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Michael Lin, MD PhD 🧬 Profile picture
@michaelzlin
Mar 15, 2022 • 7 tweets • 3 min read • Read on X
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Great news for SA. They relied heavily on J&J and provide much knowledge about J&J's lower efficacy vs other vaccines. They've now joined most of the world in recommending 2 boosters after J&J.

Meanwhile the USA is still stuck on 1 booster only for JnJers.
And despite having been one of J&J's most vocal supporters, South Africa's health ministry is allowing heterologous boosting. That heterologous boosting works better than homologous boosting for J&J is now common knowledge.
In case we needed another reminder, a paper just came out last week (one I had analyzed as a preprint) showing J&J + 1xPfizer was much better than J&J + J&J, and similar to 2xPfizer, finally
sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
And regarding CDC data that JnJers in the US got Omicron at lower frequency than RNA recipients: such data are uninterpretable without splitting the groups by history of COVID and boosters. AFAIK boosted/infected/unboosted/naive were all grouped together.
It's exceedingly unlikely that unboosted uninfected 1xJ&J can more effective than unboosted uninfected 2xRNA vs Omicron because all the evidence is their nAbs are far lower. I covered this earlier
And in the controlled setting of monkey studies, a J&J booster clearly produces lower anti-Omicron Abs than a RNA booster, when added to either a 1xJ&J or 2xRNA primary series.

Thus serology predicts J&J blocks Omicron infection worse than RNA per dose

biorxiv.org/content/10.110…
Not to mention, as we knew, that JNJ x1 (Ad26 here) as an initial "vaccine" is far inferior in anti-Omicron antibodies to RNA x2 (BNT2x here), regardless of whether you boost with another RNA or a JNJ dose later.

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More from @michaelzlin

Michael Lin, MD PhD 🧬 Profile picture
Jul 6
In case you think cameras can detect cars or people ahead of them through the glare of the sun, or that AI has learned to react to ambiguous situations with the, well, intelligence of humans, read this Image
It's a frightening and sad story (a grandmother was killed) and I'm surprised to find out about it only now.

There's clear evidence from the Tesla's own cameras that no kind of image processing can beat glare (and that FSD lacks all sense of caution)
bloomberg.com/features/2025-…
Glare happens when light rays from the sun get scattered by water or dust in the air at every lit location to new directions. That means air between an object and the camera can scatter sunlight toward the eye or camera.
Read 7 tweets
Michael Lin, MD PhD 🧬 Profile picture
May 18
FDA has granted regular approval to the Novavax vaccine. What does this mean? A lot of things, all good.

1- It proves Novavax has met efficacy and safety criteria to merit approval outside of the emergency use situation.
Novavax is safer than the RNA vaccines, but ironically the RNA vaccines received full approval earlier than Novavax. That meant Novavax was the only COVID vaccine which vaccine skeptics could incorrectly claim was not safe enough to receive regular approval.
2- Novavax will get to participate in annual booster updates on the same terms as the RNA vaccines. This year's advisory committee for booster strain selection has already been scheduled.

3- All health insurers should now cover Novavax.
Read 14 tweets
Michael Lin, MD PhD 🧬 Profile picture
Apr 18
"Novavax had 1.7 systemic symptoms compared with 2.8 in Pfizer recipients. In total, 43.8% of Pfizer vaccinees reported at least one symptom of moderate or higher grade, compared with 24.2% of Novavax"

@RobertKennedyJr in case you didn't know. It's also more broadly protective. Image
This is the 2nd controlled study to show about half the side effects rate for Novavax vs Pfizer.

Of the 3 covid vaccines, Novavax is the only one still on EUA. Happens it's the smallest of the 3 companies and hasn't hired ex-FDA staffers.

Article below.
cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/novav…
FDA had a deadline of April 2 (this month) to decide on regular approval for Novavax, and reportedly was going to, except Peter Marks resigned the day before. Sadly he didn't sign the approval before he left. Was different for Pfizer and Moderna, who got early review and approval
Read 9 tweets
Michael Lin, MD PhD 🧬 Profile picture
Mar 25
Our NIH grant to discover coronavirus antiviral meds was terminated today.

With this grant, we had developed a better SARSCoV2 inhibitor than Paxlovid, and we recently discovered an improved drug that looks better than Pfizer's own second-generation inhibitor. Image
This is part of a complete elimination of COVID19-related research, including on long COVID.

The rationale given is that the pandemic is over.

In reality, people are dying of COVID at several times the rate of flu, and still getting long COVID.

arstechnica.com/health/2025/03…
This goes against RFK Jr's stated intention to concentrate on chronic disease.

Long COVID is a bad chronic disease to get, and there are reports of long COVID cases getting better immediately after treatment by protease inhibitors such as the ones we are improving.
Read 9 tweets
Michael Lin, MD PhD 🧬 Profile picture
Feb 28
I wish sane writers like David Wallace-Wells (and real scientists) had more influence instead of those with an axe to grind or a conflict of interest to protect. Even within @nytimes, he was given a second-fiddle seat. But he keeps his facts, and perspective, straight. Image
Link: nytimes.com/2025/02/26/opi…
Some excerpts Image
Read 10 tweets
Michael Lin, MD PhD 🧬 Profile picture
Sep 15, 2024
Yet another study that shows that Novavax-induced Abs clear virus from the upper respiratory tract better than RNA vax-induced Abs.
Novavax beats Moderna, which (transiently) induces higher levels of neutralizing Abs. As I've said before, Abs are much more than neutralization. Ab effector functions do most of the clearing, and Novavax seems particularly good at that.
And this is in the 2-dose Phase 3 trials, before the 3rd "booster" dose that, in RNA vaccines but not Novavax, induces antibody (immunoglobulin) class-switching to the no-effector-function IgG4
Read 4 tweets

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