"Vaccines are wearing off"

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Re: "Vaccines are wearing off"

Post by Woodchopper » Thu Sep 16, 2021 7:29 pm


Pfizer and Moderna said protection from their Covid-19 vaccines can wane over time, as the US drug regulator prepares to consider whether to approve a booster programme.

Ahead of a crucial meeting of the Food and Drug Administration vaccines advisory committee on Friday to discuss its booster proposal, Pfizer on Wednesday submitted a study by Kaiser Permanente Southern California suggesting that vaccine efficacy wanes over time naturally, “irrespective of variant”, rather than as a consequence of the Delta coronavirus strain evading its jab.

Pfizer presented data showing how the vaccine’s protection declined six to eight months after the second dose, becoming gradually less effective in two-month intervals. Vaccine efficacy fell about 6 per cent every two months after the second dose, down from 96.2 per cent a week after full vaccination to 83.7 per cent more than four months later.


The company also cited Israeli data showing that a third booster shot restored protection up to 95 per cent against Covid, documents filed to the FDA show.

Separately, Moderna shared data on Wednesday also showing the protection afforded by its vaccine wanes over time.

“The increased risk of breakthrough infections in . . . participants who were vaccinated last year compared to more recently illustrates the impact of waning immunity and supports the need for a booster to maintain high levels of protection,” said Stéphane Bancel, Moderna’s chief executive.
https://www.ft.com/content/8d42600f-7da ... 735c6f73c7

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Re: "Vaccines are wearing off"

Post by Woodchopper » Fri Sep 17, 2021 2:07 pm


What pushed Israel out of herd immunity? Modeling COVID-19 spread of Delta and Waning immunity
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101 ... 21263451v1

tl;dr Both of them

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Re: "Vaccines are wearing off"

Post by jimbob » Fri Sep 17, 2021 4:13 pm

Have you considered stupidity as an explanation

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Re: "Vaccines are wearing off"

Post by Herainestold » Fri Sep 17, 2021 6:55 pm

Well obviously immunity is waning or we wouldn't be doing boosters.

The surveillance report has some good information on transmission, but unfortunately it is pre Delta.

The combination of low efficacy against transmissiom, which wanes much more quickly than protection against severe disease,and waning immunity in older age cohorts, makes it look like the fall and winter will not be pleasant. I have got my fingers crossed for an October lockdown, but it is looking less likely.
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Re: "Vaccines are wearing off"

Post by headshot » Fri Sep 17, 2021 7:07 pm

Herainestold wrote:
Fri Sep 17, 2021 6:55 pm
The combination of low efficacy against transmissiom, which wanes much more quickly than protection against severe disease,and waning immunity in older age cohorts, makes it look like the fall and winter will not be pleasant.
We call it autumn in the UK.

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Re: "Vaccines are wearing off"

Post by basementer » Fri Sep 17, 2021 7:24 pm

He has used vernacular Canadian before.
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Re: "Vaccines are wearing off"

Post by Herainestold » Fri Sep 17, 2021 7:40 pm

basementer wrote:
Fri Sep 17, 2021 7:24 pm
He has used vernacular Canadian before.
And will continue to do so.
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Re: "Vaccines are wearing off"

Post by lpm » Fri Sep 17, 2021 8:15 pm

You know cases are falling, right?
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Re: "Vaccines are wearing off"

Post by Woodchopper » Fri Sep 17, 2021 8:27 pm

lpm wrote:
Fri Sep 17, 2021 8:15 pm
You know cases are falling, right?
Depends upon the timescale. I think the graph has been undulating since the beginning of August.

I’ll wait longer until I’ll declare a fall.

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Re: "Vaccines are wearing off"

Post by lpm » Fri Sep 17, 2021 8:43 pm

It didn't undulate. It rose in August. It fell in Sept. Now back to level of mid August.

And that's with the major unlocking step of reopening schools 2 weeks ago.
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Re: "Vaccines are wearing off"

Post by Bird on a Fire » Fri Sep 17, 2021 8:57 pm

Woodchopper wrote:
Fri Sep 17, 2021 8:27 pm
lpm wrote:
Fri Sep 17, 2021 8:15 pm
You know cases are falling, right?
Depends upon the timescale. I think the graph has been undulating since the beginning of August.

