COVID-19 vaccines – Page 3 – Go Retire Psychiatrist

New Wrinkle on Iowa Bill to Oppose mRNA Vaccines in Iowa

This is a follow up to yesterday’s post about the Iowa legislature’s proposition of a new law that would essentially ban mRNA vaccines in Iowa. I don’t understand the numbers and codes on the new sections, but the new one proposes that manufacturers of vaccines would have to waive immunity from lawsuits arising from “a design defect of the vaccine.”

I’m not sure if that’s addition to being charged with a simple misdemeanor, subject to a $500 fine for administering the vaccine. I oppose this one too because I think it would essentially make vaccines difficult to access and harder to persuade new medical staff to come to Iowa.

There’s going to be a meeting about the bill at 4:30 PM CST. I can’t remember if it’s at the state house or at the Exile Brewing Co. for sandwiches and Ruthie’s beer.

In any case, the comment section is overwhelmingly in opposition to the bill. I saw several comments mentioning that we already have the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVIP), which is designed to field requests for compensation to those who believe they’ve been injured by certain vaccines. I had not heard of it before. It’s administered by the federal government, Health Resources & Services Administration, which is under the Health and Human Resources department.

There is a nice easy to read summary about the complicated story of vaccine safety and liability at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia website. It was reviewed by Dr. Paul A. Offit, MD last year. He attends meeting of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, although I think he missed the one last month about the flu vaccine because it was cancelled.

If I see anything earth shaking about the meeting this afternoon on HF712, I’ll make an addendum to this post.

Proposed Bill Would Ban mRNA Vaccines in Iowa

Sena just alerted me to a bill in the Iowa legislature right now that proposes mRNA vaccines (like the Covid vaccine for example) be banned in Iowa. Part of it says that any person who provides or administers such a vaccine would be guilty of a simple misdemeanor and subject to a $500 fine. I do not support it although I also support the right of others to disagree.

The bill advanced out of subcommittee yesterday and I’m not sure how although, admittedly, I don’t know what exactly that means about its chance of being ultimately passed into law. There were hundreds of comments against it. It moves for further consideration to the Iowa Senate Health and Human Services Committee according to a story in the Daily Iowan.

This sent me to the web to find out what other silly laws Iowa has passed. A few of them are below:

“Any person who attempts to pass off margarine, oleo, or oleomargarine as real butter is guilty of a simple misdemeanor in Iowa. This one originated in 1943, but is still in force today.”

“In Marshalltown, horses are forbidden to eat fire hydrants.”

“It is illegal for a mustached man to kiss a woman in public.”

All of the above are on this Iowa State University web page.

Are There Clear and Consistent Racial Differences in Immunity?

So, the short answer is “Probably not.” I did a little digging on this because I heard the recently confirmed HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr (RFK Jr) cite studies which he says did indicate there are differences in humoral immunity between Caucasians and African Americans.

Now remember, I’m a retired general hospital psychiatric consultant and my immunology background consists of the standard immunology lecture in medical school. The class I remember most vividly was the one in which the lecturer stopped her lecture abruptly, sighed deeply and looked defeated, probably because she saw the look of confusion on our faces.

Now that you know my credentials, let me just review what I found in a far from exhaustive review of the scientific literature on the topic of whether or not African Americans have, as RFK Jr. remarked, a “better” immune system than Caucasians.

On my own, I found what RFK Jr referred to variously (depending what social media web source you use) as the “Poland” or “pollen” studies as the scientific source of information supporting his view. I suspect it’s this, in which the last author in the citation is GA Poland:

Haralambieva IH, Salk HM, Lambert ND, Ovsyannikova IG, Kennedy RB, Warner ND, Pankratz VS, Poland GA. Associations between race, sex and immune response variations to rubella vaccination in two independent cohorts. Vaccine. 2014 Apr 7;32(17):1946-53. doi: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2014.01.090. Epub 2014 Feb 13. PMID: 24530932; PMCID: PMC3980440.

It was later in the day that I finally also found the NPR news story, the author of which pointed out the same article.

