Covid-19 vaccines and vaccinations

Binkie4 said:
https://www.fda.gov/news-events/pre...ong-acting-monoclonal-antibodies-pre-exposure

Announcement of an AZ preexposure treatment for those who don't respond to the vaccine by making antibodies or who are unable to take the vaccine.

"
The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday authorized the first drug for widespread use in preventing Covid in Americans with weakened immune systems who have not been adequately protected by vaccines.

The antibody treatment, which was developed by AstraZeneca and will be sold under the brand name Evusheld, is engineered to be “long-acting,” meaning the body metabolizes it more slowly so that it can stay active for months. That is expected to offer longer-lasting protection — perhaps for half a year — compared to the monoclonal antibody treatments that are given to high-risk people already sick with Covid." ( New York Times)
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is this a reasonable option and a reasonably safe one for pwme whose doctors have told them taht v is risky?
 
Ravn said:
What's the feeling on T-cell vaccines? Promising or hype?

https://theconversation.com/covid-why-t-cell-vaccines-could-be-the-key-to-long-term-immunity-174494
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It is hype.
Existing vaccines already generate long-lived T-cell immunity and that T-cell immunity is not enough to protect against symptomatic infection by highly transmissible respiratory infections (SARS-CoV-2 and Influenza). We know that protection against symptomatic infection is mostly due to antibodies specific for the receptor binding domains, leading to elimination before the virus infects cells. The Cuban COVID vaccines for example, only contain the spike RBD.

T-cell immunity does however lower risk of severe outcomes.
 
Snow Leopard said:
It is hype.
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I agree, or at least it is misleading. In a way what is being pointed out is that we might do better with old-fashioned types of vaccine that present the entire virus, in live or dead form, to the immune system in such a way that both T and B arms are stimulated to respond both to extracellular and intracellular forms during an infection. The recent successful vaccines are very clever but are expected to produce a narrower response.

So, really, the term 'T cell vaccine' is bogus, even if it means a vaccine that stimulates all T cell pathways rather than just help for antibody production.
 
Jonathan Edwards said:
In a way what is being pointed out is that we might do better with old-fashioned types of vaccine that present the entire virus, in live or dead form, to the immune system in such a way that both T and B arms are stimulated to respond both to extracellular and intracellular forms during an infection.
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How do viral vector vaccines perform on that score?

AstraZeneca seems to be doing a better job at sustained T-cell response than the mRNA versions, if I remember correctly.
 
Jonathan Edwards said:
In a way what is being pointed out is that we might do better with old-fashioned types of vaccine that present the entire virus, in live or dead form, to the immune system in such a way that both T and B arms are stimulated to respond both to extracellular and intracellular forms during an infection.
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The problem with that claim is that we already have such vaccines (adjuvinated whole 'inactivated' virus) and the efficacy tends to be lower.

There is suggestion that the T-cell response to the viral vector and mRNA vaccines are actually stronger that that of inactivated virus vaccines, because the spike proteins are made within cells and hence more readily presented to T-cells on MHC-I receptors...

Sean said:
AstraZeneca seems to be doing a better job at sustained T-cell response than the mRNA versions, if I remember correctly.
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Where did you see that? I've seen similar results AZ as from the mRNA vaccines in terms of SARS-CoV-2 specific responses. We've seen similar waning of effectiveness against hospitalisation with AZ compared to the mRNA vaccines too.

The initial speculation about T-cell activation was based on phenotyping of T-cells in circulation, but it was never demonstrated whether those T-cells were specific for the spike protein, rather than say, the adenovirus vector!
 
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Quite interesting piece. I wonder how similar these reactions are to those reported by some pwME. Really needs to be studied.

In rare cases, coronavirus vaccines may cause Long Covid–like symptoms
Brain fog, headaches, blood pressure swings are being probed by NIH and other researchers

https://www.science.org/content/art...avirus-vaccines-may-cause-long-covid-symptoms

"Dressen had never had COVID-19. But that November, she’d received a dose of AstraZeneca’s vaccine as a volunteer in a clinical trial. By that evening, her vision blurred and sound became distorted—“I felt like I had two seashells on my ears,” she says. Her symptoms rapidly worsened and multiplied, ultimately including heart rate fluctuations, severe muscle weakness, and what she describes as debilitating internal electric shocks.

A doctor diagnosed her with anxiety... Her husband, Brian Dressen, a chemist, began to comb the scientific literature, desperate to help his wife, a former rock climber who now spent most of her time in a darkened room, unable to brush her teeth or tolerate her young children’s touch.

As time passed, the Dressens found other people who had experienced serious, long-lasting health problems after a COVID-19 vaccine, regardless of the manufacturer. By January 2021, researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) began to hear about such reports and sought to learn more, bringing Brianne Dressen and other affected people to the agency’s headquarters for testing and sometimes treatment."
 
Ariel said:
In rare cases, coronavirus vaccines may cause Long Covid–like symptoms
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I think the emphasis needs to be on may here.

I would guess that every day about 100 people in the US develop ME for whatever reason.
Maybe recently about 1% of US citizens have got vaccinated each day.
So each day there is likely to be someone getting ME who was vaccinated that day.
The onset of neurological symptoms the same evening actually sounds too short to have an immunological explanation anyway.
 
With working in a hospital my husband was vaccinated for flu for years. One year he became ill the evening after the injection with a flu like illness. It has never happened in the years since.

He was obviously already going down with something when he got the injection.

I may be mistaken, but I would think that it would take a day or so to become obviously sick if the vaccine was damaging the immune system. After a tetanus injection my armed swelled up within an hour but it went down quickly too.
 
