Is Rand Paul confusing the vaccine message to COVID survivors?
Posted by Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) Last week Twitter thread People who survived the covid-19 infection were less likely to be re-infected and were vaccinated against the covid-causing virus SARS-CoV-2, but had better immunity to the mutant than uninfected people. Claim to be. Social media communication represents his latest salvo in an ongoing debate about whether innate immunity is equal to or better than vaccination. The science on this subject is still evolving, but looking at the evidence behind Pauls series of tweets, it seemed in turn. After all, almost 65% of Americans have been vaccinated with at least one covid vaccine, but some people who have recovered from covid may not feel the need to be shot. Paul, who was the first senator to be diagnosed with the virus, is among them. Lets take a closer look at what Paul said on Twitter, the research he quoted, and how researchers characterized his comments. Breakdown of Twitter threads  In his first tweet, Paul referred to a recent Cleveland Clinic study, stating that among unvaccinated but already covid-19-infected subjects, there was no reinfection during the 5-month observation period. Stated. Employees have shown that unvaccinated people infected with COVID 19 have the same reinfection rate as those who have been infected with COVID 19 and have been vaccinated.   In a subsequent tweet, Senator said: The immune response to natural infections is likely to provide protective immunity against SARS-CoV-2 mutants . Therefore, recovered COVID-19 patients are better against the mutant than humans. Highly likely to protect. People who are not infected but are immune only to vaccines containing spikes. All three vaccines allowed for emergency use in the United States (Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson) Contains genetic instructions that tell cells how to make spike proteins associated with the corona virus. The presence of that spike protein makes antibodies in our body and protects them from covids. At the end of his last tweet, Rand linked to Second study He supported his claim, led by scientists at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. Digestion of scientific treatises  Paul referred to two scientific treatises in a tweet thread. Both are preprints and have not yet been published or peer-reviewed in scientific journals. One is Study from Cleveland Clinic Healthcare workers in four categories: unvaccinated but previously infected. Not vaccinated, but not previously infected. Vaccinated and previously infected; vaccinated but not previously infected. Workers were followed for 5 months. Researchers found that those who had not been vaccinated but had previously been infected with covid did not become infected again during the five-month study period. Infections were nearly zero among vaccinated individuals, but infections were steadily increasing among unvaccinated and previously uninfected individuals. When asked if he believed Pauls tweet correctly interpreted his findings, the lead author of the study said: Dr. Navin ShresthaThis was an accurate interpretation of the findings, said an infectious disease expert at the Cleveland Clinic. However, Dr. George RutherfordAn epidemiologist at the University of California, San Francisco wrote in an email that he would add a warning to the wording of Pauls tweet. In his tweet, Senator Paul said that the denominator of previously infected healthcare workers was 52,238 at the Cleveland Clinic. This is the total number of the entire survey. Previously infected and never vaccinated. There were 1,359 and no reinfection was seen with a median follow-up of 143 days, so the tweet itself is accurate. Read literally, but the denominator is actually 1,359.   Is Other studies Paul said researchers analyzed the covid-19 immunity of people infected and uninfected with the covid virus and found that the infection activated a variety of immune cells and that immunity lasted for at least eight months. Said. In the last two tweets of the thread, Paul quotes directly from the Discussion section of the study. The immune response to natural infections is likely to provide protective immunity against SARS-CoV-2 mutants . Therefore, recovered COVID-19 patients were uninfected but contained spikes. It is more likely to protect against mutants than those who are immune to the vaccine alone.   Lead author of the study, Kirsten CohenSenior staff scientists in the Vaccines and Infectious Diseases Division at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle confirmed that Pauls tweet was a direct quote from the study. Still, in her view, the citation was out of context and presented to fit Pauls purpose, but she said it did not accurately reflect the overall take-out message from the results of the study. She said it was because Paul was quoting from the discussion section of the treatise. The discussion is the last section of a scientific treatise, and Cohen stated that the purpose here is to predict what the results of the study mean for broader scientific significance. We wrote that recovery in covid patients is more likely to protect against mutants than freshly vaccinated patients, but thats not the case, Cohen said. Stated. Im not saying they are known. Its hypothesizing or basically saying that this could be the case.  In fact, Cohens study did not include vaccinated subjects. Researchers found that people who recovered from covid-19 and were vaccinated could be better protected from covid variants than those who received the vaccine alone, based on data showing a wide range of natural reactions in the immune system. I simply inferred in the text Paul quoted that it was sexual-induced immunity. I didnt mean to claim that infected people didnt need to be vaccinated or their immune response was good, Cohen wrote in an email. However, Cohen acknowledged that the sentence was confusing when it was out of context and said it would remove it from the treatise when it was submitted for publication. Cohen pointed us to another person Fred Hutchinson-led research She was involved. It also showed that people who previously had covid-19 also benefited from being vaccinated, especially because of the significantly increased immune response to the mutants. Conventional knowledge about innate immunity  Therefore, what we know from these two studies is that surviving a covid infection gives a significant amount of immunity to the virus. Other studies support this claim. Existing literature shows that innate immunity provides protection against COVID-19, he said. Shane CrottiHe is a professor at the Center for Infectious Diseases and Vaccine Research at the Lahora Institute of Immunology and has published numerous peer-reviewed studies on innate immunity to covid-19. He said such immunity specifically protects against hospitalization and severe illness. To Crottis own recent researchHis team, the largest ever to measure molecules and cells involved in immune protection, have found that innate immunity to covid lasts for at least eight months. Based on expectations, it can last up to several years. Thats good news, but Crotty said there are three caveats. First, innate immunity seems to be very effective, Currently dominant US variants (Known as alpha), it also appears to be weaker than vaccine immunity to some circulating mutants, such as the delta mutant first detected in India. This means that if these variants eventually dominate the United States, those who rely on innate immunity will be less protected than those who are vaccinated. Second, there is a lack of data on whether innate immunity prevents asymptomatic infections and infections. However, some other studies have shown that vaccines do. Third, Crotty said his study shows that levels of innate immunity can vary widely from individual to individual. His team even found a 100-fold difference in the number of immune cells among people. If you think of the immune system as a basketball game and think of it as a team that scored one point and another team that scored 100 points, thats a big difference, said Crotty. Im not sure that people with lower levels of immunity will be protected from covid-19.  However, Crotti said that everyone who has been vaccinated has a much more consistent number of immune cells because everyone receives the same dose. With all of this in mind, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Recommended People who have previously been vaccinated with covid-19, whether they are Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines or Moderna vaccines, need to be vaccinated and both vaccinated. Fauci, one of Japans leading infectious disease specialists, Repeated this message during the White House covid-19 briefing last month.