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A mix-and-match approach to COVID-19 vaccines could provide logistical and immunological benefits

Various companies use different ingredients and different delivery systems in their COVID-19 vaccines. Researchers are investigating whether it’s better for individuals to mix what’s available.

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One of this and one of that might be a good strategy to coronavirus vaccination. SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

While it’s now pretty easy to get a COVID-19 shot in most places in the U.S., the vaccine rollout in other parts of the world has been slow or inconsistent due to shortages, uneven access and concerns about safety.

Researchers hope that a mix-and-match approach to COVID-19 vaccines will help alleviate these issues and create more flexibility in the immunization regimens available to people.

Around the world, different pharmaceutical companies have taken different approaches to developing vaccines. Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna created mRNA vaccines. Oxford-AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson went with what are called viral vectors. The Novavax COVID-19 vaccine is protein-based.

So mixing vaccines could mean more than just switching manufacturers – like from Pfizer for dose one to Moderna for dose two. You might be tapping into a different way to stimulate your immune response if you opt for a first dose of AstraZeneca and a second dose of Moderna.

The most obvious benefits of treating various brands and kinds of COVID-19 vaccine as interchangeable are logistical – people can get whatever shot is available without worry. By speeding up the global vaccination rollout, mixing and matching vaccines could help end this pandemic. Researchers also hope combining different vaccines will trigger a more robust, longer-lasting immune response compared to receiving both doses of a single vaccine. This approach may better protect people from emerging variants.

artist's rendition of a coronavirus particle and antibodies
After vaccination, your body makes antibodies (blue in this illustration) that will hunt for coronavirus proteins (pink). Christoph Burgstedt/Science Photo Library via Getty Images

Biological effects of a mix-and-match approach

Scientists suspect there are a few ways that receiving two different COVID-19 vaccines may result in a stronger immune response.

Each company used slightly different regions of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein in their formulations. It’s the virus’s spike protein that your immune system responds to, so exposure to different portions of the spike protein should mean your body will make an array of corresponding antibodies that can fend off future infection. The range of antibodies should then provide better protection and increase the likelihood that you’ll be protected from variants with changes in the spike protein.

And different vaccine technologies activate unique aspects of the immune system thanks to how they present their portion of the spike protein.

diagram of vaccine platform options
Researchers can build vaccines based on a number of what they call platforms – different technological ways to safely introduce your immune system to the targeted virus. Blakney AK, Ip S, Geall AJ. An Update on Self-Amplifying mRNA Vaccine Development. Vaccines. 2021; 9(2):97., CC BY

The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are composed of a small snippet of mRNA, genetic material that contains the recipe to make a region of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. Wrapped up in a fat coat, the mRNA slips into a vaccinated person’s cells where it directs production of the viral protein. The person’s immune system then recognizes the foreign spike protein and produces antibodies against it.

Several other COVID-19 vaccines rely on a viral vector. In these cases, researchers modified an adenovirus that usually causes the common cold to deliver the DNA instructions for producing a portion of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. The modified virus is safe because it can’t replicate in people. Along with J&J and AstraZeneca’s, examples of COVID-19 viral vector vaccines in use globally include Russia’s Sputnik Vand the CanSino Biologics vaccine.

Your immune system can develop an immune response to the viral vector vaccine itself, which could reduce the vaccine’s effectiveness against the coronavirus. Experts hope that combining vaccine platforms, for example using an mRNA-based vaccine or one that includes a different viral vector for the second dose, could reduce that risk.

Investigating combos’ safety and effectiveness

Around the world, studies are underway in animals and people to investigate the safety, types of immune response generated and how long immunity lasts when one person receives two different COVID-19 vaccines.

Results from a Spanish trial of more than 600 people indicated that vaccination with both the viral-vector AstraZeneca and mRNA-based Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines triggers a robust immune response against the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Preliminary results from a German study that has not yet been peer-reviewed found that getting the AstraZeneca vaccine first followed by the Pfizer vaccine resulted in production of more protective antibodies and provided better protection against variants of concern compared to two AstraZeneca doses.