I’ll wait longer until I’ll declare a fall.
We call it autumn in the UK.
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Re: "Vaccines are wearing off"

Post by Woodchopper » Sat Sep 18, 2021 3:43 am

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Fri Sep 17, 2021 8:57 pm
Woodchopper wrote:
Fri Sep 17, 2021 8:27 pm
lpm wrote:
Fri Sep 17, 2021 8:15 pm
You know cases are falling, right?
Depends upon the timescale. I think the graph has been undulating since the beginning of August.

I’ll wait longer until I’ll declare a fall.
We call it autumn in the UK.
:D

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Re: "Vaccines are wearing off"

Post by Woodchopper » Sat Sep 18, 2021 4:21 am

A good summary:

COVID vaccine immunity is waning — how much does that matter?
As debates about booster shots heat up, what’s known about the duration of vaccine-based immunity is still evolving.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02532-4

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Re: "Vaccines are wearing off"

Post by Woodchopper » Sat Sep 18, 2021 4:30 am

lpm wrote:
Fri Sep 17, 2021 8:43 pm
It didn't undulate. It rose in August. It fell in Sept. Now back to level of mid August.

And that's with the major unlocking step of reopening schools 2 weeks ago.
Whatever it’s doing the situation since early August is markedly different from earlier in the pandemic. Previously, for most of the time cases had been rising exponentially, falling exponentially, or had flatlined close to zero over the summer months.

Since early August, as you write, the movements on the graph haven’t been nearly as dramatic. The obvious cause is mass immunity from vaccination and prior infection.

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Re: "Vaccines are wearing off"

Post by sTeamTraen » Sat Sep 18, 2021 9:07 pm

The theme of 2022 - unless everyone decides that Covid is to be lived with like the flu, with no special measures - is going to be the expiry of immunity, as much in administrative terms as physiological.

For example, suppose you had your second Pfizer shot in April 2021. You now have a certificate saying you have been vaccinated. Until when is that coverage considered to be valid, in that it will let you travel or get into a restaurant? Not many countries have answered that yet, but Austria already has: 360 days. And 270 days for Janssen.

Relatedly, but separately, is the question of the expiry of the certificates themselves, at least for the EU certificates. I had my second dose on 1 July 2021 and my Spanish certificate, from the Balearic Islands health authority expires, on 23 May 2023. But if I get one from the Spanish national health ministry, it expires on 3 June 2023. The same applies to a friend's test certificate from early August, which is also "valid" (at the level of the certificate, within the EU-format data) until 23 May 2023, although the test itself was only valid for 24 hours if going to France, 48 hours if going to Germany, 72 hours if going to Denmark, or 3 days (at any time within three calendar days) going to the UK.

Presumably the various governments (times 4 for the UK nations and their respective NHS's, oh joy) will have to come up with some kind of rules about this (unless everyone is to be asked for an individual antibody test, aargh). Then people who are planning to travel can play the same kind of bingo as they have been doing up to now with the start, as opposed to the end, of immunity. (Top prize goes to Ireland, where immunity officially starts 7 days after your second Pfizer dose, 14 days after your second Moderna or only Janssen dose, and 15 days (WTF) after your second AstraZeneca dose.)

The permutations are going to be dizzying, because there is a good chance that people will have boosters that are not the same vaccine as their first two doses (we already have plenty of people in Spain who had AZ first and Pfizer second; they can't get out of UK quarantine with that.) By 2022 there will be several more vaccines on the market and governments are either going to have to throw up their hands and say something simple like "Most recent dose less than 365/500/730 days ago", or embark on the production of complicated tables which the average punter will have very little chance of understanding.
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Re: "Vaccines are wearing off"

Post by Millennie Al » Sun Sep 19, 2021 2:08 am

A vaccine certificate (i.e. something which says which vaccines you got and on which on a dates) should no more expire than your birth certificate. It is an error of bureaucracy to confuse the real world with its paperwork. As to the actual effect of vaccine wearing off, that may vary from one type to another, so would need to be evaluated with regard to which vaccines were administered (which, of course, will not necessarily be just one type) and when. But it's clear that there's anything usefully achieved by this. Vaccine passports might be useful for persuading people to get vaccinated, but it doesn't prevent them getting and spreading the disease, so why keep them?

