www.axios.com
Despite the vaccines rapidly dwindling effectiveness against COVID infections, particularly with omicron…what’s that? Vaccines don’t prevent infections per say, correct?
I’d like to see support for this statement. The main complaint I saw from doctors was when the CDC reduced the quarantine period to 5 days.
Vaccines don't prevent infection. They teach our immune system how to neutralize the infection. They can only prevent infection by stopping community spread. If everybody’s immune system is killing the virus, then it cannot spread. If it cannot spread, it cannot reproduce and it dies out.
If you ask the CDC in Fall 2021 or later, then you’d be right- vaccines now “stimulate an immune responseagainst diseases”. They have forwarded this idea that understanding vaccination to imply disease prevention is some sort of fallacy.
I’m quite aware of how vaccines work. I would my preferred definition is this:
Immunity is much more specific than “immune response”. Immunity typically implies prevention. Prevention is not absolute, it does not necessarily imply success. Oral contraceptives are said to “prevent” pregnancy but that does not mean they are 100% successful.
Not one says “prevent infection” as you did. There is a difference. You painstakingly parsed minute details of the CDC statements, so I hope you can apply the same rigor to your own.
Wow. So much nonsense. Per the old definition your Grandfather (hope he's well) did not receive a vaccine because his body did not produce (enough) immunity. The new definition acknowledges that the act of vaccination has does not account for the host-dependent requirements of developing immunity. Two long posts about vaccine inefficacy expectations, when the current initial full vaccination still provides 95% risk reduction for death and 50% risk reduction for any infection. The vaccines may have dropping efficacy in humoral immunity (antibody production) that prevents infection, however, the cellular immunity part seems to last longer, which prevents severe disease.
technofog.substack.com
We’re talking about two different scenarios. With the flu, you have a vaccine that was designed a year in advance predicting the 3-4 most likely strains. If it’s not effective in preventing illness, it’s more than likely because the virus has mutated. But that’s not really the failure of the vaccine itself, it’s the failure to design the right one. Obviously the future cannot be reliably predicted and ineffective flu vaccines are to be expected.
technofog.substack.com
I’m still not clear why some vaccines are regarded as “lifetime” and others not. I understand the changing mutating nature of flu and COVID, but why are measles, mumps, TB or polio considered lifetime?.
CDC Emails: Our Definition of Vaccine is "Problematic"
CDC: Problematic Vaccine? No, Problematic Definition of Vaccine.
Interesting to see the true motivations behind this change.
Oftentimes the vaccine failure in patients are caused by the lack of an immune response. I guess since not everyone will form an immune response their definition is still wrong, if you use the same reasoning they used, which lets keep in mind was adopted from a bunch of anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorists. People highly regarded for their reasoning skills (sarcasm).
The CDC, or at least these employees seem to have thought the antivaxxers had a legitimate point. I would argue they did not, but these emails appear to be between communications department staff, not medical professionals or scientists. But this seems to be another example of the CDC doing ridiculous things to protect the perception of the vaccine or their public health policies.
We’re talking about two different scenarios. With the flu, you have a vaccine that was designed a year in advance predicting the 3-4 most likely strains. If it’s not effective in preventing illness, it’s more than likely because the virus has mutated. But that’s not really the failure of the vaccine itself, it’s the failure to design the right one. Obviously the future cannot be reliably predicted and ineffective flu vaccines are to be expected.
It’s another scenario to have a vaccine for a virus that works very well and the stops working despite the virus having not changed to any significant degree.
The reality some vaccines lose efficacy with time (which is actually the case with the flu vaccine, it’s effects just happen to last long enough to get through most of the flu season, same with tetanus, etc)- COVID vaccine included. So rather admit the shortcoming of the COVID vaccines (as all pharmaceutical do) and say the acquired immunity from the COVID vaccine diminishes with time, they instead try to change the definition of a vaccine to essentially say vaccines don’t have the intention of providing protection / preventing disease.
