I didn’t sleep well last night, then took a long nap today, so this is all you get today, sorry.
Vaccines
This preprint reports on Phase 1 studies of Patria, the Mexican version of NDV-HXP-S. (If you’ve forgotten, NDV-HXP-S was developed at a med school in New York, uses the 6-proline stabilization, and uses really old technology (i.e. it is ultra cheap), and is patent-free. Mexico, Brazil, and Thailand are making versions. Vietnam was, but quit because it was too hard to run trials.) Phase 1 trials are really small, and used to figure out dosing (as well ask keeping an eye on safety and efficacy). I don’t normally report on Phase 1 trials, but this is a very important vax.
They found that they had to use the highest dose of the three they tried, but that there were very few side effects. They tried two doses of intramuscular(IM), two doses of intranasal(IN), and IN first, then IM. IM+IM worked best; the others didn’t work nearly as well. (It’s a pity that they didn’t happen to try IM+IN, as there is other research that says that works really well.) They found that the vaccines worked “well enough”. With such a small study, it’s not really possible to be very precise about effectiveness.
They have started working on an Omicron-specific version. (I hope they try IM first then IN in those trials!)
This tweet from Novavax reports results from their Phase 3 trial in adolescents. Side effects were minimal, and it was 82.0% effective against Delta.
Variants
This preprint says that vaccines are about the same against Omicron version BA.2 as variant BA.1 (Omicron Classic), and infection with BA.2 gives good protection against BA.1. Aside from this being good news (well, not really bad news), this means that BA.2 is outcompeting BA.1 in many places is due to increased transmissibility and not increased immune evasiveness.
Recommended Reading
This article talks about the benefit of “living reviews”: frequently updated (like weekly) literature reviews.
This article talks about why — from an evolutionary psychology perspective — masks (and other mandates) are so polarizing.