In Vaccine Thread 2021

[Lefty Specialist]

A friend was going in for back surgery and one of the things he had to do before being admitted was get a COVID test. He tested positive. He was fully vaccinated and had absolutely no symptoms, not even a raised temperature. They tested him again to make sure and he was still positive. So his surgery was put off, which makes him unhappy but he's happy he didn't test positive a year ago.

[batmagadanleadoff]

The vaccine doesn't stop the virus completely, but it does stop those consequences virtually completely.

The J&J vaccine, alone, doesn't seem to "virtually completely" stop the Delta variant.

[Edgy MD]

The important thing is that she had a "cold" and not a "trip to the hospital and a ventilator".

The vaccine doesn't stop the virus completely, but it does stop those consequences virtually completely.

It's certainly an important thing for her, but it's not necessarily the most important piece of information for us as a society.

[kcmets]

Our niece and your friend are the first I've heard of vax'd people getting COVID. It's
not something that MSNBC or CNN is in any rush to report even if it's common or some-
what common. I'm worried about the six kids exposed to it because what she got didn't
care whether she was vax'd or not. Please don't judge my fears.

[batmagadanleadoff]

The important thing is that she had a "cold" and not a "trip to the hospital and a ventilator".

The vaccine doesn't stop the virus completely, but it does stop those consequences virtually completely.

It's certainly an important thing for her, but it's not necessarily the most important piece of information for us as a society.

Agreed. It goes without saying that everybody's better off vaccinated. But I'm still wearing masks, vaccine notwithstanding.

[kcmets]

We still mask up in stores and in restaurants until seated. I've noticed over the last
two weeks the masked numbers are dropping quite noticeably and some people look
at me like I'm a jerk for wearing one.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Our niece and your friend are the first I've heard of vax'd people getting COVID. It's
not something that MSNBC or CNN is in any rush to report even if it's common or some-
what common. I'm worried about the six kids exposed to it because what she got didn't
care whether she was vax'd or not. Please don't judge my fears.

It's been reported for over a month.

CDC says roughly 4,100 people have been hospitalized or died with Covid breakthrough infections after vaccination

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/25/covid-b ... ation.html

[kcmets]

Just got a text that niece's hubby and all three kids have tested positive.

[Edgy MD]

fux.

[kcmets]

The elderly father and the others have to wait a few more days before testing.

[Benjamin Grimm]

Were the kids vaccinated? I've read of cases where vaccinated parents get the virus from their unvaccinated kids. Most vaccinated people who become infected do so because they've gotten a fairly large viral load, as a parent might from living in the house, maskless, with kids who are always around. That may not be the case here, of course.

[kcmets]

Imagine they all were, everyone must be over 12 by now and the two moms are
both proactive types. We'll find out.

[Willets Point]

As I've assumed, the biggest barrier to vaccination is not antivaxers but working class people worried about losing their jobs if they miss time due to side effects.

To increase vaccination rates among essential workers, we need better paid sick leave laws. Nearly half of adults in the United States who have not received a coronavirus vaccine are concerned about missing work as a result of side effects from the shot; this concern is even greater among Black and Latinx adults. Last year, around 25 percent of all private-sector workers (and a much greater number of the lowest-wage earners) had no paid sick leave. Laudably, some jurisdictions have passed laws requiring paid leave for the vaccine; for example, New York State requires employers to provide up to four hours of leave per shot for this purpose, and Chicago has similar rules, although limited to employers that mandate vaccines. These laws are a good start, but to fully remove this barrier, workers need paid leave not just for the shot itself but also for side effects.

- There’s a Way to Get More People Vaccinated—and It Doesn’t Involve the Lottery

[batmagadanleadoff]

The vaccine doesn't stop the virus completely, but it does stop those consequences virtually completely.

The J&J vaccine, alone, doesn't seem to "virtually completely" stop the Delta variant.

__________

Finally, Experts Break the Silence on J.&J. Boosters
By Michelle Goldberg

Opinion Columnist

Early last month, I got my third Covid vaccine shot. I now realize this was overkill and I’m fairly embarrassed about it, but at the time I felt like I was operating in an information vacuum.

Let me explain.

As I’ve written before, I participated in the Johnson & Johnson vaccine trial. Even though I initially got the placebo, the study offered me the opportunity to get the real thing weeks before I’d have otherwise been eligible, and I gratefully accepted. At the time, public health authorities were telling everyone to take the first shot you could get. I’m still glad I followed this advice; after gutting out the worst year of my life, I was terrified of getting Covid right on the brink of vaccine salvation.

