In the last few days researchers from the Vaccine Research Center at the US NIH released a paper for peer review on the performance of a new mRNA vaccine targeting Omicron variant, delivered as a ‘booster’ after two doses of mRNA vaccine targeting the original Wuhan strain (ie, the current type of covid vaccine).

The researchers did find that the booster offered protection against infection, but it was rather flawed in that they only measured protection 2 weeks after the booster was administered; during this time there will be potent IgA antibodies targeting covid in the upper respiratory tract, however, these will have waned significantly by 60 days after the booster and thus protection will be rapidly lost. The very limited lifespan of post-vaccination IgA antibodies has been known since the first reports on the vaccines, but for some reason this has been ignored in favour of reporting on IgG antibodies in the blood; these offer no benefit in terms of protection against respiratory tract infections. The NIH paper is no different, in that the bulk of the paper discusses IgG antibodies in the blood; all the information about how IgG antibodies rise and fall over the months just isn’t particularly relevant. It is most likely that protection against covid is initially mediated by the innate immune system, with newly produced IgA antibodies arriving after a few days to mop up any virus that is still present.

The paper is also flawed in that assessed performance of the vaccines only at the 6 week and 9 month point after initial vaccination, and at 2 weeks after boosting. They state that IgG antibodies are present after initial vaccination, have waned by the 9 month point and are restored by the booster — thus there is a suggestion that an annual booster might just about suffice (perhaps with a ‘low immunity’ period during the summer when coronavirus infections are lower). The reality is that protection almost certainly wanes far faster than this, meaning that multiple boosters per year would be required to maintain protection against current variants, with unknown side effects in the short- medium- and long-term.

Well done for reading this far, because…

The bombshell in the paper is that boosting with the Omicron-specific vaccine substantially raised antibodies to the original Wuhan strain, and was better at neutralising Wuhan strain than Omicron strain. This means that… well, the authors say it themselves:

The observation that boosting with either mRNA-1273 or mRNA-Omicron resulted in the expansion of a similarly high frequency of cross-reactive B cells likely stems from the principle of original antigenic sin, otherwise termed antigenic imprinting, whereby prior immune memory is recalled by a related antigenic encounter (Davenport and Hennessy, 1957; Davenport et al., 1953).

Thus the NIH experts have confirmed that it is likely that OAS is occurring after vaccination against covid. This has been spoken of many times over the last 12 months, but generally not by official government sources.

The real-world impact of OAS is likely to be that once the virus completely escapes a person’s vaccine induced immunity then repeated exposure to the virus will mainly ‘top up’ the ineffective immune response to the spike protein of the Wuhan variant of Covid, and there will be little targeted response to the new variant. The likely consequence is that as each variant shifts further away from the Wuhan strain further vaccines will become less and less effective, even if they target newer variants. Those with immunity following natural infection will have an immune response to proteins in the virus that don’t change much between variants and thus even if they also have OAS there should be some continued long term protection against these new variants.

Bartram’s Folly

The US NIH state that OAS is a likely…