The truth about vaccines and their boosters

Before I begin, I have to clarify that I’m only looking at the effectiveness of vaccines against the original Omicron variant in this post. I have no information about the Omicron BA.2 variant.

First up, a truth that no government wants to admit: neither Pfizer, Moderna or AstraZeneca do much to protect against symptomatic disease with Omicron:

Comparison of Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca vaccines at 2 doses

I took this data from a study that appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine: https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMoa2119451 If you scroll down to Table 3, which appears just before the Discussion, you can check the raw data for yourselves. This data compares the effectiveness of all three vaccines against the Delta variant and the Omicron variant. This is an example:

https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMoa2119451

As you can see, AstraZeneca is shown by its scientific name rather than the one we’re all familiar with. The same applies to Pfizer – BNT162b2 – and Moderna – mRNA-1273. For each vaccine, Table 3 displays its effectiveness against Delta and Omicron at specific time points. The 2 – 4 week time point is when the vaccine is at its most effective in preventing symptomatic disease. You can then see how quickly that effectiveness wanes over time.

Because I found the presentation of the data a bit hard to follow, I translated it into a spreadsheet and made it more visually clear:

The data from Table 3 showing the results for the Omicron variant only

Despite my best efforts, the data is still confusing so let me walk you through it. On the far left you have the effectiveness of the three vaccines at just 2 doses. As you can see, after 5 months, none of them are very effective and AstraZeneca is the least effective of all. This means that if you are Australian, over 65 and received only 2 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, you have virtually no protection. AT. ALL.

Until just 2 weeks ago, I fell into the ‘no protection at all’ category.

Now let’s have a look at what effect the boosters have. I’m going to start by looking at each vaccine boosted by itself – i.e. by a third dose of the same vaccine.

AstraZeneca

Looking at the table above you can see that 2 doses of AstraZeneca boosted with a 3rd dose of AstraZeneca – i.e. 3 doses of AstraZeneca – provides a maximum of 55.6% protection at 2-4 weeks. By week 9 – just over 2 months later – that protection has dropped to 46.7%.

Pfizer

Two initial doses of Pfizer followed by a Pfizer booster – i.e. 3 doses of Pfizer – provides a maximum of 67.2% protection. By week 10 that’s dropped to 45.7% protection.

Moderna

Two initial doses of Moderna followed by a Moderna booster – i.e. 3 doses of Moderna – provides a maximum of 66.3% protection. I can’t tell you what that protection becomes at week 10 because there is no data for it. The reason there’s no data is because there were only 7 people in the study who had 3 doses of Moderna. I guess that was simply too small a sample size to be significant.

To recap, 3 doses of the same vaccine at weeks 2 – 4 – i.e. when protection was highest – resulted in:

• 55.6% protection for AstraZeneca
• 66.3% protection for Moderna
• 67.2% protection for Pfizer

Pfizer comes out on top, but only by a very small percent. AstraZeneca is roughly 11% worse than either of the mRNA vaccines. That said, the level of protection still isn’t stellar…for any of them.

Now, let’s see what happens when you mix-and-match vaccines.

When AstraZeneca is boosted by Pfizer, the level of protection at week 2-4 is 62.4%. AstraZeneca boosted by Moderna provides quite a bit more protection at 70.1%.

Significantly, boosting with Moderna causes that protection to also wane less by weeks 9 – 10:

• 60.9% with Moderna
• 39.6% with Pfizer

I’m pleased to say that I received my Moderna booster two weeks ago so my protection is reasonably high. I say ‘reasonably’ because I only have 1/2 a thyroid. That means my immune system is a bit compromised and the vaccines can’t provide me with the same level of protection.

The most interesting bit of data, however, is yet to come.

If you received two doses of Pfizer and followed that up with the Moderna booster, you will have the highest level of protection at 73.9%. By contrast, two doses of Moderna followed by a Pfizer booster will only give you a 64.9% level of protection.

So in conclusion:

1. Get a booster as soon as you hit the 3 month mark [after your second dose of whatever].
2. If at all possible, get the Moderna booster, especially if you received AstraZeneca as your base vaccine.
3. Any booster is better than none.
4. Keep taking precautions even after you receive your booster – even 73.9% protection isn’t all that much.

The study I’ve referenced here only looked at protections from symptomatic disease. Not severe disease. Not death. If the vaccines work the same way against Omicron as they did against earlier variants then there’s a good chance they will protect against severe disease and death, but the data isn’t in yet, so they may not. And given that BA.2 is a bit of an unknown quantity, we don’t even know if the boosters are as effective against it as they are against BA.1.

