Israeli trial shows 4th COVID shot less effective on Omicron

Phynart Studio/E+ via Getty Images

• The results are in for the Sheba Medical Center's landmark study of a fourth COVID-19 shot, which took place in Tel Aviv with the Pfizer-BioNTech (PFE, BNTX) vaccine. While the trial was many times smaller than traditional studies (just 154 medical staff were given the extra booster in December), it's the only known study of the effects of a fourth dose. The findings are also preliminary and not yet published.
• Quote: "The vaccine, which was very effective against the previous strains, is less effective against the Omicron strain," said Prof. Gili Regev-Yochay, a lead researcher in the experiment. "We see an increase in antibodies, higher than after the third dose. However, we see many infected with Omicron who received the fourth dose. Granted, a bit less than in the control group, but still a lot of infections. The bottom line is that the vaccine is excellent against the Alpha and Delta [variants], for Omicron it's not good enough."
• As a result, she is recommending a fourth shot be given to those at higher risk, but signaled that the current campaign, which offers the jab to anyone of 60, could be amended to only include even older groups. Regev-Yochay also said that while the decision to give the fourth vaccine to the most vulnerable was the correct one, the results didn't support a rollout to the wider population. EU medicines regulator warns on COVID booster shot frequency.
• Go deeper: Israel was the fastest country to roll out initial vaccinations against COVID-19 a year ago, and became one of the first to approve a COVID booster. In clearing a fourth shot, the nation hoped to keep the Omicron variant at bay, helping to avoid overwhelming the hospital system and shutting down businesses. As of Sunday night, over 500K Israelis out of a population of nearly 9.5M have been inoculated with a fourth dose. COVID-19 vaccine makers fall as top health officials question need for Omicron-specific shots.

Comments

[kovnat]

Let's see how this Omicron sub-pandemic within the Covid 19 pandemic pans out. In the next two weeks we should know if the number of new cases has dropped as it has in South Africa and the UK. They suffered early spikes in the number of cases and have since seen a marked drop in their new case rates.

[kovnat]

@funbi121
Yes, it is all right to go outside but when you continue from outside to inside for any reason, put your mask on.

[JDoe20]

@kovnat
Thanks for your recommendation but I’ll pass.

[John Naccarelli]

This has now become nothing more than a money-grab for business. The healthcare aspects have been pushed to the side. I have gotten 3 shots already and I AM DONE! I have gotten COVID once and probably a second time but didn't test the second time around. The funds wasted on this testing and more vaccinations is not logical, nor rational. Does EVERYONE get the flu vaccine every year? NO, but I do because it makes sense for me. No more boosters and let the human body do what it has done for over 1000000 years of evolution to fight off virus and disease.

[Ultimate Bag Holder]

@John Naccarelli so let this virus to spead . Let the Bubonic Plague do its busines.

[funbi121]

@Turkish Dude The bubonic plague has a case fatality rate of 60%...COVID has a case fatality rate of 1.4%. It's okay to go outside now.

[CA2mddw1971]

@funbi121
Agree with your overall sentiment, but FYI, the CFR for covid is nowhere near 1.4% in the overall population. It's closer to 0.1% for anyone healthy and under the age of 65. And that was BEFORE they found medications that helped treat the disease.

[eduso]

OK, ZERO data.
Who gave the doctors the money for this nice manipulation and day trade?

[JoeyT]

@eduso I thought initial data showed 30% preventative for infection, but 70% preventative of hospitalization. Much worse than 80/90 for delta, but still worth getting.

[eduso]

@JoeyT Zero data now - sheer manipulation.

[SmartReturns]

@JoeyT This guy's just a fool. The data shows that it is effective against Omicron, just not as effective as it is against the other variants. Still worth it.

[Stefan Redlich]

Not really a surprise but I guess the key is that it large prevents severe cases and complications which is a good thing but this way this will never ever end. How many more times do you want to vaccinate the entire world? 2x every year forever or what?

[SmartReturns]

@Stefan Redlich Eventually our bodies will adapt to it. The flu has a very small death rate because we have been living with it for so long. Covid has a high death rate because it's new.

[TruffelPig]

This is just plain bad info - hospitalization is the key parameter.

[Marrk]

@TruffelPig They were just plain not measuring hospitalization. They were just plain measuring infection rates.

