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Elon Musk Says the Second Dose of mRNA Booster Jab Crushed Him as Vaccine Debate Grows Worldwide
International Business Times reported:
Twitter CEO Elon Musk on Saturday joined the growing debate on the serious side effects of COVID-19 vaccines, saying he had “major side effects from my second booster shot.” In a tweet, he said that he “felt like I was dying for several days.”
“Hopefully, no permanent damage, but I dunno,” the billionaire said, adding that “first mRNA booster was ok, but the second one crushed me.”
Musk’s admission about the side effects of COVID vaccines came as Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla evaded difficult questions about the effectiveness of the company’s vaccine during the World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davis. Bourla refused to answer any questions and instead repeatedly responded with phrases such as “Thank you very much” and “Have a wonderful day.”
Musk also revealed that his cousin, who is young and in peak health, “had a serious case of myocarditis” and “had to go to the hospital” after the COVID vaccine jab.
The debate over the side effects of COVID vaccines is gaining ground worldwide, including in India. In India, the government earlier this week reaffirmed the after-effects of different COVID-19 vaccines, but refuted a report based on an IANS RTI plea pertaining to the potential ramifications of these jabs as “ill-informed” and providing “erroneous” information.
WSJ Shreds Vaccine Makers, Biden Admin Over ‘Deceptive’ Booster Campaign
Wall Street Journal editorial board member Allysia Finley has taken a flamethrower to vaccine makers over their “deceptive” campaign for bivalent COVID boosters, and slams several federal agencies for taking “the unprecedented step of ordering vaccine makers to produce them and recommending them without data supporting their safety or efficacy.”
The narrative behind the campaign was simple; mRNA COVID shots could simply be ‘tweaked’ to target new variants — in this case, the jabs were claimed to confer protection against BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron variants, along with the original Wuhan strain.
As Finley writes, three scientific problems have arisen. The virus is mutating much faster than vaccines can be updated. Vaccines have ‘hard wired’ our immune systems to respond to the original Wuhan strain, “so we churn out fewer antibodies that neutralize variants targeted by updated vaccines.” Antibody protection wanes after just a few months.
Here’s the money shot: “The vaccine makers designed their studies to get the results they wanted. Public-health authorities didn’t raise an eyebrow, but why would they? They have a vested interest in promoting the bivalents.”
Finley further notes that vaccine makers could have performed small, randomized trials last summer and early fall on the bivalents — with results available by the end of September. But the Biden administration didn’t want to wait (and now we know why).
U.S. FDA Proposes Shift to Annual COVID Vaccine Shots
The U.S. health regulator on Monday proposed one dose of the latest updated COVID-19 shot annually for healthy adults, similar to the influenza immunization campaign, as it aims to simplify the country’s COVID-vaccine strategy.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration also asked its panel of external advisers to consider the usage of two COVID vaccine shots a year for some young children, older adults and persons with compromised immunity. The regulator proposed the need for routine selection of variants for updating the vaccine, similar to the way strains for flu vaccines are changed annually, in briefing documents ahead of a meeting of its panel on Thursday.
The Biden administration has also been planning for a campaign of vaccine boosters every fall season.
If the panel votes in favor of the proposal, Pfizer Inc. (PFE.N) and Moderna Inc.’s (MRNA.O) bivalent vaccines, which target both the Omicron and the original variants, would be used for all COVID vaccine doses, and not just as boosters.
What We Know About How COVID Vaccines May Affect Menstrual Cycles
Since early in the pandemic, women have reported experiencing changes in their menstruation after they got COVID-19 or were vaccinated against it.
A study of almost 4,000 women in the U.S. found that menstrual cycle lengths were extended by about 0.7 days after the first dose and 0.9 days after a second dose. Though the cycles were longer overall, however, researchers did not find a change in how many days women’s periods lasted.
An even larger study of nearly 20,000 women in the U.K. found a similar effect on overall cycle length, but also noted that it was extended for longer in people who got both doses of a vaccine within the same menstrual cycle. For these individuals, their cycle length increased by an average of 3.7 days.
A paper published on Jan. 7 in the Journal of Infection and Chemotherapy reinforced that finding with new data. The authors calculated the difference between predicted and actual menstrual cycle lengths in women in Japan before and after COVID-19 vaccination. Before women were vaccinated, the average difference was about 1.9 days. After two doses of a vaccine, it could be as high as 2.5 days. The change was more pronounced in people who received two vaccine doses within the same cycle, with that group seeing an average difference of 3.9 days.
JPM23: Pfizer, Moderna and More Look to Combine COVID and Flu Vaccine Markets
When Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna swooped in to save the day with pandemic mRNA vaccines, few people — if any — were thinking about the long-term structure of the COVID-19 vaccine market. Now, as vaccination rates decline and government contracts dry up, that future is becoming clearer.
