The omicron variant may be milder than past variants, but COVID cases are skyrocketing to levels unseen in this pandemic. Daily new cases are approaching half a million—nearly twice the previous peak in January of last year.
But based on a recent study, the Biden administration may have doomed the best weapon against the omicron variant.
I recently noted that the omicron variant doesn’t seem to care if you’re vaccinated. As a result, cases of omicron among the vaccinated are outpacing those of the unvaccinated in Germany, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere.
There’s just a tiny little exception.
According to a new study out of South Africa, the Johnson & Johnson booster appears to show strong protection against the omicron variant. “Research from the South African Medical Research Council found that levels of protection against COVID-19 rose in the following weeks after receiving the booster, even after the surge of the easily transmissible omicron variant,” The Hill reported last week. “After a booster dose was given to those who previously received the J&J vaccine, it was shown to prevent 85 percent of hospitalizations in those who had received the second jab one to two months ago, an increase from 63 percent for those who had got their booster within the past two weeks.”
“This [study] adds to our growing body of evidence which shows that the effectiveness of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine remains strong and stable over time, including against circulating variants such as Omicron and Delta,” Mathai Mammen, global head of research and development for Janssen (a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson), said in a statement. “We believe that the protection could be due to the robust T-cell responses induced by the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine. Furthermore, these data suggest that omicron is not affecting the T-cell responses generated by our vaccine.”
But the Biden administration didn’t want you to get the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. So, instead, it pushed the Pfizer & Moderna vaccines.
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Last month, an advisory panel for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) voted to recommend the Pfizer or Moderna COVID-19 vaccines over the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. The CDC claimed that their decision was based on the 0.000053% chance of dying from severe blood clots from the vaccine. But that made no sense, as that risk was even less than the number of reported deaths from all the vaccines combined.
This wasn’t the first time the Biden administration made a questionable decision at the expense of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Last year, the Biden administration temporarily paused administering the J&J vaccine over the risk of severe blood clots. At the time of the pause, there were six cases of patients with severe blood clots out of nearly 7 million—a much smaller risk than actually dying from COVID.
We can speculate forever about why the Biden administration has been biased against the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, but as cases of omicron are exploding and the vaccine appears to offer good protection against omicron, that bias seems to have come back to bite him.
