FDA To Allow “Mixing and Matching” Of COVID Boosters

mRNA or a disabled adenovirus? According to the latest iteration of the “science” it’s really all the same and just jam it in there, because as the NYT reports, the Food and Drug Administration will allow Americans to “mix and match”, i.e., receive a different Covid-19 vaccine as a booster than the one they initially received, a move that could “reduce the appeal of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine and provide flexibility to doctors and other vaccinators.”

In other words, the mRNA lobby has just booked the entire second floor at Scores and is hoovering up industrial amounts of Colombian marching powder while surrounded by the best silicone money can rent.

In the latest example that money talks and what was scientific consensus until this morning walks, the government would not recommend one shot over another, and may instead note that using the same vaccine as a booster when possible is preferable, but vaccine providers could use their discretion to offer a different brand, a freedom that state health officials have been requesting for weeks. Maybe one should check if the bank accounts of said state health officials have suddenly seen a mysterious inflow of outside funds that prompted their agitation.

In any case, the approach was foreshadowed on Friday, when so-called “researchers” presented the findings of a federally funded “mix and match” study to an expert committee that advises the Food and Drug Administration. The study found that recipients of Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose shot who received a Moderna booster saw their antibody levels rise 76-fold in 15 days, compared with only a fourfold increase after an extra dose of Johnson & Johnson.

We can only assume that this “study” is different than the one that took place just a few months ago that prompted the same NYT to report that “Britain Opens Door to Mix-and-Match Vaccinations, Worrying Experts“…

… and in which we read that:

Some scientists say Britain is gambling with its new guidance. “There are no data on this idea whatsoever,” said John Moore, a vaccine expert at Cornell University. Officials in Britain “seem to have abandoned science completely now and are just trying to guess their way out of a mess.”

It now turns out that Britain was simply early in guessing which way a whole lot of bribes money can sway the “science” du jour.

Amusingly, even as the FDA agonizes over greenlighting covid booster shots for Americans younger than 65 – having initially rejected the biotech/pharma lobbied outcome which has been eagerly sought by the Biden admin – Federal regulators this week are aiming to greatly expand the number of Americans eligible for booster shots. As such, the FDA is now expected to authorize boosters of the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines by Wednesday evening; it could allow the mix-and-match approach by then. The agency last month authorized booster shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for at least six months after the second dose.

Then, on Thursday, a CDC advisory committee will also take up the booster issue and will then issue its own recommendations (to go ahead and do it because science says “mix and match” is cool). By the end of the week, tens of millions more Americans could be eligible for extra shots.

So how exactly do we know that the “mixing and matching” that was anathema as recently as January is now to be encouraged? Well, because the “experts” emphasized last week that the new “data” was based on small groups of volunteers and short-term findings.

We repeat: small groups of volunteers and short-term findings of mixing and matching revealed that all is well, so by extension, the protocol is perfectly suitable for hundreds of millions over years if not decades.

Furthermore, only antibody levels — just one measure of the immune response — were calculated as part of the preliminary data, not the actual levels of immune cells primed to attack the coronavirus, which scientists say are also an important measure of a vaccine’s success. Then again, in a country that ignores natural covid immunity – because, well, that doesn’t lead to an even bigger yacht for certain biotech CEOs – this was to be expected.

It gets better: perhaps in an attempt to mitigate its previously reported on how experts were “worried” due to precisely this “mix and match” approach, the NYT notes that “while the research on mixing and matching doses is somewhat thin, even some scientists who have strongly criticized the Biden administration’s booster policy said that providers should be given a measure of discretion as the campaign ramps up.”

One wonders if these are the same “scientists” who strongly disagreed with a growing number of countries – such as Sweden, Norway and Finland – suspending use of the Moderna vaccine in young people “for precautionary reasons” following reports of “possible rare side effects.” Something tells us that that the answer is a resounding yes.

“If you look at the data, it certainly looks like it might be better,” Dr. Paul A. Offit, the director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said of Moderna or Pfizer boosters for Johnson & Johnson recipients. “I think we should move quickly on this, because it’s already happening.” He should know – after all this is the same Dr. Offit who was “honored by Bill and Melinda Gates during the launch of their Foundation’s Living Proof Project for global health.”

Demonstrating just how extensively the scientific consensus can swing in under a year, at the meeting on Friday of the Food and Drug Administration’s expert panel – of which Dr. Offit is a member – top C.D.C. officials argued that providers needed latitude to offer different vaccines as boosters because – get this – patients might have had adverse reactions after their initial shots or presented other new concerns. In other words, a patient may not want a booster due to a bad experience with the original vaccine. So here’s the brilliant solution: just give them the other vaccine. And what’s most remarkable is that since this is fundamentally a ploy to get people who have had a JnJ vaccine to get a second, mRNA-based vaccine, the “scientific” thinking is that giving patients the same vaccine which was halted in various Scandinavian countries due to its “possible rare side effects” is literally what the doctor ordered.

Ultimately, however, money is involved and as most of our readers know by now, money can induce some truly creative “scientific” thought. Like for example the thinking by Pfizer and Moderna CEOs who know that they need this approval to continue making billions from the vaccine: the federal government will cover the cost of a different vaccine as a booster only if the Food and Drug Administration authorizes the approach, officials told the NYT.

“I’d like to reiterate how important it is from a programmatic perspective to have a little bit of flexibility,” Dr. Melinda Wharton, a top vaccine official at the C.D.C., told the F.D.A. panel. The same “little bit of flexibility” why the NYT back in January called “a mess” and “gambling”

And just to avoid potentially embarrassing questions about conflicts of interest, the ironclad clause was invoked – the public health interest. 

“From a public health perspective, there’s a clear need in some situations for individuals to receive a different vaccine,” said Dr. Amanda Cohn, another high-ranking C.D.C. official.

Finally, what would yet another scientific flip-flop be if it didn’t include, you guessed it, Anthony Fauci.

Anthony S. Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, publicly suggested on Sunday that the government was headed toward granting greater leeway, at least for Johnson & Johnson recipients. “I believe there’s going to be a degree of flexibility of what a person who got the J.&J. originally can do, either with J.&J. or with the mix-and-match from other products,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.”

A far cry from what he said in January, but that’s hardly news to anyone.