Covidiot News - Just Because You Haven't Had COVID-19 Yet, Doesn't Mean You Won't!

The SARS-CoV-2 virus needs to attach to receptors to gain access to our cells.

Kateryna Kon/Shutterstock

Haven't had COVID yet? It could be more than just luck

There are some scary questions for creationists at the end of this article. They follow on naturally from what's being discussed, so creationists should probably avoid reading too far, unless they have a responsible adult with them.

This article from The Conversation is from May 2022, when we were into the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic and most vulnerable people had had the two-step vaccinations and many would have had the spring booster. At that point neither me nor my partner had had COVID-19, which we put down to rigorously following the recommendations regarding mask-wearing, social distancing, hand washing, etc. and had tried to reduce our vulnerability to the sever forms of it by losing about 3 stone in weight and, in my case, getting my blood pressure under control with medication. We also tried to ensure our immune systems were healthy by taking vitamin D3, vitamin C, zinc and iron supplements.

In the early days of the pandemic, even before the official restrictions on social contact, we had observed the basic rules of hygiene and everyone who came into the house used hand-cleanser at the front door. I had even managed to obtain a supply of face-masks and plastic gloves online, which we wore at all times outside the house. Every package that was delivered to the house was left for several hours before we touched it, and all our weekly shopping was delivered or bought with click and collect. Delivered bags were left for four hours before unpacking. And we took weekly tests just in case we had it asymptomatically. All that might seem a little over the top now, but we were vindicated as events were to prove.

We put the fact that we hadn't caught it by mid-2022 down to our preventative measures, not to luck or genetics - a view that was vindicated last year when we both came back from a two-week vacation in France with a mild form of COVID-19, despite having had all the boosters on offer. We probably picked it up in a crowded airport or on the plane, where all the social distancing measures had been forgotten and even face masks were no longer worn. We both felt like we had a mild case of flu for a couple of days and after a week we were testing negative. Had we contracted it in Spring 2020, the outcome would probably have been very different as we had no immunity, and both had three of the risk-factors - overweight, high BP and over 70. In addition, my partner had had a mastectomy and was receiving treatment for breast cancer.

One reason you can't ever be sure that you won't catch COVID-19 is because the virus keeps mutating to produce new variants so, even if you were fortunate enough to have natural or acquired immunity to the variants so far, it is quite possible that the next or subsequent variants will have evolved a way round it. The following chart from the UK NHS, shows the rise and fall of the main variants over the course of the pandemic:

Source: NHS UKHSA Date Dashboard

But still, a few people managed to stay free from the virus. In the following article, reprinted from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license, Lindsay Broadbent, Research Fellow, School of Medicine, Dentistry and Biomedical Sciences, Queen's University Belfast, explains why. Her article has been reformatted for stylistic consistency:

Anti-Vaxxer Conspiracists News - How Trumpanzee Cult Conspiracists Are Risking People's Lives For Money While Feeding Populist Extremism

Online spaces attract conspiracy theorists. Social media has helped propagate conspiracy theories faster than was possible with more traditional media. This has driven engagement with political parties that focus on conspiracy theories.

Envato/DC_Studio

Anti-vaccine conspiracies fuel divisive political discourse | The University of Tokyo

According to a news item carried today by Agence France-Presse (AFP), US antivaxx conspiracists are deliberately spreading fear and disinformation to sell quack medical kits to gullible fools and in doing so are risking the lives of anyone foolish enough to believe them. And a recent paper published by a Japanese research group has shown how extremist parties are trading on growing antivaxx paranoia, originating in Trump-supporting conspiracists in the USA, by incorporating it into the political platforms.

This team of researchers recall how Donald Trump first of all tried to take credit for developing the mRNA vaccines against Covid-19, as though he had personally directed the research and invented the science behind mRNA vaccines, then switched to curry favour with the antivaxxers by casting doubt on the need for boosters. And of course, antivaxxer conspiracy theories became a central theme of the rabidly pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy theorists.