The Com-COV study in the U.K. is also investigating the safety and effectiveness of giving patients a combination of the AstraZeneca and Pfizer-BioNTech shots. Preliminary findings indicate that people who got one shot of each type were more likely to report mild to moderate side effects than those who received two doses of the same vaccine. Final results of this study, including the effectiveness of this approach, are expected in June 2021. The expanded Com-CoV2 study is testing other combinations of COVID-19 vaccines, namely from Moderna’s mRNA platform and Novavax’s protein platform.

vials of three vaccines with syringe
Mixing might be important as the coronavirus continues to evolve. Thomas Kienzle/AFP via Getty Images

Combos could be a good anti-variant strategy

Emerging coronavirus variants are one of the most intriguing reasons to consider mixing vaccines. Administering vaccines that target different variants would provide broad collective immunity and limit emergence of new possibly more dangerous strains.

It’s possible that people who are currently fully vaccinated will need a third shot to address genetic differences in new variants. Changing platforms for this booster shot – for instance, if your first round was viral-vector based, switching to mRNA or one that is protein-based – could help bolster your immune response.

Flu vaccines routinely protect against multiple strains of the influenza virus – but these are usually manufactured by the same company. In the future, this approach could lead to vaccines that contain multiple regions of SARS-CoV-2 to protect against several variants, or regions of both the coronavirus and influenza proteins, protecting against both viruses in a single shot.

What’s allowed so far

For now, though, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the U.S. allows the mixing of the mRNA-based Pfizer and Moderna shots only in “exceptional situations,” such as limited vaccine supply or if a patient doesn’t know which vaccine they originally received.

Canada’s public health agency recently approved the mixing of different COVID-19 vaccines if limited supply prevents someone from getting their second dose of the same vaccine, or if someone is apprehensive about a second dose of AstraZeneca due to publicized side effects.

EU countries are so far awaiting further study results before allowing mixing vaccine doses.

[You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors. You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter.]

Maureen Ferran receives funding from The National Cancer Institute, NIH.

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New Zealand Ousts Leftist Lockdown Loons After Conservative Wins Election

New Zealand Ousts Leftist Lockdown Loons After Conservative Wins Election

Voters in New Zealand on Saturday ousted the party once led by Jacinda…

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New Zealand Ousts Leftist Lockdown Loons After Conservative Wins Election

Voters in New Zealand on Saturday ousted the party once led by Jacinda Ardern, and have instead elected the country's most conservative government in decades.

New Zealand's new Prime Minister elect Christopher Luxon

Turns out forcing your citizens to take vaccines, decreeing state news the only 'truth,' and locking up peaceful protesters opposed pandemic authoritarianism did not go over well.

On Saturday, conservative Christopher Luxon was elected New Zealand's next prime minister. While the exact makeup of Luxon's government has yet to be determined, his center-right National party looks set to form a coalition government with one or two minor parties.

The National Party will likely combine its indicated 50 seats with the ACT party (11 seats), to give them 61 seats, providing a slim majority in the 121-seat New Zealand parliament. As Goldman notes, the results are largely in line with pre-election polling, with the incumbent Labour party on track to lose their outright majority in parliament for the first time since 2017.

"You have reached for hope and you have voted for change," Luxon told supporters to rapturous applause at an event in Auckland, alongside his wife Amanda and their children.

Outgoing Prime Mininster Chris Hipkins, who's held the job for nine months following the abrupt resignation of Jacinda Ardern, told supporters late Saturday that he'd called Luxon to concede.

Outgoing New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins

Hipkins said that while the result wasn't his desired outcome, "I want you to be proud of what we achieved over the last six years," he told supporters in Wellington.

On the economic front, Goldman notes that Luxon's party has vowed to reduce effective tax rates on incomes and investment parties. And while National has pledged to offset the fiscal impact of tax cuts with savings elsewhere, Goldman sees the risks as "skewed to more stimulatory fiscal policy in 2024" vs New Zealand's current fiscal projections.

The proposed tax cuts and new spending amounts to around 0.8% of annual GDP, which would boost household disposable income by around 1.5% and also provide a tailwind to house prices in 2024. While National has pledged to offset the new spending and lower taxes with a reduction in spending and new taxes, overall we view the risks as skewed to more fiscal stimulus (compared to the current fiscal projections) and additional rate hikes from the RBNZ (GSe: base case on hold at 5.5%).

Luxon has also addressed crime in New Zealand, telling supporters that it's "out of control," adding "And we are going to restore law and order, and we are going to restore personal responsibility."

