Posted on 06/17/2023 9:58:28 AM PDT by lightman
People “up to date” with their COVID-19 vaccinations are more likely to get infected, according to a new study.
Vaccinated people who received one of the updated bivalent vaccines had a higher risk of becoming infected when compared to people who had not—a group that included both vaccinated and unvaccinated people—researchers with the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio found.
The higher risk held even after adjusting for factors such as age and job location.
“This study highlights the challenges of counting on protection from a vaccine when the effectiveness of the vaccine decreases over time as new variants emerge that are antigenically very different from those used to develop the vaccine,” Dr. Nabin Shrestha and other researchers said.
The Omicron XBB subvariant became dominant in the United States in January. The bivalent vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer target BA.4 and BA.5, in addition to the old Wuhan strain.
The study, published on the medRxiv server (pdf) on June 12 ahead of peer review, included 48,344 employees of the Cleveland Clinic, 47 percent of whom had evidence of prior infection. Employees were included if they were employed in the fall of 2022, when the bivalent vaccines first became available, and were still employed when the XBB strain and its lineages became dominant. The study covered Jan. 29, 2023, to May 10, 2023. People whose age and sex weren’t available were excluded.
Analyzing the vaccine effectiveness with a Simon-Makuch hazard plot, the researchers treated each employee as “not up to date.” When a worker received a bivalent dose, they started counting as “up to date.” Employees stopped being counted if they were fired.
During the study period, 1,475, or 3 percent of clinic employees, became infected.
Being “not up to date” was associated with a lower risk of infection, with an unadjusted hazard ratio of 0.78 and an adjusted hazard ratio of 0.77. A hazard ratio under one means a smaller risk of infection.
Researchers did not provide vaccine effectiveness estimates because they did not calculate how many of the infected employees were unvaccinated, Shrestha told The Epoch Times via email. Most employees, 87 percent, had received at least one dose of a vaccine.
The Cleveland Clinic has been offering employees tests and vaccinations throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. The health care nonprofit started offering bivalent vaccine doses on Sept. 12, 2022, shortly after it was cleared by regulators and recommended for virtually all vaccinated people by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). ‘Up to Date’
The CDC has defined “up to date” as receiving all recommended vaccine doses. The definition has changed multiple times during the pandemic. It was a primary series at first. Later, a monovalent booster was added.
As of April, being “up to date” for people aged 5 and older means having had one bivalent dose. For children aged six months to 4 years, it means two doses of Moderna’s or three doses of Pfizer’s vaccine. The latest update was made as authorities replaced the old vaccines with the bivalents, which had previously only been available as boosters.
The Cleveland Clinic researchers wanted to see whether people who meet the current definition of “up to date” were better protected than those who do not, given the lack of data for the bivalent vaccines, which were cleared without clinical trial data and to this day lack clinical trial efficacy estimates. The researchers previously found that the more doses a person receives, the more likely they are to get infected.
The finding that being “up to date” did not equal better protection stems from the bivalent not being effective against the XBB lineages, the researchers said. The other reason, they said, is because the CDC does not formally recognize in its vaccination guidance the protection bestowed from prior infection, known as natural immunity.
A key point is that some people who were not up to date became infected with the Omicron subvariants BA.4, BA.5, or BQ, which helped provide them better protection against XBB, the researchers said.
“It is now well-known that SARS-CoV-2 infection provides more robust protection than vaccination,” they said, pointing to three studies, including one they did. “Therefore it is not surprising that not being ‘up-to-date’ according to the CDC definition was associated with a higher risk of prior BA.4/BA.5 or BQ lineage infection, and therefore a lower risk of COVID-19, than being ‘up-to-date’, while the XBB lineages were dominant.”
Strengths of the study include its large sample size and ability to examine the data different ways, such as by date from vaccination and date from a positive test. Limitations included not being able to separate asymptomatic infections from symptomatic infections and, due to a low number of severe illnesses among the study population, the inability of assessing protection against severe illness. Reactions
Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, a former CDC health officer who is now a professor of public health sciences at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine, told The Epoch Times in an email that the limitations mean the study “does not tell us much at all.”
“These types of observational studies cannot adequately adjust for factors that cannot be measured. That’s why randomized controlled trials are the only way to make definitive conclusions,” he said, also predicting the study would not pass peer review.
The authors have submitted the paper to a journal, Shrestha said.
Other experts said the findings indicate the bivalent vaccines don’t protect against XBB.
“The article needs full peer review obviously but does suggest the bivalent COVID-19 vaccination does not offer protection against current circulating COVID-19 infection,” Dennis McGonagle, a clinical professor at the University of Leeds School of Medicine, told The Epoch Times via email. “The high rate of natural infection previously in this large cohort and natural upper respiratory tract immunity, that current vaccines cannot provide, and the likely limited effectiveness of the vaccine to new viral mutants likely has contributed to these findings.”
The CDC did not respond to an inquiry regarding whether the study would prompt officials to consider updating its “up to date” definition and why the agency has never recommended people with prior infection get fewer vaccine doses. It says on its website, “If you recently had COVID-19, you still need to stay up to date with your vaccines.”