And, if immunity does substantially decline, it's quite possible that we'll move into a situation where it declines in an area until an outbreak occurs, conferring natural immunity for some time, with this causing chaotic variation in number of infections, which will doubtless result in lots of people seeing patterns which are not there.

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Re: "Vaccines are wearing off"

Post by sTeamTraen » Sun Sep 19, 2021 12:15 pm

Millennie Al wrote:
Sun Sep 19, 2021 2:08 am
And, if immunity does substantially decline, it's quite possible that we'll move into a situation where it declines in an area until an outbreak occurs, conferring natural immunity for some time, with this causing chaotic variation in number of infections, which will doubtless result in lots of people seeing patterns which are not there.
You seem to have aggregated declining immunity within individuals into a rather speculative model, which might perhaps be epidemiologically interesting if you could find some evidence for it (for "natural immunity" to have an effect would seem to require a large percentage of people to be infected, which individuals may not be queuing up to do).

But my point is more about the reactions of governments, which will typically be one-size-fits-all and apply regardless of someone's actual immunity level. We've seen that even with the EU they are not very good at explicitly coordinating their policies on any of the versions of the certificate or vaccine efficacy (I would love to have been in the meeting where an Irish scientist argued to the government that there was a compelling reason to assume that immunity kicked in after 14 days for Moderna but 15 days for AZ), because they like to show that British / Irish / Austrian / Dutch / French scientists are The Best In The World and We Don't Need To Take Our Science From Foreigners, while at the same time quietly benefiting from the situation whereby pretty much everyone can go on holiday as long as they had a full vaccine course at least a month ago.

It's also going to be much more complicated with vaccine "expiry" than with test expiry because at present you can't just go and get another one (although perhaps as vaccine supply continues to increase we will see boosters available for £30 in pharmacies). So it doesn't matter quite so much that to enter France your antigen test has to be less old then the one you needed to enter Germany, because getting a test is a minor inconvenience. There are people near me who can't travel quarantine-free to the UK and perhaps even to some other EU countries because it's not possible for them to correct an unusual aspect of their vaccine record (two different doses, one dose plus Covid, doses in different countries if the certificate isn't in a particular form) and they can't fix that by just getting another jab.

We've seen repeatedly how governments struggle to find the balance between fairness ("It's ridiculous that we can't do A or B just because they are a bit like C") and complexity ("You can only do C with one person from outside your household or three from within it"), and I wouldn't bet on them getting this right either.
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Re: "Vaccines are wearing off"

Post by Millennie Al » Mon Sep 20, 2021 2:05 am

sTeamTraen wrote:
Sun Sep 19, 2021 12:15 pm
Millennie Al wrote:
Sun Sep 19, 2021 2:08 am
And, if immunity does substantially decline, it's quite possible that we'll move into a situation where it declines in an area until an outbreak occurs, conferring natural immunity for some time, with this causing chaotic variation in number of infections, which will doubtless result in lots of people seeing patterns which are not there.
You seem to have aggregated declining immunity within individuals into a rather speculative model,
Indeed. I'd go as far as to call it "highly speculative". There will be a complex web of interacting factors: personal immunity, people's reaction to news about cases, governments' reactions to medical facts, people and government reacting to each other and to predictions, etc. Maybe even things like weather encouraging or discouraging more ventilation.

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Re: "Vaccines are wearing off"

Post by Bird on a Fire » Tue Sep 21, 2021 1:55 pm

A bit of pharmacovigilance data for Janssen suggests it's working well:
On Monday, the French Medicines Agency (ANSM) indicated that a "significant number" of cases of failure of the Janssen Covid-19 vaccine, which works with a single dose, had been detected in that country.

"A significant number of cases of Janssen vaccine failure have been reported, including severe forms (death, resuscitation) as well as an above-normal presence of patients vaccinated with Janssen in the intensive care of two CHU (University Hospital Centers)," said the ANSM.

In Portugal, according to Infarmed, out of a total of 36 serious situations detected, “five led to hospitalisation and 31 were considered clinically relevant”.

“Considering that in Portugal more than one million doses of this vaccine have already been administered, this would represent an incidence of four reported cases per 100,000 vaccines”, added the national regulator, guaranteeing that this number of notifications “is far below the expected value, taking into account the results obtained in the clinical trials used for the approval of this vaccine”.

