WSJ: Are Vaccines Fueling New Covid Variants?
The Lunacy of Uneducated Opinions Driving Scientific Discourse
While I am sure Ms. Allysia Finley is competent to the extent of her education, holding a bachelor’s degree in American Studies, this is where her competency ends. Her experience as a prior writer for “The Stanford Review” student newspaper with a self-proclaimed political bias and the Orange County Register is representative of her deep and obvious political bias.
Her not so thinly veiled disdain for science and attack on experts in the field, platformed by the Wall Street Journal, is yet another example in a long list of journalistic irresponsibility during a global public health crisis. If we as Scientists to not meet this with the rebuttal it deserves we further invite pure quackery and bastardization of our field.
Both the Wall Street Journal and Finely should be embarrassed by the level of ignorance displayed to their readership. Readers should be aware that allowing Politics to influence Science has deadly outcomes, something, three years into a global pandemic and millions of deaths later, Finley fails to indicate an understanding of the impact.
Let’s walk through this deeply flawed opinion piece, paragraph by paragraph.
Public-health experts are sounding the alarm about a new Omicron variant dubbed XBB that is rapidly spreading across the Northeast U.S. Some studies suggest it is as different from the original Covid strain from Wuhan as the 2003 SARS virus. Should Americans be worried?
Let’s start with basic errors in the first paragraph that boldly indicate lack of expertise and error checking from WSJ and Finley to any educated reader.
XBB.1.5 is spreading the United States (not just the Northeast) which is an important distinction as it is expected not only to be more immune evasive but have higher binding affinity to the ACE2 receptor than XBB; thus, making it more transmissible. This may seem like a minor point, however, the mutations in XBB.1.5 that confer higher transmission rates are not immune evasive (the thesis of their opinion). This indicates that immune evasion alone is not a selective pressure or guarantees virus success but that evolutionary selection for dominant variants is driven by improved rates of initial infection. This has been seen throughout virus evolution and inarguably reduced by vaccination. This alone renders the rest of the opinion piece weak in the scientific space and little more than biased non-expert conjecture, but let’s continue.
The word ‘different’ auto-links to the opinion piece itself, which contains no supporting evidence for the authors statement. A simple error perhaps, but definitely a sloppy mistake.
COVID is capitalized and stands for Coronavirus Disease. Everyone in the field knows this as well as an enormous number of lay people. The author nor their editor could not bother to establish correct writing terminology.
COVID itself is not a strain, nor even a variant. It is the disease caused by the particular variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. No one should continue to take an article seriously that cannot express their opinion regarding Science in well established terminology. I assure you, no Scientist or decision maker in this space is.
Finally, in the first paragraph, Finley links one article under “studies” the content of which describes issues with breakthrough infection, not vaccination driving variants. This study provides counter evidence to the entire premise of her opinion article she is attempting to report. One wonders if she even bothered to read the first 200 words of the study.
This is all just the first paragraph. If you are not convinced by the unscientific utter conjecture regarding this opinion piece not worth the pixels it was written with, I continue below. But first, let’s discuss the underlying fundamentals leading to this error in logical thinking regarding vaccination and variants.
The principles of vaccination reducing virus variants are well understood. Virus variants develop more often when viruses replicate unchecked by the immune system. Higher viral loads are see in people who are not vaccinated experiencing their first infection or in those who are immunocompromised. Vaccination confers the immune system with a head-start reducing virus replication as well as variant development. Please review this linktree for representative supporting articles.
Indeed, the corollary is the extremely high level of virus mutations seen in those who are immunocompromised, where it is speculated that some of the largest genetic leaps in globally circulating variants occurred. Those who are unvaccinated, but prior infected do have an ‘educated’ immune system; however, it is now well documented that SARS-CoV-2 incurs long-lasting immune system dysregulation leading some repeat infections to have the hallmarks of infection in immunocompromised individuals. This enhances the likelihood of virus variant development in those re-infected with SARS-CoV-2.
To believe that the selective pressure of antibodies alone binding to the receptor-binding domain (RBD) of the spike protein would drive virus evolution is to admit utter ignorance regarding the complexity of immune responses. Human immune responses engage multiple mechanisms within the humoral, cellular, and innate branches of an immune system to control viral replication. Antibodies are only one part of the immune response. In short, the human immune system does not behave as a small-molecule or antibiotic does when engaging a virus or bacteria. To assume virus variants develop by the same mechanism as antibiotics resistance by vaccine induced selective pressure is simply erroneous and has been previously demonstrated to be false.
