Study - getting a different vaccine as a booster better than the same one

As promised, there's been new data on the efficacy and safety of booster shots done with a different Covid-19 vaccine than the one used for the basic vaccination.

This study has just been released pre-print, two days ago.

It looked at all 3 American-authorized/approved vaccines, and a booster with any of the three.

So, subjects were randomly assigned to nine situations (basic + booster):

Moderna + Moderna
Moderna + Pfizer
Moderna + J&J
Pfizer + Pfizer
Pfizer + Moderna
Pfizer + J&J
J&J + Moderna
J&J + Pfizer
J&J + J&J.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.10.21264827v1.full.pdf

All six situations of mix (boosting with a different vaccine) were superior to match (boosting with the same vaccine the subjects had with the basic vaccination)!

Safety-wise, no particular problem was seen with the mix strategy.

The study is small. Only 50 people in each of the 9 situations.

People who had the same booster of their basic vaccination, increased their antibody levels by a factor of 4 to 20 fold.

The people who mixed had an increase by a factor of 6 to 76 fold.

Particularly, people who got the J&J benefitted much more of an mRNA booster than of a J&J booster.

Moderna basic vaccination had the best result. This is confirming once more a trend of Moderna being the best Covid-19 vaccine in the market.

Impressive. I read a piece today lamenting how bureaucratic the FDA and the CDC are being. They are not showing a lot of creativity... they are only approving Pfizer boosters for people who got Pfizer, Moderna boosters for people who got Moderna, and J&J for people who got J&J, while the evidence is starting to show that mixing is advantageous.

This study gave the participants the boosters 12 weeks after the end of basic vaccination.

They observed for late side effects for one additional month; didn't find anything out of the ordinary. Two participants had a serious medical condition, but both conditions were considered to be unrelated to the vaccines. One was a case of rhabdomyolysis after a fall, and another one, a case of cholecystitis. Neither is known as a side effect of the Covid-19 vaccines.

So this study, although small and still pre-print and non-peer-reviewed, is encouraging regarding the efficacy and safety of the mix strategy.

 

interesting, thanks for the info

 

You're welcome.

I hope more studies like this one are done with a larger number of participants and longer follow-up, and if these preliminary results are confirmed, the FDA and the CDC open up the recommendations, to allow people (and their doctors) to pick any of the three vaccines for their boosters, instead of a rigid recommendation that the booster must match the basic vaccination. Some of the European countries have already made it official, and are already allowing the mix strategy. Somehow, it's been looking like while in the past the FDA and the CDC were trend setters among the international scientific community, now we're falling behind the European Medicines Agency.

 

Nothing says we couldn't, just that they didn't/don't "approve" of it yet. So a little rule-bending would be in order: IE: When it's time to get your booster, just say the vaccine that you didn't get and your pharma/doctor won't know for the wiser.

 

Not so simple, at least in my state; we're supposed to register with a state database to get the appointments and the pharmacy then logs in too, to confirm, and they will see your records regarding what basic vaccination you took.

And people misunderstand the actual powers of the CDC. When they "recommend" a vaccine through their advisory panel and the director's executive action, it's called a "recommendation" but it does actually have force of law as a way of speaking. It is fairly illegal for a provider to administer a vaccine outside of the FDA's Emergency Use Authorization and the CDC's "recommendation." Not "illegal" in the legal system sense but a provider could collect sanctions for practicing outside of accepted and recommended standards. That's why the vaccination campaign did not start immediately after the FDA issued the first EUA for the Pfizer shot back in December. It was only once the CDC met and "recommended" the shot a couple of days later and the director signed on, that the actual shots started finding American arms.

Of course the other alternative is for example, for a person who had the Pfizer basic vaccination, to show up without an appointment to a place that is doing walk-ins, pretend that he doesn't have any documents on him, give a false name and false address, and lie that he never had the vaccine before and want a Moderna shot. Given that to prevent illegal aliens from being possible spreaders of the virus if they're denied a vaccine, the CDC has instructed pharmacies to administer the shot anyway if the person is undocumented, some people are doing just that (I actually know a couple who did it this way). I don't recommend it, because it feels wrong and vaguely illegal (although I'm not aware of this being prosecuted as a felony or misdemeanor although I suppose a committed prosecutor would be able to make a case for some sort of illegal impersonation - but there is no political appetite for that), and because if the person has a reaction, this kind of practice falls outside the reporting mechanisms. But yes, I hear that people are doing that. I think the CDC and prosecutors have no interest in going after people who do that, not to add even more fire to the political hot potato, including because America has no shortage of vaccines.

I suppose that if we had a situation of shortage, and someone "illegally" taking a shot would hinder someone else from getting it, there would be an appetite to prosecute. As of now, I think the CDC is happy with people getting any vaccine, any way, and they don't want to add some sort of stress of threatening people with prosecution if they bend the rules.

 

Because despite my reservations(and admittedly pouting. Of course, given my own particular situation I don't have a vehicle and haven't really been out much.) I'd been doing studying recently on the vaccines, coming to the conclusion of which one I could put up with the most and my answer was: J/J due to the one-time thing(boosters had been my big concern.)

From the studies though, i feel like if I took a J/J and took one of Pfizer or Moderna, I think what makes it effective is that the two different vaccines could potentially cover different aspects of the immune system.

 

Correct. It does look like this is a safe and effective strategy. Just yesterday, I read a report that the FDA is thinking of approving that strategy, after all, if more data confirm what this preliminary study showed.

 

Since the left bury the truth and outright lie about deaths caused by the vaccines then if you are wanting to get a booster, I would personally highly recommend getting the same shot as the original if you survived those with no serious adverse reactions, except in the case of the J&J vaccine, which isn't as effective as the others and again, if you are wanting to get a booster if you had had the J&J vaccine, I would suggest getting one of the other two.