I don't see any evidence for how an annual Covid shot will provide durable protection (current ones wane after 4-6 months) without better vaccines, such as variant-proof, improved nanoparticles, and nasal wsj.com/articles/u-s-p…
This has the ring of Covid capitulation erictopol.substack.com/p/the-covid-ca…
I'm certain we can do better than this. The science foundation is there for multiple paths of extended durability and enhanced protection. The will is not.
Nasal and oral vaccines are our best shot to block infections, transmission, achieve containment of the virus, reduce the toll of sickness, & help prevent #LongCovid. They are not getting adequate priority in the US science.org/doi/10.1126/sc… w/ @VirusesImmunity@SciImmunology
"The imaging findings suggest that inflammatory cardiac involvement after COVID may be a pathophysiological commonality shared among all individuals, regardless of the expression of cardiac symptoms"
The main symptom was difficulty breathing with exertion; 53% of the cohort had persistent symptoms at ~1 year, not present before Covid.
"Absence of significant structural heart disease or increased levels of cardiac biomarkers"
The BA.5 variant wave is in descent in the US and throughout the world. Without a threatening new variant that exhibits ability to strongly compete now, we should have several weeks of a respite
World cases/ deaths
Japan, one of the last to get hit, still on the rise for deaths
The US metrics
Except for deaths that remain at a ~500 deaths/day plateau, all are pointing in the right direction
Cases are notoriously under-reported, but we are at the lowest level in 4 months, (that number of confirmed cases, 78K, is still very high) /2
Please be aware there's still lots of circulating virus, ~90% of which is BA.5 out there
Only BA.4.6 is slowly competing at an appreciable level, recently ~1% growth/ week
Latest transmission map /3 covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tra…. .
The historic drop in US life expectancy
Biggest two-year decline —2.7 years in total — in almost 100 years
Now 76.1, the lowest in 25 years
Levels at 1944 for AIAN
Pandemic, accidents and overdoses were 1° drivers nytimes.com/2022/08/31/hea… cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsrr…
This precipitous drop and current level is substantially worse than 21 peer countries medrxiv.org/content/10.110…
There's one country that doesn't get what it pays for, which preceded the pandemic economist.com/graphic-detail…
Now >$12,000/person and further reduction of life expectancy down to 76
Some views lacking optimism. Key point re: reduction of infections/ transmission and why a nasal vaccine booster, if efficacious, would be a better bet.
Also supports getting human nAb data before rolling out (which may not happen)
And a new report brings up the question of the bivalent booster (ancestral + BA.5) that is the current strategy:
"it needs to be considered whether keeping the ancestral WA1 strain in the updated vaccine is of value or not." medrxiv.org/content/10.110…