Let’s continue to review the opinion piece in question, here is the second paragraph:
It isn’t clear that XBB is any more lethal than other variants, but its mutations enable it to evade antibodies from prior infection and vaccines as well as existing monoclonal antibody treatments. Growing evidence also suggests that repeated vaccinations may make people more susceptible to XBB and could be fueling the virus’s rapid evolution.
The first sentence of the paragraph is accurate. However, the ‘growing evidence’ indicated here is not referenced, likely because it is simply uneducated conjecture. As of this writing there is no research that shows repeat vaccination increases XBB family variant infection. This is highly unlikely given the aforementioned vaccination results. Although this is an opinion article, for a non-scientist non-expert to make such a sweeping and grand statement with no references, no scientific support, regarding a rapidly spreading variant currently in circulation is completely divorced from reality. For the Wall Street Journal to publish this nonsense degrades their reputation as a resource for intelligent discourse.
It is possible the author was referring to a recent preprint article from the Cleveland Clinic, that did not study XBB variants. A note of caution, preprint articles are often rejected outright and require significant changes to the data and/or author conclusions prior to publication. Given the academic discussion regarding the presented findings of this article it is likely this too will be rejected. I detailed a few of the reasons why in this assessment. In short, the findings are self-contradictory, the data is inherently flawed, and the statistical power is weak and will likely be non-existent when inherent data biases are addressed. Do note, I have personally done numerous preprint article reviews for over 10 different highly referenced journals in my career as a scientist. This is part of our training. Undergraduate degrees in American Studies do not typically, as far as I know, train the people who obtain them in scientific literature review and certainly this specialty does not lend one to be considered a peer in the field. Thus, using a preprint article with obvious flaws, Finley, again, exhibits at best a combination of ignorance and sloppy logical thinking. Indeed, Finley ignores a primary finding of the pre-print, failing to mention to their readers that the study found a 30% increase in infection protection from the booster.
Let us move quickly through the rest of the opinion piece. Here is the third paragraph:
Prior to Omicron’s emergence in November 2021, there were only four variants of concern: Alpha, Beta, Delta and Gamma. Only Alpha and Delta caused surges of infections globally. But Omicron has begotten numerous descendents, many of which have popped up in different regions of the world curiously bearing some of the same mutations.
Here, the author seems utterly unaware of the viral evolution process and that at the time of the primary named virus variants in circulation over 100,000 other subvariants of various fitness had emerged and fallen away in the 0.5-1% or so of global sequences posted to the publicly available GISAID database. For easy viewing of a subsample of GISAID database in Nextstrain.org. It is easy to see there that an explosion in SARS-CoV-2 variants did not occur with the massive global vaccination campaigns undertaken in 2021.
Furthermore, the author seems distinctly unaware that mutational conversion across the globe was not the primary reason for these variants spreading but that their arrival in different countries is demonstrated with distinct timings associated with air travel.
Notably, the Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta variants were documented in 2020 before vaccines were available. Attributing the development of these variants to COVID vaccination belays utter ignorance of the timing of variants and vaccine distribution.
“Such rapid and simultaneous emergence of multiple variants with enormous growth advantages is unprecedented,” a Dec. 19 study in the journal Nature notes. Under selective evolutionary pressures, the virus appears to have developed mutations that enable it to transmit more easily and escape antibodies elicited by vaccines and prior infection.
The first statement is a quote from a research article. This is true as this respiratory virus is highly contagious and has simultaneously infected millions of people providing numerous opportunities to mutate. The first mutation that drove higher viral loads and infection rates occurred prior to the vaccine G614D, which is not in the spike protein receptor binding domain. Nowhere in the article cited do the authors lend support to the conjecture of this opinion piece.
The second statement is nothing more than the author’s conjecture which is again not supported by anything more than an uneducated bias.
The same study posits that immune imprinting may be contributing to the viral evolution. Vaccines do a good job of training the immune system to remember and knock out the original Wuhan variant. But when new and markedly different strains come along, the immune system responds less effectively.
Indeed, the study posits that immune imprinting, a yet unproven hypothesis in the field of immunology. Often the terminology of ‘immune imprinting’ when used in scientific discussion is mis-understood by the lay-person. For example, scientists may use immune imprinting to refer to the antibodies already created by prior infection. However, there is no evidence that those antibodies prevent further adaptation of the immune response when it encounters a closely related variant. B cell evolution is well documented to be ongoing and highly flexible regarding closely associated pathogens. If it were not, we would all be dead by now.
