Anyone gotten a booster shot?

[ucbalumnus]

@shawbridge

How should one interpret the J&J figure of 13.1%. It is better than no protection in terms or probability of infection, but not by a lot. However, is there data regarding the probability of serious infection and death?

The study of US veterans from which these numbers come from is linked from this post:

Inside Medicine. What Are You Seeing? [COVID-19 medical news]

Study of 780,225 US veterans and vaccinations: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm0620 When Delta came, both vaccinated and unvaccinated veterans had a more difficult time escaping infection: [image] “Kaplan-Meier curves illustrating cumulative risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection by vaccination status and age. (A) All ages. (B) Age <50 years. (C) Age 50-64 years. (D) Age ≥65 years. The survival function estimates time to infection detected by most recent RT-PCR assay.” However, vaccinated veterans were much less likely to die: [image] “Kaplan-Meier curves illustrating cumulative risk of death due to any cause by vaccination status and RT-PCR assay. (A) Age <65 years. (B) Age ≥65 years. (C) Charlson Comorbidity Index score <3. (D) Charlson Comorbidity Index score ≥3.”

The paper from the study says that “For age <65 years, vaccine effectiveness against death (VE-D) was 81.7% (95% CI: 75.7% to 86.2%) for any vaccine; 73.0% (95% CI: 52.0% to 84.8%) for Janssen; 81.5% (95% CI: 70.7% to 88.4%) for Moderna; and 84.3% (95% CI: 76.3% to 89.7%) for Pfizer-BioNTech. For age ≥65 years, VE-D was 71.6% (95% CI: 68.6% to 74.2%) for any vaccine; 52.2% (95% CI: 37.2% to 63.6%) for Janssen; 75.5% (95% CI: 71.8% to 78.7%) for Moderna; and 70.1% (95% CI: 66.1% to 73.6%) for Pfizer-BioNTech.”

@shawbridge

should J&J folks just start over with Pfizer or Moderna?

The current recommendation is to get another dose of vaccine.

It may have been a mistake to designate the J&J vaccine as a one dose (only) vaccine. While one dose of J&J was reasonably effective (probably more so than one dose of Moderna or Pfizer), one dose of J&J was not as effective as two doses of Moderna or Pfizer. Perhaps there is some resistance among both the vaccine companies and the FDA against having a variable dose vaccine (where “one dose gives significant protection, but two doses are recommended for optimal protection”).