Governments and media have gone quiet on the pandemic, leading a lot of people to believe that the danger is over. It’s not. It’s just that no-one wants to admit that vaccines are not the magic bullet we were promised. The continuing death toll here in Australia and elsewhere in the world is proof of that.

Get your booster. Wear a mask. Don’t be a fool, the life you save may be your own.

Meeks

How do you measure success in a pandemic?

I’m writing this as someone who lives in the most locked down city on Earth – Melbourne. We suffered through the first wave of Covid-19 and lost 820 people to the virus, but that death toll could have been much, much worse; during the first wave in Italy, 35,142⁽¹⁾ Italians lost their lives.

Returning to the first wave of Covid-19 in Melbourne, we eliminated the virus and kept it from spreading to the rest of Victoria and the other states by putting ourselves into a VERY strict lockdown. That lockdown included a curfew and a ‘cordon sanitaire’ around Melbourne. It worked. In fact, the same restrictions continued to eliminate the virus from Victoria until NSW, with the tacit approval of the Federal government, decided that we all had to ‘live with Covid’. Thanks to our long border with NSW, we could no longer keep the virus out.

The other States and territories – Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania, Northern Territory and the ACT – continued to keep Delta out until Omicron came along. Western Australia is now the only state still trying to keep Omicron out. Across the ditch, our New Zealand cousins have not given up the fight against Covid-19 either. The battle may have changed from elimination to a fighting retreat, but it continues. The battle also continues in many of the countries of Asia, but we hear so very little about them.

I created the following spreadsheet from data published by https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries The website provides covid-19 related information about every nation on Earth.

That’s a lot of data and the forest tends to get lost in the trees so I created a subset⁽²⁾ of the data to show the difference between the Asian approach to Covid-19 and that of most Western countries. I’ve included Australia and New Zealand as part of Asia, because that is what we are.

In the screenshot below, the data is sorted by total deaths:

Iceland did the best with just 46 deaths while the USA did the worst with 904,038 deaths, but Iceland has a very small population while the USA has a very large one. In the next screenshot, I sorted the data according to deaths per million in order to account for differences in population size:

Iceland appears on the top of the list, again, because something is screwy with the ‘per million’ figure. I suspect a human error resulted in the decimal point being left off, but I’m too lazy to look up the population of Iceland to be sure.

Setting Iceland aside, the data suddenly reveals two surprises:

1. China does the best with just 3 deaths per million. [Remember that China has a population of roughly 1.4 billion people]
2. Hungary does the worst with 4,285 deaths per million.

Hungary is the country of my birth. It’s a small country with a small population [roughly 9.6 million]. That population is now smaller by 41,229 people. I’m glad my parents are no longer alive to see what has happened to their country. That said, the USA and the UK have the dubious honour of having the second and third worst results after Hungary.

So how do you measure success in a pandemic? Is it money saved? Or lives?

In a recent video, Dr John expressed disbelief that China would continue to eliminate the virus ‘in the age of Omicron’. In the comments, all sorts of theories were raised, most denigrating China’s strategy as futile, draconian and only possible in such a tightly regulated nation. The unspoken assumption was that no sane person would want to live like that.

I’m not an apologist for China because I don’t think it needs one. Yes, the Chinese government probably is guilty of human rights violations, but people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. The murder of George Floyd in the US brought the plight of Black America into sharp focus. When police feel they can kill Black Americans without fear of consequences, that’s a human rights violation. When children can be murdered at school because there is no gun control, that’s a human rights violation.

Here in Australia, the media shone a spotlight on our asylum seekers recently, but only because a famous tennis star was locked up with them for a very short time. What we’ve done to asylum seekers in the name of ‘stopping the boats’ is also a human rights violation. Would they be treated the same way if they were white and came from a European country?

But our human rights violations aren’t restricted to asylum seekers. The ‘deaths in custody’ of hundreds of First Nations Australians doesn’t rate a mention unless there’s some political twist to the story. That’s an ongoing human rights violation, yet no one wants to haul Australia off before the Court of International Justice in The Hague. Is it because we belong to ‘us’ and everyone else is ‘them’?

I’m sure China’s strategy of elimination isn’t motivated by pure altruism, but I suspect the Chinese government has worked out that its economy depends on the health of the populace. Dead people can’t manufacture anything. Dead people can’t buy anything either. Maybe that’s a lesson all neo-liberal governments need to learn.