Notably, the top players are aiming to combine their coronavirus vaccines with annual flu shots and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) immunizations. In addition, execs at several vaccine companies said they expect the COVID-19 shot market to gradually shift to something like the flu vaccine business.
Aside from using the flu market as a model, CEO Stéphane Bancel told Bloomberg that Moderna could introduce a combination flu and COVID product as soon as next year. The company could introduce a triple combination shot with the RSV component by 2025 at the earliest, he added.
Moderna isn’t the only company eyeing combination vaccines. GSK, which recently won a European nod for its Sanofi-partnered booster, is also angling for space in the combination market. While analysts were skeptical about recent phase 1 data from GSK and CureVac’s modified COVID and flu shots, the company sees “real interest” in a COVID-flu combination shot, GSK’s chief commercial officer Luke Miels told Fierce Pharma during an interview at JPM.
Speaking of the current options, Pfizer has combo goals as well. The company’s BioNTech-partnered COVID-flu mRNA shot could launch in 2024 or later, according to a company presentation at JPM.
Does COVID Reinfection Bring More Health Risks — or Make You ‘Super Immune’?
A recent study states that COVID-19 reinfections could pose additional risks to people’s long-term health — as compared to only getting COVID once — however, some infectious disease experts in the U.S. disagree that there is evidence showing repeat infections are more dangerous.
“Reinfection is consequential in the sense that if you get COVID again, even if you have had it before and even if you have been vaccinated, that still could put you in the hospital, that still in some cases, can result in death,” said Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, an author of the study who works as a clinical epidemiologist at Washington University and as chief of research at the Veteran Affairs St. Louis Healthcare system.
But Dr. Celine Gounder, an infectious disease epidemiologist and editor-at-large at Kaiser Health News, is among those who said that immunity from a first infection means that a subsequent infection poses a lower risk of such outcomes.
“There is nothing about a reinfection that is more dangerous than an original infection, and if anything, a reinfection is going to be a lower risk because you have some immunity baseline at the time of reinfection,” said Gounder.
‘This Will Happen Before 2030’: How the Science Behind COVID Vaccines Might Help to Fight Cancer
In December 2022, the U.S. biotech firm Moderna, a company that emerged from relative obscurity to become a household name during the pandemic, published the results of a clinical trial that sent ripples through the world of cancer research.
Conducted in partnership with the pharma company MSD, it demonstrated that a messenger RNA (mRNA) cancer vaccine, used in combination with immunotherapy, could offer significant benefits to patients with advanced melanoma who had received surgery to remove their tumors. After a year’s worth of treatment, the phase IIb trial found that the combination reduced the risk of cancer recurrence or death by 44%.
While mRNA has become synonymous with the COVID-19 vaccines developed by Moderna, Pfizer and BioNTech, cancer has long been the ultimate goal of the technology. Now, the NHS has launched a groundbreaking partnership with BioNTech to try and fast-track the development of mRNA cancer vaccines over the next seven years.
As part of the partnership, eligible cancer patients in the U.K. will get early access to clinical trials from autumn 2023 onwards. The hope is that by 2030, these innovative new treatments can be made clinically available to around 10,000 cancer patients.
CDC: XBB.1.5 Grows in U.S. as COVID Cases, Hospitalizations Decline
U.S. News & World Report reported:
The highly contagious Omicron subvariant XBB.1.5 is spreading in the U.S. while COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations are on the decline, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
XBB.1.5 was responsible for 49% of new coronavirus infections this week, according to CDC estimates. That’s up from 37% of cases last week when the strain surpassed BQ.1.1 to become the top strain circulating in the U.S.
XBB.1.5, which has been called the most transmissible subvariant yet, is the only strain that is increasing in prevalence in the U.S., setting it up to dominate the variant scene in the coming weeks.
COVID, Flu, RSV Declining in Hospitals as ‘Tripledemic’ Threat Fades
Doctors braced for a dire winter — a looming disaster some dubbed a “tripledemic” — with flu season revving up, coronavirus roaring back and the holidays providing fuel for viruses to spread.
But no such surge materialized. The RSV wave has receded in Connecticut and across the country. Flu cases have rapidly dwindled. COVID hospitalizations rose briefly after Christmas, only to fall again.
The United States is better equipped now than earlier in the pandemic to weather coronavirus surges because most people have some degree of immunity, and early treatment keeps the most vulnerable people from becoming seriously ill.
“As awful as Omicron was, it left in its wake a tremendous amount of immunity,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at Brown University School of Public Health.