Long PFE, MRK, JNJ

[R0ckS0lid]

Buy the dip. Many People still want to be boosted because they stay want to stay out of the hospital and to avoid very unpleasant symptoms. Omicron specific vaccine will also desirable by many. Bottom line is BioNTech will continue to bring in strong revenue and profit. Their evaluation is cheap, and there are no insider selling or note selling to deplete it’s value. The upside is huge if Omicron specific vaccine is a hit, or one of their pipeline comes through.

[The Exception]

😴

[Mason A]

Nobody was expecting a fourth dose of the same original formulation to offer any significant improvement against Omicron....yet Israel administered 500,000 doses without any data?

[eduso]

@Mason A OK, ZERO data.
Who gave the doctors the money for this nice manipulation and day trade?
Later they will say simply that they were wrong...

[trude017mill]

Therapeutics and natural immunity is our only path out of this. Keep yourself and your immune system healthy and avail yourself of the many ways good doctors are keeping people alive. doctorsbeatingcovid.com/... This 10 min clip, https://rb.gy/43wtlu does a great job explaining, in layman's terms, why these therapies are not working with variants, but natural immunity does.

Remember back in 2020 when there was no vaccine (and less people died with Covid), how many times did we hear, "most cases will be mild, some with little to no symptoms"? Healthy, non immune compromised folks beat it back then and are beating it now (vaxed or not). And unfortunately, those who are vulnerable (very old, those with comorbidities, obese, cigarette smokers...), are not beating it (vaxed or not). It's easy to say, see all these people with the vax are getting C-19 but not getting real sick, but that may have been the case anyway, depending on each person's individual factors. Because they did not keep a control group of nu-vaccinated from trials, we will never know if the shots actually helped or not.

Remember back before the CDC conveniently changed the definition of a vaccine, when all prior vaccines actually prevented sickness and the spread? The term vaccine should be stripped from these experimental treatments. As this Israeli trial shows, there is no "public health" benefit, the vaxed are getting it and spreading it. It's simply a personal medical choice which we should all be free to choose or not.

[CA2mddw1971]

@trude017mill
"personal medical choice which we should all be free to choose or not."

Personal choice??? You must be one of these fascists I'm hearing so much about. /s

[mbkent]

@CA2mddw1971 - be certain that you understand the definition of “fascism”. Fascism is authoritarian ultranationalism characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, and strong regimentation of society and the economy that rose to prominence in early 20th-century Europe.

[CA2mddw1971]

@mbkent
Be certain that you can understand when someone is using sarcasm.
(------> /s )

[Tawm]

Sadly, I recommend selling a bit of PFE and taking profits. The licensed pirates (class action lawyers) and complicit politicians see a juicy target fattening up. Just give it time.

[pat45]

back to masks....

[JDoe20]

“In clearing a fourth shot, the nation hoped to keep the Omicron variant at bay . . . .”

The old saying still applies, hope is not a plan.

[FirstFIREWealth]

Bring the 5th shot

[GameKing13]

I think it should be like one of those pizza stores that if you have nine visits, they give the 10th one for free.

Maybe after nine shots, the 10th one will be the good one

[HavingFunToday]

@GameKing13 the call it covid-19 so maybe the 19th shot you get a prize.

[mwilson801]

They are making a mockery of the notion of a vaccine.
Less surprisingly, the crowd is making a fool of themselves by proudly advertising they don't even understand what a vaccine is.
Maybe when they are done counting Nov 2020 ballots they can grab their high school biology textbook again. Oh wait, this is America, there is no such thing.

In Spain, as of 12/26/2021:
Hospitalizations (vax / unvax)
30-59 (1.9 / 13.14)
60-79 (7.54 / 127.58)
>80 (14.25 / 137.49)
ICUs (vax / unvax)
30-59 (0.18 / 2.05)
60-79 (0.99 / 28.97)
>80 (0.28 / 5.01)

Same data everywhere.
Kick unvaccinated m0r0ns out of hospitals. Just Do it.

www.sanidad.gob.es/...

[VoiceofSanitySometimes]

@mwilson801

Look up the data on hospitalization of obese v not, and cigarette smokers v not, and those who get regular exercise v not, and those who eat healthy diets v not. Etc. All choices that people make. Should we kick everyone who made a life choice you don't like out of hospitals? We'd certainly need a lot less hospitals, maybe none.