Firstly, the AFP report:

Covidiot News - How the mRNA Vaccines Give Long-Term Protection Against COVID-19

Long-Term Data Reveals SARS-CoV-2 Infection and Vaccine-Induced Antibody Responses Are Long-Lasting | Mount Sinai - New York

If you listen to antivaxxer covidiots you would believe:

• COVID-19 is no worse than the common cold.
• The SARS-CoV-2 virus which causes COVID-19, is a deadly organism developed by the Chinese for biological warfare.
• COVID-19 was a hoax (which even normally hostile nations had signed up to, apparently).
• God sent the virus to punish America for legalising same-sex marriage (and the rest of the world was collateral damage)
• The vaccines developed against it don't work (regardless of what the clinic trials showed).
• The vaccines contain microchips and special genes to make you become gay and/or subject to satellite control.
• The vaccines contain deadly viruses that can be activated via the 5G phone network.
• Millions of people have died or will die soon because they've been vaccinated.
• [Fill in your own crackpot theory because someone will already have claimed it to be true].

The truth is, however, that millions of people died of COVID-19 in the first year of the pandemic, before a vaccine was generally available and this death rate fell to low levels following the roll out of the first vaccines and subsequent boosters to allow for new variants. Although the virus is still very much with us, people have been able to resume normal activities and the economic and health impact of the virus is now no more than that of seasonal flu, but there were concerns that antibody levels produced in response to the mRNA vaccines were short-lived, giving only temporary protection.

Now a large-scale analysis conducted by leading microbiologists at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai has shown that antibody responses induced by COVId-19 vaccines are long-lasting. The results of this analysis are published, open access, in the Cell Press journal, Immunity, and are discussed in a Mount Sinai press release:

The emergence of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, in late 2019 sparked the global pandemic that is now in its fifth year. Vaccines that were developed at record speed have saved millions of lives. However, the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 variants and waning immunity have decreased the effectiveness of the vaccines against symptomatic disease. The common perception now is that mRNA-based vaccine-induced immunity wanes quickly. However, this assumption is largely based on data from short-term studies that include a very limited number of data points following peak responses.

The Mount Sinai research team’s analysis of more than 8,000 samples collected over a three-year period in New York City examined how antibody responses to the virus’s spike protein changed after infections, during the primary immunization series, during monovalent and bivalent booster vaccination, and during breakthrough infections.

They found that upon primary immunization, participants with pre-existing immunity (those who had previously been infected with the virus) mounted higher antibody responses faster and achieved higher steady-state antibody titers than individuals who had not been previously infected. The waning of antibody response was characterized by two phases: an initial rapid decay from the strong peak after vaccination, followed by a stabilization phase with very slow decay, suggesting that antibody levels were very long-lasting. Booster vaccination equalized the differences in antibody concentration between participants with and without pre-existing immunity. Breakthrough infections increased antibodies to similar levels as an additional vaccine dose in individuals who had not previously been infected.

This investigation represents one of the most extensive and in-depth assessments of the longevity of SARS-CoV-2 immune responses to date. Its major conclusion is that changes in the virus that allow it to evade immunity, rather than waning immunity, are the major reason for breakthrough infections.

Ours is one of the longest-running COVID-19 studies out there. Following the same group of people monthly over time is rare and powerful because you can compare immune responses on an individual level. SARS-CoV-2 continues to evolve, so this research is important to provide an understanding about the impact of new variants and new vaccine doses on a healthy immune system, and to guide all of us to make the best choices to maintain protection against the virus that continues to circulate in our communities.

Professor Viviana Simon, MD, PhD, lead author
Professor of Microbiology, Medicine and Pathology, Molecular and Cell-Based Medicine
Department of Microbiology
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA.

This in-depth analysis was made possible through the Protection Associated with Rapid Immunity to SARS-CoV-2 (PARIS) study, an observational, longitudinal cohort of health care workers of the Mount Sinai Health System that was initiated in April 2020. At that time, the densely populated New York metropolitan area was hit with an exponential increase in severe SARS-CoV-2 infections, and essential workers in the health care system were at high risk for infection. In response to the crisis, a team of leading virologists, physician-scientists, and pathologists at Mount Sinai established a specific and sensitive SARS-CoV-2 binding enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay to accurately measure the SARS-CoV-2 antibody titers. This test was used to measure immune responses in the PARIS cohort in order to determine how quickly the antibody defenses were mounted and much these changed over the months and years of follow up.