He's also vowed to fix the capital's traffic woes with a new tunnel project.

Tyler Durden Sun, 10/15/2023 - 14:00

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“We Can’t Force The Human Body To Accept Foreign Genetic Code” Dr. McCullough On mRNA Technology

"We Can’t Force The Human Body To Accept Foreign Genetic Code” Dr. McCullough On mRNA Technology

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch…

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"We Can't Force The Human Body To Accept Foreign Genetic Code'' Dr. McCullough On mRNA Technology

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough warned that messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines inject “foreign genetic code” into human beings, which the body fails to break down or expel for a prolonged period of time.

Colorized scanning electron micrograph of a cell (purple) infected with a variant strain of SARS-CoV-2 virus particles (pink), isolated from a patient sample. (NIAID via The Epoch Times)

Research on mRNA “has been going on for decades,” Dr. McCullough said during an Oct. 5 interview. The 2023 Nobel Prize for medicine was awarded to two scientists for making “messenger RNA long-lasting in the human body,” he said. “I mean, it has been tested in multiple applications … It's an absolute bust. It was just the worst idea ever to install the genetic code for a lethal protein without being able to shut it off. It wasn't the fact that it was rushed; it's just ill-conceived from the very beginning.”

We can't force the human body to accept foreign genetic code and produce a foreign protein … Messenger RNA for vaccines is a completely failed concept. It’s a dangerous concept, and the U.S. government wasn't honest. They should have been honest. Trump should have come out and said, ‘Listen, it's on our website; our military's been working on this since 2012.’”

During a testimony at the European Parliament last month, Dr. McCullough said, “There's not a single study showing that the messenger RNA is broken down” in the human body once it is injected.

There's not a study showing it leaves the body.” Since the vaccines are “made synthetically, they cannot be broken down.”

He added that the lethal protein from the [COVID-19] vaccines found in the human body after vaccination was found to be circulating “at least for six months, if not longer.”

In the case of seasonal jabs, that is, taking an injection or booster at the end of six months as recommended by the authorities, “there's another installation in more circulating potentially lethal protein.”

Scientist Drew Weissman, who won the 2023 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his role in developing mRNA technology, warned in a 2018 paper that not only did clinical trials of mRNA vaccines produce “more modest [results] in humans than was expected based on animal models,” but that the “side effects were not trivial.”

Dr. Mccullough’s comments come as the Gates Foundation is spending $40 million on countries in Africa and other economically backward nations to produce new mRNA vaccines in efforts to prevent diseases like tuberculosis and malaria.

Concealing a ‘Global Security Threat’

In the Steve Deace interview, Dr. McCullough said that the ineffectiveness of the technology was not unknown to the government since they’ve been testing it for nearly 40 years.

He referred to a February 2023 paper published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), which cited that the U.S. government has been investing billions of dollars in developing messenger RNA technology since 1985.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) began investing in mRNA tech in 2011. DARPA then launched the Pandemic Prevention Platform (P3) program in 2016 that sought to produce “relevant numbers of doses” against infections within 60 days of identifying them.

The ADEPT P3 was a program by the U.S. military “to end pandemics in 60 days.” There is no other technology “that our government has invested more in,” Dr. McCullough said.

Dr. McCullough cited another paper that stated there were “over 9,000 patents on messenger RNA. And all the patent assignees are big entities. At the top is Sanofi, then Cervavac, BioNTech, Moderna, and the U.S. government. No single person invented messenger RNA. Someone who comes up in 2021 and says, ‘You know I invented it’. That's impossible. This has been going on for decades.”

Dr. McCullough pointed out that the United States and China have been in “collaboration for years” in their research on infectious and lethal coronavirus.

However, officials like Anthony Fauci, the former head of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Francis Collins, the former head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and “a whole cadre of scientists, they collaborated to conceal this global security threat.”

“They actually intentionally lied to the world and said the virus came out of nature. They knew it came out of the Wuhan lab,” he said, citing a research paper by Ralph Baric and Dr. Zhengli-Li Shi that was published in the Nature journal in 2015.

Dr. Zhengli-Li Shi is affiliated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, while Mr. Baric is from the Department of Epidemiology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

They said they created SARS-CoV-2 virus. They called it the Wuhan Institute of Virology 1 virus. That was the prototype SARS-CoV-2. So, that's in 2015. Instead of bringing Ralph Baric out [and asking] ‘Dr. Baric, how do we get ourselves out of this disaster,’ you masterminded this virus funded by the US.”

