Part !!!
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“[T]he scientists all, at one point, believed that the COVID vaccine prevented transmission,” he said. “I said, No, they don’t prevent transmission, because I read the monkey studies in May of 2020, and I saw that the amount of the concentration of the virus in the nasal pharynx of the vaccinated monkey was identical to the unvaccinated monkeys.”
First, as we’ve explained before, stopping disease transmission is not a requirement for a vaccine. While some vaccines do reduce the spread of disease, others do not — and an inability to do so doesn’t mean a vaccine has failed. Often, the main goal of a vaccine is to prevent disease or severe disease, which is the case for the COVID-19 vaccines.
The COVID-19 vaccines were authorized for emergency use based on their ability to prevent symptomatic disease in clinical trials, not for any effect on transmission. In December 2020, when the Food and Drug Administration authorized the first COVID-19 vaccine, the agency even warned that it wasn’t known whether the vaccine would prevent spread of the coronavirus.
That didn’t mean the COVID-19 vaccines would do nothing for transmission, though. In the following months, data showed that vaccination did reduce spread, either because vaccinated people were protected against infection in the first place or because they were less contagious if infected.
With the emergence of the omicron variant, however, which is more transmissible and immune evasive, the vaccines were no longer as good at preventing infection or reducing onward spread of the virus. The vaccines likely do still reduce transmission, but only a little bit, and for a shorter period of time, research has shown. That doesn’t mean the shots don’t work. The vaccines still provide some protection against symptomatic disease and reduce the risk of severe disease and death.
Kennedy is also wrong to claim that studies of the then-candidate vaccines in monkeys showed no difference in viral concentration in the nasopharynx and indicated the vaccines would have no effect on transmission. In a study published in July 2020, animals vaccinated with the Moderna vaccine and then purposely infected with the virus showed much lower levels of virus in samples from the nose and lung than purposely infected unvaccinated animals.
The authors even wrote that their study “showed early prevention of viral replication in the upper and lower airways after a high-dose challenge,” noting that “the ability to limit viral replication in both the lower and the upper airways has important implications for vaccine-induced prevention of both SARS-CoV-2 disease and transmission.”
The results were similar for Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose adenoviral COVID-19 vaccine. In a study published in Nature in July 2020, only one of the six vaccinated monkeys had any detectable virus in its nose at any time point — in sharp contrast to the unvaccinated animals, which had much more virus for a longer time.
The monkey results were more ambiguous for the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. One vaccine design, BNT162b1, showed a more clear reduction in the viral load in nasal samples, while another, BNT162b2 — the one that was ultimately used in the vaccine — did not. But it’s not true that the amount of virus in the unvaccinated and vaccinated animals was “identical.” One day after infection, the BNT162b2-vaccinated animals had higher amounts of virus in their noses than unvaccinated controls, but for all other tested subsequent days, starting on day 3, none of the BNT162b2-vaccinated animals had any detectable virus at all in their noses, unlike the unvaccinated animals. Swabs taken from the back of the throat also showed both vaccine designs reduced the amount of virus there.
It’s possible Kennedy is thinking of the monkey test results for the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. Those results, released in May 2020, did not show any difference in the viral load in the nose among vaccinated and unvaccinated animals — something that the Moderna authors commented on and contrasted with their results. But the AstraZeneca vaccine uses a different design than the mRNA shots and was never used in the U.S. And despite the monkey results, subsequent research suggests the AstraZeneca vaccine did reduce transmission in people.
More on the way . . .
RFK Jr.’s COVID-19 Deceptions - FactCheck.org
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s battle against vaccines -- and against the institutions that promote them -- goes back to at least the mid-2000s, as we explain in the first article of this series. But the arrival of COVID-19 gave the environmental attorney fresh grounds to intensify his attacks and a...
Kennedy’s Misunderstanding of COVID-19 Vaccines and Transmission
During an interview with the New Yorker, published July 7, Kennedy said he knew early on that COVID-19 vaccines “should be dead in the water” because they “won’t prevent transmission.”“[T]he scientists all, at one point, believed that the COVID vaccine prevented transmission,” he said. “I said, No, they don’t prevent transmission, because I read the monkey studies in May of 2020, and I saw that the amount of the concentration of the virus in the nasal pharynx of the vaccinated monkey was identical to the unvaccinated monkeys.”
First, as we’ve explained before, stopping disease transmission is not a requirement for a vaccine. While some vaccines do reduce the spread of disease, others do not — and an inability to do so doesn’t mean a vaccine has failed. Often, the main goal of a vaccine is to prevent disease or severe disease, which is the case for the COVID-19 vaccines.
The COVID-19 vaccines were authorized for emergency use based on their ability to prevent symptomatic disease in clinical trials, not for any effect on transmission. In December 2020, when the Food and Drug Administration authorized the first COVID-19 vaccine, the agency even warned that it wasn’t known whether the vaccine would prevent spread of the coronavirus.
That didn’t mean the COVID-19 vaccines would do nothing for transmission, though. In the following months, data showed that vaccination did reduce spread, either because vaccinated people were protected against infection in the first place or because they were less contagious if infected.
With the emergence of the omicron variant, however, which is more transmissible and immune evasive, the vaccines were no longer as good at preventing infection or reducing onward spread of the virus. The vaccines likely do still reduce transmission, but only a little bit, and for a shorter period of time, research has shown. That doesn’t mean the shots don’t work. The vaccines still provide some protection against symptomatic disease and reduce the risk of severe disease and death.
Kennedy is also wrong to claim that studies of the then-candidate vaccines in monkeys showed no difference in viral concentration in the nasopharynx and indicated the vaccines would have no effect on transmission. In a study published in July 2020, animals vaccinated with the Moderna vaccine and then purposely infected with the virus showed much lower levels of virus in samples from the nose and lung than purposely infected unvaccinated animals.
The authors even wrote that their study “showed early prevention of viral replication in the upper and lower airways after a high-dose challenge,” noting that “the ability to limit viral replication in both the lower and the upper airways has important implications for vaccine-induced prevention of both SARS-CoV-2 disease and transmission.”
The results were similar for Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose adenoviral COVID-19 vaccine. In a study published in Nature in July 2020, only one of the six vaccinated monkeys had any detectable virus in its nose at any time point — in sharp contrast to the unvaccinated animals, which had much more virus for a longer time.
The monkey results were more ambiguous for the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. One vaccine design, BNT162b1, showed a more clear reduction in the viral load in nasal samples, while another, BNT162b2 — the one that was ultimately used in the vaccine — did not. But it’s not true that the amount of virus in the unvaccinated and vaccinated animals was “identical.” One day after infection, the BNT162b2-vaccinated animals had higher amounts of virus in their noses than unvaccinated controls, but for all other tested subsequent days, starting on day 3, none of the BNT162b2-vaccinated animals had any detectable virus at all in their noses, unlike the unvaccinated animals. Swabs taken from the back of the throat also showed both vaccine designs reduced the amount of virus there.
It’s possible Kennedy is thinking of the monkey test results for the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. Those results, released in May 2020, did not show any difference in the viral load in the nose among vaccinated and unvaccinated animals — something that the Moderna authors commented on and contrasted with their results. But the AstraZeneca vaccine uses a different design than the mRNA shots and was never used in the U.S. And despite the monkey results, subsequent research suggests the AstraZeneca vaccine did reduce transmission in people.
More on the way . . .