In addition to showing the impact on a person’s individual antibody response to vaccines based on the type of vaccine received and whether or not they were infected before receiving the first dose, the PARIS study made possible the development of a mathematical model that can be used to predict and characterize antibody responses of both individual people and populations.

People have pandemic fatigue and vaccine uptake has slowed, especially after the vaccines started to be charged to insurance*. We were pleasantly surprised to see that the booster doses promoted a large antibody response regardless of a person’s personal infection history, so we are hopeful that our study findings will encourage people to get their vaccine boosters when eligible and to stay engaged in research. Our work also showcases the impact of viral evolution over time and why it’s critical to keep studies like this going, despite the pandemic fatigue.

Komal Srivastava, MS, Co-first author
Director of Strategy and Operation
Mount Sinai Center for Vaccine Research and Pandemic Preparedness.

According to the research team, the PARIS model has broad applications for studying the kinetics of antibodies produced to different COVID-19 vaccines in diverse populations. They stress much more work remains to analyze side effects, applications of the antibody model and continued research about new vaccines and viral variants.

This study adds an essential piece of data to understand the intricate immune response elicited by SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19 vaccination. In light of the emerging viral variants, which predominantly induce a cross-reactive antibody response against the spike protein, it will be exciting to characterize in depth the role of these antibodies - in particular the non-neutralizing ones - in protection against the most recent circulating viral variants. Likewise, monitoring the induction of variant-specific antibodies after multiple exposures by breakthrough infections and by administration of updated COVID-19 vaccines, such as the XBB.1.5 monovalent booster, will be key to understand the evolution of the antibody response over time.

Assistant Professor Dr Juan Manuel Carreno Quiroz, PhD, Co-first author.
Department of Microbiology
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA.

*Note: in the UK, vaccines are provided free by the NHS. Other non-US countries will have their own health-care systems which may or may not include charges for the vaccines.

More technical detail and the background to the research is given in the team's paper in Immunology:

Graphical abstract

Highlights

• COVID-19-vaccine-induced immunity wanes but stabilizes at an individual setpoint
• Pre-existing immunity results in rapid antibody responses upon vaccination
• Boosters equalize antibody titers between individuals with and without hybrid immunity
• Antibody kinetics show two phases: an initial rapid decay followed by a steady state

Summary

It is thought that mRNA-based vaccine-induced immunity to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) wanes quickly, based mostly on short-term studies. Here, we analyzed the kinetics and durability of the humoral responses to SARS-CoV-2 infection and vaccination using >8,000 longitudinal samples collected over a 3-year period in New York City. Upon primary immunization, participants with pre-existing immunity mounted higher antibody responses faster and achieved higher steady-state antibody titers than naive individuals. Antibody kinetics were characterized by two phases: an initial rapid decay, followed by a stabilization phase with very slow decay. Booster vaccination equalized the differences in antibody concentration between participants with and without hybrid immunity, but the peak antibody titers decreased with each successive antigen exposure. Breakthrough infections increased antibodies to similar titers as an additional vaccine dose in naive individuals. Our study provides strong evidence that SARS-CoV-2 antibody responses are long lasting, with initial waning followed by stabilization.

Introduction

The emergence of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in late 2019 sparked the global coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic that is now in its 4th year. Vaccines to mitigate the impact of the pandemic were developed at record speed and have saved millions of lives. However, the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 variants¹ and waning immunity² have decreased the effectiveness of the vaccines against symptomatic disease.³ These two issues, the emergence of antigenically distinct SARS-CoV-2 variants and waning immunity, are often conflated and used interchangeably but represent two different phenomena.⁴ Most vaccines used in North America and Europe are based on lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) containing messenger RNA (mRNA) produced by Pfizer/BioNTech (BNT162b2) or Moderna (mRNA-1273), and the common perception now is that mRNA-based vaccine-induced immunity wanes quickly.⁵ However, this assumption is mostly based on data from short-term studies that include a very limited number of data points following peak responses.^2,5

In March of 2020, the densely populated New York metropolitan area was hit with an exponential increase of severe SARS-CoV-2 infections, resulting in a staggering number of fatalities and a severely overburdened healthcare system.^6,7,8 Due to shortages of personal protective equipment, essential workers in the health care system were at high risk for infection. In response to this crisis, we established (1) a specific and sensitive SARS-CoV-2 binding enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) to measure humoral immune responses,⁹ and (2) an observational longitudinal cohort of health care workers of the Mount Sinai Health System to determine the kinetics of these humoral responses. This study, named Protection Associated with Rapid Immunity to SARS-CoV-2 (PARIS),¹⁰ aims to capture the dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 antibody responses to infection as well as vaccinations, to determine re-infection rates, and to assess correlates of protection in the context of individual immune histories.