‘Pull All COVID-19 Vaccines Off the Market’

In his interview, Dr. McCullough made three recommendations. “I say number one, I've called in the US Senate [and] now the European Parliament [to] pull all COVID-19 vaccines off the market before anyone else is harmed.”

“Number two, US, EU and all westernized Nations [should] pull out of the WHO. They're not trustable. And number three, I'm following the World Council for Health. I am recommending a halt on all childhood vaccines, the entire vaccine schedule until this is clarified since messenger RNA is now on the schedule without any concerns for safety.

Cardiologists Dr. Aseem Malhotra (left) and Dr. Peter McCullough (right) in Dallas, Texas, on Nov. 29, 2022. (Bao Qiu/The Epoch Times)

While some studies related to the safety of COVID-19 vaccines have shown the jabs to be safe, others have raised concerns about the safety of the shots.

A December 2022 study analyzed trials comparing vaccine recipients with individuals who did not receive a vaccine or were given a placebo.

It concluded that “compared to placebo, most vaccines reduce, or likely reduce, the proportion of participants with confirmed symptomatic COVID-19, and for some, there is high-certainty evidence that they reduce severe or critical disease.”

However, a June 2022 study that looked at mRNA vaccinations found that “Pfizer and Moderna mRNA COVID-19 vaccines were associated with an increased risk of serious adverse events of special interest (AESI).”

“The excess risk of serious adverse events of special interest surpassed the risk reduction for COVID-19 hospitalization relative to the placebo group in both Pfizer and Moderna trials.”

‘Shedding’ the Infection

During the interview, Mr. Deace asked about hearing issues that he and his colleague suffered and whether they had any ties with the vaccines. While he did not take a COVID-19 shot, the colleague was vaccinated. Mr. Deace asked if this was “further proof that basically the last few years Peter everybody was a lab rat whether you took the vaccine or not.”

Syringes and vials of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine are prepared to be administered at a drive-up vaccination site in Reno, Nev., on Dec. 17, 2020. (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)

“It's true, nearly all of us have been exposed to the Wuhan spike protein,” Dr. McCullough replied. “When I see patients in the office, we check antibodies against the spike protein. Invariably, they're elevated. Rarely, I'll find somebody who hasn't been exposed.”

Dr. McCullough pointed out that there are “clear-cut papers” showing individuals suffering hearing loss after taking COVID-19 jabs. “It's all related to the spike protein,” he said. mRNA vaccines work by instructing cells in the body to produce the spike protein found on the surface of the COVID-19 virus.

Once vaccinated, an individual’s muscle cells begin producing spike protein pieces, displaying them on cell surfaces, which end up triggering the immune system to create antibodies. When such an individual gets infected with the COVID-19 virus, these antibodies will then fight the virus.

Dr. McCullough warned that even people who have not received mRNA COVID-19 vaccines can eventually get affected by messenger RNA through a vaccinated individual via “shedding.”

Shedding means that one has been exposed to the spike protein or to the messenger RNA from close contact with another individual. We know both of them can travel via exosomes which are small phospholipid packets that can be exhaled [via] breath, through sweat, [and] various forms of body fluid, typically you know very close contact.”

“There was a big project called the Eva project in the UK showing 78 percent of women who take a vaccine—they actually have menstrual abnormalities. And those who even didn't take a vaccine, they end up having menstrual abnormalities. There's been plenty of these reports that have occurred.”

Dr. McCullough cited an interview he did with scientist Helene Banoun, an expert on shedding, who believes such things “clearly happens, for sure, in people who've taken the vaccine within 30 days, close contact.”

“Now, two studies—one in the United States, one in Japan—[show] the messenger RNA comes through breast milk. The spike protein may be shedded potentially for a much longer duration of time. It's been shown in the human body now for months, maybe even years afterward. And that's the rationale for what our recent proposal to actually undergo spike protein detoxification.”

The cardiologist pointed out that “every signal” related to cardiovascular disease, neurologic disease, blood clots, immune disease, and cancer “is up.”

“There can be debates on why all these chronic diseases are up, all-cause mortality up in every single area of the world,” he said. “The two big exposures we've had are COVID-19 infection and now COVID-19 vaccines, and I think both mechanisms have led to this wave of disease.”

