Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval threw some shade at Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes in an official city proclamation Friday.
Pureval proclaimed this Sunday “They Gotta Play Us Day” in honor of the city’s Bengals taking on the Chiefs in the AFC championship.
Brittany Matthews, girlfriend of quarterback Patrick Mahomes of the Kansas City Chiefs, before a game against the Denver Broncos at Empower Field at Mile High Oct. 17, 2019, in Denver, Colo. (Justin Edmonds/Getty Images)
In his proclamation, the mayor pointed to Mahomes’ 0-3 record against Joe Burrow, joking that officials have asked Burrow to take a paternity test to confirm whether he is Mahomes’ father.
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Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas caught wind of Pureval’s jabs and called them “weak as hell.”
Mahomes’ wife, Brittany, agreed.
“WEAK. & embarrassing,” she quote-tweeted.
CINCINNATI MAYOR RIPS PATRICK MAHOMES IN PROCLAMATION, JOKES JOE BURROW IS MAHOMES’ FATHER AHEAD OF TITLE GAME
In last year’s AFC title game, the Bengals beat the Chiefs 27-24 in overtime after Cincinnati outscored Kansas City 17-3 in the second half and overtime. It clinched the Bengals’ first Super Bowl appearance since the 1988 season.
Patrick Mahomes of the Kansas City Chiefs kisses wife Brittany before a game against the Los Angeles Chargers at Arrowhead Stadium Sept. 15, 2022, in Kansas City, Mo. (Jamie Squire/Getty Images)
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The Chiefs are hosting their fifth consecutive AFC championship game Sunday. They are 2-2 in their last four conference title games.
Former Vice President Mike Pence took a thinly veiled swipe at President Biden’s handling of classified documents Friday — while also telling a Florida audience that he and former President Donald Trump “went our separate ways.”
Pence, 63, implicitly blasted Biden’s more than two-month-long public concealment of the discovery of classified records from his vice presidency — while also addressing recently uncovered secret papers at Pence’s Indiana home.
“While I was not aware that the classified documents were in our personal residence, let me be clear, those classified documents should not have been in my personal residence,” the former Hoosier State governor said. “Mistakes were made and I take full responsibility.”
“Our national security depends on the proper handling of classified and sensitive materials. And I know that when errors are made, it’s important that they be resolved swiftly and disclosed,” he went on, drawing a contrast with Biden.
Boxes of classified documents were found in Trump’s home at Mar-a-Lago in August. AP
Mike Pence said he takes “full responsibility” for classified documents found at his Indiana home. AP
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“My only hope is that the American people look at our conduct in this matter and that they see that we acted above politics and put the national interest first,” Pence added while promoting his book “So Help Me God” at the Florida International University in Miami.
Pence is a possible 2024 Republican presidential candidate and acknowledged that he and his former boss Trump, 76 — who launched a 2024 comeback bid in November — are no longer allied after Trump “returned” to rhetoric claiming the 2020 election results were fraudulent.
“[Trump] and I actually parted amicably at the close the administration. In the months that followed, we spoke from time to time, but when the president returned to some of the rhetoric that he was using before that fateful day in January of 2021, I just decided it would be best if we went our separate ways and we have,” Pence said.
While vice president, Pence defied Trump’s demand that he unilaterally reject swing-state electors for Biden while presiding over the counting of Electoral College votes, provoking Trump’s rage as a mob stormed the Capitol to disrupt the proceedings.
Pence publicly revealed Tuesday that he had found classified records at his home — eight days after what he said was the Jan. 16 discovery at his Indiana residence. His attorney informed the National Archives on Jan. 18 and the FBI retrieved them Jan. 19.
Biden, by contrast, did not publicly disclose for more than two months the discovery on Nov. 2 of classified documents dating to his vice presidency at his former Penn Biden Center office in Washington. The cache was found six days before the midterm elections and reportedly included “top secret” documents dealing with Iran and Ukraine.