With over 8,000 longitudinal study visits across a single cohort during the first 3 years of the pandemic, our investigation represents one of the most extensive and in-depth assessments of the longevity of SARS-CoV-2 immune responses to date. Using this longitudinal cohort, we determined the kinetics of antibody responses to spike protein after infections, during the primary immunization series, during monovalent and bivalent booster vaccination, as well as during breakthrough infections. Our findings indicate that, in contrast to common perception, COVID-19 mRNA vaccination induces long-lasting antibody responses in humans. The PARIS Study also provides insights into the effect of booster vaccination and breakthrough infections on the stability of antibody responses.

What is clear from this study is that antibody levels remain at protective levels for very much longer that was previously thought and that they continue to give protection against the severe form of the disease. However, as the virus evolves in an environment in which the vast majority of possible victims have already been vaccinated or have had previous infections so have high antibody levels, the variants that can 'escape' this protection will continue to evolve and become the predominant variant.

This diagram from UK data shows how the different variants have evolved and either replaced earlier variants or have reached an equilibrium with them:

Changes in proportions of SARS-CoV-2 variants in UK over time. This diagram is a good illustration of how the proportions of different alleles of a gene change in a species gene pool over time as the species evolves.

Source: National flu and COVID-19 surveillance report: 22 February 2024 (week 8) Ref: GOV-16232

It is essential then that regular boosters, which provide protection against the latest variants, should continue to be given. We are in a long-term struggle with this virus and vaccines keep us ahead of the game.

Antivax COVIDiot News - Study Shows Vaccines Halted The Rise In Prem Births Caused By COVID-19

Covidiot Trumpanzees.
Risking the lives of unborn babies for political ends.

Study: Spike in premature births caused by COVID, halted by vaccines

About the last thing the politically-motivated, far right antivaxxers covidiots are interested in is protecting human life. With characteristic hypocrisy, many of the same frauds are also active campaigners against legal abortions and a woman's right to choose which, together with COVID-19 denialism and antivaxx conspiracism, have become major talking points in the Trumpanzee far right playlist.

The hypocrisy of these frauds was revealed yesterday in a study which shows there was a huge spike in the number of premature births during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic when women infected with the virus spontaneously aborted their baby. The same study also shows that in those areas where the vaccine uptake was high, the premature birth rate quickly fell back to pre-pandemic levels, but in areas where uptake was low, it took another year to return to pre-pandemic levels.

The study was carried out by Professor Jenna Nobles of Wisconsin–Madison University and Professor Florencia Torche, of Stanford University who have published their findings in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

As the Wisconsin–Madison University press release explains:

Creationism in Crisis - How Science is Fighting Creationism's Divine Malevolence With Nobel Prize-Winning Science

Katalin Karikó (right) and Drew Weissman, the winners of the 2023 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for their discoveries enabling the development of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines

Peggy Peterson Photography
Penn Medicine / Via Reuters

Nobel prize in medicine awarded to mRNA pioneers – here's how their discovery was integral to COVID vaccine development

Of course, no serious biologist things they are fighting and invisible magic creator in the sky who is actively designing parasites to harm us, or designing anything else, for that matter, but creationists believe that's just what they are doing.

Some even go so far as claiming scientists, together with their technical staff and publishers, are all part of a secret Satanic conspiracy to mislead people about what their god has created, including the parasites and the suffering and misery they cause, apparently.

So, this piece of research must come across to genuine creationists who really do believe what their cult mandates them to believe, as scientists waging a war on their god's creation.