“I think more powerfully with the vaccines since the vaccines are largely genetic, they're given every six months, and they install the genetic code for the disease-promoting and lethal Wuhan spike protein.”

Tyler Durden Sat, 10/14/2023 - 22:10

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International

Rent Control Is A Disaster – Don’t Let It Spread Across The Nation

Rent Control Is A Disaster – Don’t Let It Spread Across The Nation

Authored by Betsy McCaughey via The Epoch Times,

America’s renters -…

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Rent Control Is A Disaster - Don't Let It Spread Across The Nation

Authored by Betsy McCaughey via The Epoch Times,

America’s renters - more than one-third of the nation’s households - are in for trouble.

Left-wing politicians are demanding rent regulation from coast to coast. Wherever it is adopted, the result will be a disastrous reduction in the rental housing supply, leaving renters desperate for places to live.

New York is the poster child for the failures of rent regulation. The U.S. Supreme Court is currently mulling a challenge to the constitutionality of the city’s rent regime.

Whatever the justices decide, the public needs to consider less destructive, more targeted ways to help low-income people pay for housing. The court of public opinion needs to consider these facts.

Fact No. 1: Rent regulation isn’t targeted to the poor.

In New York, there’s no means test. What you need is luck or connections. The mean income of a rent-stabilized apartment dweller is $47,000, but census data show that tens of thousands of them earn more than $150,000 per year. Some occupants use what they’re saving on rent to pay for a weekend place in the Hamptons or New England.

The pols don’t object—a sure sign they’re calling for rent regulation to help themselves politically, not the poor.

In New York, 44 percent of rental apartments are regulated by the Rent Guidelines Board (RGB), established in 1969, which sets the maximum amount by which landlords are allowed to raise the rent. Those limits apply to all buildings of six or more units built before 1974.

In 2022, the RGB set the maximum rent hike at 3.25 percent on one-year leases and this year at 3 percent. Never mind that last year, fuel costs to heat the buildings soared by 19 percent and overall inflation hit 8.3 percent.

The decisions are political, not economic. Many Democratic politicians vilify building owners as “greedy landlords” and depict themselves as the champions of the downtrodden. It’s a scam.

Fact No. 2: Winners and losers.

The winners are the lucky few with rent-regulated apartments and the pols who count on an army of tenant activists to turn out at the polls. The losers are the 56 percent of renters who don’t score a regulated apartment and have to scour neighborhoods for an unregulated place that they can afford. They’re paying more.

Why? Because regulation causes some landlords to walk away, reducing the overall supply of apartments. The laws of supply and demand mean rents go up. New Yorkers in unregulated apartments are paying the highest rents in the United States for a one-bedroom apartment. They're the real victims, and they should be furious.

Yet the left-wing press pretends that rent control offers only benefits. The New Republic warns that the Supreme Court challenge threatens “laws that have benefitted the city’s tenants for generations.” Sorry, untrue—only some tenants, and not always the neediest.

It’s economic madness. The saner way to help those who need assistance paying rent is with a voucher. We offer the needy SNAP debit cards to help them pay for groceries. No one slaps price controls on grocery stores or designates certain stores as “regulated,” forcing them to sell at below cost.

Yet New York forces certain landlords to pay what should be a public cost shared by all, an argument made to the court.

Fact No. 3: The Marxist fantasy that rent regulation will help the poor is spreading across the United States and Europe as well.

Maine and Minnesota have enacted laws allowing municipalities to impose rent regulations. In November 2024, California voters will be asked to approve a proposition allowing local governments to add additional restrictions to the state’s existing rent caps.

The laws of supply and demand are international. Berlin froze rents in 2019, and the rental supply plummeted, according to the Ifo Institute, a think tank.

Yet London Mayor Sadiq Khan is calling for freezing rents for two years. London provides housing vouchers to the poor—a smarter approach—but when the city froze the voucher amounts during the COVID-19 pandemic, fewer apartments were available in the price range. The answer is to raise the voucher amount. Freezing rents will only make the shortage worse.

Ignore the demagogues. The evidence is in: Rent regulation is a political scam. There are better ways to help Americans afford a place to live.

Tyler Durden Sat, 10/14/2023 - 16:20

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