Moderna boss Stephane Bancel has said he expects a “material drop” in the efficacy of his company’s vaccine against the new Omicron variant. He told the Financial Times:
I think it’s going to be a material drop. I just don’t know how much because we need to wait for the data. But all the scientists I’ve talked to … are like, ‘This is not going to be good.’ … There is no world, I think, where [the effectiveness] is the same level … we had with Delta
He also said it would take months for drugs companies to update the vaccines. This means any Omicron wave is likely to have arrived, peaked and receded before the shots can be manufactured and widely administered.
A more sanguine Boris Johnson claimed on Tuesday afternoon that there are good grounds for believing third vaccine doses will give “considerable protection” against the Omicron variant. This view was given support by Dr Ugur Sahin, co-founder of BioNTech and one of the scientists behind the Pfizer vaccine, who said he remains optimistic that the jab will continue to provide protection against severe disease (though, tellingly, did not mention protection against infection). “Our message is: Don’t freak out, the plan remains the same: Speed up the administration of a third booster shot,” he told the Wall Street Journal – though some might point out Dr Sahin may have other reasons for wanting to “speed up” the distribution of his product.
SAGE member Professor John Edmunds has warned that reported infections are rising rapidly in South Africa, where the new variant was first detected last week. While data from Gauteng province, where the new variant was discovered on November 24th, showed a slight decline on Sunday and Monday, this may be a weekend effect, and there has certainly been a sharp rise overall in the past eight days. It is worth keeping an eye on the region to see how it develops.
It has also transpired in the last couple of days that the variant was already in other countries including the Netherlands several days prior to its discovery in South Africa. Nonetheless, the WHO has said the earliest known specimen of the variant was collected on November 9th in southern Africa.
While vaccines may work less effectively against Omicron than against earlier variants such as Delta (efficacy against which, particularly after several months, is anyway disputed), natural immunity arising from previous infection is looking more robust.
Two new research papers, one in the NEJM and one in the Lancet, provide further compelling evidence of the protective power of natural immunity. In the NEJM paper, researchers from Qatar report on reinfections in the country during the back-to-back Alpha- and Beta-associated surges in the first half of 2021. Examining medical records from all 353,326 people who received a positive PCR test in the country between February 28th 2020 and April 28th 2021 (excluding 87,547 people who had received a vaccine), they found that the odds of severe disease on reinfection were 0.12 times those at first infection (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.03-0.31), which translates to 88% protective efficacy. There were no cases of critical disease or death on reinfection versus 28 and seven respectively at first infection, giving 100% efficacy against these outcomes (though the small numbers here resulted in large confidence intervals). Putting the three outcomes of severe, critical, or fatal disease together, they found odds of 0.1 on reinfection compared to first infection (CI: 0.03-0.25), for an efficacy of 90%.
Four reinfections were severe enough to require hospitalisation, they say, but none led to ICU admission or ended in death. “Reinfections were rare and were generally mild, perhaps because of the primed immune system after primary infection,” they write.
They add that in earlier studies they had looked at the protective efficacy of natural infection against reinfection and estimated it at 85% or greater. Putting these figures together, this means prior infection has an efficacy of at least 98.5% against severe reinfection when compared to the immunologically naïve with no previous infection or vaccination. Does this mean that infection with SARS-CoV-2 will behave immunologically like the other ‘common cold’ coronaviruses and provide long-term immunity against severe illness, even if protection against mild reinfection fades, they ask? “If this were the case with SARS-CoV-2, the virus (or at least the variants studied to date) could adopt a more benign pattern of infection when it becomes endemic,” they suggest.
The Lancet paper supports these tentative conclusions. Reviewing all relevant papers on the online medical database PubMed, the authors Noah Kojima and Jeffrey D Klausner from the University of California find seven studies which show the risk of infection decreases by 80·5-100% for the previously infected compared to the immunologically naïve.
Kojima and Klausner make the case for the superiority of natural immunity versus vaccine immunity, including where variants are concerned.
