Last year, CDC COVID-19 Response Team published a weekly report on Friday where a vast majority of the patients infected with the Omicron variant identified in the US so far were fully vaccinated individuals.
The federal government and mockingbird media are still clinging to their slipping grasp of the dwindling minority of Americans who are still concerned about the “pandemic.”
The updated booster shots against Omicron got emergency authorization, and a CDC panel voted to recommend the shots for children as young as 5 to 11 and for people over the age of 12.
The new vaccine is called Bivalent which means it contains two messenger RNA (mRNA) components of the coronavirus. Half of the vaccine targets the original strain, and the other half targets the BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron subvariant lineages.
These new COVID boosters were not tested on humans – only mice.
“Since children have gone back to school in person and people are resuming pre-pandemic behaviors and activities, there is the potential for increased risk of exposure to the virus that causes COVID-19. Vaccination remains the most effective measure to prevent the severe consequences of COVID-19, including hospitalization and death,” said Peter Marks, M.D., Ph.D.
“While it has largely been the case that COVID-19 tends to be less severe in children than adults, as the various waves of COVID-19 have occurred, more children have gotten sick with the disease and have been hospitalized. Children may also experience long-term effects, even following initially mild disease. We encourage parents to consider primary vaccination for children and follow-up with an updated booster dose when eligible,” he added.
Now, two independent studies conducted by scientists from Columbia University in New York City and Harvard University found that the new boosters did not produce a better antibody response in humans against BA.5 than the first-generation vaccines, NBC reported.
They compared samples from 21 patients in the Columbia research and 18 people in the Harvard study who received the new boosters to people who received the old vaccine as their fourth shot.
However, the FDA said these two studies are “small and subject to limitations.”
“It’s important to note that the two studies were done independently. They’re small studies but there are two of them —it’s not just a fluke,” said Dr. Dan Barouch, the lead author of the Harvard study.
More from NBC:
Scientists at Columbia and Harvard, in two independent studies, found the new boosters and the old shots basically performed the same against omicron BA.5, raising doubts about whether the vaccines will live up to high expectations set by the Biden administration. The antibody responses were slightly higher with the omicron boosters, though the studies concluded the difference wasn’t significant.
Dr. Peter Marks, head of the FDA’s vaccine division, said the studies are small and subject to limitations. Data from larger well-controlled studies are expected in the near future, he said. Pfizer and Moderna are conducting clinical trials on the new boosters and are expected to provide data later this year.
“It is important to note that even the data from these initial small studies indicate that the bivalent vaccines are generally at least as good or better as the original vaccines in generating an immune response, particularly to BA.4/BA.5 and other newer variants,” Marks said in a statement.
Even modest increases in immune response could have positive consequences for public health, he added.
“FDA continues to encourage eligible individuals to consider receiving an updated vaccine to help protect against the currently circulating Covid-19 variants and the wave of Covid-19 that appears to be coming,” Marks said.
