Chances are nonzero that the next variant will come from the currently most widespread and most contagious variant, i.e. Omicron. Good to be prepared.
Basically in this epidemic, if the question is "should we .... just in case?" the answer is yes. Just do it.
The two scariest words from that Nature news article?
WHO committee
Aha to give the WHO committee credit they arrived at the right answer. I guess the logic of updating your vaccines with actually extant viral sequences was too straightforward to refute. who.int/news/item/08-0…
BTW news coverage of various crises within the epidemic makes a lot more sense if you just imagine "what would big pharma say at this point"? e.g. media voices hesitation on variant-specific boosters (top tweet) when big pharma had original-strain vax to sell but no variant vax
When variant vax are ready you can expect news stories about their advantages. Not saying media purposely advertise for pharma, but reporters know companies have more data than the CDC, treat pharma predictions/ideas as newsworthy, and many aren't able to find indep. sources.
That's why the news articles about Pfizer or Merck vax and pills were ~100% favorable. What big pharmas say is news because they are big, whereas what anybody else says is not important by definition. Okay for political and financial news, but not accurate as science journalism.
Example below. No second opinions presented, just a straight repeat of what the Pfizer CEO says. Because what a CEO says about what CDC and FDA should do is news in itself, it seems. thehill.com/policy/healthc…
Of course this has the effect of biasing the jury. By making it seem a foregone conclusion it will make it harder for FDA or CDC to resist approving whatever Pfizer wants to sell. Fine if it's an updated booster. Not so fine if it's the obsolete formula.
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Basically Pelosi figured out Donilon was the one feeding Biden hopium-spiked poll results, and leaked it out.
Once it was proven that there really was bad info in the inner circle, that gave everyone else confidence in their own eyes. The emperor really was naked.
“Put Donilon on the phone,” Ms. Pelosi told the president, referring to Mike Donilon, the president’s longtime aide, according to people familiar with the exchange, which was reported earlier by CNN. “Show me what polls.”
Biden has COVID-19 again. He had first symptoms today, positive test today, and first Paxlovid dose today.
As the early Paxlovid will limit immunostimulation by virus, I predict he will suffer rebound again, unless he gets 10-day course, or he is given a strain-matched vaccine.
Biden's DO does not seem to follow the science. The rate of rebound is 26% if started within the first 2 days of symptoms or positive test.
Sure, FDA and CDC and Pfizer still claim it's less than 3% and no different than no-Paxlovid, but it fools nobody
I predicted his first rebound on immunological principles alone and on understanding Paxlovid mechanism of action. It was a real prediction, made before it happened, and sticking my neck out in public to make it.
I intuited that early start of Paxlovid blunts immunity, allowing viral rebound once drug ended. I thus predicted both Joe and Jill Biden's rebounds (before they occurred), as they started Pax on day of symptoms.
"The model identifies that earlier initiation and shorter treatment duration are key predictors of post-treatment rebound."
The model shows that early therapy reduces the number of infected cells secreting innate immune signals (IFNs) that then activate antibody production.
"If the virus is not eliminated by an early acquired response along with antiviral pressure, it rebounds to a peak level that is sometimes comparable to the initial peak."
We have seen this with many people, e.g. Fauci reported the rebound was worse than the initial infection
"Short- and long-term neuropsychiatric outcomes in long COVID in South Korea and Japan"
Higher recorded rates of cognitive deficit (2.7x), insomnia (2.4x), anxiety (2.2x), mood disorder (1.9x), and stroke (2.0x) in the year after COVID-19 infection.
Big caveat: Retrospective association study, so major possibility of reporting bias. People who recently got COVID may be more likely to seek care and diagnosis for any new health problem. The study tries to control for this but there's no way really to eliminate it entirely.
Arguing for adequate adjusting is that there are a few conditions that would be prone to reporting bias for which an association was *not* seen: parkinsonism, muscle disease, psychosis.
Documents for the June 5 FDA VRBPAC meeting are out.
Advisors will be asked to answer the question "For the 2024-2025 Formula of COVID-19 vaccines in the U.S., does the committee recommend a monovalent JN.1-lineage vaccine composition?"