Hm, does that mean the side effects would be expected to be about the same as the vaccines we have already? I'm worried that regular boosters will be an extremely hard sell if so many people get sick for days after each one.
I think they made the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines extra strong (and double dose) because we were in the middle of a once-in-a-century pandemic. Would've been still somewhat effective at lower dosage. Folks have tested Pfizer at lower dose, and it seems to work still. But being high dose and double dose probably has also helped protect well against variants.
> I think they made the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines extra strong (and double dose) because we were in the middle of a once-in-a-century pandemic.
Was looking into Pfizer’s effectiveness against the Indian variant since that seemed to be the most worrisome one out there and this was the vaccine I got.
What it boils down to:
1 shot + 3 weeks: 33% effective.
2 shots + 2 weeks: 88% effective.
Happy to have gotten both shots of Pfizer as overkill looks like exactly the right amount of kill. If I can get boosters down the line in the form of a patch, all the better really.
The Moderna shots seem to be far more overkill than even the Pfizer ones. 100 micrograms of mRNA vs 30 in the Pfizer. Both are probably more than necessary but they had one shot to nail it and they went all in on the first try. Likely related, myself and everybody I know had far worse side effects from the Moderna shots than the people I know who received the Pfizer ones.
The 3-4 week spacing was based on the first clinical results that came back. Now that we have data on longer spacings, it looks like waiting at least 3 months results in a stronger immune response. https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n18https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/jou... We had to rush the second shots to get immunity quickly, but for a later booster, the required dose might be a lot lower.
Not sure about this one specifically, but these microneedle array vaccines seem to use a slightly different mechanism to elicit an immune response (they stimulate Langerhans cells, which are dendritic cells in the skin). Hard to say if that would make side effects worse or better or have no effect -- this trial was in mice so it's not like the researchers could ask -- but it's probably different enough a system that people's experiences with the injectable vaccines probably aren't especially predictive either way.
could slap a skin patch onto everyone that walks through the door.. viola, spike proteins for everyone! It wouldn't bother those that already have anti-bodies for it, and the rest would naturally start making anti-bodies.
Yes, the patch is coated with the actual spike protein, with some modifications:
> The HD-MAP is a 1 x 1 cm solid polymer microprojection array containing 5,000 projections of 250 µm in length. Vaccine is coated onto the microprojections via a nitrogen-jet-based drying process before application to the skin at a velocity of 18-20 m/s via a spring-loaded applicator.
> Here, we explore HD-MAP delivery of a subunit vaccine candidate –a recombinant SARS-CoV-2 spike glycoprotein, termed HexaPro which has been stabilized in its prefusion conformation by removal of the furin cleavage site and the inclusion of six stabilizing proline mutations
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