Vaccines are great but they’re not a silver bullet that will save us from the inconvenience of old fashioned contagion control. To save lives, we have to have both. To save our economies, we have to save lives first.

Meeks

⁽¹⁾ Finding the number of total deaths in the first wave [for Italy] was surprisingly hard, or perhaps I didn’t search for the right terms. In the end, I had to calculate the number of death [for Italy] from a graph put out by the WHO:

https://covid19.who.int/region/euro/country/it

If you go to that graph and hover your mouse over each column, you can see the total deaths for that period. I copied the raw numbers into the spreadsheet below so I could get a total just for the first wave in Italy:

⁽²⁾ The data I used for the comparison between Asian and Western Covid-19 results is detailed below:

mRNA vaccines and Myopericarditis

Some time ago, I posted about the need to aspirate the needle before injecting with AstraZeneca vaccine. When I finally had my first jab of AZ, I asked the nurse to aspirate the needle, and that simple change helped my nerves a lot.

Now, there’s proof that not aspirating the needle before injecting mRNA vaccines can cause myopericarditis, which is a rare but known side-effect of mRNA vaccines such as Pfizer and Moderna.

Rather than trying to explain the research myself, please watch this video in which Dr John Campbell explains the terms, the research and the results:

I know a lot of you have already had both doses of whichever vaccine was available. But…it’s pretty obvious that we’re going to need booster shots fairly soon. That means you will once again be at the whim of fate.

The number of people unfortunate enough to develop myopericarditis is small, but it is real so, when it’s your turn for a booster…go to your GP and ASK for the needle to be aspirated. For your health and peace of mind.

cheers,
Meeks

I’ve had my first jab of AstraZeneca

Am I happy about it? No.

I never gamble because I don’t see myself as a ‘lucky’ person. I don’t even win anything at those stupid scratchies. So having to take a chance on AZ, however ‘small’ that risk may be, scares me silly.

And I hate not having a choice of vaccines. Not just because of the risk of blood clots, but because AZ is quite a bit less effective against Delta than Pfizer.

And while I’m at it, I hate the Morrison government for being such cheapskates. They put all their eggs in the nice, cheap AZ basket which is a big part of the reason we are so very far behind in terms of vaccinations.

And last but not least, I hate GladysB, Premier of NSW, for deliberately allowing the Delta outbreak to spread to just about every part of Australia [and even to New Zealand]. I don’t know if it was sheer hubris – “We are the gold standard state so we don’t need to learn from anyone else” or her emphasis on the economy rather than on lives, but she has helped to destroy the reasonable standard of living we used to enjoy despite the pandemic.

GladysB decided that we would all have to ‘live with Covid’, and now none of us have a choice in the matter.

So no, I’m not happy, and the next person who hangs shit on anti-vaxxers, just remember this: whether you agree with their reasons or not, those people are afraid. That is not a good place to be.

I’m not anti-vaccines in general, but I know what it feels like to be afraid of AZ. Trust me, it’s not a pleasant feeling.

Meeks

Why the vaccinated have to keep wearing masks

In the coming days, the leaked information from the CDC is going to be misrepresented by every anti-vaxxer, conspiracy theorist and general nutter in the world, so we will need facts to counter the inevitable surge of crazy. We will also need to understand the implications of this data for ourselves.

Point number 1.

We have to understand that all this data is about the Delta variant. Delta is a mutation of the original Covid19 virus and its an order of magnitude more infectious.

The graphic below [taken from the CDC powerpoint slides] compares various forms of infectious diseases. The higher up a disease is located on the graphic, the deadlier it is. The further to the right it is, the more infectious it is.

As you can see, Delta is not very high up on the graphic – i.e. it’s nowhere near as deadly as say Ebola – but it is a long way to the right. That means it is as infectious as chickenpox. And chickenpox is the second most infectious disease of all.

Point number 2.

All of the current, first generation of vaccines were developed in a mad rush…for the Alpha variant of Covid19 – i.e. the original version of the virus. We’re only now starting to get reliable data about how well these vaccines work against Delta.

Point number 3.

Emerging data shows that none of the current vaccines work as well against Delta as they do against the Alpha [original] variant. When it comes to reducing the severity of disease and the likelihood of death, however, they still work extremely well, with a few exceptions.

Point number 4.