The war, of course, is a war that medical science has always waged against suffering and the causes of suffering, because increasing the sum total of happiness, but reducing the unhappiness in the world, is basic humanist morality - something that would appear to be lacking in creationists' putative intelligent [sic] designer.

A particularly successful recent war was the war against the SARS-CoV-2 virus that caused the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic still raging throughout the world, but thanks to the success of medical science, in a much less virulent form, most people having been protected by the mRNA vaccine developed by Nobel Prize-winning scientists, Dr Katalin Karikó and Dr Drew Weissman of the University of Pennsylvania and a massive world-wide effort to find a vaccine.

First a little about mRNA vaccines:

Covidiot News - More Evidence of the Efficacy of COVID Vaccines

Hakan Nural, Unsplash (CC0)

Vaccine effectiveness against SARS-CoV-2 reinfection during periods of Alpha, Delta, or Omicron dominance: A Danish nationwide study

A new study published today on the open access journal, PLOS Medication, shows that even those people who had previously been infected with COVID-19 still benefit from vaccination, although the benefit varies a little with the batch used. The study, led by Katrine Finderup Nielsen at Statens Serum Institut, Denmark, shows that these individuals gain between 60% and 94% protection against reinfection.

According to information released by PLoS ahead of publication:

During the recent pandemic, vaccination has been one of the best tools available for curbing the spread of COVID-19. People infected with the virus are known to develop long-lasting natural immunity, but Finderup Nielsen and her team wanted to know whether these individuals would still benefit from receiving the vaccine. The team analyzed infection and vaccination data from nationwide Danish registers that included all people living in Denmark who tested positive for the virus or were vaccinated between January 2020 and January 2022. The data set included more than 200,000 people who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 during each of the Alpha, Delta and Omicron waves. Their analysis showed that for people with previous infections, vaccination offered up to 71% protection against reinfection during the Alpha period, 94% during the Delta period and 60% during the Omicron period, with protection lasting up to nine months.

Malevolent Designer News - Yet Another SARS-CoV-2 Variant and Another Wave of COVID-19 is On The Way

Big COVID-19 waves may be coming, new Omicron strains suggest | Science | AAAS

According to this article in Science, another wave of COVID-19 infections is on the way because several different sub-strains of the Omicron variant have converged on a similar way to evade the antibodies our immune systems manufacture in response to vaccination and/or infection.

It's not possible to say which of the various emerging strains will come to predominate, but one variant, known as BA.2.75.2, is a likely candidate. It is proving to be especially successful at evading antibodies because changes at half a dozen key sites in its genome that affect the way antibodies bind to the spike proteins on the viral coat, mean the antibodies don't bind very successfully.

Antivaxx Covidiot News - Another Good Reason to Get Vaccinated

Una de cada tres personas infectadas con COVID-19 y que no se vacunaron ya no tiene anticuerpos detectables un año después de la infección COVID-19: [One in three infected but unvaccinated persons no longer have detectable antibodies one year after the infection] - News - ISGLOBAL

I've just booked my fifth, COVID-19 vaccination (my third booster) and with reasonable precautions like hand cleansing, social distancing, and avoiding crowded places, I've managed to stay clear of infection so far. At the start of the pandemic, I had four high risk factors - over weight, very high blood pressure, slightly raised cholesterol level and age - and might well have struggled to survive infection. Since then, I've lost 3 stone to get a safe BMI, and got my BP down to within a normal range and now have a normal cholesterol level. Alas, I can't do anything about the third factor, but I can keep my antibody count up.

My last booster was in March this year, so I would be interested to know what level of protection I now have because, as this study shows, the antibody level falls over time, particularly for people like me who have stayed infection free, so that for 36% of people who were vaccinated but never got infected, their antibody level is undetectable after a year! This means, if I wait till Spring, I'll go through most of the coming Winter with a low antibody count.

