FDA Approves Booster Shot for People with Weakened Immune Systems

[harllee]

I find that if I really relax my arm during the shot and then after the shot exercise my arm it does not get as sore

 

[fh2000]

I took the Pfizer booster on 9/24/21, the first day for 65+. It is getting close to 3 months, and I start to worry the effectiveness will start to go down.

 

[explanade]

I took the Pfizer booster on 9/24/21, the first day for 65+. It is getting close to 3 months, and I start to worry the effectiveness will start to go down.

Supposedly the booster raises antibodies by several fold over the second shot.

So if 2 shots last about 6 moths, one would think the booster would last at least as long.

We should get data from Israel as their people reach the 6-months point in January and February.

There are caveats though, older people may not get as much of an increase in antibodies and variants may require much higher levels of antibodies to provide the same level of protection that you got vs. earlier variants.

 

[Alan]

The UK booster trial tried 7 different vaccines as booster shots and concluded that Pfizer and Moderna were by far the best. The results were published in The Lancet this week.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...significantly-strengthen-immunity-trial-finds

In a study published in the Lancet, researchers on the UK-based Cov-Boost trial measured immune responses in nearly 3,000 people who received one of seven Covid-19 boosters or a control jab two to three months after their second dose of either AstraZeneca or Pfizer vaccine.

Those boosted with Pfizer after two doses of AstraZeneca had antibody levels a month later nearly 25 times higher than controls. When the Pfizer booster was given following two Pfizer shots, antibody levels rose more than eightfold.

The most potent booster in the study was a full dose of the Moderna vaccine, which raised antibody levels 32-fold in the AstraZeneca group and 11-fold in the Pfizer group. When Moderna is used in the UK booster programme, it is given at a half-dose.

Lancet full report here

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)02717-3/fulltext

 

[Alan]

A key finding in the booster study is that cellular immunity (T-cells) is also greatly boosted and that T-Cells work effectively against all variants since they kill infected cells and are not targeting the virus protein spikes.

 

[simple girl]

Just got my Moderna booster. Yippee! Minimal pain.

I overheard the pharmacist tell another patient that the booster typically results in less arm soreness than the flu shot, because it is less medicine being injected.

If that's correct, I wonder if those who have more arm soreness with the booster than the flu shot perhaps had poor injection technique. ? Also, it's very helpful to keep you arm relaxed during the injection. This is from personal experience of varying soreness.

 

[MarieIG]

A key finding in the booster study is that cellular immunity (T-cells) is also greatly boosted and that T-Cells work effectively against all variants since they kill infected cells and are not targeting the virus protein spikes.

This is good to know.

 

[explanade]

A key finding in the booster study is that cellular immunity (T-cells) is also greatly boosted and that T-Cells work effectively against all variants since they kill infected cells and are not targeting the virus protein spikes.

Did they quantify the T-cell boost?

Antibody boost was like 8x and higher.

 

[jollystomper]

Received my booster Friday. Just the usual slight pain that day. Saturday I swam for about 90 minutes (well, some swimming, some floundering, I am taking lessons ) without any problems.

 

[Alan]

Did they quantify the T-cell boost?

Antibody boost was like 8x and higher.

Let me quote from the article above which says that T-Cell response was just as good against all 3 versions of the virus it was tested against. (i.e. Covid-Classic, Covid-Alpha and Covid-Delta). Therefore they expect the T-Cell response to be just as effective against Covid-O.

Beyond antibodies, the scientists looked at the impact of boosters on T-cells – another crucial component of the immune system linked with the prevention of severe disease. Most of the boosters, including Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca, increased T-cell levels regardless of the vaccine people had for their first two doses.

One result that has caught scientists’ attention is that the T-cell response was as good against the Beta and Delta variants of concern as against the original virus that emerged from Wuhan. Asked if the finding might be relevant to the Omicron variant, Faust said: “Our hope as scientists is that protection against hospitalisation and death will remain intact.”

Jonathan Ball, professor of molecular virology at the University of Nottingham, who was not involved in the study, shared Faust’s optimism.

“Whilst variants, such as the Delta variant, reduced the overall virus-killing effect of antibodies, the T-cell responses were pretty much unaffected,” he said. “The fact that the mRNA vaccine boosts gave a marked increase in both antibodies and T-cells is great news, especially now, when our attention has been grabbed by the emergence of the Omicron variant.

 

[explanade]

T-cells are hard to measure.

Especially once they migrate to the bone marrow.

I think when they talked about waning immunity, they were also possibly talking about T-cell action not clearing the virus quickly enough before vaccinated people were suffering more than mild disease.

And "mild" disease is apparently sometimes like moderate flu symptoms, like almost a week of fever, coughing, loss of smell and taste.

Not to mention risk of long covid even in these mild breakthrough infections.