The exceptions include people with compromised immune systems, and the elderly. For them, the vaccines do not work as well. The operative phrase here is ‘as well’. That means people with cancer who are on chemo, or those with autoimmune diseases being treated with immuno-suppressant drugs, or steroids or a whole range of other immune system related conditions, all of these people must continue to take extra precautions. These include the wearing of masks, social distancing, not congregating in crowds, hand hygiene etc.

Point number 5.

Apart from the immuno-compromised, the vaccines do NOT provide 100% protection against infection, even for normal, healthy people who are fully vaccinated.

According to the CDC, 35 thousand fully vaccinated people out of a total vaccinated population of 162 million are likely to get what’s called a breakthrough infection. This is when you become infected despite the vaccine. In percentage terms, this is 0.02% of fully vaccinated Americans spread throughout the US.

Point number 6.

Vaccinated people who get breakthrough infections are still far better off than those with no vaccination at all. The graphic below, also taken from the CDC powerpoint slides, shows a side-by-side comparison of vaccinated versus non-vaccinated people:

The green bars represent the unvaccinated population, and the levels of disease, hospitalization and death that they suffer from Delta.

The small blue bars represent the vaccinated population who experience disease, hospitalization and death as a result of breakthrough infection. It’s like comparing an ant to an elephant.

Point number 7.

In my last post I talked about Israeli data showing that Pfizer protection against transmission – i.e. the chance of infecting others even though you yourself are unaffected – drops to about 39% after four months. CDC data shows that if you are fully vaccinated and get breakthrough infection, you will be just as infectious as someone who has no vaccination at all.

This, more than anything else, is why both the US and the UK have mandated mask wearing again. To protect both the unvaccinated AND the vaccinated.

To put this transmission problem into context, we have to remember that these first generation vaccines were designed to reduce serious disease and death if you caught Covid. No one knew whether they would provide any protection against transmission at all.

Then we started getting data from Israel and other places that suggested that yes, not only did the vaccines protect against serious disease and death, they protected against transmission as well! Hooray.

Unfortunately, we did not have all the data back in January and February, 2021. Now in July, we know that the protection against transmission is temporary, at best.

Point number 8.

The implications of this new data are that we will have to continue all the OTHER pandemic precautions as well as getting vaccinated. That means wearing masks in public, social distancing, stringent hygiene, restrictions on congregating in crowds etc. Not the news any of us want to hear, but still miles better than dying.

There will be deaths though. Most will be amongst the anti-everything crowd who won’t get vaccinated, won’t wear masks, won’t accept lockdowns and other public health orders. Sadly there’s not much anyone can do to save those who refuse to be saved.

Our job is to protect ourselves and those we love by continuing to live cautiously until we see what effect booster shots have on Delta. With luck, the boosters will do the trick. If they don’t, we’ll have to live cautiously until the next generation of vaccines are ready.

We’ve been extraordinarily fortunate to get vaccines so quickly, even if they aren’t a magic bullet against Covid. Now we just need to be sensible…and patient. Covid is not finished with us yet. Stay safe. -hugs-

Meeks

References

For a full list of the powerpoint slides leaked from the CDC go to : https://context-cdn.washingtonpost.com/notes/prod/default/documents/54f57708-a529-4a33-9a44-b66d719070d9/note/753667d6-8c61-495f-b669-5308f2827155.#page=1

For Dr John Campbell’s explanation of the CDC powerpoint slides [this is where I based my own understanding of the data] go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsRdICFRHcc

Vaccines – some real data on efficacy

This is an important video for everyone to watch as Dr John Campbell explains about the adverse reactions recorded for the Pfizer vaccine. He then goes through the first peer reviewed paper published for the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.

As Australia has aligned itself heavily with the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, it’s very reassuring to know that it is both safe and efficacious! Just as a matter of interest, Australians won’t be getting any vaccines until some time in March, 2021. As we have the virus under control [knock on wood], we can afford to wait.

Feels great to get some good news on the virus front for a change. 🙂

cheers
Meeks

The ethics of ‘herd immunity’

I think a lot of people do not understand what ‘herd immunity’ actually means. This first graphic is what the very first case of Covid-19 would have looked like – 1 infected person surrounded by millions of people with no immunity at all:

Now contrast this with what happens when a population has 70 – 90% herd immunity:

When a newly infected person crops up, he or she is surrounded by people who have already developed immunity to the infection so the virus has nowhere to go and dies out.

Or to put it another way, the virus cannot reach new victims because they are protected by a barrier of people with immunity.

