FDA expands Pfizer boosters for more teens as omicron surges https://www.wral.com/coronavirus/fd...rs-for-more-teens-as-omicron-surges/20060539/ The U.S. is expanding COVID-19 boosters as it confronts the omicron surge, with the Food and Drug Administration allowing extra Pfizer shots for children as young as 12. Boosters already are recommended for everyone 16 and older, and federal regulators on Monday decided they’re also warranted for 12- to 15-year-olds once enough time has passed since their last dose. But the move, coming as classes restart after the holidays, isn’t the final step. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention must decide whether to recommend boosters for the younger teens. Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC’s director, is expected to rule later this week. The FDA also said everyone 12 and older who's eligible for a Pfizer booster can get one as early as five months after their last dose rather than six months. FDA vaccine chief Dr. Peter Marks said in a statement the agency made its decision because a booster “may help provide better protection against both the delta and omicron variants,” especially as omicron is “slightly more resistant” to the vaccine-induced antibodies that help fend off infection. Real-world data from Israel tracked more than 6,300 12- to 15-year-olds who got a booster there at least five months after their second Pfizer dose and found no serious safety concerns, the FDA said. Likewise, the FDA said even more data from Israel showed no problems with giving anyone eligible for a Pfizer booster that extra dose a month sooner than the six months that until now has been U.S. policy. Vaccines still offer strong protection against serious illness from any type of COVID-19. But health authorities are urging everyone who’s eligible to get a booster dose for their best chance at avoiding milder breakthrough infections from the highly contagious omicron mutant. Children tend to suffer less serious illness from COVID-19 than adults. But child hospitalizations are rising during the omicron wave -- most of them unvaccinated. Pediatrician and global health expert Dr. Philip Landrigan of Boston College welcomed the FDA's decisions, but stressed that the main need is to get the unvaccinated their first shots. “It is among unvaccinated people that most of the severe illness and death from COVID will occur in coming weeks,” he said in an email. "Many thousands of lives could be saved if people could persuade themselves to get vaccinated.” The vaccine made by Pfizer and its partner BioNTech is the only U.S. option for children of any age. About 13.5 million 12- to 17-year-olds — just over half that age group — have received two Pfizer shots, according to the CDC. For families hoping to keep their children as protected as possible, the booster age limit raised questions. The older teens, 16- and 17-year-olds, became eligible for boosters in early December. But original vaccinations opened for the younger teens, those 12 to 15, back in May. That means those first in line in the spring, potentially millions, are about as many months past their last dose as the slightly older teens. As for even younger children, kid-size doses for 5- to 11-year-olds rolled out more recently, in November -- and experts say healthy youngsters should be protected after their second dose for a while. But the FDA also said Monday that if children that young have severely weakened immune systems, they will be allowed a third dose 28 days after their second. That’s the same third-dose timing already recommended for immune-compromised teens and adults. Pfizer is studying its vaccine, in even smaller doses, for children younger than 5.
The important thing to note is that while immunity wanes with the mRNA vaccines against Omicron, prior infection ("natural immunity") provides nearly no protection at all. Note however this study is performed in a lab -- it is in vitro and not human subjects. Immunity wanes against Omicron variant with both Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, study finds https://edition.cnn.com/world/live-...s-12-31-21/h_50a9afb81f1802a3ed942b94324e6163 Immunity wanes against the Omicron variant of the coronavirus with both the Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines – but not as much as it wanes after a natural infection, researchers reported Friday. And they say their findings show the need for vaccines that specifically protect against Omicron. Dr. Emilia Sordillo at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York and colleagues tested the blood of people who had been vaccinated, or vaccinated and boosted with Moderna’s or Pfizer/BioNTech’s vaccines, as well as the blood of people who had recovered from Covid-19. Although the tests were done in lab dishes, the researchers said the experiment replicates real life conditions because they used live virus. They looked for what are known as neutralizing antibodies: immune system structures that can stick to the virus and stop it from infecting cells. “Across all 85 samples, the reduction in neutralization for Omicron was greater than 14.5 fold,” compared with the Beta variant and the original strain, they wrote. “In comparison, there was only a four-fold reduction against Beta in the same sample. “In fact, 16.5% of samples lost all neutralizing activity against Omicron.” That included nearly three-quarters of blood samples from people who had recovered from infections. “Our findings support recent reports describing significantly reduced protection from reinfection and almost non-existent vaccine effectiveness against symptomatic disease after two BNT162b2 (Pfizer) vaccinations,” they wrote. But people who got Pfizer boosters had protection “in the range of 75%,” they wrote. They found no evidence that the Moderna vaccine provides stronger protection than Pfizer’s. The blood of people who got two doses of Pfizer/BioNTech’s vaccine produced antibody neutralization levels that were 23-fold lower against Omicron than against the original strain of the virus, and antibody levels from people who got Moderna’s vaccine were 42 times lower. For people who got booster doses, neutralization activity was 7.5 times lower for the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine and 16.7 times lower for Moderna’s. In general, antibody protection correlates with real-life protection, but it doesn’t measure the long-term protection from severe disease and death provided by a slower-growing and longer-lasting type of protection: immune cells called T cells. “We should remember that the relationship between measurable neutralizing antibodies and clinical course of infection is not a simple one. In general, antibodies are required to prevent initial infection; but cellular immunity – which may be maintained – is required to prevent serious illness,” Dr. Peter English, an expert in communicable disease control in the UK, said in a statement. “Importantly, the study supports the view that a third dose of vaccine considerably improves the antibody response against Omicron infection,” added English, who was not involved in the study. Dr. Julian Tang of the University of Leicester, who also was not involved in the study, also said T-cell responses are important for long-term protection against severe disease. “The bottom line is that boosting existing immunity (whether vaccine or naturally acquired) does help to protect against infection/reinfection to some degree – as well as boosting existing T-cell responses – all of which will help to protect us against Omicron. So getting these booster doses is important – especially if you are in one of the more vulnerable groups,” Tang said.