Similarly, rather than say disease prevention is decreased because COVID has mutated and the vaccine is no longer or the optimal design for the given variant, they say vaccines weren’t supposed to provide protection to begin with.
Then why did the FDA indicate the vaccines “for prevention of” COVID-19 and why did the FDA base their vaccines efficacy primarily off of prevention of COVID?
Rather than providing the public education to explain why vaccines don’t always work and how they can still be helpful if you catch the disease, they fight the criticism by changing definitions to something incredibly vague? As if that’s going to be more convincing.
These emails suggest these CDC employees thought the antivaxxers had a legitimate claim. The subtext is
Let me make an analogy. Antipsychotics are “a type of psychiatric medication which are available on prescription to treat psychosis”. I can give a patient an antipsychotic, but it doesn’t mean it’s going to work aka they receive treatment. In fact, 10-15% of psychotic people won’t ever respond to antipsychotics from day zero, but up to 50% stop responding long term. Does that mean we need to change the definition? How about “a psychiatric medicine often prescribed to patients diagnosed with psychosis”? Perfect!
The definition of a pharmaceutical class is based on what the intention of what the product is ideally supposed to do, not be worded to encompass situations where it does not work. As we’ve established nothing is 100% effective. But the entire basis of vaccines lies on the idea of immunity, including partial immunity, and preventing disease. That’s why COVID , Flu, MMR, etc vaccines are technically classified as prophylactic vaccines and are legally considered preventative healthcare.
As I mentioned, this is really just an academic debate as it has no bearing on clinical practice or research or regulations. As I mentioned earlier, so don’t love their old definition, but the new one is terrible. My concern however is that this type of reactionary, political (not so much L/R politics but rather throwing the weight of the govt around) nonsense and wordplay only encourages distrust of the health authorities and clinical healthcare industry. The irony is, the more they try to control public perceptions through aggressive and flagrant actions, the worse they and the policies they support are perceived.
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www.snopes.com
Biden was factually incorrect about this, however, the infection risk was reduced by >>90% pre Delta, and we didn't have reliable Delta data then (I know, I tried to find it). So he was wrong, but considering the mature available data suggested you are very unlikely to get COVID. Thus the statement was approximately correct, the issue was the absolutistic presentation. Some people just revise history by applying our current knowledge to the past. Again let me compare this to Trump's saying COVID is "just a flu" when the data widely available then indicated 100x higher mortality.Did Biden Say You Won't Get COVID if You're Vaccinated?
Biden overstated the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccinations during a July 2021 town hall.
Can't wait to see how this is spun here.
Cellular immunity is a synonym for cell-mediated immunity.
A super malignant anatomy professor of mine had one good saying: "Nomenclature is made by those who can't do science". (He flunked hundreds of people out of medical school on nomenclature questions..). If you've ever written a consent form for a study, one of the requirements is to make it readable on a <8th (usually 6th) grade literacy level. You for some reason feel entitled/tasked to create a definition nobody asked you to make up that manages to fail at simplicity.I would agree new definition considers host dependent factors, it also recognizes therapeutic vaccines which we’ll probably see more of in the future… but that’s not why they changed the definition according to their own public statement.
And apparently this was the conversation behind the scenes.
CDC Emails: Our Definition of Vaccine is "Problematic"
CDC: Problematic Vaccine? No, Problematic Definition of Vaccine.
Of course the link goes nowhere. The raw reporting of COVID deaths from Israel in August 2021 showed much higher derivable efficacy numbers. So here you are a Pharmacist, spreading unsubstantiated COVID information reverberating a climate change denying congressman funded by Big Fossil fighting against Big Pharma?! Give me a break!
You're going in circles. I don't care too much about it. Promoting immunity doesn't necessarily mean protection. Remember, that CDC needs to keep it simple.
"produce protection from a specific disease". Neutrophil activity is classified as innate immunity and not adaptive immunity, thus not specific to a disease, so no their definition isn't wrong. Your reasoning is. This is immunology 101.