A timeline of how the Biden classified documents scandal unfolded
Sept. 18, 2022 – Biden calls Trump “totally irresponsible” for storing top-secret documents at Mar-a-Lago
Nov. 2, 2022 – Biden’s attorneys find classified documents stashed at the Penn Biden Center in Washington
Nov. 4, 2022 — The National Archives contacts the Justice Department, saying the documents have been found and secured in an Archives facility
Nov. 8, 2022 — Democrats perform better than expected in the midterm elections, losing a net of just nine seats in the House of Representatives and gaining a seat in the Senate
Nov. 9, 2022 — The FBI begins an “assessment” of whether the classified material was mishandled in violation of federal law
Nov. 14, 2022 — Garland assigns Chicago US Attorney John Lausch to lead an initial investigation to determine whether Garland should appoint a special counsel
Nov. 18, 2022 – Garland announces special counsel in Trump case
Dec. 20, 2022 — Biden’s personal attorney tells Lausch more classified documents have been found in the garage of Biden’s Wilmington, Del. home
Jan. 5, 2022 — Lausch advises Garland to appoint a special counsel
Jan. 9, 2023 – The public is first told of the mishandled Biden documents
Jan. 10, 2023 – Biden makes first public statement about Penn documents
Jan. 11, 2023 — Classified documents reported found at second location
Morning of Jan. 12, 2023 — Biden attorney tells Lausch one additional classified document found at the Wilmington home
Morning of Jan. 12, 2023 — White House, Biden confirm documents found in garage
Afternoon of Jan. 12, 2023 – Garland appoints special counsel to investigate Biden documents
Biden kept his own discovery under wraps until Jan. 9 when CBS News broke the story.
Classified records also were found Dec. 20 inside Biden’s Wilmington, Del., garage next to his prized classic Corvette. In at least three additional searches of the home, including week by the FBI, more classified documents were found from Biden’s vice presidency and Senate years.
Classified documents were discovered at President Biden’s Delaware home where he keeps his 1967 Corvette. Joe Biden
Although Biden in September chastised Trump as “irresponsible” for keeping classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., which the FBI raided Aug. 8, Biden has defended his own conduct.
“My Corvette is in a locked garage, OK? So it’s not like they’re sitting out on the street,” Biden snapped at reporters this month when asked about the improper storage.
Special counsel Robert Hur is investigating whether Biden or anyone in his orbit broke the law. A different special counsel, Jack Smith, is investigating Trump’s handling of documents. It’s unclear how or whether the Justice Department will review Pence’s conduct.
Trump incongruously defended Pence this week, writing on social media, “Mike Pence is an innocent man. He never did anything knowingly dishonest in his life. Leave him alone!!!”
Joe Burrow‘s swagger has prompted one of his teammates to take things to the next level.
A day after Sunday’s playoff win over the Bills, Bengals cornerback Eli Apple has posted multiple tweets taking shots at the Bills and, specifically, at receiver Stefon Diggs.
“Someone get them couples therapy,” Apple tweeted above a video of Diggs gesturing in frustration at quarterback Josh Allen, after Allen failed to connect with receiver Gabe Davis on a fourth-down play that essentially ended the game. Diggs believed he was open in the end zone for a touchdown that would have cut the margin from 27-10 to 27-16, pending the PAT.
Apple also retweeted a video of Donald Trump chanting “turn off the lights,” in reference to “Diggs in the playoffs.”
Apple also retweeted the various tweets from Diggs regarding his reaction to the loss, and other messages mocking Diggs and the Bills.
In one tweet, Apple posted a video of Allen and Diggs shaking hands during pregame warmups with this message: “They ain’t do this after the game.” Apple also referred to Diggs as “Terrell Owens Jr.”
Allen got plenty of jabs from Apple, too. Scroll through his Twitter page and you’ll see all of it.
It’s one of the spoils of victory, to be sure. And it will make next year’s regular-season meeting between the Bills and Bengals in Cincinnati even more memorable.
Maybe, if the Bengals win the Super Bowl, the season will start with Bills vs. Bengals.
The Bengals need to win two more games to make that happen. If/when they lose — and if Apple has a rough showing — he’ll be hearing all about it from Bills fans, and maybe from Diggs directly.
New evidence in the scientific community indicates that there is a strong correlation between COVID-19, its related vaccines, and the reactivation of other viruses which have previously infected the host. This article will dive deeper into the nuances.
How Can Viruses Be Reactivated?
In the number of years I spent in the military as a microbiologist, I’ve always been quite impressed with how shrewd viruses can get.
During viral infections, viruses have to deal with the defense of the immune systems. If the immune system has the upper hand and defeats the viruses, viruses might develop mechanisms to stay dormant and become inactivated.
One such mechanism is to insert their viral DNA into cells’ chromosomes, staying in latency without active replication. Other mechanisms might involve promoting epigenetic silencing of the viral genome, meaning they stay “muted” in activity, but present and lying in wait.
