Besides me, the other experts interviewed included
Dr. Monica Gahdni @MonicaGandhi9
Dr. Nikolai Petrovsky @vaxine_news
Dr. Nadia Sam-Agudu @NASAdoc
Dr. Miguel O'Ryan @MiguelORyan1
Dr. Andrew Reed
This podcast is exceptionally well put together with tremendous professionalism and polish, providing a clear, balanced, and insightful discussion of boosters and mandates.
My part involves a discussion of the data showing previously infected individuals have substantial immune protection vs. reinfection, and the implications of this for vaccine mandates, and occurs at about the 20 minute point of the podcast.
I highlight that there is also data supporting the benefit of vaccination (1 dose) after previous infection, but question how rigid vaccine directives could not acknowledge previous infection as providing immune protection.
I also mention one reason why some hesitate to acknowledge this is concern that some will use this information to mislead unvaccinated people that they are better off skipping vaccination and allowing themselves to become infected to gain immunity, downplaying risks of infection.
Transparency and clarity.
If we have those, we can acknowledge whatever the data say, and can explain the nuances so people don't misinterpret/misapply the emerging knowledge.
Ignoring or suppressing clearly demonstrated results ultimately just increases distrust and confusion
It also concedes some of the high ground to those with agendas who cherry pick & misrepresent the data to push their own narratives, gifting them more credibility & influence.
Co-author of paper claiming COVID-19 vaccines linked to miscarriage says he’s retracting it – Retraction Watch retractionwatch.com/2021/11/16/co-…
This paper was really embarrassingly ignorant — they purported 91% miscarriage rate from reanalysis of NEJM suggesting miscarriage rate was not high after vaccination.
They take subset of first trimester “completed pregnancies” and noted nearly all ended in miscarriage …
But ignored the fact that given the timing of the study there was no way for the women vaccinated in first trimester to have delivered a full term baby yet, so of course the “completed pregnancies” were the miscarriages.
Just peeked at Israeli MOH 11/9 data on current infection/serious infection rates split out by unvaccinated, boosted, & vax/not boosted.
We see boosted strongly protected vs. infection, and vaccinated/boosted show evidence of waning effectiveness, but still 50-70% VE_infection
For serious disease, again boosted are strongly protected. But even vaccinated/not boosted have much lower severe disease rates than unvaccinated.
Remember, these are CURRENTLY active cases, so only a snapshot, but show (1) strong protection of boosters and (2) Even unboosted vaccinated subpopulation seem to have substantial protection vs. severe disease, at all age groups.
What do currently active cases on Israeli MoH dashboard say about vaccine effectiveness vs. infection/severe disease for those vaccinated and with/without booster?
Here are the current data as of October 7, 2021 after roughly 2 months of delivery of boosters:
These data come from the Israel MoH dashboard from October 7, 2021 (datadashboard.health.gov.il/COVID-19/gener…) and include counts of currently active infections and severe infections by age group, split out by vaccination status (unvaccinated, boosters, or vaccinated but no boosters).
I simply computed "vaccine effectiveness" for vaccine (or booster) as the 1 minus the ratio of the infection (or serious infection) rate for the vaccinated (or boosted) group and the unvaccinated group.
Note that this is only a snapshot of current cases.
Lancet paper based on >3.4m USA patients found Pfizer vaccine effectiveness (VE) vs. infection decreased from 88% 1m after vaccination to 47% after 5m, but that VE vs. hospitalization remained strong at 93% through 6m.
This paper followed >3.4m patients >12yr old in the Kaiser Permanente Southern California (KPSC) system between 12/20 and 7/21 using a retrospective cohort design.
All patients needed to have >1yr of previous data to establish comorbidities.
Their primary analysis computed relative risk of PCR+ infection, comparing unvaccinated with fully vaccinated individuals for each calendar day.
They adjusted for age, sex, race, previous SARS-CoV-2 infection, SES, previous health-care utilization, & various co-morbidities.
Large contact tracing study in UK shows Pfizer vaccine reduces transmission by 82% vs alpha and 65% vs delta and AstraZeneca by 63% and 36%, respectively. medrxiv.org/content/10.110…
The study uses the national contacting tracing registry and compares testing positivity of contacts across vaccinated and unvaccinated, stratify information by vaccine type and number of doses
The modeling accounts for key potential confounding variables in the tested individual so as not to be driven by demographic factors.