the push for vaccinations.
5) There are side effects with the vaccines as there are with any medicine. But truly serious ones are very rare compared to risk of COVID related complications or death. 215 million people have been vaccinated in the US. 3.75 billion people in the world: Almost half the world.
6) There will always be people who doubt the efficacy of vaccines because they hear someone got severe Covid despite vaccines and therefore why bother. Actually vaccines reduce your risk of severe Covid by 90%. They work: Randomized trials and Real world data.
More here on clarifying doubts about vaccine efficacy.
10 suggested action items for physician colleagues suffering under the burden of @ABIMcert MOC. #MedTwitter
1. If your institution allows it, stop participating in MOC. Personally, MOC has no value to me.
2. If your institution requires ABIM certification, advocate for @InfoNbpas as alternative option.
3. Do not participate in more than one ABIM MOC specialty, the one that’s required by your institution. Save your money. Don’t spend a penny more than you have to.
I see a lot of wrong analysis on accelerated approval and surrogate endpoints.
It’s always easy to criticize from the outside. The criticisms raised are well known to the FDA and investigators. They are considered. We go in eyes fully open. We try to do what’s best for patients
Without accelerated approval using surrogate endpoint of overall response rate in single arm trials, for 2-3 years lives would have been lost waiting for drugs like Velcade, Revlimid, pomalidomide, Daratumumab, carfilzomib and more.
1) @costplusdrugs — where you can get >2000 prescription meds at lower price than almost any other pharmacy in America. Has revolutionized the generic prescription drug market. @mcuban costplusdrugs.com
2) @PayorDieFilm — the story of lives lost due to the high price of insulin in America. Likely contributed to why all 3 big insulin manufacturers have now cut the price of insulin by >70-80%. @scottaruderman @NSmithholt12
Watch on @paramountplus @mtvdocs
3) Inflation Reduction Act provisions to cap Medicare Part D copays.
For 2024, the out of pocket max for Part D drugs that a patient pays in copays is capped to a max of ~$3250. A huge relief to many.
Two days ago I did 60 ABIM MOC questions in Heme and Onc (against my will).
Almost all were esoteric/ irrelevant questions. Rare things that doctors rarely see. #MedTwitter
What’s my opinion?
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I spend a lot of time in medical teaching and writing. I write for UpToDate for 20 years, and all of the major Hem Onc textbooks.
In my opinion, the MOC questions are useless for routine Hem Onc clinical practice. Useless to assess “walking/ essential knowledge”.
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What’s worse: Every 3 or 4 questions that I spent time and answered, I would get a note that it was a “test question”. No answer was given at the end, making it a complete waste of time and making me an unwilling partner to test questions for the ABIM. @DavidSteensma
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