Host cells will then reproduce cells still carrying the viral genetic information. Then, viruses might come back years, or even decades later, reactivating the viral replication when the immune system degrades. This prudent strategy where viruses turn into a latent enemy within the host is quite an effective strategy against the enemy, whether in the military or the human body.
The scientific community is very familiar with five types of viruses that are able to “hibernate” and reactivate given suitable conditions:
Herpes simplex virus, which causes blisters in the mouth and genital herpes. It is extremely common;
Varicella zoster virus (VZV), more commonly known as chickenpox;
Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), which causes mononucleosis or “mono,” the “kissing disease,” as it can be transmitted when people kiss each other;
Cytomegalovirus (CMV), which usually causes a great deal of trouble for immunocompromised people but not really otherwise;
Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which causes AIDS; this virus can stay in your body for more than a decade before becoming activated.
Let’s take VZV, or chickenpox, as an example. In the usual sense, everybody gets chickenpox in their life. This usually happens early on and is quite itchy for the patient but doesn’t have a lot of other severe complications.
After the patient initially overcomes VZV, it never truly goes away. It has the possibility of coming back, especially with the weakening of the immune system. It can attack again in a more severe form called shingles or Herpes Zoster. Shingles is a very painful rash that develops on one side of the body. In some cases, it may also cause chronic nerve pain or other serious complications, including blindness.
Shingles can also be caused by advanced age, stress, diseases (chronic or acute), cancer, or various other sources. In fact, the aforementioned factors usually also lead to the reactivation of other viruses. Chronic fatigue might lead to reactivating EBV, herpes might be reawoken with surgery, and HIV might be kickstarted by tumors.
A popular theory behind why viruses can be reactivated is that, after the initial wave of viruses was defeated, the body has a large fleet of naive CD-8 T-killer cells (immune cells that get rid of pathogens they don’t recognize) which serve to keep the remaining number of viruses in check.
When the immune system is placed under a lot of stress, such as during acute infection, when battling cancer, or after an organ transplant (due to the administered immunosuppressant drugs), those naive CD-8 cells go down in number one way or another. The virus then seizes the chance to proliferate when defenses are down.
Can COVID-19 Reactivate Latent Viruses?
Although it is unclear what exactly lets the viruses know that the immune system is compromised or otherwise occupied, there is now an increasing pool of data that strongly correlates the reactivation of previous viruses and a COVID-19 infection or even vaccination.
For example, in the journal Cell, scientists published a study that followed around 300 COVID-19 patients and tested their blood serum for viral fragments including from the Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV), the Cytomegalovirus (CMV), as well as SARS-CoV-2 itself.
The researchers recorded fragment levels two to three weeks after clinical diagnosis of COVID-19, two to three weeks after acute disease onset, and two to three months after initial symptoms. The researchers found that although viral fragment levels of other diseases were never higher than that of SARS-CoV-2, EBV fragment levels were still quite high.
Then, is this due to coinfection of COVID and EBV, or reactivation of latent EBV after COVID infection?
Actually, studies have found that the fluctuation patterns of antiviral IgG levels can indicate whether this is coinfection or reactivation of latent EBV.
In the diagram illustrated here, the solid lines represent antigen levels for EBV during acute infection, and the dashed lines are predicted antigen levels for a reactivation of EBV caused by SARS-CoV-2.
So, there are two major differences: one is that IgG antibody levels against viral capsid protein (VCA IgG) will be low during the initial one to two days of infection, while VCA IgG will start from a high level if it is a reactivation case.
The second difference is that the IgG against nuclear antigen (NA protein) will have a slow curve to increase its level if it is related to acute EBV infection on top of COVID, but the NA IgG will start from medium to high level if it is a reactivation of latent EBV.
Long COVID and Virus Reactivation
COVID-19 sometimes leads to an infamous syndrome called long covid, also known as post-acute sequelae of COVID-19 (PASC). Long covid patients often experience “unremitting fatigue, post-exertional malaise, and a variety of cognitive and autonomic dysfunctions” for a prolonged period of time.
This means that the immune system is under a terrific amount of stress struggling with these symptoms, which some scientists speculated to be quite the precursor to the reactivation of various hibernating viruses.
In a cross-sectional study, 215 participants were analyzed for key features that distinguished long COVID.
The results were surprising in the sense that many antibody responses were raised against not only SARS-CoV-2, but also other viruses such as EBV and VZV.
Using a process called rapid extracellular antigen profiling (or REAP), scientists were able to identify an elevated REAP score for many viruses belonging to the family herpesviridae, indicating that these viruses were reactivated during a COVID-19 infection.
