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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   Edited 2yr ago   38806 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022

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https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-19993-w

A study out of Japan shows no neutralizing ability against Omnicron for double vaccinated individuals 6 months post-jab. One out of the 6 sera actually showed ADE, or antibody dependent enhancement of infection.

Finally, we examined the effect of sera after vaccination against infection with the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron strain. Clone 35 cells were cultured in the presence of sera collected before vaccination (Supplemental Fig. 7A) or on day 175 after the second vaccination (Supplemental Fig. 7B) along with authentic SARS-CoV-2 Omicron virus. Although some sera maintained neutralizing activity against the original strain (Supplemental Fig. 6D) even on day 175 after the second vaccination, none of these sera had neutralizing activity against Omicron (Supplemental Fig. 7B). Rather, one serum (HC6) exhibited some ADE activity (Supplemental Fig. 7B). The observed augmentation in infection with Omicron was serum dose-dependent and required ACE2, because the parental cell line (K-ML2, lacking ACE2 and TMPRSS2) of clone 35 exhibited no infection with Omicron even in the presence of serum (Supplemental Fig. 8). These results suggest that the rapid spread of Omicron around the world may in part result from the lack of cross-neutralization against Omicron and some ADE activity of sera after vaccination.

This seems to provide evidence that the mRNA vaccine is harmful in regards to omnicron, rather than merely ineffective, at around 6 months post-injection. ADE is what happens when your immune system enhances an infection rather than lodging an attack against it. Dengue fever is a common example for ADE because your second infection is can be worse than the first, as your immune system aids in the infectivity.

The study did not look at before or after 6 months. An earlier Japanese study hinted to the possibility of ADE two years ago iirc, specifically focusing on possible COVID-19 mutations.

ADE has been this mythical specter in online conspiracy theory circles. If it is proven that ADE is real at all relevant post-injection timespans for omnicron and/or other mutations, this would vindicate many COVID conspiracy theorists in an important aspect of the vaccination effort.

What's the effect on severe outcomes such as hospitalisation and death? My understanding for a while has been that vaccinations are quite effective for these against Omicron while not being particularly effective against infection. Should this cause me to update my beliefs?

I think it’s complicated. If ADE is occurring without any neutralization, as far as I know this means the vaccine is plainly increasing infectivity and severity, but not necessarily significantly. The whole point of a vaccine is to launch antibodies to neutralize, not enhance infectivity.

Population-level surveys are really terrible at telling us anything about vaccine protection because of the Selection Effect. The healthiest 1% of people are much more likely to take all recommended health measures, like vaccines. So for instance, those who get the flu vaccine in the summer have half the all-cause mortality over the summer, not because the vaccine was effective, but because the cohort of people who opt-in to optional recommended health practices are going to be healthier than the average.

At the same time, there exists a bottom 1% of healthy people who literally eschew all health interventions and keep terrible lifestyle habits. Some of these are alcoholics, homeless, schizophrenics, shut-ins, whatever. They are far more likely to be unvaccinated because they are far less likely to participate in any health intervention.

Whenever the media talks about population surveys saying unvaccinated have higher hospitalization, it means virtually nothing without factoring in the above, plus factoring in invisible damages of vaccination. Hence there’s a need to look at other kinds of studies: sera studies and controlled studies. Controlled studies found no difference in mortality with 20k adherents, and sera studies have results like in OP.

You usually need a little more analysis than a link and a summary for a toplevel post 'round these parts... This is one of many studies seeming to show the covid vaxxes are less effective than hoped / advertised in 2021. Why does this move the needle more than what we already know?

Updated. Forgot ADE is still niche terminology

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