Biden launches #VaxUpAmerica tour, as latest research shows new boosters no better than old against new variants

Flanked by Dr. Anthony Fauci, other top U.S. public health officials and the CEOs of major pharmacy chains including CVS, Rite-Aid and Walgreens, President Biden today urged “all Americans” to get an updated COVID-19 vaccine and pleaded with Congress to continue funding the vaccines and COVID-19 treatments, such as Pfizer’s Paxlovid.

(Article by Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D. republished from ChildrensHealthDefense.org)

“If you’re fully vaccinated, get one more COVID shot — once a year, that’s it,” Biden said, likening it to an annual flu shot. “If you get it you’re protected, and if you don’t, you’re putting yourself and other people at unnecessary risk,” he said.

Biden, who last month declared the “pandemic is over,” also urged people to get their kids the flu shot and the COVID-19 shot, stating “you can get them at the same time.”

Biden ended his speech by getting the COVID-19 booster shot live on camera.

Happening Now: President Biden receives his updated COVID-19 vaccine and delivers remarks on the ongoing fight against the virus. https://t.co/7VfpeCAOWr

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) October 25, 2022

Commenting on Biden’s speech, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., founder, chairman of the board and chief legal counsel for Children’s Health Defense, said:

“It’s troubling President Biden is so captive of a false and discredited narrative that he continues to aggressively promote a high-risk, zero-liability, experimental medical intervention with a product that doesn’t work as advertised and is causing horrendous health problems in Americans.

“It’s even more dismaying that he has used the prestige and moral authority of the presidency to recruit America’s corporations into a racketeering enterprise.”

Biden’s speech coincided with today’s announcement that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on Wednesday will launch a #VaxUpAmerica Family Vaccine Tour that will feature pop-up vaccination events across the country.

As part of this tour, the White House said:

“HHS will work with national and community-based organizations and others to reach families where they are with information on COVID-19 vaccines, and will host pop-up vaccination events and distribute toolkits at venues such as Head Start provider locations, nursing homes and community health centers around the country.”

According to the White House, administration officials and others will “share information and encourage schools, community-based organizations, faith-based organizations, employers and others to host their own vaccination events.”

The #VaxUpAmerica Tour will be accompanied by a big advertising push. “The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is launching new national and local TV, radio and print ads geared at reaching Black and Latino audiences in more than 30 markets in English and Spanish. New football and country music-themed radio ads geared at reaching rural communities will run in 15 local markets,” the White House said.

“New print, radio, digital, and social ads will run in 25 markets to reach Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander audiences in seven languages,” the White House said, adding that Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Snapchat and Reddit will run “new social and digital ads promoting the COVID-19 vaccines.”

New boosters no better than old ones, new study says

Advertisements for the Biden administration’s fall booster campaign will “highlight the importance” of getting the shot “to protect the ones we love” and will promote “the protection the updated COVID-19 vaccines offer against Omicron.”

However, the authors of a preprint paper published Monday revealed for the first time how the new bivalent booster performs in human beings. They summarized their findings:

“When given as a fourth dose, a bivalent mRNA vaccine targeting Omicron BA.4/BA.5 and an ancestral SARS-CoV-2 strain did not induce superior neutralizing antibody responses in humans, at the time period tested, compared to the original monovalent vaccine formulation.

“ID50 titers against three related sarbecoviruses (SARS-CoV, GD-Pangolin, and WIV1) were slightly but significantly higher in those who received a fourth monovalent vaccine dose compared to those who received a bivalent vaccine.”

“The study should be very concerning to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC),” said Dr. Madhava Setty, senior science editor for The Defender.

Setty added:

“Not only did the new bivalent formulation do no better than the old booster in eliciting an antibody response to the subvariants it was targeting, it resulted in a weaker response to related viruses. This suggests that the new booster could limit the recipient’s ability to respond to future variants.”

Indeed, the authors of the study concluded:

“These findings may be indicative of immunological imprinting, although follow-up studies are needed to determine if the antibody responses will deviate in time, including the impact of a second bivalent booster.”

Setty said that “despite the CDC’s strong support of these boosters it would be safe to say at this point that they don’t provide the added protection against BA.4 and BA.5 as claimed.”

He added: “Having no results in humans to counter these findings, the CDC is now in an embarrassing position. They had no justification in authorizing these boosters without any human trials.”

Despite the lack of direct data on the safety or effectiveness of the shots in children, the  U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Oct. 12 amended the Emergency Use Authorizations (EUAs) to allow the Pfizer-BioNTech Omicron BA.4/BA.5-adapted bivalent COVID-19 vaccine for children as young as 5, and Moderna’s Omicron BA.4/BA.5-adapted bivalent vaccine for children as young as 6.

When the new bivalent boosters initially received EUA, the Pfizer booster was authorized only for individuals ages 12 and older, and the Moderna booster for people 18 and older.

The FDA said prior data on earlier versions of the booster — which targeted the original variant from Wuhan and the original Omicron variant BA.1 — sufficed for its decision to authorize the new boosters that target Omicron variants BA.4 and BA.5.

But this presumption does not make scientific sense, according to Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccinologist who directs the Vaccine Education Center and is a member of the FDA’s vaccine advisory panel.

“The BA.1 strain is essentially gone,” Offit told MedPage Today in an Aug. 2 interview on why he voted against authorizing the fall boosters for adults.

“It’s been replaced by BA.5/BA.4 and now BA.2.12.1, which are just Omicron subvariants that are somewhat distant from BA.1,” he added.

The question vaccine advisors are always asked to consider in the end is whether the benefits outweigh the risks — even if the risks are generally small and sometimes unknown, Offit said. “I didn’t see the benefits.”

Offit said he was surprised that out of 21 voting members, 19 voted “yes” because he “just didn’t see the evidence for that.”

“I think this was something that was desired by the Biden administration,” he added.

Read more at: ChildrensHealthDefense.org