It is known that SARS-CoV-2 infection induces specific and durable T-cell immunity, which has multiple SARS-CoV-2 spike protein targets (or epitopes) as well as other SARS-CoV-2 protein targets. The broad diversity of T-cell viral recognition serves to enhance protection to SARS-CoV-2 variants, with recognition of at least the Alpha (B.1.1.7), Beta (B.1.351), and Gamma (P.1) variants of SARS-CoV-2. Researchers have also found that people who recovered from SARS-CoV infection in 2002-03 continue to have memory T cells that are reactive to SARS-CoV proteins 17 years after that outbreak. Additionally, a memory B-cell response to SARS-CoV-2 evolves between 1·3 and 6·2 months after infection, which is consistent with longer-term protection.
Some people who have recovered from COVID-19 might not benefit from COVID-19 vaccination. In fact, one study found that previous COVID-19 was associated with increased adverse events following vaccination with the Comirnaty BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine (Pfizer-BioNTech). In addition, there are rare reports of serious adverse events following COVID-19 vaccination. In Switzerland, residents who can prove they have recovered from a SARS-CoV-2 infection through a positive PCR or other test in the past 12 months are considered equally protected as those who have been fully vaccinated.
Given this evidence, they argue, “policy makers should consider recovery from previous SARS-CoV-2 infection equal to immunity from vaccination for purposes related to entry to public events, businesses, and the workplace, or travel requirements”.
Based on the studies to date, natural immunity appears to convey 80-90% protection against reinfection and, on top of that, 90% protection against serious disease once reinfected, giving around 99% protection against serious reinfection. This protection doesn’t appear to have waned over time or against new variants in the way vaccine protection has done. Omicron may tax the vaccines, but on the evidence so far it seems unlikely to tax natural immunity in the same way.
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Slight distraction. What about the amazing announcement that we will no longer be free in the UK but will need to ask constant permission for access to society against the ever expanding and constantly changing requirements of our police state masters…?
That development, if it transpires, must be met with French Resistance level pushback. For our children’s sake, if not for our own. If they can establish that, atrocities will follow as sure as night follows day.
im ready to visit my local supermarket, load up a couple of trolleys and then walk out. How about you>?
National Socialist Salute needed when walking past covid blokleiters.
But the nearest British equivalent of Tasmanian Senator Jacqui Lambie would be Little Britain’s Fat Pat. More seriously, Lambie had a strange Damascene conversion not long ago on the subject of gene therapy injections. One minute she was grilling Brendan Murphy on how crap the vax damage payout scheme was, and then the next she was screaming in the Senate about how every last person must be hunted down and vaxxed. Perhaps she had a visit from the trench coats.
Yes, somebody or something has got to the Independent federal Senator from Tasmania. The woman who had told a Senate Inquiry into Australia’s Covid vaxx roll-out that her Taswegian constituents (including herself and her friends) were hesitant to take the jab because of the side effects and the lack of compensation should anything go wrong, has gone full Vaxx Brownshirt.
She has spoken with unhinged fury against a motion moved by One Nation senator, Pauline Hanson, to outlaw No-Jab-No-Job vaccine mandates. She has supported the fruit canning and processing giant, SPC, and their introduction of a vaxx mandate for their employees, getting quite gung-ho with the veiled threats: “those anti-vaxxers out there, that 20 or 30 per cent, ah, the ones out there ah protesting on the streets and doing that sort of thing, I think you’re going to find the rest of us coming at you lock, stock and barrel, ah, and we’re going to be putting the pressure on you fairly hard because the rest of us that are trying to do the right thing by the country, and our kids, and get vaccinated and do the right thing, um, I think for you we’re going to start getting even more agitated and we’re going to start getting more hardcore and I think that’s what you’re going to see massive division out there, ah, and it’ll be us on the front foot, that’s what I think’s gonna happen, I think the tide is going to turn, on those anti-vaxxers out there and you are really gunna feel the heat.”
Now it’s Novack’s turn to earn the demented ire of the absolute charmer from the arse-end of Australia.
I don’t particularly like Djokovic’s on court persona but he is a fantastic tennis player and, we now learn, a very brave and principled man.
I suppose it’s a lot easier to be brave and principled when you are a multi-millionaire but I’m sure the pressure on him to give is immense.
Forget the money, he has the chance to move clear as the winner of the most men’s slams in history. To potentially give up the chance to win another (a slam he always wins), shows admirable courage in sticking to his principles.
Maybe he can see a future where he alone remains the ‘fittest’ tennis player…
And perhaps the only tennis player.
If only more of them followed his example.