Top U.S. officials, including the CDC’s director, met in late 2021 to discuss the matter and opted against changing the recommended schedule despite several outside advisers saying they should. Multiple CDC studies have found that protection from prior infection is superior to vaccination.
The CDC claims that the currently available COVID-19 vaccines “are effective at protecting people from getting seriously ill, being hospitalized, and dying.” Observational studies from the CDC and other entities have estimated the bivalent vaccines provide protection against hospitalization during the BA.4/BA.5 era, but that the protection quickly wanes.
Early data from the XBB era, presented this week by the CDC, showed effectiveness against hospitalization turning negative after just 90 days. The Cleveland Clinic group’s previous paper found negative effectiveness against infection over time. Protection against infection from similar bivalents used in some countries was just 25 percent during a time period mostly covering XBB, Qatari researchers recently reported. They could not calculate effectiveness against severe disease because none of the infected cases progressed to that stage.
“It is often stated that the primary purpose of vaccination is to prevent severe COVID-19 and death,” the Cleveland Clinic researchers said. “We certainly agree with this, but it should be pointed out that there is not a single study that has shown that the COVID-19 bivalent vaccine protects against severe disease or death caused by the XBB lineages of the Omicron variant.”
They added, “People may still choose to get the vaccine, but an assumption that the vaccine protects against severe disease and death is not reason enough to unconditionally push a vaccine of questionable effectiveness to all adults.” Natural Immunity
The researchers also looked at how protective natural immunity was. They found that the protective effect was higher for people who were infected by a recent Omicron subvariant when compared to people who were infected by an early subvariant or pre-Omicron strains.
The researchers did not provide protection estimates for natural immunity against severe disease.
The Qatari researchers previously found that natural immunity from pre-Omicron strains did not protect well against reinfection from Omicron. They were also unable to estimate protection against severe illness, though they found in a separate study that natural immunity remained strongly protective against severe illness after 14 months.
Stopped getting vaccinated in Dec of 21. Got covid in April of 22. Won’t get any more because got side affect 4 days after the shot. Mine is really weird, tongue began to itch.
And more likely to be stupider
Please don’t tell me the whole Covid-19 vaccine mandates weren’t just plans of the Biden administration to enrich the pharma execs and gain their support for 2024 ... oh go ahead and tell me
Impossible. It’s safe and effective against Covid.
B-b-b-but does this mean Fauci and the government and the medical profession LIED TO US?
Watch for my shocked expression coming soon.
Remember, people were canceled, banned and doxxed for daring to question the jabs policy in public. Others lost their jobs. People died after the jabs.
Revenge should balance the scales of the universe.
Is there an “insta”post button or something?
Do you conspire with the thread poster so you can have a pithy post ready to go?
a minute and a half .... like lighting...
and that was a long read(for me)
MARK MY WORDS ... I will be first ..some where ..some way.. some time.........
on topic....
it's incredible that there are still people getting vaxed.
There was a thread on a Gates backed Korean vax being put out there.
Some thing is up with this whole vax thing ...depopulation..
conspiracy theory ?
Personally know several people vaxed with primary series plus 2-3 ‘boosters’. All have had COVID at least once after shots & some have had 2, if not 3 rounds. They are dealing with ‘long COVID’, numerous heart ailments (Afib is most common), including one emergency pacemaker implant, and they get every ‘bug’ that comes down the pike. It’s sad to watch people who were healthy and active prior to the shots barely able to do anything with their calendars full of medical appointments. Several family members and friends have had cancers recur with a vengeance ... two have died within weeks of getting a Stage 4 diagnosis. One seriously vax injured child after mother bullied into getting shots while pregnant. All VACCINATED Joe, you stinkin’ criminal corruptocrat ... and I am being polite.
In other news, water is wet. Film at 11.
Had someone tell me out of the blue that he had COVID and his entire family was positive. Since I have never been tested nor vaxxed I was curious how he found out. He said that they took a home test and it returned positive but apparently none of them were ill.
Strange world of mass hysteria.
Who reads the article???
“Who reads the article???”
But aren’t we suppose to pretend that we read the article?
Now I have to go back and re-read the handbook...
..or pretend to anyhow..
To be honest I usually do read before commenting but some topics I pretty much have made my mind up on.
....DUH.......
Somebody needs to ask Trump if he’s “up to date” on all his boosters, since he’s called all other politicians who don’t give their full status out “gutless.”
My wife a retired RN and a Kaiser patient is thinking about getting a shingles shot and no Covid shots this fall.
People who were vaccinated for shingles had a lower risk of COVID-19 diagnosis or hospitalization, according to a Kaiser Permanente study of people ages 50 and older. The research was published December 28 in The Journal of Infectious Diseases.
The 2 separate analyses gave highly consistent results, showing that people, who had received at least 1 dose of the shingles vaccine were 16% less likely to be diagnosed with COVID-19—no matter how long ago they had received the vaccine.Dec 28, 2022.
Is Covid still a thing?
I never took any Covid shot, so I am not exactly tuned in to the whole process - but nobody I know ever talks about Covid anymore - except when they are talking about the past.
Like “back during Covid blah blah blah..”
“People who were vaccinated for shingles had a lower risk of COVID-19 diagnosis or hospitalization”
Interesting.
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