IgM (immature antibody) production rises in a few days, peaks in about 7 and you'll get IgG (mature antibody) production crossing over between days 5-10. Of course you need IgA to prevent mucosal entry. I don't know what the specific dynamics of cellular immunity are, and I suspect this time it's not entirely my personal ignorance, but it's being much harder to track.
CARs are irrelevant to current discussion.
I understand, but you don't even realize how hard you're moving the goal posts. You mentioned Influenza. Well, dive a little into asymptomatic influenza (there's a BMJ paper on this from ~2015). If we tested for Influenza like we test for COVID the Influenza vaccine efficacy numbers would be much lower than what you're referring to. And before @Herdfan will come up with a Trump quote, no, I'm not advocating for less COVID testing.
CDC processed up to Dec 4. Risk of infection is 2x higher in the unvaccinated, which translates to 50% risk reduction. This number is 20-fold lower mortality among fully vaccinated. But if I use publicly reported data from hospitals I worked at, 75% of COVID admissions are unvaccinated and 25% people of adults are unvaccinated. Do your math. I did mine, and all of this meet my definition of "protection".
You might think it's a simple question, but it's not. It's actually a billion dollar question. Just think about how HIV doesn't have a vaccine, versus mumps is considered a one-and-done disease. TB vaccine (BCG - Bacillus Calmette Guérin) has a debated efficacy, thus not given in the USA.
I haven't heard experts refute this directly (although YMMV depending and sources), in fact they've said natural immunity certainly may provide protection. The problem is the amount of protection is all over the place, the vaccine at least guarantees a certain and consistent level for most with few exceptions. Besides, with millions dead I would ask who would want to risk it for natural immunity.What about immunity in the sense of cell mediated immunity? Would that not apply?
I would agree new definition considers host dependent factors, it also recognizes therapeutic vaccines which we’ll probably see more of in the future… but that’s not why they changed the definition according to their own public statement.
And apparently this was the conversation behind the scenes.
CDC Emails: Our Definition of Vaccine is "Problematic"
CDC: Problematic Vaccine? No, Problematic Definition of Vaccine.
I would argue “promoting protection” occurs because you are “promoting immunity” or some form to some degree. Promoting is not promising and it also implies partial effects are possible. The CDC’s definition of immunity is “protection from infectious disease”. So now we’re going around in circles.
Based on their definition would Neupogen now be a vaccine? It “promotes protection” by stimulating neutrophil production. These neutrophils protect “against disease” such as bacterial infections and cancers… or neutropenia of course. I think it fits the definition quite well but we both know it’s definitely not a vaccine.
I suppose the issue with depending too much on cellular immunity (in healthy individuals) is it’s delayed response time compared to humoral. More time to incubate means more time to replicate, more time to spread, more time to mutate, etc. Cell mediated response takes what- 6-8 days? Versus a couple with antibodies?
T-cell targeted therapies would be quite interesting… along the lines of allogenic CAR-T cells except for infection and hopefully absent the cytotoxicity problems and absurd costs.
I never said vaccines don’t have utility or that people should not be vaccinated. I am addressing specifically the topic of disease prevention in the context of diminishing efficacy.
I’m curious about your source on the 50% protection or is that internal data? I’ve seen 30-40% reported, but not exactly top tier quality studies. Obviously a lot of cofounders at this point- +/- booster, vaccine mixing/matching, timing, etc.
The fact that you would re-post such a source tells everybody here everything they need to know. This is conspiracy theory BS. Anybody that passed a basic logic course in high school could easily refute the false conclusion they made:What about immunity in the sense of cell mediated immunity? Would that not apply?
I would agree new definition considers host dependent factors, it also recognizes therapeutic vaccines which we’ll probably see more of in the future… but that’s not why they changed the definition according to their own public statement.
And apparently this was the conversation behind the scenes.
CDC Emails: Our Definition of Vaccine is "Problematic"
CDC: Problematic Vaccine? No, Problematic Definition of Vaccine.
Read the actual sources they posted. The CDC definition of vaccine was way out of date, and not consistent with current science. Nobody “tried to change reality.”