Long COVID is known to cause a lot of issues even disregarding the reactivation of previous viruses, but what about the COVID-19 vaccines? Will they cause something similar?
Can the Jabs Reactivate Viruses as Well?
COVID-19 vaccines simulate the COVID-19 infection in a special way and force the immune system to adaptively react to it.
During the time when the immune system is processing the vaccine, it effectively redirects the attention of a lot of the naïve CD-8 T-killer cells to the COVID-19 spike proteins, and might leave a fleeting moment for some viruses from past infections to resurface.
The Epstein-Barr virus (EBV or mono) is ubiquitous in the global population and usually doesn’t cause a lot of trouble. Only in patients with severe immune deficiencies, such as after an organ transplant, will EBV lead to severe or even fatal complications.
One study looked at patients with an organ transplant history and analyzed their EBV fragment levels before and after receiving a full course of COVID-19 vaccination. They found that EBV levels in this category of patients were significantly higher after vaccination.
Another case study related to EBV analyzed its reactivation in a young and healthy man after he was administered a COVID-19 vaccine. This was the first case of EBV reactivation in a healthy, immunocompetent adult post-COVID-19 vaccination. These incidences indicate a strong correlation between the vaccine and dormant virus reactivation.
According to the REAP data above, shingles or herpes zoster (HZ) was another virus that correlates to COVID-19 in terms of reactivation. An Indian case study analyzed 10 cases of shingles directly after the COVID-19 vaccine, where the onset of symptoms occurred within 21 days post-vaccination.
In the study, 80 percent of the patients in the study didn’t have any other factors which might have led to the reactivation. Two patients, who had diabetes as the only other possible factor, already had it well under control before the vaccination. This is not the only case report in relation to shingles.
An article published in The Lancet reveals that 16 and 27 cases of shingles were discovered after the administration of CoronaVac (Sinopharm) and BNT162b2 (Pfizer/BioNTech) vaccines when analyzing vaccination records from the Hong Kong Department of Health. The study concluded that shingles would likely occur in about seven or eight in 1 million doses administered. A more systematic case report which summarized 91 cases of post-vaccine HZ found that the mean symptom onset time was just under six days, with hypertension as the most common comorbidity and autoimmune conditions being fairly prevalent among the patients.
Data from the WHO global safety database shows that there are already over 7000 cases of HZ found worldwide, meaning that this is not an isolated issue.
By May 2022, the United States Vaccine Adverse Event Report System (VAERS) has already reported 4,577 cases of HZ post-vaccination, and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MRHA) of Great Britain reported 2,527 HZ cases. It is important to note that HZ is likely an underreported occurrence as a post-vaccination complication.
Other viruses mentioned in the beginning, such as the Cytomegalovirus (CMV) and the cancer-inducing Kaposi’s Sarcoma-associated Herpesvirus (KSHV) have also seen case reports or studies that document their reactivation after the administration of anti-COVID-19 drugs. Scientists are even discussing whether SARS-CoV-2 itself can embed itself in humans only to become reactivated in the unforeseeable future, but it is generally too early to tell.
The hotly contested issue at hand is how we should treat the issue of vaccination for those at risk of having their old diseases “rise from the dead” or “wake up from hibernation.” The discussion of antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE), which raises the risk of booster vaccines causing more severe illness than otherwise, begs the question of whether vaccines effectively lead to easier infections, whether COVID or old viruses and diseases.
It is important to note that the studies validate the correlation between the COVID-19 infection or vaccine and the reactivation of various viruses from their dormant period, but it is in no way meant to indicate causation.
However, there needs to be a well-calibrated balance between administering vaccines to individual groups with different risk factors.
The official guidelines are to get the elderly vaccinated first in order to protect them from strong ramifications as a result of a COVID-19 infection. It is true that most coronavirus deaths are from that age group and that the elderly suffer the most under this virus.
However, we have to keep in mind that, empirically, this age group is precisely the group at high risk of having other viruses reactivated when their immune system has a burden to face.
This is why a delicate balance of risks and benefits must be maintained when operating under the assumption and guise of prevention and protection.
Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. Epoch Health welcomes professional discussion and friendly debate. To submit an opinion piece, please follow these guidelines and submit through our form here.
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Dr. Xiaoxu Sean Lin is an assistant professor in Biomedical Science Department at Feitian College – Middletown NY. Dr. Lin is also a frequent analyst and commentator for Epoch Media Group, VOA, and RFA. Dr. Lin is a veteran who served as a U.S. Army microbiologist. Dr. Lin is also a member of Committee of Present Danger: China.