But then things started to go wrong for J.&J. At the end of March, news broke of problems at the Baltimore plant manufacturing the vaccine, and up to 15 million contaminated doses had to be scrapped. (Eventually around 60 million doses were thrown away.) In mid-April federal authorities called for a pause on the use of J.&J. shots because, in very rare cases, they were linked to a blood-clotting disorder.

By then, I’d had my vaccine for a month. But I was anxious about what the problems with J.&J. meant for boosters. When I got my inoculation, I knew the company was testing a two-dose regimen, and I thought it was likely that I’d end up getting a second Johnson & Johnson shot. Suddenly that seemed unclear.

In the following weeks, my uncertainty only grew. Because J.&J. has made up only a small fraction of vaccinations, there’s been a paucity of information about how it’s performed in the real world. In May, for example, when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that vaccinated people don’t have to wear masks indoors, it was primarily based on findings that the mRNA vaccines — those manufactured by Pfizer and Moderna — inhibit transmission. I had no intention of living my life more cautiously than people who’d got the mRNA shots, but I hated feeling like I was more vulnerable than them.

So in May, with vaccines plentiful where I live, I went to a nearby clinic and got a Pfizer shot. At that point, I reasoned, European countries were already combining the AstraZeneca vaccine, which uses roughly the same mechanism as J.&J., with mRNA shots. A British study found no danger from mixing doses aside from increased side effects. And a Spanish study showed that when the AstraZeneca shot was followed by Pfizer, it seemed to trigger a more potent immune response than two doses of AstraZeneca did.

No one at the clinic asked if I’d already been vaccinated. Still, I felt that I was doing something sneaky and disreputable, and not just because it’s unfair that Americans have such a glut of doses. In general, I don’t think people like me, with no medical expertise whatsoever, should ignore expert guidance on vaccines because “I’ve done my own research” on the internet.

But the experts weren’t telling people who’d gotten J.&J. much of anything. I reached out to a couple of high-profile physicians and scientists, but they didn’t answer me, perhaps out of reluctance to provide untested medical advice.

Some other people were quietly doing the same thing I had. Right after getting the Pfizer shot, I called the J.&J. trial to confess, in case the people running it needed me to drop out. The person I spoke to said that while it wasn’t ideal, I should keep participating, and that I wasn’t the only volunteer who’d gone out and gotten a second vaccine.

The evidentiary void around J.&J. seemed to grow more frightening with the spread of the Delta variant. Previously, data from Britain had shown that a single dose of either Pfizer or AstraZeneca provided pretty good protection against Covid infection. With Delta, single-dose protection went way down, to around 35 percent.

For weeks, no one knew what that meant for the J.&J. vaccine. Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan, had the Johnson & Johnson shot, and has been hearing from people who’d also gotten it and were scared.

“I really don’t blame people — they keep hearing all this stuff about two shots, two shots, Delta, you need to be fully vaccinated,” she told me earlier this week. “And nobody’s really saying anything about Johnson & Johnson.” Many people, she said, “feel that they’ve been left behind because there really isn’t any new information coming out about it.”

On June 21, Rasmussen decided to get a Pfizer booster. At around the same time, Michael Z. Lin, a neurobiologist and bioengineer at Stanford, wrote a Twitter thread arguing that the C.D.C. should issue guidance on mRNA boosters for people who’d received J.&J. A couple of days later, Andy Slavitt, until recently a senior adviser to Joe Biden’s pandemic response team, put out an episode of his podcast titled, “The Delta Variant Question No One Will Answer,” addressing those who’d received Johnson & Johnson and were wondering about getting another shot. He was equivocal: either wait for the data, or “go ahead and take a Pfizer or Moderna shot.”

I wish I’d heard these voices earlier, because by then I’d already gotten two Pfizer shots. When the clinic scheduled my second appointment, I wasn’t sure whether to return for it. I’m still not sure why I did. Mostly, at a time when no one was talking about J.&J. boosters, I didn’t want to be an anomaly. I wanted the full Pfizer course because I didn’t want to worry about whether new findings about mRNA effectiveness against the variants applied to me.

Nothing bad happened, but the experts I spoke to said the third shot was unnecessary, and that there’s a point after which too much immune stimulation can be harmful. “There’s no pressing reason to go beyond a single RNA booster,” Lin told me.