[mwilson801]

@VoiceofSanitySometimes The above are weekly hospitalization and ICU rates per 100k in Spain.

In 2017, Spain had a population of 46.5M and 22k people where diagnosed with lung cancer. 86% of them were smokers.

Assuming they all showed up uniformly across time and hospitals and that they all required immediate hospitalization, their hospitalization rates per 100k were 0.13 / 0.78

I don't remember having had to shut everything down or cancel elective surgeries because 0.9 smokers per 100k showed up to a hospital.

And those smokers are already paying higher premiums, if they elected cancer coverage in the first place.

Had they all showed up at once within a week in a massive lung cancer wave, the rate for that week would have been 6.62 / 40.69

Do you get the difference in magnitude between those rates?
And between an infectious disease with an obnoxious spread and the rest?

[VoiceofSanitySometimes]

@mwilson801

I can't speak for the Spanish data, but the data in the US on hospitalizations is grossly misleading. Hospital bed and ICU bed utilization in the US is in the high 70% range, right where it normally is this time of year. The Governor of NY just admitted that around half of the claimed covid hospitalizations in the state were because of the person got covid while they were in the hospital for something else. Other data clearly shows that most of the people who had covid when they were admitted to the hospital were admitted for a reason having nothing to do with their covid.

There is no covid hospitalization crisis in the US. All those who want to claim there is one can do is point to the places that have the fewest hospital beds per capita say their hospitals are overflowing (Idaho is a great example of that). What they don't tell you is that their hospitals are always overflowing because they don't have enough beds. NYC was in constant "lock-down" in 2020 and much of 2021 because hospital capacity utilization was too high, while at the same time covid hospitalizations per capita were quite low. The reason is because they shut down over 20% of their hospital capacity between 2005 and 2015, so NYC has about 30% less hospital capacity per capita than the rest of NY state.

Now back to your comments on cigarette smoking. Do you think the only bad outcome from cigarette smoking is lung cancer? How about COPD? How about heart disease? How about all the other cancers that cigarette smoking can cause? Why don't you go back to your data and tell me the relative rates of hospitalization among smokers v non-smokers? And then tell me the relative rate of the obese v not.

Obese people pay more for health insurance than others? Not in Spain, where nationalized health care is funded from payroll taxes. And not in the US, where Medicare and group health insurance (mostly through employers) don't differentiate obesity. May want to check that assumption.

[dgiinvestor]

Underacheivers.

They need 1 more. Matter of fact, make it 11 shots. COVID would never see that coming. Turn it up to 11.

[CA2mddw1971]

@dgiinvestor
I know you're joking, but I took a small position in PFE because I'm convinced well over half the population will get as many shots as they are told to, no questions asked.

The word, "sheep," comes to mind. I'm going to cast my lot with the wolves.

[MessaDave]

I am not looking forward to catching this latest variation of Covid. Also, I am a vaccination supporter. That said, I question getting a fourth shot when it’s not effective against Omicron. They told us how many folks were in the study but not that actual numerical results. My guess the difference was not significant or they would be announcing it from the top of a mountain. Honest information is needed, not the BS which appears on a regular basis.

[HavingFunToday]

@MessaDave if like they are saying the 4th shot doesn't work against Omicron then what would be the need for a 4th one?

[gogogoapple]

Time to embrace the therapeutics. Vaccines won’t get us out of this or control it long term

[dgiinvestor]

@gogogoapple Or, we can stop looking for an escape from every possible unpleasantness and finally grow up.

[BWAHAHAHAHAHA]

@gogogoapple Isn't this "Vaccine" really a therapeutic?

[trude017mill]

@gogogoapple Amen brother and keep yourself and your immune system healthy. There are many ways good doctors are keeping people alive. doctorsbeatingcovid.com/...
@BWAHAHAHAHAHA Remember back before the CDC conveniently changed the definition of a vaccine, when all prior vaccines actually prevented sickness and the spread? The term vaccine should be stripped from these experimental treatments. As this Israeli trial shows, there is no "public health" benefit, the vaxed are getting it and spreading it. It's simply a personal medical choice we should all be free to choose or not.

[dynx]

Only one solution, and we all know what it it: 5 shots!

[kb9wnt]

@dynx nope. I was thinking more like an IV drip.