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Former President Trump used his rally in Waukesha, Wis., on Friday evening to criticize Democrats’ sweeping climate, tax and health package while touting his track record of recent endorsements.
While Trump was in the Badger State to boost several of his endorsed candidates ahead of the Aug. 9 primary, including gubernatorial candidate Tim Michels (R) and Adam Steen, running in the 63rd Assembly District race against Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R), the former president used the rally to take jabs at his opponents.
“The radical Democrats now intend to impose the biggest tax hike in American history, the exact opposite of what I did,” Trump asserted, referring to the reconciliation deal. “And they are working feverishly to pile on more regulations at levels never seen before. You’re going to have regulations like nobody’s ever seen before.”
He name-checked Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), claiming he got “taken for a ride” by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who made a surprise announcement with Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) last week that they had reached a deal on climate, health and tax reforms.
“Joe Manchin has totally sold out West Virginia, what he’s done to that state is disgraceful. And I told the old broken crow, Mitch McConnell, that this was going to happen,” Trump said.
Manchin had earlier in July appeared to pour cold water on the prospects of a deal after data was released showing inflation at 9 percent annually.
When the deal was announced, after the Senate with GOP support passed a bill to boost domestic semiconductor production and fund scientific research, some Republicans expressed frustration about the agreement, saying they would have blocked the chips and science bill if they knew Democrats were pressing forward with provisions on taxes and climate in a reconciliation package.
Manchin claimed he and Schumer had not misled their colleagues.
The former president touted the recent successes of Arizona candidates Kari Lake (R) in the GOP gubernatorial primary and Blake Masters in the Republican Senate primary as well.
He also mentioned Michigan gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon (R) and former Department of Housing and Urban Development official John Gibbs (R), who defeated Rep. Peter Meijjer (R-Mich.), one of 10 House Republicans to vote in favor of impeaching Trump.
Trump called Michels, who is running against former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch (R) in the gubernatorial primary next Tuesday, an “incredible success story” and touted his construction company.
He called Steen — a candidate he endorsed as part of a larger revenge tour against Republicans who he believes crossed him following the election and the Capitol riot — a “true patriot.” Vos, Steen’s opponent, drew Trump’s ire after he refused efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
As Trump took a few jabs at Kleefisch, he also appeared to subtly hit back at those who endorsed her, including former Vice President Pence.
“Tim’s opponent in the primary is Rebecca Kleesfisch, a career politician and a political insider. Known her for a long time. She’s the handpicked candidate of the failed establishment, the RINOs … the Washington swamp, and she’s running a campaign of falsehoods and lies,” he alleged, using the acronym for “Republican in name only.”
The former president even waded into House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) trip to Taiwan, one of several stops she made in her travel to East Asia amid heightened tensions between China and the self-governing island, asking why she would travel to Taiwan.
A surge in Covid-19 hospital admissions driven by the BA.5 subvariant of Omicron, accompanied by the inability of vaccines to prevent reinfection, has prompted health policymakers to rethink their approach to boosters.
US regulators last week recommended changing the design of vaccines to produce a new booster targeting Omicron — the first change to the make-up of shots since their introduction in late 2020. Research into immune imprinting, whereby exposure to the virus via either infection or vaccination determines an individual’s level of protection, is now driving the debate over the make-up of Covid-19 vaccines.
Immunologists say that, more than two years into the coronavirus pandemic, people have acquired very different types of immunity to the Sars-Cov-2 virus, depending on which strain or combination of strains they have been exposed to — leading to big differences in Covid-19 outcomes between individuals and countries.
“The effect is more nuanced than ‘more times you have it, less protection you get’,” said professor Danny Altmann of Imperial College London, who is investigating the phenomenon with colleagues. “It’s more helpful to consider it as progressive fine-tuning of a huge repertoire. Sometimes this will be beneficial for the next wave, sometimes not.”
What is immune imprinting?
After someone encounters a virus for the first time, through infection or vaccination, the immune system remembers its initial response in a way that usually weakens the response to future variants of the same pathogen but may sometimes strengthen it. Proteins on the “spike”, which the virus uses to bind with human cells, play a key role.
“Our first encounter with the spike antigen, either through infection or vaccination, shapes our subsequent pattern of immunity through immune imprinting,” said professor Rosemary Boyton of Imperial College.