 

[Koolau]

I would think that any intramuscular injection would make your arm hurt, even just pure water, as you are introducing fluid into tissue where it was not meant to be.

The last 25 years of flu shots didn't hurt like this.

I honestly felt nothing but pressure when receiving my Covid 19 shots. My recent flu shot was PAINFUL going in.

I don't think anyone would intentionally inject "water" as it's not isotonic. Normal saline should NOT hurt (other than the actual needle stick.) Once again, I've have told you way more than I know, so YMMV.

 

[pacergal]

DS got his booster this past weekend, DD has hers scheduled next week, and is working on DSiL.
DGS( age 6) got his second shot also.
They all also have received flu vaccines.
So thankful for this. Every layer of protection helps!

 

[MuirWannabe]

In case anyone finds this interesting. DW and I participate in a study measuring antibodies over time in various people. You get tested for antibody levels on a quarterly basis. Round 1 testing occurred on 8/26/21. We just completed our round two on 12/10/21. Results:

DW
Covid antibodies round 1: 20.1
Covid antibodies round 2: 66.8
Vaccine antibodies round 1: 194
Vaccine antibodies round 2: 220

Me
Covid antibodies round 1: 0
Covid antibodies round 2: 0
Vaccine antibodies round 1: 842
Vaccine antibodies round 2: >2500

Clearly the booster helped my antibody level. But provided almost no boost for DW, as her original two shots seemed less effective also.

DW’s Covid antibodies increased although it’s been longer from her infection. The only hypothesis I’ve got for that is that we were both recently exposed to our Covid positive granddaughter and maybe that triggered her t-cells to generate more Covid antibodies to ward off infection?? Who knows? Neither of us were infected.

We’ve no idea why DW’s vaccine antibodies seem to be so poor compared to mine. She does have an autoimmune disease called Sjogrens. It’s a very mild thing that basically can cause dry eyes and mouth. Nothing that’s ever been a real issue for her. She was told by her doctor this wouldn’t cause a poor reaction to vaccines. So again, who knows?

 

[explanade]

Maybe alternative would be monoclonal antibodies and the soon to be approved Pfizer antiviral.

Though the REgeneron monoclonal antibodies may need to be modified for the Omicron variant.

 

[Koolau]

^^^^

Do we know what is a "good" level of antibodies? It would seem more is better, but I'm assuming some threshold of protection exists.

Thanks for this interesting comparison. It seems the more we know about Covid, the more remains to be known. Aloha.

 

[MuirWannabe]

Yea, I tend to believe the t-cell/antibodies from infection probably provide greater and longer lasting protection than anything the vaccine does. The vaccine protects against the spike protein only as I understand it. Still, the best we have without actually getting Covid.

I wish there were some trustworthy studies on lasting protection from natural immunity that look not just at antibodies but also t-cell activity. I kinda think (without any evidence) that any studies claiming natural immunity is not as good as vaccine immunity are tainted. That just doesn’t seem logical or jibe with what we know about SARS Cov 1 and lasting immunity. But I’m absolutely no expert.

 

[anethum]

Yea, I tend to believe the t-cell/antibodies from infection probably provide greater and longer lasting protection than anything the vaccine does. The vaccine protects against the spike protein only as I understand it. Still, the best we have without actually getting Covid.

I wish there were some trustworthy studies on lasting protection from natural immunity that look not just at antibodies but also t-cell activity. I kinda think (without any evidence) that any studies claiming natural immunity is not as good as vaccine immunity are tainted. That just doesn’t seem logical or jibe with what we know about SARS Cov 1 and lasting immunity. But I’m absolutely no expert.

I've posted this before. Oklahoma publishes detailed information concerning re-infection cases and breakthrough infections in the state. Their data show unequivocally that unvaccinated individuals in OK are far more like to get re-infected than fully vaccinated individuals in OK are likely to get infected.

See the table at the bottom of page 10 on the following document:

https://oklahoma.gov/content/dam/ok...-report/2021/2021.10.13 Weekly Epi Report.pdf

Their most recent data is for October. The "Reinfection Rate per 100,000 Eligible Cases" was 1,167. The "Breakthrough Rate per 100,000 Fully Vaccinated" was 668. The "Reinfection to Breakthrough Rate Ratio" was 1.75 . The ratio was even higher for each preceding month.

Data from South Africa show a very high re-infection rate from Omicron.

 

[braumeister]

Mod note:
Once again, please respect the guidelines for this forum.
From the sticky:

There has been a lot of very useful information and perspective shared here on this topic, but unfortunately also a good bit that does not meet our standards. Please respect your fellow members by thinking through this before posting:
- Is it true?
- Is it helpful?
- Is it kind?

When we see comments like "I tend to believe..." and "I kinda think..." in lieu of facts, it appears that the thread is in danger of being derailed in an unproductive direction.