This is what is meant by ‘herd immunity’ – the protection of the uninfected by those who have already been infected. You could also say this is the protection of the weak by the strong. Bear that in mind.

But, and there’s always a but, you can only reach herd immunity if almost everyone in the population is already immune. The question then is: how do we get to herd immunity?

In the modern world, vaccination programs have all but eradicated diseases such as measles, small pox, polio, tetanus, tuberculosis, rabies etc. More importantly, people who have not been vaccinated are still protected because of herd immunity.

Is there any other way of acquiring herd immunity?

The simple answer is no, the more complicated answer is ‘maybe’. If you look at the list of quite deadly diseases eradicated by vaccines, you notice that they’ve been around for thousands of years. Assuming they were infecting quite a lot of people for all those thousands of years, why did humanity not gain herd immunity to them?

The answer is that 70 – 90% mentioned above. Relatively benign infections that didn’t kill off their hosts may well have led to herd immunity in the past, but deadly ones like small pox clearly didn’t. Isolation probably protected a lot of populations in the ancient world, but even today, with so many people travelling from one side of the world to the other, it’s still not possible for that many people to be infected and recover all at once.

Without an effective vaccine, Covid-19 will continue to circulate through the global population for years, much like the Spanish Flu.

If an effective vaccine against Covid-19 is never found, we will have no choice but to gain herd immunity the hard way. But the cost will be heavy. The elderly and those in ‘care’ will die. A lot of medical personnel will die. And so will people of all ages who have pre-existing medical conditions.

One of the highest co-morbidities for Covid-19 is diabetes.

And guess what? There are 422 million people with diabetes in the world today, and 1.6 million die directly from the condition each year. Now add Covid-19 to that mix and you get an awful lot of people aged 20-70 at risk of dying.

Other co-morbidities include high blood pressure, lung conditions, HIV etc.

Now imagine all these people dying, year after year after year until we reach the magic number of 70 – 90% immunity.

It’s a horrible scenario, yet many governments are flirting with the concept of ‘natural herd immunity’ because they see it as a magic bullet that will save their economies. Sweden is one such country, and the almost inevitable results are now in:

Taken from a video posted by Dr John Campbell: https://youtu.be/K4SQ-NOV-iU

From left to right, we see Country, population, number infected [with Covid-19] and number died [of Covid-19].

Sweden has roughly twice the population of Norway, Finland and Denmark, but about five times as many infections. When it comes to deaths, however, Sweden is waaaaay out in front. But it’s the breakdown of those deaths that’s truly horrifying. A great many have occurred in care homes where the sick have received next to no basic care. Instead, many doctors have recommended cocktails used for end-of-life palliative care. These cocktails often have a negative effect on the respiratory system. And yes, that means the sick and elderly die faster.

I strongly suggest you visit Dr John Campbell’s Youtube video for more details.

When I was a kid, I remember learning that the ancient Greek state of Sparta would place newborn babies out on a hillside overnight, so that only the strongest would survive to become warriors. Later on, I learned that in [some?] Eskimo tribes, the elderly would walk out onto an icefloe and calmly wait to die, so they would not be a burden on their communities.

I do not know how accurate either of those stories are, but they taught me the difference between voluntary euthanasia and state sanctioned, involuntary euthanasia. I felt sad for the Eskimo elders, but even now, so many decades later, I still feel nothing but contempt for the Spartans. They mandated that helpless babies should die to save Spartan society from becoming ‘weak’…

Do I really need to spell it out? Any society that puts money and saving ‘the economy’ ahead of lives, no matter how much of a ‘drain’ those lives may be, is no better than the Spartans.

I used Sweden as the example in this post because the results of that country’s experiment have been so stark, but almost all of the countries of the First World have flirted, or are still flirting, with herd immunity…as a choice. Instead of saving lives while waiting for a vaccine to become available, they’ve chosen strategies that encourage herd immunity in the hope that their economies won’t suffer.

The reality, however, is that no country is near the magic number required for herd immunity to actually work. Not one. Meanwhile, the death toll rises.

So who is to blame?

The epidemiologists who recommended that governments aim for herd immunity?

Or the politicians who accepted those recommendations and went ahead with what amounts to involuntary, state sanctioned euthanasia?

Or are we, ultimately to blame?

Yes, us. The highest death tolls have so far occurred in prosperous, Western, democratic countries. That means we voted those politicians into power. Or maybe we just didn’t vote at all and allowed them in by default. Either way, we got the leaders we deserve.

Meeks