No one has disclosed what is actually in the various Jabs, and as drug taking is a problem in the sports world he is looking pretty principled..
Djokovic is showing a lot more sense than people like Sergio Agūero, now invalided out of his chosen sport. Djoko’s on court persona is totally irrelevant here.
On the BBC today:
‘Universal mandatory Covid vaccinations are unethical and will not be introduced in England, the health secretary says.
Asked on BBC Breakfast if he envisages compulsory vaccinations, Sajid Javid says no, adding that they have only been introduced in high-risk settings such as for NHS and social care workers.
“I think it’s unethical and also I think that at a practical level having some kind of universal mandate for vaccination doesn’t work,” he says.
On Wednesday, the prime minister suggested there should be national debate on mandatory vaccination but Javid says there is no need for a debate and suggests Boris Johnson was referring to a conversation about “high-risk settings”.
Well, let’s hope so.
Quite, let’s hope so. If they try and force universal mandates, people will get nasty and things will go out of control. Anyway, Bojo, I thought you said 70% vaxxed would be enough for herd immunity. Or was that another lie?
Last year it was let’s just just get the elderly and the vulnerable vaxxed them we can go back to normal!
looking bac k the whole thing was a propaganda master class. I saw a repeat of the woman who was first to get a vaccine in the uk with all the nhs staff standing in a line down the hospital corridor clapping like morons. I actually felt a little bit of stomach acid come up . it was that bad!
It’s ALL lies!
“Believe nothing, trust nobody”
The jabs (not vaccines) ensure that herd immunity can never be reached and the looting can continue as long as the globalists require it to.
Last year we were told 15 million to end the cycle of lockdowns.
I’m sure they’ll be looking at the idea Greece has come up with.. To mandate the clotshots for all over 60s, it’ll solve the pension crisis, the drain on the NHS, the social care issue and free up property all in one move.
Since I’m over 60 I am resigned to the fact I will be shipped off to some camp for dissenting…… But they’ll have to fucking catch me first and I won’t go peacefully.
We’ve an attic you can hide in – at least until they come for us.
Thank you, may need to take youup on that sooner than any of us think.
Welcome. Might be quite crowded, but at least there won’t be any panickers….
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?… The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn , The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956
Don’t burn in the camps.
If (when) there was a ‘national debate’ on compulsory vaccinations, would it be an informed debate I wonder? Would everyone be allowed to participate, or would the filthy unjabbed be banned from entering any debating chamber? Rhetorical. I think we know the answer.
See the ITV poll.
High risk settings like going to the pub? Or working in the private sector?
Lambie is an unhinged nutcase. I would say mad as a box of frogs, but that would be unfair on the mental capacity of cartoned amphibia.
I hear the slow boiling of frogs can be quite fun.
Well, yes – for psychopathic sadists. For MPs? Yes, of course!
Who gives a fuck about tennis when they plan to kill us
In her resignation statement Shithead praises the Pig Dictator
She is so thick that it is oblivious to her that from start to end the Pig Dictator set her up
I suspect they recruit and retain a few thickos for these very purposes
Some people have commented that Plan B was a distraction from the party story
Au contraire, the manufactured party story allowed the introduction of the next stage of Stan’s genocide laws
I agree with most of your sentiments. I am maybe a bit biased because I follow tennis (or used to) but I think this story is important as long as Djokovic sticks to his guns, refuses to reveal his vaxx status and refuses to go to Aus. I don’t want him to have an exemption. A Number 1 sports person in a big money sport who stands up for freedom would be a useful ally.
I think an exemption would be good if he then refused and said all must be treated equally.
Yes
Indeed, but perhaps too much to hope for.
Yes, the fight against the genocidal Covid scam needs to be waged on a broad basis. Djokovic’s firm stand may help some waverers start the wake up process and for that alone it has merit.
Distraction from the Ghislaine Maxwell trial, more likely. I reckon if those facts became known, everyone would forget about the lurgy altogether, as those who seek to control us are very likely to be heavily implicated.
I don’t want this to happen but if a player has a heart attack during the later stages of the Aussie Open how do they spin out of that? Well played Novak, his coaches and management team for being principled.