 

[REWahoo]

FIY, from an NPR article showing a comparison of the original, Beta, Delta and Omicron positive test results in South Africa.

What omicron's fast spread could mean for the U.S. – and the world

 

[ExFlyBoy5]

I've posted this before. Oklahoma publishes detailed information concerning re-infection cases and breakthrough infections in the state. Their data show unequivocally that unvaccinated individuals in OK are far more like to get re-infected than fully vaccinated individuals in OK are likely to get infected.

See the table at the bottom of page 10 on the following document:

https://oklahoma.gov/content/dam/ok...-report/2021/2021.10.13 Weekly Epi Report.pdf

Their most recent data is for October. The "Reinfection Rate per 100,000 Eligible Cases" was 1,167. The "Breakthrough Rate per 100,000 Fully Vaccinated" was 668. The "Reinfection to Breakthrough Rate Ratio" was 1.75 . The ratio was even higher for each preceding month.

Data from South Africa show a very high re-infection rate from Omicron.

That's an excellent find for Oklahoma (where I live). They have a pretty robust reporting system but it's difficult to put it "all together" but this report does a great job. Thanks for sharing! Here's the latest ending 12/04

https://oklahoma.gov/content/dam/ok...-report/2021/2021.12.08 Weekly Epi Report.pdf

 

[sengsational]

Labs Noodling on Omicron and vaccine and natural induced immunity

There are several labs that have in-vitro results that try to predict how well real people that have been vaccinated (various levels) and people that have naturally derived immunity (from suffering the real disease) plus vaccinations will likely be able to fight-off omicron variant.

The way they do this is pretty cool. The technique is called "live virus neutralization assay". They take real omicron variant Sars-CoV-2 cells (or simulated ones in one paper), and they grow them up over a period of time without putting anything on the cells. That's the baseline.

Then they go out in the population of real people and collect their plasma. For each plasma sample, they note that person's vaccination status. So they might have caught the disease, then had two Moderna shots, or maybe they never had the disease and had two Moderna shots. Or the other paper, the plasma was from people that had Biontech or disase+Biontech.

So you've got a plate of omicron cells and you add plasma from these people at different concentrations. Obviously, one plate per plasma addition.

As you'd expect, full strength (undiluted) plasma would be the most effective at killing off the virus (and you'd be right). And also as you'd expect, the original Sars-CoV-2 (not the omicron) was easier for these plasma samples to kill-off, because the plasma donors' bodies had "seen" this before, and could thus handle it more easily.

Then they start using less and less concentrated plasma against the virus on the plates. Again, as you would expect, the more diluted the concentration of the plasma (less "good stuff" added), the less effective it was a stopping the virus from replicating.

Although the papers are not peer-reviewed (I don't thing they are, anyway), the bottom line appears to be that vaccine-only induced immunity has a difficult time against omicron. One paper looks like it's saying that recent third shot (booster) could help (if you watch the video, please help clarify what it indicates). It looks like having had the disease is very helpful against omicron compared to vaccine only.

Oh, and there appears to be some seriously bad news for those who're looking for monoclonal antibodies to come to the rescue against omicron...one paper indicated they didn't slow the replication at all.

This video examines three papers, if you want to interpret for yourself:
https://youtu.be/GHYHfbxzQAo?t=159

 

[Koolau]

<SNIP>

Oh, and there appears to be some seriously bad news for those who're looking for monoclonal antibodies to come to the rescue against omicron...one paper indicated they didn't slow the replication at all.

It has always amazed me that something (a virus) we can't even decide is or isn't "alive" can adapt so well and so quickly. YMMV

 

[rodi]

My younger son is home from college on winter break. I figured it would be easy to get him boosted while he's home.... Um... no... it's almost as hard as when vaccines first came out - except no super centers. I did score him an appointment the day before he leaves to go spend New Years with his girlfriend and her family.

One of the reasons I'm pushing hard to get him boosted is that the local (San Diego) CSU just announced that students living in resident halls will need to be boosted. (Along with athletes). My son goes to a different CSU - but I strongly suspect there will be a vax booster mandate at his school soon for the dorm students. (Son, a freshman, lives in the dorm.) He had to be fully vaxxed to attend in person this past fall.

Need to get older son boosted next... but he's still recovering from a surgery and want him to recover more from that. (He had an infection post surgery that he's still on antibiotics for.). He will probably be able to get boosted at work - since there is a pharmacy at the store he works at.

 

[retire-early]

I received my Pfizer booster on Wednesday.
I was fine until I went to sleep that night.
Had chills for a few hours when I first got into bed.
The next day I felt like I had a stomach flu. Fortunately that went away after 24 hours.
48 hours later I am back to normal except for a slightly sore arm at the injection site.