2021-07-14 General

Vaccines

This study shows that Pfizer gives really good protection to pregnant women (66%/97% against symptomatic infection with one/two doses).


This small study (129 participants) from Hannover, Germany and this other even smaller study (59 participants) from Kiel Germany, showed that in test tubes, AZ+Pfizer is better than AZ+AZ (especially against Beta), and has basically the same results as Pfizer+Pfizer.

This study in 88 Swedish health care workers found that AZ+Moderna worked better in test tubes than AZ+AZ (especially against Beta).

Note that AZ is much cheaper and readily available than Pfizer or Moderna, so it would make perfect sense for a jurisdiction to choose to do AZ+mRNA if they were cost-sensitive and couldn’t get their hands on Pfizer right away.


This article gives anecdotes about vaccines causing (temporary) menstrual irregularities.


This Letter to the Editor says that, in test tubes, people vaccinated with one-shot of J&J vax developed more antibodies over time that were fine against the scariants, and kept the antibodies at a relatively high level for at least eight months. This suggests that one shot of J&J is fine, you don’t need a booster.

Treatments

This article says that a company claims it has made a nasal spray that blocks viral loads of all viruses by blocking them with nitric oxide. That would be great if it works.


This study says that bamlanivimab plus etesevimab was an awesome treatment:

Unfortunately, the chatter I hear is that bamlanivimab plus etesevimab doesn’t work well against VOCs. That’s a bummer, but it gives hope for being able to find something similar that does.