Someone had posted awhile ago about vaccine imprinting including a link to an article about it. I wanted to discuss this with my physician but can't seem to find the post. Can anyone help me find it? TIA
Vaccine imprinting: Someone had posted awhile ago... - MPN Voice
Vaccine imprinting
Thanks so much!
You are severely misinterpreting those studies to fit your narrative. And, yet again, you get to conclusions that are not supported by science. A couple of studies that did not look at a multitude of factors are not a solid scientific base to conclude what you concluded. Their sample is "cohort of healthcare personnel in northern Ohio." These are people who work in health care, not your average person. They are exposed to a large volume of infections. And their explosion in infections compared to previous years coincided with dropping prevention measures such as using masks indoors and staying at home when sick.
Also, the laxity of prevention measures outside vaccination and a low vaccination uptake means the virus spread and mutated to evade previous immunity. There are many variants of virus around and they are good at evading immunity. And in people often exposed to infection, such as health care staff, vaccine alone while the virus spread is not limited by other measures in the community, is never going to be enough. These are just some of the factors that the studies you presented did not take into account.
Vaccines for which we have broad enough coverage and have herd immunity work because so many people are vaccinated (~90%) that there is a very low spread of said pathogens that new variants of said pathogen do not develop. If people stop vaccinating and we do not get good coverage, we will get where we are with SARS-COV2 with some pathogens.
"Immune imprinting" is just a hypothesis that needs much better research before it can be speculated it has an impact. And the study you cite was the one looking at the bivalent vaccine, using the wild type and an Omicron variant. That is not the case for boosters anymore. So it does not apply to current boosters.
If that data is not "in the news" the way you presented it, there might be a good reason for that: the scientists who wrote the studies did not interpret their data the way you did. Also, for the studies that were too small or look like cherrypicking, or are not relevant for current situation, they will most likely not be seen as needing publicity.
« a higher number of prior vaccine doses was associated with a higher risk of COVID-19 »
The association between a higher number of prior COVID-19 vaccine doses and an increased risk of contracting COVID-19 can be attributed to several factors:
1. **Waning Immunity**: Over time, the immunity provided by vaccines can decrease. This means that individuals who received their doses earlier might have lower levels of protection compared to those who were vaccinated more recently¹.
2. **Behavioral Factors**: People who have received multiple doses might feel more protected and therefore might engage in riskier behaviors, such as not wearing masks or attending crowded events, which can increase their exposure to the virus².
3. **Variant Evolution**: The effectiveness of vaccines can vary depending on the dominant COVID-19 variants. Some studies have shown that vaccines were less effective against certain variants, which could explain why individuals with more doses might still contract COVID-19¹.
4. **Selection Bias**: Individuals who are more likely to get vaccinated multiple times might also be those who are more exposed to the virus, such as healthcare workers or people with underlying health conditions, which could skew the data².
The study’s findings have been misinterpreted by some to suggest that more vaccine doses increase the risk of contracting COVID-19. However, the researchers did not conclude that additional doses cause a higher risk of infection. Instead, they observed an association that could be influenced by various factors, such as waning immunity, behavioral differences, and the characteristics of the study population.
The controversy mainly arises from how the study’s results have been communicated and interpreted, particularly on social media and in some opinion pieces2. It’s important to consider the broader context and the limitations of the study when evaluating its findings.
Source : conversation avec Copilot, 03/12/2024
(1) Effectiveness of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Bivalent Vaccine. academic.oup.com/ofid/artic....
(2) Risk of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) among those up-to ... - PLOS. journals.plos.org/plosone/a....
(3) Correlates of protection and determinants of SARS-CoV-2 breakthrough .... bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.c....
(4) Covid-19: Undervaccination was associated with higher risk of ... - The BMJ. bmj.com/content/384/bmj.q121.
(5) Association between vaccination rates and COVID-19 health outcomes in .... bmcpublichealth.biomedcentr....
Your "message" is misinterpreting the actual content of the study (see the post from Manouche below your post) and it is not a message, it is your opinion which is a misinterpretation of what can be scietifically said based on those studies. I understand that you most likely do not have formal scientific education. But kindly show some modesty related to your abilities to interpret science. You are confusing correlation with causation. Answering to you more on the studies would mean to feed your wish to have your beliefs confirmed.