In France, among people vaccinated with the Janssen vaccine, 32 cases of infection with covid-19 were reported, corresponding to an incidence of 3.78 cases per 100,000 people.
https://www.theportugalnews.com/news/20 ... letter-603
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Re: "Vaccines are wearing off"

Post by sTeamTraen » Tue Sep 21, 2021 6:54 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Tue Sep 21, 2021 1:55 pm
A bit of pharmacovigilance data for Janssen suggests it's working well:
On Monday, the French Medicines Agency (ANSM) indicated that a "significant number" of cases of failure of the Janssen Covid-19 vaccine, which works with a single dose, had been detected in that country.

"A significant number of cases of Janssen vaccine failure have been reported, including severe forms (death, resuscitation) as well as an above-normal presence of patients vaccinated with Janssen in the intensive care of two CHU (University Hospital Centers)," said the ANSM.

In Portugal, according to Infarmed, out of a total of 36 serious situations detected, “five led to hospitalisation and 31 were considered clinically relevant”.

“Considering that in Portugal more than one million doses of this vaccine have already been administered, this would represent an incidence of four reported cases per 100,000 vaccines”, added the national regulator, guaranteeing that this number of notifications “is far below the expected value, taking into account the results obtained in the clinical trials used for the approval of this vaccine”.

In France, among people vaccinated with the Janssen vaccine, 32 cases of infection with covid-19 were reported, corresponding to an incidence of 3.78 cases per 100,000 people.
https://www.theportugalnews.com/news/20 ... letter-603
A million doses of Janssen out of a total population of 10 million? That's a lot. Here in Spain it's 2.3 million (delivered from the factory) for 47 million people, so half as much per head.

I wonder if the greater convenience of the Janssen (one-shot) vaccine is part of what explains the difference between Spain's (not bad) vaccination rate of 80% and Portugal's excellent 87%?
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Re: "Vaccines are wearing off"

Post by shpalman » Tue Sep 21, 2021 9:09 pm

I calculated fewer than about 1.5 million doses of J&J given in Italy out of a population of 60 million. The maximum number delivered was 2.26 million.

It wouldn't surprise me if J&J turns out to start wearing off after 10-12 weeks, since that was the length of the Phase III trial and they only tested a single-dose regime. If AstraZeneca had done the same I'd expect they'd have got the same result, but they quickly modified theirs to a two-dose protocol. But later data from Britain indicates the first dose protects well up until about 10-12 weeks...
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Re: "Vaccines are wearing off"

Post by purplehaze » Wed Sep 22, 2021 9:33 am

I'm on an ONS survey and have been for quite a while. I'm double vaccinated, AZ, March and May and patiently awaiting my booster - I'm in the age group to get it.

It took a month for me to develop antibodies after my first jab in March but in April, May and June I tested positive for anti-bodies. I was away in July and August when the tests took place, although other members of my family did the tests - they've had Pfizer. Both swabs and bloods are now self testing - a finger prick is used for the bloods. The test results do specify if there is a test failure.

So after my summer hiatus, I did tests in September, it has come back negative for antibodies and the swab is negative for Covid. This could be that the vaccine has worn off or it could be a false negative. I'm hopeful that next month I test positive again for antibodies but I also want the booster.

The youngest taking this survey (19) tested positive for anti-bodies a week after his first jab but unfortunately he did get Covid which shows up on his test.

Should I request the Pfizer booster?

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Re: "Vaccines are wearing off"

Post by lpm » Wed Sep 22, 2021 10:18 am

You'll be getting a Pfizer. Unless you get a Moderna. No AZs for the booster program.

It will be six months after your second, i.e. in November.

Not having antibodies doesn't mean the vaccine has worn off, it just means the antibody part of the response is fading as per normal.
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Re: "Vaccines are wearing off"

Post by purplehaze » Wed Sep 22, 2021 10:58 am

Moderna is not being given as a booster.

November is a long time. I'm a carer for my son and have been trying to get my mother proper homecare in case anything happens to her sons, youngest and oldest, who look after her. She lives in Northern Ireland. My youngest brother is having serious prostate problems - mid 50s - and my oldest brother is cynical about the booster.

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Re: "Vaccines are wearing off"

Post by purplehaze » Wed Sep 22, 2021 11:01 am

Sorry, Moderna is not being given where I live in England.

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