[conspire] 2 Virology professors explain why bivalent vaccine won't stop transmission

[Les Faby]

Thanks for responding. The only thing important in requiring a vaccine is
***transmission***
Why I asked about transmission 2 months after vaccination:
There are 12 months in a year and if it is only even somewhat effective
less than 17% of the time
thenan annual booster is close to useless.
   Also, I read Katherine Wu's paper. Good choice of authors, BTW. She is
recommending the
vaccine because it keeps you from getting seriously ill. She does NOT say
it will keep you from transmitting the disease
or you should take it for that purpose. Which of your papers, if any, say
it has a big effect on you transmitting the virus? If it does,
how long does the effect last?
   SARS-2 has evolved. It now is much faster at infecting your cells. You
may have an educated immune system but it is too slow to stop infection
and transmission. The good news is we have anti-virals and vaccines to keep
us from getting seriously ill or dying. The disease has been around for
3 years and it is no longer novel. Smart People taking multiple precautions
still are getting infected. Fauci, CDC's Wilensky, Pres. Biden,... It is a
respiratory
disease with a short incubation period.
   ****
The Other people on the committee disagreeing with Dr. Offit are NOT saying
it will keep you from infection because they know that is an impossible
standard.
They know what happens when you breathe in virus, and what the educated
immune system needs to do to stop infection. The virus is too fast.
**** details you can skip ****
To prevent infection, you need to maintain high levels of virus-specific
antibodies of the immunoglobulin IgA in the mucosa.



On Thu, Nov 17, 2022, 1:44 AM Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:

> Quoting Les Faby (lfaby2018 at gmail.com):
>
> > Rick asked for evidence to help him decide if he should just require
> > boosters or additionally require the bivalent booster.
> >  I asked Prof Vincent Racaniello, who Dierdra knows. His colleague, who
> has
> > her lab at the FDA, agrees with him.
> > They are COVID vaccine proponents for getting the 2 shots plus one
> booster.
> > They are pro-vaccine but have seen no evidence that the current shot
> makes
> > you safer for others.
>
> OK, I'll add that to my pondering, and thank you for taking the trouble.
> I'll get back to that "safer for others" bit below.
>
> > Dr. Paul Offit, who has developed a vaccine and is on the CDC(?) vaccine
> > committee, also concurs.
> > Them answering the question:
> > (30-60 seconds)
> > https://youtu.be/sc5XeZuoUCc?t=1847
>
> > Dr. Paul Offit, who has developed a vaccine and is on the CDC(?)
> > vaccine committee, also concurs.
>
> He's a member of CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.
>
> Citing Dr. Offit is _slightly_ tendentious.  (Not a complaint.)  Dr.
> Offit is a real, respectable figure in this field, but he's been very
> much a maverick outlier with just about everyone else about the rollout
> policy re: the earlier boosters and about the desirability of the
> covalent booster at the time of approval, relative to the data that were
> then available.
>
> I respect his reasons for being a maverick, and his views are entirely
> within the bounds of science.  They are, however, distinctly a minority
> among informed parties.  Here's NY Magazine's "Intelligencer" feature
> discussing his Dec. 2021 view that boosters for _everyone_ was in his
> view not justified at that time.
>
> https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/12/omicron-dr-paul-offit-is-skeptical-of-boosters-for-all.html
>
> And one of my favourite site covering fringe-science giving reasons
> why Dr. Offit is _not_ a crank even though he's a contrarian:
> https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/i-wont-call-dr-offit-an-anti-vaxxer/
>
> Here is Dr. Offit, two days ago, stating a carefully qualified bit of
> doubt about an aspect of present evidence for the bivalent booster(s):
> https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/14/us/politics/moderna-booster.html
>
>   "We still do not have a single shred of evidence that the bivalent
>   vaccine works better than the monovalent vaccine," said Dr. Paul A.
>   Offit, the director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s
>   Hospital of Philadelphia and a member of the Food and Drug
>   Administration’s panel of outside vaccine experts.
>
>   "The only evidence we have today has been neutralizing antibodies, and
>   that hasn’t been particularly supportive," Dr. Offit said. "You could
>   argue we never needed to include these circulating strains, until a
>   circulating strain arises that is resistant to protection against severe
>   disease."
>   [...]
>
>   Neither company "controlled for length of time after the last dose,"
>   Dr. Offit said, adding, "There are a lot of problems with that." He
>   said the longer interval after the third dose could have strengthened
>   the immune system of participants who received the updated booster,
>   leading to higher antibody levels.
>
> Each of Dr. Offit's contrarian opinions has been scientifically
> defensible, e.g., when he opined that the evidence on hand at the time
> of this-or-that FDA decision was too weak and that the decision was
> hasty.  However, in each case, a decisively strong majority of
> qualified experts has respectfully disagreed.
>
>
> You said Dr. Racaniello and Dr. Rosenfeld's answer concerned
> whether boosters beyond the first makes anyone safer for others.
> As always in science, it's vital to make sure one is investigating
> the correct question.  Individuals seeking information about infectious
> diseases might ask "Will X make it less likely to become infected if
> exposed?"  "Will X affect my likelihood of symptomatic disease?"  "Will
> X affect my period of infectiousness to others?"  "Will X affect my
> probable time to recovery?"
>
> The question you asked Racaniello and Rosenfeld was "I have a friend
> hosting a dinner party.  Do you think it is necessary to have the
> bivalent [booster...]?  How will [the bivalent booster] affect
> transmission beyond a couple of months?"  But the answer was a little
> squirrely.  Racaniello said "Dixon had a bivalent and it didn't prevent
> him from getting reasonably symptomatic COVID, which was treated with
> Palovid.  So, Les, my feeling is three shots, that's what I had, that's
> what Amy has, that's enough.  I got infected, I had symptoms, I took
> Paxlovid, beautiful.  Life is good.  That's the way I think you should
> do it.  I don't think it's going to impact transmission, very much at
> all.  It seems to me that the bivalent is not really doing much for
> preventing infection, even two weeks after you get it.  Two weeks!  When
> antibody levels should be high."  Rosenfeld: "Well, at first it's not
> going to affect infection."  Racianiello: "That's correct.  Not after a
> few months.  But even two weeks after, it _should_ affect infection, but
> it's not going to...."  Rosenfeld:  "Well, you would tell me that Dixon
> is old and he doesn't make any memory B cells, so you have to...."
> Racianello:  "Yeah, but, Amy, after two weeks, you're not depending on
> memory B cells.  You're depending on effector B cells, that are going to
> be around for maybe a few months, and then go away.  Then, you depend on
> memory cells, and Dixon is screwed, right.  He can't make memory cells,
> right."
>
> Neither of the good doctors is consistent on what question he or she is
> addressing.  This is troubling.
>
> And if the question was supposed to be "Does the bivalent booster make a
> CABAL attendee safer for others?", then neither of them seem to have
> properly addressed that question at all.  (What you said, specifically,
> was "transmission beyond two months".  I'm unclear on why the scope
> of your question was limited to 2+ months after a bivalent booster, but
> I note that's what you asked.)
>
> Now, a side-light about who these two good people are.  Vincent R.
> Racaniello, Ph.D. is a Columbia professor of Microbiology & Immunology,
> whose expertise is virology (including but not limited to poliovirus).
>
> Amy B. Rosenfeld, Ph.D. is also a virologist, with most of her work
> having been on enteroviruses in Dr. Racaniello's lab.
>
> If I had a question about viruses, I would be ecstatic about ability to
> consult these two doctors.  If my question were about vaccines and
> epidemiology, though, it's not entirely clear their expertise is
> in quite the right area.
>
> Ideally, one would want to consult experts on _vaccines_, specifically
> these ones, and what evidence there is for the bivalent booster reducing
> infection and/or retransmission of current strains, relative to having
> had no other COVID booster or vaccine for many-months-to-a-year.  And
> then one would want to ask them the right question.  A "safer for
> others" framing _does_ seem the most relevant questing to CABAL
> attendance, which I guess equates to asking about the bivalent booster
> reducing infection and/or retransmission of current strains.
>
> On the evidence, I'm not sure Drs. Racaniello and Rosenfeld understood
> you to be asking about that, given their answers, and given your wording
> "How will [the bivalent booster] affect transmission beyond a couple of
> months?"  I'm not sure you asked the right question, and I'm pretty
> certain the doctors were unclear on what question they were choosing to
> answer.
>
> Anyway, thank you for asking, and pointing to their answer.  That gives
> me more to ponder.
>
> I'll admit, I've been lately paying attention mostly to the best
> reporters' assessment of experts on my behalf, reporters like _The
> Atlantic_'s Katherine J. Wu.
>
> https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/11/annual-covid-vaccine-booster-shots/672037/
> But this is, obviously, a complex topic, and I'll need to stop for the
> time being.
>
>
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