[conspire] COVID at the end of 2021

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Les Faby (lfaby2018 at gmail.com):

> J&J encodes the same full spike D614G variant with 2 proline
> substitutions to encode the pre-fusion spike protein as the mRNA
> vaccines.
> 
> Reference: How the Johnson & Johnson Vaccine Works
> https://nyti.ms/2WuvMsA

Appreciated.  For whatever it's worth, I was relying on this statement
in the press:

  “There is something that makes sense about it,” says Monica Gandhi,
  M.D., an infectious disease expert and professor of medicine at
  University of California, San Francisco. And that’s because J&J’s viral
  vector vaccine and the mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna “don't
  actually code for the exact same part of the spike protein,” she
  says.

  Meaning that while the two different vaccine technologies work in a
  similar way — they direct the body to make a harmless piece of the
  coronavirus’s signature spike protein so that the immune system
  can learn to recognize it as an invader and attack it if ever faced with
  the real deal — the proteinsthat they instruct the cells to make vary. 

  “So you're going to get more of a response, that would be the hope, by
  giving them both because you cover more of the spike protein. You have
  different antigens [foreign substances that induce an immune response]
  that you see,” Gandhi says.

  Keep in mind, too, that the J&J vaccine has never generated as strong an
  immune response as the mRNA vaccines, says Isaac Weisfuse, M.D., a
  medical epidemiologist and an adjunct professor at Cornell University
  Public Health. And “if you boost with something that historically has
  more efficacy,” you’re going to see a higher antibody level.

https://www.aarp.org/health/conditions-treatments/info-2021/mixing-matching-covid-vaccines.html

As mentioned, this is outside of both my expertise and the medical
subjects I've tried to study up on -- so, asked a question without 
opportunity to study up, I'm reduced to the same sort of quick targeted 
Web searching we-lot use to quickly assess things -- something I would 
not trust on such a subject that is both technical and suffused with
speculation and bad information.  In other words, caveat lector.

-- 
Cheers,        "Public health is not private health.  Epidemics are not personal
Rick Moen      diseases, and pandemics are not even national:  They take place 
rick at linuxmafia.com          across the shared immune system of human society."
McQ! (4x80)                  -- Indi Samarajiva, https://t.co/bW2w059PYp