Indeed, there may be no reason to get a booster at all. On Thursday evening, with discussion of boosting J.&J. all over the media, Johnson & Johnson released data showing that its vaccine retains most of its effectiveness against the Delta variant. “Booster shots seem unnecessary, at least for now,” The New York Times reported.

The news from Johnson & Johnson didn’t change Lin’s thinking. As he sees it, even before the Delta variant, J.&J. wasn’t as effective as the mRNA vaccines, which makes him apprehensive about breakthrough infections. And because Delta is more transmissible than previous variants, those who do have breakthrough infections could be more likely to infect others.

No one I spoke to had any second thoughts about the message, during the early part of the vaccine rollout, to take the first shot you can get. When vaccines were in short supply and the virus was surging, it made sense. But now that mRNA vaccines are abundant in this country, the situation has changed.

It would be nice to have guidance on this from the C.D.C., but we shouldn’t expect it anytime soon. In the absence of data, Slavitt said, it would be irresponsible for the C.D.C. to make a recommendation. “People want the science to tell us exactly what to do,” Slavitt said. “When we say, ‘Follow the science,’ the reality is the science doesn’t always know.”

So as with many other aspects of this pandemic, people have to figure things out for themselves. Slavitt said one of his sons was vaccinated with Johnson & Johnson and is planning to get an mRNA booster. But, he adds, people who do the same should know they’re doing it at their own risk.

The need to make decisions with imperfect information “isn’t uncommon, particularly in a situation where you’ve got a novel virus,” said Slavitt. “Eventually, that answer will be known. Of course, people don’t like to be in the uncomfortable zone before we know the answer.”

I’m glad that people with expertise are finally weighing in. I just wish this conversation had gone public a few weeks sooner.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/02/opin ... e=Homepage

[Ceetar]

so..in a panic, this woman basically messed up clinical trial data, ignored guidance, and seemingly unironically notes that it would be irresponsible for science to guess what you should do prior to data, data which she helped muddy.

Oh, and then the NY Times let her publish this for some reason? what drivel.

[batmagadanleadoff]

so..in a panic, this woman basically messed up clinical trial data, ignored guidance, and seemingly unironically notes that it would be irresponsible for science to guess what you should do prior to data, data which she helped muddy.

Oh, and then the NY Times let her publish this for some reason? what drivel.

Michelle Goldberg is a regular Op-Ed contributor to the New York Times - a writer and Pulitzer prize winner. She's also a regular on MSNBC and probably other cable TV News channels that I don't watch so regularly. I don't think she goes more than a day or two without appearing on some MSNBC show or other, if even that much.

FWIW, and I don't really know how much worth, she was in the placebo part of the J&J trials.

As a recipient of the J&J vaccine myself, I could really appreciate her piece, even if in the end, I'm not so sure that she provided any solid advice, at least to my liking. I had been poring over the news for the past six weeks on an almost daily basis, searching for new and updated info on the efficacy of the J&J, particularly against the Delta variant. And I can tell you from personal experience, that the info and data was not coming. Personally, I still don't feel as safe as I think I should feel by now, notwithstanding, as I already mentioned, having received a J&J vaccine.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Is Trump the root cause of all of this anti-vaccination hysteria sweeping the red states? Because if it is, the man is evil incarnate, but even more so than I already understood him to be. And the thing of it is, he was covid vaccinated. Not only that, but he caught a dose of covid-19 so severe that it would've definitely killed him if he wasn't the president of the USA with access to all kinds of medical care that practically nobody else had access to.

COVID Is Looking Like a Permanent Feature in the Anti-Vaccination Belt

Tennessee is becoming a harbinger of the dark future.

We are voting ourselves back into the dark ages, and there doesn’t seem to be anyway to stop it. From the Tennesseean:

The Tennessee Department of Health will halt all adolescent vaccine outreach – not just for coronavirus, but all diseases – amid pressure from Republican state lawmakers, according to an internal report and agency emails obtained by the Tennessean. If the health department must issue any information about vaccines, staff are instructed to strip the agency logo off the documents. The health department will also stop all COVID-19 vaccine events on school property, despite holding at least one such event this month. The decisions to end vaccine outreach and school events come directly from Health Commissioner Dr. Lisa Piercey, the internal report states.

Not just COVID, mind you, even though the pandemic is spiking again in Tennessee, as it is everywhere in the Anti-Vaccination Belt, but all vaccine outreach for every communicable disease. This new madness has already cost the state one important public health official.