The Left retreats from 'war on COVID' messaging as Americans accept virus is here to stay: Watters Democrats appear to be coming to terms with the reality of the virus Fox News host Jesse Watters blasted Democrats and the media on Monday on "The Five" for their sudden "retreat" from the war on COVID-19 as Americans embrace the reality that coronavirus is here to stay and life must adjust accordingly "Vaccinated Democrats are getting breakthrough cases of the 'cron and they are having a breakthrough case of clarity, saying I can tell the difference now. Maybe we shouldn’t be shutting schools down. Maybe we shouldn’t be firing nurses. Maybe vaccinated people can transmit this thing," Watters said on "The Five." "So you’re seeing a retreat in the war against the virus by the left and they are circling back to where conservatives have been for months, if not years After nearly two years of advocating or defending various lockdowns and mandates in an effort to halt the virus for good, prominent Democrats and media outlets appear to have come to terms with the fact that even with effective vaccines that diminish its impact, COVID-19 is an endemic disease that won't be eradicated at any point in the near future. Watters said the media's collective effort to reframe the virus as "a bipartisan menace" proves as much "[They say]" there shouldn’t be a stigma attached to catching COVID-19. Shouldn’t be ashamed of catching the virus. Oh, thanks, guys. Where has that been?" Watters asked Read more at https://www.foxnews.com/media/left-retreat-war-covid-messaging-americans-accept-coronavirus
Why are so many vaccinated people getting COVID-19 lately? https://apnews.com/article/coronavi...irus-vaccine-69b19dcb2cf9527e22083e9547d70228 Why are so many vaccinated people getting COVID-19 lately? A couple of factors are at play, starting with the emergence of the highly contagious omicron variant. Omicron is more likely to infect people, even if it doesn’t make them very sick, and its surge coincided with the holiday travel season in many places. People might mistakenly think the COVID-19 vaccines will completely block infection, but the shots are mainly designed to prevent severe illness, says Louis Mansky, a virus researcher at the University of Minnesota. And the vaccines are still doing their job on that front, particularly for people who’ve gotten boosters. Two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines or one dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine still offer strong protection against serious illness from omicron. While those initial doses aren’t very good at blocking omicron infection, boosters — particularly with the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines — rev up levels of the antibodies to help fend off infection. Omicron appears to replicate much more efficiently than previous variants. And if infected people have high virus loads, there’s a greater likelihood they’ll pass it on to others, especially the unvaccinated. Vaccinated people who get the virus are more likely to have mild symptoms, if any, since the shots trigger multiple defenses in your immune system, making it much more difficult for omicron to slip past them all. Advice for staying safe hasn’t changed. Doctors say to wear masks indoors, avoid crowds and get vaccinated and boosted. Even though the shots won’t always keep you from catching the virus, they’ll make it much more likely you stay alive and out of the hospital.
Video of Tedros speech that boosters should be reserved for those over 50 and "some countries are using booster shots to kill children". Major slip right there.
Nothing was stated about "boosters killing children"...as in its an edited video of the WHO statement by a very sick person in the head. In contrast, he talked about boosters should be given to the elderly and he talked about the equality issues involving countries' vaccination in comparison to other countries. The latter is a huge problem because countries with "low vaccination rates" or with "low vaccination regions" within a country... They are the countries giving birth to Variants of Concern and it impacts the entire world considering globally we're connected via travel. ---------- WHO spokesperson said Tedros “got stuck on the first syllable [of children] ‘chil’ and it came out sounding like ‘cil/kil.’ He then correctly pronounced the same syllable immediately after, with it coming out audibly as ‘cil-children’,” the spokesperson said. Transcript: “So, if it’s going to be used [vaccines], it’s better to focus on those groups who have the risk of severe disease and death, rather than, as we see, some countries are using to give boosters to children, which is not right. Then the equity issues comes in here. Instead of boosting a child in high income countries, it’s better to vaccinate the elderly in countries where the elders have not been vaccinated, even the primary vaccines.” ---------- Someone edited the original video to put emphasis on the "cil" syllable to sound more like "kil". In fact, in the written statement of his speech that came out minutes later..."kil" is not used and Tedros agreed that such was true due to the fact that he stutters sometimes. I remember a video in which Tedros talks about disease and poverty before the Pandemic. He made a comment about "children in schools". The guy stutter and I can see how easily one could think he's talking about "killing children in schools" in poor countries. wrbtrader
Same crap from these anti-vaxxers over and over. Edited videos, claims that people who were not even vaccinated were killed by the vaccine, the list goes on & on. These people are sick in the head.