If any more evidence were needed that vaccination against COVI-19 is essential, even for people who have had the disease and acquired some natural protection, this study, by an international team led by Marianna Karachaliou, Gemma Moncunill, Manolis Kogevinas and Carlota Dobaño and colleagues provides it. The main findings, published open access in MBC Medicine, include:

Why Scientific Evidence Doesn't Change a Fundamentalist's or Conspiracist's Mind

Fig. 2. Belief networks and development of interdependence over measurements.
The networks are shown for GM food (A) and childhood vaccines (B) and include moral beliefs (orange nodes) and social beliefs (green nodes). The ties represent the partial correlations between two beliefs controlled for all other beliefs. Blue (red) ties represent positive (negative) correlations, and the widths of the ties correspond to the strength of the correlations. The strength of the ties ranged from 0.02 (between the beliefs “Chi” and “Fam”) to 0.30 (between the beliefs “Med” and “Sci”) for GM food and from 0.02 (between the beliefs “Com” and “Jou”) to 0.28 (between the beliefs “OnE” and “OnC”), N = 979.

Study: new model for predicting belief change | Santa Fe Institute

Two reserchers at the Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA, postdoctoral Fellows Jonas Dalege and Tamara van der Does, have developed a model to predict whether a person is likely to change his/her beliefs when presented with evidence-based information.

Those who have ever tried debating in the social media with Creationists, Antivaxxers, QAnon cultists or people who believe Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election, will be aware that people with these counter-factual beliefs are almost impossible to shift from those positions, no matter how strong the evidence presented to them.

The problem is our old friend, cognitive dissonance. Briefly, cognitive dissonance is the conflict or dissonance that is generated when firmly held belief meets contrary evidence. The result is emotional discomfort, sometimes amounting to a perceived threat, which needs to be resolved one way or another.

Covidiot News - Why Covidiot Antivaxxers Are Easy To Fleece

Given that those who have fallen for the various politically-motivated antivaxx hoaxes are significantly more likely to catch COVID-19 and be made seriously unwell with it, and so are much more likely to suffer from 'long COVID', unscrupulous quack cure pedalers have a ready-made lucrative market in quack cures and fake miracles in the form of people who have already proven their gullibility. They are being aided in this fraud by the social media and the usual channels for spreading fake news and disinformation.

In this article, reprinted from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license, reformatted for stylistic consistency, Deborah Lupton, SHARP Professor and leader of the Vitalities Lab, Centre for Social Research in Health and Social Policy Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, explains how long COVID victims are being sold a new range of 'miracle cures'. Read the original article here.

Covidiot News - Antivaxxer Covidiots Losing the Argument

a COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and acceptance. b COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and acceptance if recommended by employer or one’s doctor. a, b COVID-19 acceptance in June 2020 was defined as willingness to take vaccine if proven safe and effective. COVID-19 vaccine acceptance in June 2021 was defined as having received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and if not, willingness to take the COVID-19 vaccine when it is available to them. Vaccine hesitancy was defined as having reported “no” to the question on whether they have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and also either unsure/no opinion, somewhat disagree, or strongly disagree to the question on whether they would take a COVID-19 vaccine when available to them. Four countries (Ghana, Kenya, Peru, and Turkey) were not included in the 2020 global survey. c Potential COVID-19 vaccine acceptance if recommended by employer or one’s doctor among those willing to take vaccine when available and those hesitant to vaccinate. c Potential COVID-19 vaccination was defined as willingness to take the COVID-19 vaccine when it is available if recommended by employer or by doctor.

Study shows increase in COVID-19 vaccine acceptance around the world - CUNY Graduate School of Public Health & Health Policy

A new study by scientists from the City University of New York School of Public Health (CUNY SPH), USA, the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), Hospital Clínic, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain, the University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada and the School of Health Administration, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, has show a growing acceptance of the anti-Covid vaccines on a global scale between 2020 and 2021.

The team conducted a survey of 23,000 individuals from 23 countries in June 2021 and found that 75.2% reported acceptance of the vaccine, compared to 71.5% in 2020. The results of the survey were published open access in Nature Communications.
According to the CUNY SPH press release:

The study … was carried out within the context of a year of substantial but very unequal global COVID-19 vaccine availability and acceptance, which necessitated new assessments of the drivers of vaccine hesitancy and the characteristics of people not vaccinated.

Concerns about vaccine safety and efficacy and mistrust in the science behind vaccine development were the most consistent correlates of hesitancy. Other factors associated with vaccine hesitancy varied by country and included personal experience with COVID-19 (e.g., sickness or loss of a family member) and demographic characteristics (e.g., gender, education, and income).