What you are posting is sowing scientifically unsupported doubts about some vaccines. And people tend to generalise fast from one vaccine to all vaccines. If you were a scientist, you would know it is not ethical to cherrypick studies to make a point that could induce doubts about a very necessary prevention.
It is not the first time you are doing this. How you present your "message" is rather problematic. You might not be antivaccine, but the way you phrase what you post is in line with doubting vaccines. Someone might read it and might be influenced by this towards distrust in vaccines. You are in a support group for chronic blood cancer patients. The last thing they need is to be subtly trained in vaccine scepticism here. Your experiences are not universal and kindly, be considerate of what you post.
And why do you need to post these unfounded doubts about some vaccines? What is your goal? Why not make a blog about this outside this vulnerable community? Because here you can only do more harm than good.
As a trained scientist I have a duty to point out both poorly conducted science, and misinterpretations of scientific papers.
Manouche is making a very good point in the post below this. Read it and learn from it. It is good scientific commentary and maybe you could learn something from it.
I agree it was sloppy to use a preprint, I missed that. And the goal was to discuss imprinting rather than general risks. I've deleted them. I actually am tech type, Chemical engineering degree with 100+ US patents, for mechanical things. But inventors tend to be less science process, more loose thinking. Your point re subtleties being lost on many people is a good one.
There is no question that the covid vax provides valuable protection for a period of time, and preventing worst outcomes is the current goal vs any infection.
My specific vax message has been to avoid spacing them by one week. This is well known by some practitioners but not by the place I got them nor is it standard published guidance. I hope this will change.
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This is a good -write up against the pre-print:
"Cleveland Clinic Study Did Not Show Vaccines Increase COVID-19 Risk"
“The data from the study do indeed show that those who have more vaccines have more infections, but this is very unlikely to be causal in nature,”
This was the essence of my thought: "The goal in presenting the findings, he said, was to prompt other researchers to also look at the relationship between past doses and infection risk." A large study of different design and different authors for this endpoint would be helpful.
Imprinting happens but its effect on the Covid vax may be positive:
“However, based on observational epidemiological studies to date, the clinical impact (of prior exposures) remains unclear,”
and "Study after study has shown that this type of response (immune memory) markedly enhances protective antibodies,” These studies would be good to see.
factcheck.org/2023/06/scich...
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Manouche's link #2 seems to be the peer reviewed version of the Cleveland study. They found: "On multivariable analysis, being “up-to-date” was not associated with lower risk of COVID-19", which is neutral and better than the pre-print result. They do show some of the same correlations by certain criteria, but the highest HR is only 1.3. We all know it's clearly effective against the worst outcomes, while this looked just at any infection. The duration of that protection is constantly being studied.
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Link #1 is the same Cleveland group. They found the 1st bivalent vax was just 29% effective for the best matched virus. (HR 0.71 (p<.001) It's possible imprinting is relevant here as they note. It would be good to see similar large population data for the current monovalents, it should be better. They provide "a few months" protection they report. I've read some guidance of boosting every 6 months for at risk pts.
Link#5 has the essence of the vaccine goal, it was initially to prevent infection which apparently worked well pre Omicron from reading thru these refs. But now the goal is to prevent the worst outcomes, quite practical. This can be consistent with the Cleveland studies:
"This outcome aligns with existing literature highlighting the rapid waning of the vaccines’ effectiveness against infection [33, 34]. Nonetheless, while vaccines may offer reduced protection against infection, our results indicate that they continue to provide substantial protection against hospitalization risk and help alleviate the burden on healthcare systems."
This message should actually be helpful to set expectations to match the current state. We hear people say the vax didn't work because they got infected. But it likely worked as intended because the case was most likely not severe.
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On the OP subject, there seems to be more history re the flu vax.
"Recent observations have provided convincing evidence that reduced VE after sequential influenza vaccination is a real phenomenon...In contrast, the potentially positive protective effect of early influenza virus infection later in life continues to be observed."
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articl...
This report discusses the limitations, complexities and nuances of the subject. Could be flu is similar to Covid, in years where its efficacy is low, it could be better at preventing worst outcomes than against all infection.
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And one that we can act on; A small -blind, placebo-controlled randomized clinical trial:
"giving influenza vaccine and COVID-19 booster simultaneously quite significantly blunts the response" They posit that imprinting could be at work. The comparisons were to 3 weeks apart, which many members are doing.