This week in virology, the podcast about viruses, the kind that make you sick.

From micro TV, this is Twib, this week in virology, a special episode recorded on December 7th,

2022. I'm Vincent Drakon Yellow, and you're listening to the podcast all about viruses.

Joining me today from Austin, Texas, Rich Condit. Hi Vincent, I'll just be quick here since we have,

this is a quickie. 80 degrees crazy, and partly sunny. 14C in New York and cloudy. It's been raining

the last two days. Our guest today from the University of Pennsylvania, children's hospital

of Pennsylvania, Paul Offett. Welcome back. Thank you. Thank you for having me back.

Yeah, we've been on quite a bit, and there's good reason because you have a great take on the

COVID vaccine situation, and that's why we have you here today. A couple of weeks ago,

or two weeks, you sent me an email, and the first line reads, the bivailant booster dosing story

should be a cautionary tale of how not to move forward in this pandemic, and then you set forth

your reasons for saying that. And I thought this would be an important issue for people to hear as

we're moving into holidays and people are wondering if they should get vaccinated or whatever.

So what's the story here, Paul? So when Oma Cron came into the United States,

end of December 2021, beginning of January 2022, this was an immunivasive strain.

So it had had a number of changes in the receptor binding domain at least 15, and so it escaped

largely neutralizing antibodies that had been induced by the vaccine or previous infection.

And that worried people. It worried them that this could then render a monoclonal antibodies

in effect of it. It worried them that this could make render the vaccine ineffective. And so there

was an interest by the companies and by the government in moving forward with a vaccine to contain

that strain, the B.A.1 strain. And so the both Pfizer Moderna then made a bivailant vaccine that

included the original strain on the ancestral strain and this B.A.1 strain. For Moderna, it was 25

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