I’m not surprised by those South Africa vaccine efficacy numbers, since they are broadly in line with releases we’ve been getting over the last 9 months. We already knew VE vs. infection for the monovalent vaccine was very low and that VE vs. severe disease would be higher but still lower than vs. Delta. We already knew they provide about 3-4 months of “good” protection. We already knew VE vs. BA.4/5 was lower than vs. BA.1/2.
But yeah, it’s pretty easy to square, seeing as Dr. Rivers tweeted the paragraph whose last sentence is “need for vaccines to incorporate variants of concern.” Table 1 is stuff we know about old vaccines, and future public health decisions will not be using those. An annual booster of bivalent vaccine timed like the flu shot is a different story! It’s the one being told (e.g., Zvi’s points 2 and 5), and it’s the one not shown in Table 1. Seeing as we are getting a bivalent booster in about 10 months, in part thanks to uncertainty in how the FDA was going to treat approvals, getting it down to the 6 month lead time of the flu vaccine seems in the realm of possibility for future years (potentially contra Zvi’s point 3). We will “need for vaccines to incorporate variants of concern” for annual shots to make sense, and that’s exactly what we’ll be doing.
Re: Physical World Modeling
I’m not surprised by those South Africa vaccine efficacy numbers, since they are broadly in line with releases we’ve been getting over the last 9 months. We already knew VE vs. infection for the monovalent vaccine was very low and that VE vs. severe disease would be higher but still lower than vs. Delta. We already knew they provide about 3-4 months of “good” protection. We already knew VE vs. BA.4/5 was lower than vs. BA.1/2.
But yeah, it’s pretty easy to square, seeing as Dr. Rivers tweeted the paragraph whose last sentence is “need for vaccines to incorporate variants of concern.” Table 1 is stuff we know about old vaccines, and future public health decisions will not be using those. An annual booster of bivalent vaccine timed like the flu shot is a different story! It’s the one being told (e.g., Zvi’s points 2 and 5), and it’s the one not shown in Table 1. Seeing as we are getting a bivalent booster in about 10 months, in part thanks to uncertainty in how the FDA was going to treat approvals, getting it down to the 6 month lead time of the flu vaccine seems in the realm of possibility for future years (potentially contra Zvi’s point 3). We will “need for vaccines to incorporate variants of concern” for annual shots to make sense, and that’s exactly what we’ll be doing.