A new study has found that people who received the Moderna COVID-19 mRNA vaccine are less likely to experience breakthrough infections compared to those who received the Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA shot.

The study, led by researchers out of Cleveland's Case Western Reserve University, also found that people who received the Moderna jab were less likely to be hospitalized following a breakthrough infection than Pfizer vaccine recipients.

https://beta.ctvnews.ca/national/coronavirus/2022/1/21/1_5749160.html
 
A friend just told me that he has a couple of friends who requested in advance full dose Moderna for their 3rd jab, it's normally a 1/2 dose for the 3rd.
 
Mij said:
A new study has found that people who received the Moderna COVID-19 mRNA vaccine are less likely to experience breakthrough infections compared to those who received the Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA shot.

The study, led by researchers out of Cleveland's Case Western Reserve University, also found that people who received the Moderna jab were less likely to be hospitalized following a breakthrough infection than Pfizer vaccine recipients.

https://beta.ctvnews.ca/national/coronavirus/2022/1/21/1_5749160.html
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I'm getting my booster next week but this time I'm getting the Pfizer in the hope that I don't have a long-term adverse reaction like I did with the Moderna vaccines. I'm hoping that having had the two Moderna vaccines will make the Pfizer booster more effective.
 
It’s a Terrible Idea to Deny Medical Care to Unvaccinated People
by Ed Yong

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/...inated-medical-care-hospitals-omicron/621299/

ME is mentioned:
As health-care workers become more exhausted, demoralized, and furious, they might also unconsciously put less effort into treating unvaccinated patients. After all, implicit biases mean that many groups of people already receive poorer care despite the ethical principles that medicine is meant to uphold.

Complex illnesses that disproportionately affect women, such as myalgic encephalomyelitis, dysautonomia, and now long COVID, are often dismissed because of stereotypes of women as hysterical and overly emotional.

Black people are undertreated for pain because of persistent racist beliefs that they are less sensitive to it or have thicker skin.

Disabled people often receive worse care because of ingrained beliefs that their lives are less meaningful.

These biases exist—but they should be resisted. “Stigma and discrimination as a prism for allocating health-care services is already embedded in our society,” Goldberg told me. “The last thing we should do is to celebrate it.”
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He is making a false comparison. It is not prejudice against the unvaccinated it is anger that they could have avoided being so sick. Comparing that to the way people with ME have been treated and the disabled and people of colour is disgusting.

People are dying because resources are being used on people who are sick unnecessarily. That should be called out and the people who are feeding lies to push their own agenda need sanctioned in some way.
 
Mithriel said:
He is making a false comparison. It is not prejudice against the unvaccinated it is anger that they could have avoided being so sick. Comparing that to the way people with ME have been treated and the disabled and people of colour is disgusting.

People are dying because resources are being used on people who are sick unnecessarily. That should be called out and the people who are feeding lies to push their own agenda need sanctioned in some way.
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Have you read the article? Maybe the quote gives the wrong impression out of context, I'm very sorry if that's the case.

It's not as simple as "they could have avoided being so sick", he actually writes about many of the reasons why it's very difficult or even impossible for many people in the US to access the covid vaccines, even if they want to.
 
Omicron is pushing hospitals to their limit, but the medical system still has an ethical responsibility to all patients—no matter the choices they make.
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The problem is that covid patients are the priority and are getting all of the beds at the moment and cancer patients are not getting their life saving surgeries. When people make the choice not to have vaccines, with the exception of people who have valid medical reasons that they can't have one, they should not be given priority over other health conditions, which is exactly what is happening at the moment.
 
From the article:

A person’s choices are always constrained by their circumstances. Even now, unvaccinated people are not all refusers. Using recent survey data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the health-policy researcher Julia Raifman and the economist Aaron Sojourner have shown that unvaccinated Americans are disproportionately poor—and within the lowest income brackets, people who want or would consider a vaccine outnumber those who would never get one.

That they still haven’t gotten the shots might seem inexplicable to people who can just pop into their local CVS. But people who live in poor neighborhoods might not have a local pharmacy, or public transport that would take them to one, or internet access that would allow them to book an appointment. People who earn hourly wages might not have time for a vaccination appointment, or paid sick leave for weathering any side effects.

Exact same problem in Canada.
 
TigerLilea said:
The problem is that covid patients are the priority and are getting all of the beds at the moment and cancer patients are not getting their life saving surgeries. When people make the choice not to have vaccines, with the exception of people who have valid medical reasons that they can't have one, they should not be given priority over other health conditions, which is exactly what is happening at the moment.
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Have you read the article I copied the quote from, or any other articles by Ed Yong, maybe listened to one of his interviews?

One of the his main points in the article I linked, and other articles he has written previously, is that it's an incorrect oversimplification to frame it as a question of "choice". For example, another quote from the article linked above:
Ed Yong in The Atlantic said:
A person’s choices are always constrained by their circumstances. Even now, unvaccinated people are not all refusers. Using recent survey data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the health-policy researcher Julia Raifman and the economist Aaron Sojourner have shown that unvaccinated Americans are disproportionately poor—and within the lowest income brackets, people who want or would consider a vaccine outnumber those who would never get one. That they still haven’t gotten the shots might seem inexplicable to people who can just pop into their local CVS. But people who live in poor neighborhoods might not have a local pharmacy, or public transport that would take them to one, or internet access that would allow them to book an appointment. People who earn hourly wages might not have time for a vaccination appointment, or paid sick leave for weathering any side effects.
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