I also found a couple of other articles which tend to contradict the findings of the Poland et al study. One of them was published in eClinicalMedicine in 2023:

Martin CA, Nazareth J, Jarkhi A, Pan D, Das M, Logan N, Scott S, Bryant L, Abeywickrama N, Adeoye O, Ahmed A, Asif A, Bandi S, George N, Gohar M, Gray LJ, Kaszuba R, Mangwani J, Martin M, Moorthy A, Renals V, Teece L, Vail D, Khunti K, Moss P, Tattersall A, Hallis B, Otter AD, Rowe C, Willett BJ, Haldar P, Cooper A, Pareek M. Ethnic differences in cellular and humoral immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 vaccination in UK healthcare workers: a cross-sectional analysis. EClinicalMedicine. 2023 Apr;58:101926. doi: 10.1016/j.eclinm.2023.101926. Epub 2023 Apr 4. PMID: 37034357; PMCID: PMC10071048.

The list of references include the Poland study (reference 27) cited above. The bottom line is the African American immune response to Covid is not “better” than that of white health care workers but the Asian immune response was stronger. I thought it was interesting that in the section “Evidence before this study,” the authors point out that in one previous study, African Americans had lower antibody responses to vaccination than Whites.

I looked at only one other study, published in Clinical Microbiology Review in 2019;

Zimmermann P, Curtis N2019.Factors That Influence the Immune Response to Vaccination. Clin Microbiol Rev 32:10.1128/cmr.00084-18.https://doi.org/10.1128/cmr.00084-18

OK, so I didn’t hunt through all 582 references, but I thought it was enough to note that the authors didn’t mention race as even being relevant anywhere in the body of the paper.

That said, I suspect the more important fact to focus on is racial disparity regarding African Americans even getting vaccines, especially the Covid vaccine. Vaccine hesitancy is common in this population and probably more important to address rather than whether or not there are significant racial differences in immunogenicity. The major challenge is providing accurate information about vaccines in general and Covid vaccines in particular.

The CDC Advisory Committee includes African American members who attend each meeting and emphasize the importance of including black people in vaccination campaigns. OK, so why was the meeting this month cancelled, postponed, or whatever?

Hey, I’m just an old psychiatrist, so don’t take my word for it about anything here. Ask an immunologist. If the immunologist gives you a blank look, you could try a Ouija Board.

CDC Meeting Results in Recommending a 2nd Covid-19 Vaccine Dose for Those 65yr and Older and for the Immunocompromised

I missed the October CDC meeting which resulted in a decision to recommend a 2nd dose of the Covid-19 vaccine for those 65 years and older and for the immunocompromised.

The Evidence to Recommendations (EtR) slides by Roper indicated Covid-19 circulates year round, peaking in late summer and winter.

The recommendation that those in the above-named populations should get 2 doses of Covid-19 vaccine spaced 6 months apart seems based on reasonable considerations.

It looks like the vaccine would be the same as the one previously recommended for this year.

We Got Our Vaccinations

I saw the headlines about how some people are skipping the Covid-19 and flu shots this year. But we decided to get them anyway.

Sena got both but they were pretty close together and one bandaid covered them.

FDA Approves Updated Covid-19 Vaccines to Better Protect Against Currently Circulating Variants

On August 22, 2024, the FDA authorized new Covid-19 vaccines (2024-2025) “to include a monovalent (single) component that corresponds to the Omicron variant KP.2 strain of SARS-CoV-2. The mRNA COVID-19 vaccines have been updated with this formula to more closely target currently circulating variants and provide better protection against serious consequences of COVID-19, including hospitalization and death. Today’s actions relate to updated mRNA COVID-19 vaccines manufactured by ModernaTX Inc. and Pfizer Inc.”

CDC Covid Information

Often, I see news agency headlines claiming to have insider information about what’s going on with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), FDA, etc. I respect the opinions of others about government agencies. On the other hand, I like to get information straight from the horse’s mouth.

With that in mind, here’s what the CDC says is important to know about the Covid-19 situation.