The authors found that vaccine hesitancy did not significantly correlate with a country’s current COVID-19 case burden and mortality. In June 2021, vaccine hesitancy was reported most frequently in Russia (48.4%), Nigeria (43%), and Poland (40.7%), and least often in China (2.4%), the United Kingdom (UK) (18.8%), and Canada (20.8%).

In order to improve global vaccination rates, some countries may at present require people to present proof of vaccination to attend work, school, or indoor activities and events. Our results found strong support among participants for requirements targeting international travellers, while support was weakest among participants for requirements for schoolchildren.

Jeffrey Lazarus, lead author.
Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal)
Hospital Clínic
University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
And the Graduate School of Public Health & Health Policy
City University of New York (CUNY), New York, NY, US

Support for vaccine mandates was substantially lower among those who were hesitant to get vaccinated themselves.

Importantly, however, recommendations by a doctor, or to a lesser extent by an employer, might have an impact on a respondent’s views on vaccination in some countries.

Dean Ayman El-Mohandes, co-author Graduate School of Public Health ∓ Health Policy
City University of New York (CUNY), New York, NY, USA

Although some countries are currently disengaging from evidence-based COVID-19 control measures, the disease has by no means been controlled or ended as a public health threat. The authors note that for ongoing COVID-19 vaccination campaigns to succeed in improving coverage going forward, substantial challenges remain. These include targeting those reporting lower vaccine confidence with evidence-based information campaigns and greatly expanding vaccine access in low- and middle-income countries.

Covidiot News - Another Reason Why Pregnant Women Should Be Vaccinated Against COVID-19

Covid-19 vaccination during pregnancy reduced the risk of hospitalisation with COVID-19 for babies under 6 month-old by 80% for the Delta variant and by 40% for the Omicron variant.

COVID-19 Vaccination in Pregnancy Helps Protect Infants from Needing Hospital Care for COVID-19 | Lurie Children's

Contrary to the antivaxx propaganda coming from the extreme right in the USA, a new study, sponsored by the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has shown that COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy reduced the risk of babies under 6 month old needing hospitalization due to COVID-19 infection, by 80% during the Delta wave and 40% during the Omicron wave.

The study, led by Dr. Bria M. Coates, MD, was conducted by investigators from the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital, Chicago and the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago. It included infants younger than 6 months of age who were admitted to 30 paediatric hospitals in 22 states from July 1, 2021, to March 8, 2022. Dr Coates and his colleagues found that most infants (90 percent) who needed intensive care due to COVID-19 infection were born to mothers who were not vaccinated during pregnancy.

The results were published a few days ago in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital press release explains the importance of these findings:

Covidiot Antivaxxer News - Study Shows That Covid-19 Can Cause Dementia

COVID-19 Pneumonia Increases Dementia Risk - MU School of Medicine

There are two ways of looking at the latest findings concerning the long-term effects of severe COVID-19.

• If you are a creationist, you could marvel at the inventive genius of any intelligent designer who could design such a thing as the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 just to increase the suffering in the world
• If you are a caring and compassionate person, you can appreciate how this findings makes it imperative that as many people as possible are vaccinated and boosted in order to reduce the likelihood of someone else catching the disease and to help make the pandemic a thing of the past.

The finding, by researchers from the University of Missouri School of Medicine and MU Health Care shows that there is a significantly increased risk of developing dementia following a case of COVID-29-induced pneumonia, severe enough to requiring hospitalization.

The risk of new onset dementia was more common in COVID-19 pneumonia patients over the age of 70 in our study.

The type of dementia seen in survivors of COVID-19 infection mainly affects memory, ability to perform everyday tasks and self-regulation. Language and awareness of time and location remained relatively preserved.

The findings suggest a role for screening for cognitive deficits among COVID-19 survivors. If there is evidence of impairment during screening and if the patient continues to report cognitive symptoms, a referral for comprehensive assessment may be necessary.

Professor Adnan I. Qureshi, MD. Professor of clinical neurology
MU School of Medicine.

