straight day after analyst voting to recommend moderna s booster for seniors and those at high risk. today s vote wasn t quite as cut and dry. they had a few questions to answer. is johnson & johnson s booster safe and effective? if it is, how soon do people need it? and is the johnson & johnson s booster the best for recipients or do they need the pfizer or moderna booster for better protection? dr. peter hotez of texas children s hospital, dr. hotez, the breaking news, the j&j booster and the timing, we know the fda voted to recommend it as early as two months after an initial dose, this is earlier than the other two. but the fda committee looked at two-month data and six-month booster data. why did they decide after two months? well, first of all, lindsey, you know, i ve been saying since january, this is going to be a two-dose vaccine. and the reason for that, when you looked at the phase 1/phase 2 trials, the amount of virus
headed here now, that there will be a recommendation for the most vulnerable to get a booster? i think so, you know, we have had this discussion before, jim, we said that the two mrna vaccines will be three dose vaccines and joinhnson & johnso will be a two-dose vaccine. i said that early on where it showed that individuals who got two doses of the j&j vaccine had much higher levels of virus neutralizing antibody and more robust t-cell responses. and i think that s what s panning out. there was some discussion a couple of days ago about a preprint that came online suggesting that those who got a j&j dose of this irvaccine when they were when they got boosted with mrna vaccines they did better than a second j&j dose. i m pushing back a little bit on that in the sense that when you look at that early data, the big rise in responses were delayed happened later on, maybe 70, 80
he says, do you have moderna boosters. the woman says, no, just pfizer. the guy walks out. so the new guidance is going to be, no, go ahead, any brand is better than no booster. am i correct about that? that s probably the case. but the truth is, as you heard in the united states, anyway, there s no limit to the amount of vaccine we have available. they all should be available in abundance. all things being equal, i would err on the side of sticking with the same vaccine. but if you have no other choices, yes, sure, go ahead with what they call the heterologous boost, mixing and matching. one of the studies published today showed that if you got the j&j vaccine, the amount of virus
in pregnancy. one of the pieces of disinformation coming out from anti-vaccine groups is they make the statement that it causes infertility. it s nonsense. the vaccines do not do that. they just copy, paste from a false assertion made about the hpv vaccine for cervical cancer and other cancers. these vaccines are safe. they re used in pregnancy. they ll save your life and give you high levels of virus neutralizing antibody which you can pass on to your newborn baby through breastfeeding or p pla placental. you brought up disinformation. i want to ask you about what allen west, a republican candidate for governor of texas, has been pushing on twitter. he has covid. he is not vaccinated. he s in the hospital. and he told his 800,000 followers on twitter, quote, instead of jabbing americans and
a big boost in your virus neutralizing antibodies and even get what is called entaupe broadening where you re actually really resilient against the variants. that s the message we have to get out. if you ve been infected and recovered, it s a roll of the dice. you don t know if you re protected against the delta surge and getting vaccinated will certainly guarantee that. just to simplify that even more, how do you compare vaccine immunity to previous infection immunity? i think being vaccinated is a much safer bet because we know that people receive two doses of the mnra vaccines, now we re up to three doses. we ll have really high levels of virus neutralizing antibody whereas if you re infected and recovered, it s a roll of the dice. dr. hotez said there is no blood test or method to determine who would get a big