Covid-19 Vaccines - Is Anything Better Than mRNA?

Recent analyses of populations experiencing further waves of COVID-19 infection based on the Delta variant indicate that new challenges are emerging in the fight against the COVID-19 Pandemic: Some in-use vaccines are failing to provide long-run protection against the rapidly evolving COVID-19 virus, whereas others appear to be showing better long-term performance. See our analysis in our Industry Update 11.
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• For example: Double vaccination protocols with Pfizer/BioNTech’s mRNA-base COVID-19 vaccine in Israel did NOT prevent most infections by the Delta variant, although the protocol does reduce the risk of hospitalization for serious COVID-19 illness
• Given that Pfizer/BioNTech’s vaccine does not prevent either infection and/or transmission of the Delta variant in many cases, the concept of ‘Herd Immunity’ against Delta becomes moot
  • Most COVID-19 policy-decisions world-wide are largely driven on the objective of achieving herd immunity
• Israel’s analysis of recovery from a prior natural COVID-19 infection had determined that it provides protection against the Delta variant that is 10X – 13X+ times more powerful than the protection provided by the current Pfizer/ BioNTech two dose protocol
  • This has important implications on the need for/frequency of booster shots to maintain strong immunity levels, along with the need to frequently update the vaccine formulations to ‘keep up’ with rapidly evolving COVID-19 variants

Israeli Ministry of Health figures illustrate how two shots of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is providing very little protection against the Delta variant.

• Alternatively, evidence is emerging suggesting that vaccines based on the whole virion (Whole Inactivated Virus – WIV vaccines) are providing better and longer-range immunity and protection against the most recent variants
  
  • Driven by the WIV vaccine’s basic structure which is similar to the natural infection of COVID-19 and exposes the immune system to the whole virion, not just the Spike protein
    

Image from Our World In Data

• Data from countries relying substantially on WIV vaccines are NOT experiencing a Delta surge comparable to countries relying predominantly on Spike protein-only vaccines.

• There also appear to be marked differences in your immune system after a natural infection with coronavirus and after vaccination.
• A substantial amount of research suggests that a second or third shot of a DIFFERENT type of vaccine appears to provide greater protection than more shots of the same. This finding however appears to have been ignored in both the Israeli and US booster shot decisions.

The current situation with vaccines world-wide strongly supports the following hypotheses:

• A whole virion (WIV) vaccine creates an immune response that is much closer to actual infection from Covid, as compared to vaccines relying solely on the Spike protein
• A whole virion WIV vaccines will therefore provide significantly higher protection against the Delta surge
• Any Covid vaccine modeled directly on the Delta variant will provide more protection than the SAME vaccine modeled on the much earlier Wuhan strain (i.e., all current vaccines)
• An ideal vaccine should carry 'multiple payloads' as there will be further evolution of new variants, most likely continually derived from the now dominant Delta strain.

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