If immune imprinting were disrupting COVID infection protection we would expect progressively more severe cases if someone was previously infected. This has occurred in a small subset of people, and is more likely due to well documented immune system dysfunction, references can be found here. Therefore, the conclusions in the WSJ opinion piece are not supported by clinical data.
Another glaring logical flaw in using this research to support their opinion piece is that the authors never state the vaccine is contributing to this, but rather prior infection. Infection is inarguably reduced by vaccination, despite loss of efficacy over time as new variants emerge, both virus loads and infection are still reduced.
Let’s move quickly through the final paragraphs as they are repeats of the same logical errors and ignorance regarding the topic:
Bivalent vaccines that target the Wuhan and BA.5 variants (or breakthrough infections with the latter) prompt the immune system to produce antibodies that target viral regions the two strains have in common. In Darwinian terms, mutations that allow the virus to evade common antibodies win out—they make it “fitter.”
This reveals the author’s own ignorant conjecture regarding the viral evolution process and how antibodies are developed during an immune response. Complex, multi-faceted immune responses should not be conflated with single-site binding small molecule therapeutics.
XBB has evolved to elude antibodies induced by the vaccines and breakthrough infections. Hence, the Nature study suggests, “current herd immunity and BA.5 vaccine boosters may not efficiently prevent the infection of Omicron convergent variants.”
Like hundreds of thousands of other virus mutations, some caused by viral recombination during co-infection, XBB evolved as an ‘accident’ during uncontrolled viral replication and recombination of two Omicron subvariants in an infected person. XBB happened to be fitter than other variants and, thus, persisted. This is a result of a virus taking millions of ‘shots on goal’ with error prone replication. Survival of a variant that the immune systems of the vast majority of people simply haven’t seen either by prior infection or vaccination, or is more contagious simply persists.
Using the term ‘herd immunity’ again belays ignorance as Coronavirus reinfections both with SARS-CoV-2 and other coronaviruses is entirely well known. The ship of hope that was herd immunity sailed in late 2021.
A New England Journal of Medicine study published last month provides more evidence of the vulnerability caused by immune imprinting. Neutralizing antibodies of people who had received the bivalent were 26 times as high against the original Wuhan variant as they were against XBB and four times as high as they were against Omicron and the BA.5 variant.
Notably the New England Journal of Medicine study referenced here shows that the bivalent booster has better in vitro neutralization capabilities than one or two booster shots alone. But the opinion conveniently fails to mention this.
Prior vaccination creating antibodies that respond well to the variant used in vaccination but have decreased efficacy against other variants with a host of new mutations, tested in a laboratory dish, does not indicate lack of an immune system’s ability to adapt to new viruses. Finley’s interpretation of the science and their ultimate conclusions are deeply ignorant and belay an uneducated bias.
Similarly, a study this month in the journal Cell found that antibody levels of people who had received four shots were 145 times as high against the original Wuhan strain as the XBB variant. A bivalent booster only slightly increased antibodies against XBB. Experts nevertheless claim that boosters improve protection against XBB. That’s disinformation, to use their favored term.
Again, the ignorance and bias of the opinion author is on display. To determine that there is no protection against the XBB variant based on antibody neutralization in a dish is widely regarded in the field as a faulty approach. Not only does real-world data matter, but the author seems to forget that antibodies are only part of the immune response. It is well understood that T cells, a part of the cellular branch of an immune response, still easily recognize the virus despite the additional mutations found in the XBB family of variants. The real-world clinical evidence of this can be seen in the persistent protection from hospitalization and severe disease seen in those who have recently received a booster.
The lack of respect for an entire body of Science the author clearly cannot grasp is evident in their statement that Scientists in their research articles are “spreading disinformation.” Again, the Wall Street Journal should reassess their editorial process if they wish to maintain any semblance of intelligent discourse.
A Cleveland Clinic study that tracked its healthcare workers found that bivalent vaccines reduced the risk of getting infected by 30% while the BA.5 variant was spreading. But, as the study explained, the reason might be that workers who were more cautious—i.e., more likely to wear N95 masks and avoid large gatherings—may have also been more likely to get boosted.
Notably, workers who had received more doses were at higher risk of getting sick. Those who received three more doses were 3.4 times as likely to get infected as the unvaccinated, while those who received two were only 2.6 times as likely.
Finley’s opinion goes on to incorporate the Cleveland Clinic study, which is also addressed above. This is widely regarded as a deeply flawed data set, with self-contradictory conclusions that will not likely pass through peer review without significant changes. Peer review that Finley is unqualified to approach.
Indeed, however, the authors of that study state that the booster adds an additional 30% protection against the variants in circulation at the time of the study. As mentioned above, Finley leaves this statement out of their writing, as it is directly counter to their opinion.
“This is not the only study to find a possible association with more prior vaccine doses and higher risk of COVID-19,” the authors noted. “We still have a lot to learn about protection from COVID-19 vaccination, and in addition to a vaccine’s effectiveness it is important to examine whether multiple vaccine doses given over time may not be having the beneficial effect that is generally assumed.”
Here, the opinion author is quoting from the discussion section of the Cleveland Clinic preprint article. As a long-time scientific reviewer and responsible scientist, I investigated the studies the authors referenced to support this claim: neither study cited supported the author’s claims and this is detailed here, where I include the figures showing the references provided counter-evidence to the Cleveland Clinic study author claims.
Two years ago, vaccines were helpful in reducing severe illness, particularly among the elderly and those with health risks like diabetes and obesity. But experts refuse to concede that boosters have yielded diminishing benefits and may even have made individuals and the population as a whole more vulnerable to new variants like XBB.
There is no evidence that the population is more vulnerable to the XBB family of variants due to vaccination. In fact, vaccinated and recently boosted individuals continue to enjoy less severe disease and lower rates of hospitalization and death. This is evidenced by the initial spread of the XBB variant (not XBB.1.5) in Singapore, a highly vaccinated population.
The population is more vulnerable to infection with XBB by the simple fact that the virus has mutated faster than our vaccines have evolved to combat it, leading to higher rates of breakthrough infection. It’s a very simple concept that the authors attempt to drag into the realm of scientific conspiracy.
It might not be a coincidence that XBB surged this fall in Singapore, which has among the highest vaccination and booster rates in the world. Over the past several weeks a XBB strain has become predominant in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts, making up three-quarters of circulating virus, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate. The variant has been slower to take off in other regions, making up only 6% of the Midwest and about 20% in the South. The Northeast is also the most vaccinated and boosted region in the country.
If the writer of the opinion piece had bothered with an additional 5 minutes of research they would have seen that the highly vaccinated population of Singapore had a mild and quickly resolved wave of XBB and it is no longer an issue in there. This is attributed to their extremely high vaccination and boosted rate. But, let’s not let easily verified real world data get in the way of science fiction.
Hospitalizations in the Northeast have risen too, but primarily among those over 70. One reason may be that the T-Cell response—the cavalry riding behind the front-line antibodies— is weaker in older people. The virus can’t evade T-Cells elicited by vaccines and infections as easily as it can antibodies. Because of T-Cells, younger people are still well-protected against new variants.
Here, Finley appears to drift back into the realm, albeit temporarily, of sane scientific thinking. Indeed, populations over the age of 65 have weakened immune systems and are more vulnerable to infections of all types.
However, they quickly veer off course of logic once again, forgetting that more unvaccinated than vaccinated people by proportion are hospitalized from COVID infection. Yet again, this pesky fact seems to get in the way of their position.
Another reason may be that monoclonal antibodies are ineffective against XBB, and many older people who catch Covid can’t take the antiviral Paxlovid because they have medical conditions such as severe kidney disease or take drugs that interfere with it.
There is no rebuttal here, only a reminder that the Scientific and Medical community are well aware that the monoclonal antibodies have yet to be updated to combat the XBB family of variants. We’ve understood this for months and many have redoubled their efforts to communicate regarding effective mask wearing and vaccination, important measures this opinion piece directly undermines. Wall Street Journal: reconsider your editorial process in allowing such baseless uneducated opinions to be published, taken at face value, many of your readers could suffer severe health consequences and even death.
The Biden administration’s monomaniacal focus on vaccines over new treatments has left the highest-risk Americans more vulnerable to new variants. Why doesn’t that seem to worry the experts?
It is odd that this ends with a nod to politics.
The answer to the final question of their article is simple. The experts are not concerned with conspiracy theories. Experts who understand the data, who have decades beyond the education and experience of Finley and their political bias, are concerned with vaccine and monoclonal antibody updates that will continue to save lives and protect people from severe illness.
This is a fantastic critique of a terrible WSJ piece. Bravo 👏🏻
Thank you so much for your continued work in supporting science. This was a fantastic briefing of how immunology works, written in clear, easy-to-understand language.