For the study, the researchers analysed the records of 1.4 billion medical encounters prior to July 31, 2021. They selected patients hospitalized with pneumonia for more than 24 hours. Among 10,403 patients with COVID-19 pneumonia, 312 (3%) developed new onset dementia after recovering, compared to 263 (2.5%) of the 10,403 patients with other types of pneumonia diagnosed with dementia. This represents a 20% increase in the risk of dementia following COVID-19 pneumonia.

The study was only of new onset dementia. The median time interval between infection and dementia diagnosis was 182 days for COVID-19 patients. The study only included new onset dementia associated with hospital admission during a short follow-up period. Dr Qureshi said a more detailed study, conducted over a longer time may help to determine the reasons why COVID-19 is linked to dementia.
The authors give more details in the abstract to their open access paper published in the journal Open Forum Infectious Diseases:

Abstract

Background
Case series without control groups suggest that severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection may result in cognitive deficits and dementia in the postinfectious period.

Methods
Adult pneumonia patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection (index hospitalization) and age-, gender-, and race/ethnicity-matched contemporary control pneumonia patients without SARS-CoV-2 infection were identified from 110 healthcare facilities in United States. The risk of new diagnosis of dementia following >30 days after the index hospitalization event without any previous history of dementia was identified using logistic regression analysis to adjust for potential confounders.

Results
Among 10 403 patients with pneumonia associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection, 312 patients (3% [95% confidence interval {CI}, 2.7%–3.4%]) developed new-onset dementia over a median period of 182 days (quartile 1 = 113 days, quartile 3 = 277 days). After adjustment for age, gender, race/ethnicity, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, hyperlipidemia, nicotine dependence/tobacco use, alcohol use/abuse, atrial fibrillation, previous stroke, and congestive heart failure, the risk of new-onset dementia was significantly higher with pneumonia associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection compared with pneumonia unrelated to SARS-CoV-2 infection (odds ratio [OR], 1.3 [95% CI, 1.1–1.5]). The association remained significant after further adjustment for occurrence of stroke, septic shock, and intubation/mechanical ventilation during index hospitalization (OR, 1.3 [95% CI, 1.1–1.5]).

Conclusions
Approximately 3% of patients with pneumonia associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection developed new-onset dementia, which was significantly higher than the rate seen with other pneumonias.

Qureshi, Adnan I; Baskett, William I; Huang, Wei; Naqvi, S Hasan; Shyu, Chi-Ren
New-Onset Dementia Among Survivors of Pneumonia Associated With Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 Infection
Open Forum Infectious Diseases, Volume 9, Issue 4, April 2022, ofac115, doi: 10.1093/ofid/ofac115

Copyright: © 2022 The authors. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Infectious Diseases Society of America.
Open access
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs licence (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

The findings from this study, with the findings in the study which was the subject of my last blog post which showed the efficacy of the vaccines in children, give a very clear message to anyone with a sense of social responsibility, which I appreciate tends not to include evangelical creationists and members of extremist right-wing antivaxxer cults, is that vaccinations work and should be encouraged, if we are ever to put an end to this pandemic and to reduce the suffering it has wrecked worldwide.

Probably what evangelical creationists hate most about the vaccines is that they represent a considerable triumph of science over what they believe to be the creation of their god, visited on mankind for disagreeing with evangelical creationists.

Don't be a Covidiot!
Get vaccinated or get boosted, Now!

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COVID-19 News - It Doesn't Matter Which Booster You Have, So Long as You Have One!

Transmission electron micrograph of SARS-CoV-2 virus particles (gold) within endosomes of a heavily infected nasal epithelial cell.

Credit: NIAID

Mix-and-Match Trial Finds Additional Dose of COVID-19 Vaccine Safe, Immunogenic | NIH: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

My first two anti-COVID vaccines were the Astra-Zeneca vaccines but, for reasons of availability, my booster was the Pfizer vaccine. None of the vaccines caused anything more than the slightest discomfort at the injection site which lasted about 2 days. However, a friend of mine declined an offered booster because it wasn’t the same as the initial vaccine and thought there might be a smaller boost as well as doubling the risk of an adverse reaction.

So, which of us was right?

The preliminary results of a clinical trial by the US National Institute of Health, show that there is certainly no disadvantage in a mix and match approach and there may even be a benefit. The trial results are reported in The New England Journal of Medicine.

As the NIH News release explains: