Vaccine Efficacy in Blood Cancer Patients

[Grembold]

I read an article on a BBC news web-site that stated that vaccine efficacy for patients with blood cancers give protection at about 9-13% after fist jab and very little more after the second. Can anyone tell me how true this is? Although this is some protection it is not much and makes me worried about mixing with people.

[Shedman]

I think current research is still developing better insights on this.. much depends on our t-cells.. The fact is, that we CLLers are indeed wise to exercise some caution and creativity about how we live and how we reduce our infection risks - of all infections, not just SARS-CoV-2 - whilst living good lives.

— and during+after treatment, our immune health dips further —

The good news is the emergence of more indoor air quality knowledge and mitigations becoming normalised against airborne infections..

New regulations/standards will surely arrive in many countries.

—

How to live? Well, I got a little careless 6 months after finishing B+R treatment, meeting up with people, indoors, indeed, in very crowded indoors..

I suffered a dreadful 9-10 weeks, of severe coughing, of interrupted breathing (unable to inhale for 15+ seconds at a time due to mucus plugs), of low blood oxygen at circa 88%, and subsequently of costochondritis (seriously painful rib cage affecting all movement, all sleep, all subsequent coughs..) — this illness nearly did for me.

It was here on HU, with help, that I concluded it was not COVID19.. today that distinction seems much easier and clearer.. that it was RSV, an infection most common during infancy, hitting me with my ‘reset’ post treatment weak immune system.

—

There are safer times of day/evening to meet - the less busy times.

We can encourage our favourite venues to take more actions - to install good filters, to upgrade their HVAC filters, to use the systems they have..

We can make difficult decisions before booking a restaurant with poor air quality safety.

We can ask who maintains their air system, and even ask the local HVAC companies whether they correctly test for filter bypass (air going through gaps around the filter = unfiltered air) and correct it by fitting suitable gaskets.. Yes, we can do this via Twitter, FaceBook etc..

We can ask politicians to create suitable statutory indoor air standards.

This is lobbying in our own interests. - a bit niche? Maybe, but this impacts on our health vulnerability, and our quality of life.

[LeoPa]

This was discussed a lot, lately. Pls check previous posts.

[Big_Dee]

Hello Grembold

I am doing the same things to protect myself from illness that I was doing before anyone ever heard of covid, because roughly 50% of CLLer pass on from pneumonia. Covid shot is not going to change that. Blessings.

[bennevisplace]

I think the BBC report you mean gave some headline figures for interim results of a small study (SOAP) in the UK on blood cancer patients. A bigger and better study on CLL patients has since come out of Tel Aviv. Their results were much more representative of the diversity of immune system status in CLL. Patients treated and in remission had a reasonably good antibody response to the Pfizer vaccine, and there's no reason to believe that it would be different for other vaccines.

Having said that, scientists don't yet understand how well the vaccines protect immunocompromised people, and until they tell us otherwise it's best to keep our guard up. Take reasonable precautions and you don't need to worry.

[17Pisme]

I recently took part in the LLS antibody study after taking both Pfizer vaccines and my counts were .79 on a scale of zero to 250. Not real encouraging my counts seem to be the rule and not the exception.

[Lisa-1959 in reply to 17Pisme]

I thought my counts were low at 5.47...still trying to be very careful!