The pattern has been observed for many years in flu and dengue virus, when it was usually called original antigenic sin. Studies are now demonstrating that it applies to Sars-Cov-2 too, although the effects are hard to pin down, according to Altmann, who prefers the term “immune imprinting” to the biblical connotations of original sin.
A study of 700 UK healthcare workers by the Imperial team, published last month in the journal Science, found that Omicron infection had little or no beneficial effect of boosting any part of the immune system — antibodies, B-cells or T-cells — among people who had been imprinted with earlier Sars-Cov-2 variants.
“Omicron is far from a benign natural booster of vaccine immunity, as we might have thought, but it is an especially stealthy immune evader,” said Altmann.
Vaccines currently in use were designed to target the virus as it first emerged from Wuhan, China, more than two years ago. They retain high protection against severe disease and hospital admissions but their efficacy against transmission and mild infection wanes quickly, especially against Omicron.
Understanding the effect of immune imprinting will help health officials to decide which vaccines to use in future booster campaigns. Boyton said immune imprinting has “important implications for future-proofing vaccine design and dosing strategies”.
Does immune imprinting help to explain breakthrough infections?
Most people in the industrialised world have been infected or vaccinated against Covid — or both. England’s Schools Infection Survey, run by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, last week released data showing that 99 per cent of secondary schoolchildren tested positive for Covid antibodies from natural infection.
By this stage of the pandemic, the vast majority of Covid cases are reinfections in people whose immune defences acquired from vaccines or earlier infections do not hold up against Omicron BA.4 and BA.5.
Nor are these “breakthrough” infections necessarily as mild as many people believe, said Ziyad Al-Aly, a clinical epidemiologist at Washington University in St Louis. He analysed the health records of 34,000 people with breakthrough Covid infections in the database of the US veterans administration, which provides healthcare services for retired soldiers. The cumulative risk of serious damage to heart, brain and lungs rose significantly with each repeated infection.
In another study, Al-Aly and colleagues found that, while vaccines are good at preventing acute Covid-19, they were just 15 per cent effective at preventing long Covid, which is defined as suffering symptoms for 12 weeks or more after a Covid-19 diagnosis. “Getting Covid, even among vaccinated people, seems almost unavoidable nowadays,” he said.
Has immune imprinting influenced vaccine debates?
Some anti-vaxxers have enlisted immune imprinting in their arguments, on the grounds that vaccines become less effective as the virus evolves — an objection that immunologists reject forcefully.
“While our latest findings highlight clear concerns about the nature of Omicron infection, vaccination remains effective against severe disease,” said Altmann. “Those who are eligible to receive a booster should be encouraged to do so.”
Professor Christian Drosten, a leading German virologist, said in an interview with Der Spiegel that extending the interval between jabs could help reduce the impact of immune imprinting.
“I suspect the effect [of vaccination] will get better, the greater the interval from the previous vaccination,” he said. “[But] it is not yet known how long the interval between vaccinations should actually be.”
How has differing immunity affected decisions on vaccines?
The World Health Organization last month said Omicron-based jabs may be beneficial as boosters because they would broaden protection against different variants.
And, on Tuesday, the US Food and Drug Administration advisory committee voted 19 to two in favour of incorporating genetic material from Omicron into new booster jabs.
“We’re trying to use every last ounce of what we can from predictive modelling, and from the data that is emerging, to try to get ahead of a virus that has been very crafty,” said Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research.
On Thursday, the FDA recommended including a component of the BA.4/BA.5 Omicron subvariants in a new shot for autumn booster campaigns. But the agency has not advised a change to the existing vaccine for first doses.
Moderna and BioNTech/Pfizer, the leading manufacturers of mRNA vaccines, have submitted laboratory data showing that their latest versions, targeted at Omicron, produce a potent antibody response against BA.4 and BA.5. But some immunologists remain uncertain whether they will be more effective than receiving another dose of the original Wuhan vaccine.
“Due to immune imprinting, patterns of anti-spike immunity in different people and populations have become heterogeneous, complex and unpredictable,” said Boyton. “This makes the argument for moving forward in a careful, considered and evidence-based way.”
“The challenge for next-generation Covid vaccines is to design vaccines that broaden the immune response to protect against future variants of concern.”
Ongoing contract discussions between the UFC and Nate Diaz, one of the promotion’s biggest stars, spilled into the public Tuesday when both Diaz and president Dana White commented on the situation.
On Monday, Diaz (20-13) asked the UFC to either release him from his contract or book him a fight by August. He also indicated he wishes to box YouTube star turned professional boxer Jake Paul. He accompanied his post with a video clip of Paul knocking out former UFC champion Tyron Woodley in December.