After the health department's internal COVID-19 report was circulated on Friday, the rollback of vaccine outreach was further detailed in a Monday email from agency Chief Medical Officer Dr. Tim Jones. Jones told staff they should conduct "no proactive outreach regarding routine vaccines" and "no outreach whatsoever regarding the HPV vaccine." Staff were also told not to do any "pre-planning" for flu shots events at schools. Any information released about back-to-school vaccinations should come from the Tennessee Department of Education, not the Tennessee Department of Health, Jones wrote. "Any kinds of informational sheets or other materials that we make available for dissemination should have the TDH logo removed," Jones wrote.

Michelle Fiscus was the state’s top immunization official until she was forced to resign under pressure from Republicans in the state legislature who have the prion disease at a virulent level. Fiscus went out fighting. From the Tennessean:

I am ashamed of them. I am afraid for my state. I am angry for the amazing people of the Tennessee Department of Health who have been mistreated by an uneducated public and leaders who have only their own interests in mind. And I am deeply saddened for the people of Tennessee, who will continue to become sick and die from this vaccine-preventable disease because they choose to listen to the nonsense spread by ignorant people.

She’s not kidding, either. Look at this jamoke.

Lawmakers accused the agency of attempting to circumvent parents and peer pressure minors to be vaccinated, then discussed dissolving the entire health department to stop its vaccine advertisements. Department leaders are scheduled to reappear before the same group of lawmakers for more questioning on July 21. “I have never said that I want to dissolve and reconstitute the Department of Health,” said Rep. Scott Cepicky, R-Culleoka, who proposed ending the agency on June 16. "What I said is, when we come back next month, I want that as a consideration.”

This guy is implying that he would rather consider the elimination of the state’s department of health than agree that Tennessee’s teenagers should be vaccinated against the virus fueling a worldwide pandemic. I guarantee you this will spread to other states with Republican majorities in their legislatures, and we’ll end up with outbreaks of rubella, HPV, and god knows what else on top of the COVID pandemic, which, in many places, is going to be a permanent feature. And all this makes far too much sense to far too many people.

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/p ... of-health/

[Ceetar]

I think they're probably both related symptoms of the same fascist anti-science nonsense that the party has been running with for a while. It's a coordinated effort to keep the population subdued, distracted, and uneducated. trump was just good at presenting a face to that. The asshole saying all the stupid things and venting all their anger. He validates all that other stuff, which is why the fascists like him. Mitch can put out a plan of action, and know that trump would whip it into a talking point of contention. As long as there is always a bogeyman, they don't have to stop and think. Worked for Bush too. Not like "The muslims are gonna kill us all, we gotta finish this war i started!" racism is much different than what trump used.

[batmagadanleadoff]

A new study suggests that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is not as effective against the Delta variant as the MRNA Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. Many experts are now stating that J&J recipients, especially older people and/ or those with underlying co-morbidiites, should receive an MRNA vaccine booster shot, which is not the official CDC policy, yet.

Study suggests Johnson & Johnson vaccine less effective against Delta variant

https://nypost.com/2021/07/21/johnson-j ... -suggests/

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/20/heal ... delta.html

Excerpt:

The coronavirus vaccine made by Johnson & Johnson is much less effective against the Delta and Lambda variants than against the original virus, according to a new study posted online on Tuesday.

Although troubling, the findings result from experiments conducted with blood samples in a laboratory, and may not reflect the vaccine’s performance in the real world. But the conclusions add to evidence that the 13 million people inoculated with the J.&J. vaccine may need to receive a second dose — ideally of one of the mRNA vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna, the authors said.

The conclusions are at odds with those from smaller studies published by Johnson & Johnson earlier this month suggesting that a single dose of the vaccine is effective against the variant even eight months after inoculation.

[Frayed Knot]

On the other hand, the Robert Johnson & Johnson vaccine has been rules to be quite effective against the delta blues variant of the virus.

[Willets Point]

The Yankees received J&J didn't they? That could be why they're having breakthrough cases.

[kcmets]

KB is on her way home from work (they kicked her out lol) and stopping by an urgent care
joint for a COVID test. We're both pfully pfizered. My temp is 98.1, which is my reptilian norm.

[kcmets]

Breaker one-nine, KB is COVID negatory...

[MFS62]

Eric Clapton - anti-vaxxer:
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2 ... n-morrison

Later

[kcmets]

My two-cent take, I bet Virginia is a sanctimonious bitch in real life not just in print.