“The Tasmanian Senator on Thursday morning said the rules were simple and Djokovic shouldn’t receive any special treatment. “
No, you want him to have a not-fully trialled, experimental gene therapy treatment, for an illness that in his case, would have 99.9+% survival rate of he got it!!!!
Refusing him is SPECIAL TREATMENT you clot shot jabbing clots.
I’m sure that he will “cry all the way to the bank”
(Djokovic)
Double vaccinated is so three-months ago. Leading politicians worldwide agree that Immunity these days is only worthwhile after three jabs and the two jabbed are no better than the stinking unjabbed. Are these Australian politicians literally trying to kill people?
YES
Soz, but 3 jabs is already last week’s news. Reports from Israel say a 4th shot will be needed for all, within the near future. Even BG does not force updates of his carp software on us that often.
Any player worth their salt will boycott the australian open in protest against australias crimes against humanity.
Sadly I don’t suppose any will.
Tasmanian devil.
Or Honey Badger?
The Present Mrs Johnson has given birth, hope it wasn’t a forced medical intervention as a distraction
Has it got 666 on its forhead?
No, but it’ll have to be weaned off cake.
As Australia and New Zealand are no longer functioning democracies, they should be excluded from all sporting events.
Ditto the UK, USA, China, ………….
So if you can get a ‘medical exemption’ to jabbing then you don’t need to isolate?
In that case, isolation isn’t necessary for anyone.
I guess all those grandees and their lackeys who attended COP26 must have qualified for ‘medical exemptions’ in order not to need to quarantine?
You have, in fact, caused me to re-think my comment above, Mr Dee. If one can get a medical exemption to a jab, then the jab itself isn’t necessary, never mind being excused other ‘mitigations’. If people who are, say, ‘allergic’ to some component or other of the jabs can be ok without it, then so can anyone else.
And all those grandees and their lackeys you mention? Saline, my dear Mr Dee; they were jabbed with saline only. That dollop Merkel might have risked the actual jab, but she seems frit of her own shadow. Perhaps on account of being an elderly overweight old woman, with who knows what other comorbidities.
“Tasmanian Senator Jacqui Lambie, who believes that Djokovic is trying to exploit a “loophole” to dodge the Grand Slam’s Covid restrictions“
Is there actually any evidence Djokovic is applying for this loophole exemption, beyond the fact that the organisers have apparently included him on the list of players – possibly just wishful thinking on their part?
Seems pointless if so. Why stand on principle over the “vaccine” coercion and then weasel your way in via an exemption?
If he does that then Djokovic is revealed as merely another sporting conformist and hypocrite. But until then, and so long as he sticks to his guns, he remains a fine, and rare, example of real integrity in pro sports. Genuinely courageous, in a genuinely important cause, unlike all those knee-taking conformist virtue signallers.
There should be no discrimination over the “vaccine”, and nobody, whether “vaccinated” or not, should participate in or attend any event that discriminates. By doing so, you condone the discrimination.
Well said, not that I’m sucking up because I need your attic
Oh I don’t know, I have claimed exemption from face coverings.
People should have the legal right to not share medical history, but…nations have the right to exclude any non-citizens from their nation. I despise this who mandate garbage but, it’s not my nation and the Aussies have allows tyrants to rule them, so bigger issues than tennis. But let him play!
Yes it is the Aussie’s choice and I hope he doesn’t play.
In the UK Coercion and Bullying is iIlegal Gov.UK, can they coerce the jab with the threat of restrictions in your life?
Oh the irony of it being called the Australian Open
Utter nonsense – he’s already had the virus and so has natural immunity!
Maybe the sports bods will boycott this event like the UK and USA will boycott the winter olympics.
Nope that is just too plain simple.
Ah, Tasmania, the home of the most effective genocide I’ve heard of against its native people.
There is an ivermectin panic on the big tech and MSM right now. Massive articles from MSM on Ivermectin trying to push a danger narrative and also negative press on Americans Frontline Dr’s, again, to keep the Covid narrative alive. Just go to the Goog and type ivermectin then look at all the panic news articles. We are over the target. Big-Pharma is panicking. This medicine has been widely used by humans without any problems for 40 years. It’s inventor won a Nobel Prize after 20 years of successful use and after 100 million people were cured of a broad spectrum of problems without any side effects. Get your Ivermectin while you still can! https://ivmpharmacy.com
His medical history is no business of this Antipodean harridan.