“UFC release now please or give me fight with anyone in July or August,” Diaz wrote on Twitter. “I got bigger s— to do.”
At a news conference Tuesday in Salt Lake City, UFC president Dana White commented on the promotion’s efforts to book Diaz’s next fight.
“I don’t know what we’re gonna do,” White told The MacLife’s Oscar Willis. “I like Nate, [but] let’s be honest. Nate has won one fight in five or six years. When these guys get into these positions, you have guys who have been with us for a long time, that we respect and care about … you want to be fair and do the right thing, whatever. Nate Diaz is not going to come in and fight [welterweight champion] Kamaru Usman. We’re trying to do the best we can, trying not to s— on anybody or disrespect anybody. … He probably should go on and fight Jake Paul. That’s a fight that makes sense.”
Diaz responded to White’s remarks later Tuesday, tweeting, “Send the release.”
Diaz (20-13), 37, has not fought since a unanimous decision loss to Leon Edwards in June 2021. He has one fight left on his UFC contract, and for the better part of a year he has been publicly demanding the promotion book him that final fight. Diaz has expressed interest in facing multiple opponents, including Dustin Poirier, Vicente Luque and Tony Ferguson.
The UFC did offer Diaz a fight in 2022 against surging welterweight Khamzat Chimaev, according to sources. However, Diaz turned it down, citing Chimaev’s inexperience in the company. He referred to Chimaev as a “rookie” in a comment to TMZ in December.
Despite White’s comments regarding Diaz boxing Paul (5-0, 4 KOs), it is extremely unlikely that would be his next fight because he remains under contract with the UFC.
According to sources, Diaz and the UFC have discussed a new deal in the past, however neither side has commented publicly on the possibility of one in quite some time. In March, White said he thought the chance of Diaz re-signing with the UFC was “very good.”
This is not the first time Diaz has publicly asked to be released by the UFC. He also did so in March. Representatives for Diaz declined to comment further when reached by ESPN on Tuesday.
Three doses of the same Covid-19 vaccine or a combination of jabs work equally well in preventing infections, according to the largest study of its kind.
While the effectiveness of individual coronavirus vaccines is well known, the evidence around combinations of jabs has been less clear, especially for particular groups such as older people and those who are immunocompromised.
Now a global analysis of data from more than 100 million people confirms the number of doses is the key to boosting immunity rather than jab combinations. The findings have been published in the BMJ.
Three doses of either the same vaccine or a combination of different types work comparably well in preventing Covid-19 infections, even against different variants, according to the study.
Despite a rapid decline in Covid-19 infections and deaths, concerns about waning vaccine immunity and new variants makes it important to understand which vaccine combinations are most effective, the BMJ said.
The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) searched 38 World Health Organization Covid-19 databases for published studies and preprints on a weekly basis from 8 March 2022. They identified 53 studies involving 100 million people with 24 combinations of Covid vaccine courses.
Receiving three doses of the same vaccine is known as a homologous regimen, while receiving a third dose that differs from those given as two primary doses is called a heterologous regimen.
After taking account of differences in study design and quality, CUHK researchers found that three doses of any mRNA vaccine appear to be most effective (96%) against non-severe Covid-19 infections and most effective (95%) in reducing Covid-19 related hospital admissions.
But the results also show that any three-dose regimen – heterologous or homologous – induces higher immunity in all age groups, even in the over-65s, than a two-dose homologous regimen.
And the study found that in immunocompromised patients, a third mRNA booster dose, as part of a heterologous or homologous regimen, also greatly improves protection compared with two doses.
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The effectiveness of three-dose vaccine regimens against Covid-19 related death remains uncertain.
The researchers acknowledged some of the study’s limitations, including that they didn’t evaluate the optimum time interval for prime boost or boosting regimens, owing to limited information.
“An mRNA booster is recommended to supplement any primary vaccine course,” the researchers concluded. “Heterologous and homologous three dose regimens work comparably well in preventing Covid-19 infections, even against different variants.”
The EU’s infectious-disease agency is to recommend that member states prepare strategies for possible vaccination programmes to counter rising monkeypox cases, amid mounting evidence of community transmission of the disease.
The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), said in response to questions on Sunday that it would make the recommendation in a risk assessment to be published on Monday. Any vaccination drive would use the existing smallpox jab as there is no approved monkeypox inoculation and would mean immunising close contacts of confirmed monkeypox patients.
