Friday, November 4, 2022

I received the call today from David Ho who had recently published a preprint article showing that the neutralizing antibody response against the BA4/5 variant induced by the bivalent BA 4/5 boost versus the ancestral strain boost were essentially equivalent, namely, the BA4/5 bivalent boost was no better than the standard boost. Last night, I heard from Pfizer in a zoom call with Jha and all of HHS (Walensky, Murthy, Kessler and my team at NIH) that in their experiments there was a fourfold higher titer associated with the boost by the bivalent BA4/5 compared to the boost with the ancestral strain. Pfizer claims that their study was controlled whereas the studies by Ho and Barouch were not and the numbers were small. David Ho called me today and emphasized that the combination of numbers of his study and Barouch's study made them equivalent in size to the Pfizer numbers. In addition, he made the important point that there were some discrepancies in the data that were in the press release from Pfizer which did not contain all of the data that made them concerned about the Pfizer data. In addition, David suggested that it is in Peter Mark's interest to agree with Pfizer since Pfizer confirms what his decision was about the BA4/5 bivalent boost. I do not know whether this is David Ho concerned that his data are not holding up or whether he has a very good point that Pfizer is not being totally above board with the presentation of their data. I will have to try to figure this out by discussing it with a few other people. I have already discussed it with Cliff Lane and he thinks that both of those studies don't definitively show the answer since they both have weaknesses. Cliff recommends that the data undergo significant statistical analysis. HOWEVER, Eric Topol reviews the different studies: Great put down of the HELP Report in LA Times: Column: ProPublica and Vanity Fair are pushing the COVID lab-leak theory, but their exposé is a train wreck BY MICHAEL HILTZIKBUSINESS COLUMNIST NOV. 1, 2022 1:15 PM P BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 continues to overcome BA4/5: PRESS: CBC TV “Rosemary Barton Live”;