People ‘Up to Date’ With COVID-19 Vaccines More Likely to Be Infected: Study

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.

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.

the cleveland clinic study concluded that the reason unvaxed and non-up-to-date-vaxed had lower infection rates was primarily because those folks had better immunity from having acquired natural infection as a result of NOT being faxed or fully vaxed ...

in effect, as long as one CONTINUES to take fake vax doses, one is less likely to acquire the much more powerful immunity acquired from natural infection ...

IOW, one becomes dependent upon taking the fake fax for a lifetime to avoid the powerful immunity provided by natural infection ...

of course, a MAJOR downside of such a lifetime of fake vaxing is all of the many possible morbid and/or mortal consequences that have been repeatedly demonstrated from constant exposure to injections of mRNA, particularly those which contain many broken and or fragmented mRNA segments due to poor initial purity as well as degradation due to poor handling during the many steps of transportation and storage occurring from production to injection ..

copied from the actual cleveland clinic study:

Discussion

This study found that not being “up-to-date” on COVID-19 vaccination, using the current CDC
definition, was associated with a lower risk of COVID-19 than being “up-to-date”, while the XBB lineages
were the dominant circulating strains of SARS-CoV-2.
There are two reasons why not being “up-to-date” on COVID-19 vaccination by the CDC
definition was associated with a lower risk of COVID-19. The first is that the bivalent vaccine was
somewhat effective against strains that were more similar to the strains on the basis of which the bivalent
vaccine was developed, but is not effective against the XBB lineages of the Omicron variant [2]. The
second is that the CDC definition does not consider the protective effect of immunity acquired from prior
infection. Because the COVID-19 bivalent vaccine provided some protection against the BA.4/BA.5 and
BQ lineages [2], those “not-up-to-date” were more likely than those “up-to-date” to have acquired a
BA.4/BA.5 or BQ lineage infection when those lineages were the dominant circulating strains. It is now
well-known that SARS-CoV-2 infection provides more robust protection than vaccination [4,11,12].
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.
The strengths of our study include its large sample size, and its conduct in a healthcare system that
devoted resources to have an accurate accounting of who had COVID-19, when COVID-19 was
diagnosed, who received a COVID-19 vaccine, and when. The study methodology, treating vaccination
status as a time-dependent covariate, allowed for determining vaccine effectiveness in real time. Adjusting
for the propensity to get tested for COVID-19 should have mitigated against concern that individuals who
bothered to remain up-to-date on COVID-19 vaccination may have been more likely to get tested for
COVID-19 when they had symptoms.
Our study was limited to examination of all detected infections. We were unable to distinguish
between symptomatic and asymptomatic infections, and the rarity of severe illnesses precluded studying
It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license .
(which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.
medRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.06.09.23290893; this version posted June 12, 2023. The copyright holder for this preprint
whether being “up-to-date” decreased severity of illness. Information on prior COVID-19 would have been
incomplete, as many asymptomatic and mildly symptomatic infections would have been missed. There
may have been unconsidered variables that might have influenced the results. Lastly, our study was done
in a healthcare population, and included no children and few elderly subjects, and the majority of study
subjects would not have been immunocompromised.
This study’s findings question the wisdom of promoting the idea that every person needs to be
“up-to-date” on COVID-19 vaccination, as currently defined, at this time. It is often stated that the primary
purpose of vaccination is to prevent severe COVID-19 and death. 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. At least one
prior study has failed to find a protective effect of the bivalent vaccine against the XBB lineages of SARSCoV-2 [2]. 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.
In conclusion, this study found that not being “up-to-date” on COVID-19 vaccination by the CDC
definition was associated with a lower risk of COVID-19 than being “up-to-date”. 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. It also demonstrates the folly of risk classification based solely on receipt of a vaccine of
questionable effectiveness while ignoring protection provided by prior infection.

“Many people that got vaccinated believed the initial hype that once they got shots they were bulletproof from COVID and did not do anything additional to protect against becoming infected during time periods when there was ALOT of COVID transmission.”

i think there’s some truth to that ... a primary doctor of mine, whom i USED to respect, got the clot shot very early on, and while everyone else was masking up, he took his off during my exam ... i asked him why, and he said he’d been vaxed so he didn’t need to worry anymore ... he then proceeded to spend a HUGE amount of time exhorting me to get vaxed, time i was paying him by the hour and which was unrelated to my consultation ... i was pretty P.O.ed about the whole thing ...

but THEN, he completely panicked a few weeks later when he finally discovered that the clot shot didn’t actually work all that great, and he refused to meet with patients face-to-face at all and would take only virtual consultations, the result of which nearly killed his private practice ...

all of the above would have been completely unavoidable for him had he just read a few widely available and credible medical papers [as well as CDC’s own information, even at that time] that the clot shot did NOT confer immunity or prevent communicability ... instead, he apparently chose to base his medical practice on propaganda in the popular press ...

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