Smallpox immunity has been shown to offer some cross-protection against monkeypox. Smallpox was declared eradicated in 1980, but vaccine stockpiles have been maintained to hedge against a possible resurgence.
The Stockholm-based ECDC noted it was “not an easy decision” to recommend smallpox vaccination of close monkeypox contacts at this stage and said a risk-benefit analysis for each affected individual should be undertaken. The vaccine available in the EU, Danish drugmaker Bavarian Nordic’s Imvanex, is not authorised for use against monkeypox and there is no safety data on its use in those who are immunocompromised or in young children, those at highest risk from the disease, the ECDC said.
The approach, known as post-exposure prophylaxis, is being recommended because the disease is spreading among individuals with no known links to another confirmed case or affected region, in what is known as community transmission.
The vaccine is also available in the UK, where health authorities have recommended a similar strategy.
Scientists and health authorities are struggling to better understand the outbreak, the biggest to date outside areas where it is endemic. As of Saturday, 92 laboratory-confirmed cases had been reported to the WHO from 12 countries where the virus does not normally circulate.
Israel, Austria and Switzerland said they had confirmed their first cases on Sunday.
Monkeypox is a viral disease and most cases so far, though not all, have been seen in men who have sex with men. According to the ECDC, transmission between humans mostly occurs through large respiratory droplets. Because these droplets do not travel far, prolonged contact is needed. The virus can also be transmitted through other bodily fluids. Health authorities are seeking to rule out aerosol transmission or the evolution of the virus into a more easily transmissible strain.
The World Health Organization said at the weekend that available information suggested transmission was “occurring among people in close physical contact with cases who are symptomatic”. All lab-confirmed samples to date have been confirmed as belong to the West African subfamily. No associated deaths have been reported so far.
Symptoms are flu-like and also include a rash, which often begins on the face and then spreads to other parts of the body. Incubation can be up to 21 days long, complicating contact-tracing efforts.
“The situation is evolving and WHO expects there will be more cases of monkeypox identified as surveillance expands in non-endemic countries,” the Geneva-based health body added.
Shares in Bavarian Nordic, the manufacturer of the smallpox vaccine, have risen about 55 per cent since May 19, when the number of European cases started to grow. A European health official said “thousands” of Imvanex doses were readily available.
Bavarian Nordic did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Sunday.
Meanwhile, US president Joe Biden said on Sunday that the outbreak “is something that everybody should be concerned about”. Speaking from South Korea, where he was on an official visit, he said the US was in the process of identifying a suitable vaccine to counter the virus.
Ashish Jha, the White House coronavirus response co-ordinator, told ABC on Sunday that the US had identified a case in Massachusetts and one in New York and was tracking others. But he said this was “a virus we understand” and that there were vaccines and treatments to fight it.
Additional reporting by James Shotter in Jerusalem
The United Kingdom should stop focusing on mass COVID-19 vaccination efforts after it completes its booster campaign — and begin to treat the virus as endemic, a former head of the country’s vaccine taskforce said.
Dr. Clive Dix, who chaired the vaccine taskforce until April, called for government officials to find a “new normality” for its pandemic strategy, the Guardian reported.
“We need to analyze whether we use the current booster campaign to ensure the vulnerable are protected, if this is seen to be necessary,” he said. “Mass population-based vaccination in the UK should now end.”
He said that health officials should expand their research into COVID-19 immunity in order to find ways to create vaccines for vulnerable people that target variants.
“We now need to manage disease, not virus spread. So stopping progression to severe disease in vulnerable groups is the future objective,” he said.
His comments come as the spread of Omicron in the country has fueled a surge in coronavirus infections and hospitalizations.
Dr. Clive Dix called for government officials to find a “new normality” for its pandemic strategy.Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain
The number of people in the UK hospitalized with COVID-19 rose to 18,454 on Thursday, more than double the figure two weeks earlier.
But the UK’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization on Friday advised the government that there was no need to offer a fourth dose, or second booster, to vulnerable people at this time.
The group said that the government should instead focus on giving a third dose to as many people as possible to boost protection against Omicron.
The number of people in the UK hospitalized with COVID-19 rose to 18,454 on Thursday.Gareth Fuller/PA/Sipa USA
“The current data show the booster dose is continuing to provide high levels of protection against severe disease, even for the most vulnerable older age groups,’’ said Professor Wei Shen Lim, the committee’s chair.
“For this reason, the committee has concluded there is no immediate need to introduce a second booster dose, though this will continue to be reviewed.’’
