Ineffective for Omicron. It still helps immunity in general, so is recommended for immunocompromized people and others with low immunity, most people don't need it though, the gain isn't enough to matter for them.
Considering Omicron is about to outcompete every single other variant I am not sure what 'general immunity' means in this context either.
If anyone one could assume that an Omicron specific booster would help better with future variants as those would likely spring up through changes of the current Omicron virus rather than wild type.
Various strains become more or less common over time, but the winner doesn’t totally supplant everything else globally very quickly. Omicron for example isn’t part of the Delta lineage. So, there is some justification in viewing things based on both the short term public health standpoint as well as the longe term evolution of the virus.
That said, I am not an expert just pointing out things are complicated. I would assume a targeted booster for Omicron would be a good idea, but at this point that’s just blind hope without clinical data backing it up.
Does an extra booster reduce hospitalizations and deaths?
Seems this study only addressed the first question.
But instead of giving a fourth shot based on the OG Covid, seems an updated version based on omicron, delta, and any new variants of concern would be a better idea.
I can't for the life of me understand why your last statement isn't what the world is driving for at the moment. mRNA vaccines are easily(-ish) updated, so punch out an Omicron specific dose and get on with the regular single/dual (if needed) regime.
It seems strange we'd opt for 3-4-5 shots given the benefit of mRNA was its ease of creation and modification.
I think they are making these strain specific boosters. But it seems “they”* want to keep it quiet until they are ready to release them. My first through on this is that there is over-supply of the OG vaccine and it takes time to switch production and the booster story is designed to give some hope and confidence to the masses (which is good I think). There is also some paperwork involved which takes time, but as we saw with the OG vaccines that can be done pretty damn fast.
Best guess would be the strain specific boosters will come out of nowhere and suddenly saturate news coverage. But don’t quote me on that.
* presumably the pharma companies and national governments funding them. So a conspiracy, but not a QANON conspiracy.
yes but these are for-profit companies and the developing world can't pay for those doses so what's the point to Pfizer?
That's a cynical take, but tbf don't the vaccines require logistical infrastructure that those parts of the world don't have? Other vaccines like j&j are perhaps more appropriate for that reason.
Oh, maybe it is context specific then. No one I know in Australia is really talking about variant vaccines yet so maybe our media is being a bit quiet about it. Late March is a long time away considering we are dealing with peak COVID now.
The omicron surge is happening now so health authorities are looking at solutions and a third shot worked great, so a fourth one is an obvious (short term) solution. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to work.
But the fourth dose did work, just not significantly better than the third. So for people who might have had their third too long in the past to still be confident about their imminent encounter with omicron, it is exactly the obvious short term solution you describe.
A third shot showed large antibody increases. I haven't seen a fourth shot being suggested. Here it was being studied. Omicron specific vaccines are being worked on and expected to arrive in a few months.
Antibody levels are transient and not very important. What matters over the long term is cellular immunity. We're just chasing our tails by focusing on antibody levels.
Given what happened with delta, it seems likely that by the time a variant-specific booster is ready (i.e. gone through safety trials and bureaucratic approval and have manufacturing lines switched over), the variant will already have come and gone.
It should be pretty clear at this point that we're not going to vaccinate our way out of transmission.
I doubt there's a lot of utility to boosting a 4th time with anything unless you're immunocompromised in some way.
And by the time we start vaccinating for Omicron it'll likely be too late and we'll be onto the next variant which the Omicron booster will only partially cross react with.
But the vaccines have largely done their job, the boosted mature T-cell response is what is going to be saving lives and keeping people out of the hospitals. And the virus probably can't mutate enough to ever escape from T-cells.
> Does an extra booster reduce hospitalizations and deaths?
A meta question: how do these studies control for the fact that people who care enough to get a booster are more likely to care proactively about their health?
Usually they used randomized controlled trials for this sort of thing, which in a well designed study will account for this sort of bias
Whether the population in the trial generalized to the population at large is a bit different question and I think is where the bias you’re highlighting could come into part
'... people who care enough to get a booster are more likely to care proactively about their health'
Are there studies to show people who care about health get boosters? My neighbors are hyper healthy and undosed. I am undosed and I exercise regularly.
I generally see many people who sat on couch for two years put on considerable weight. Eating ourselves into 2x pants sizes doesn't seem to be good for health, as it increases the co-morbidity counter.
There's no need for a variant-specific booster. The vaccines are still very effective at preventing severe disease with Omicron. Just like they were with Delta.
I am living in Israel, i doubt that it is possible to state anything definitively on the subject: regulations and decissions are being changed on a daily basis. I am not a healthcare specialist, however all this is giving the impression of being one big mess...
I think it can definitely be stated that having weekly decisions about something as serious and possibly long-lasting as vaccinations are a bad omen. Especially if we consider possible adverse effects in children we should instead opt for partial lockdowns at least temporarily to stem the wave
Not quite sure about this, lockdowns are having profound psychological implications, especially on the young ones. A child can't be expected to sit in a zoom session all day, it's simply not possible!
I think you seriously overestimate the overall harms of vaccines. I'm a life scientist, and I'd take the side effect profile & risks of the worst vaccine in the last 50 years over that of an Extra Strength Tylenol any day.
That's how science works: when the facts become updated you update your decisions. Israel has been among the most science-driven governments in Covid policy. I'm not really sure why your "impression" should be mentioned given that you expressly state that you're not a specialist.
I think you are sadly wrong. Corona policy in the early days quickly became inextricably enmeshed in political rivalries, electioneering and knee- jerk reactions. When you say "science driven" i think you really meant "stricter regulations". It is a fatal error to conflate the two.
Yes, there's a lot of baggage left over with a lot of regulations that were made at the beginning and which don't make much sense now. It annoys me. It's not the end of the world, and much in the same way that we had vaccine passports and quarantines throughout history when diseases came and went, once we get over with this I trust we work to get rid of the baggage.
No, just like how we had quarantines for people coming by ship in the 50s or how you have required vaccinations to enter certain countries on certain disease outbreaks and that has just been reduced drastrically as a lot of endemic diseases have been tamed.
As somebody who was bullied in my childhood and early youth, I can say that there is no way one could go back to their bullies and collaborate with them politely. The only way to "get rid of the baggage" is to cut these people out of one's life, completely. No cooperation possible, unless a genuine profuse apology is given, and convincing demonstration of good intention is presented. The other way is to become a bully, which is not an option for many.
The measures and the rhetoric of covid-enthusiasts is bullying in appearance and in essence (night curfews - for six months - and mandatory muzzling - for the owner - on solitary dog walks, for example), although I agree that for a brief initial period some didn't look like so. It is now, and has been going for quite a while. The less sense all the measures make, the more harsh doubling down goes ahead. The concerns are not only dismissed, but actively invalidated and vilified. There is absolutely no appetite shown to even acknowledge that somebody may be in pain due to what being done, yet alone apologize for it. I don't know what is appropriate word for someone insisting to continue to inflict pain even after being told that their subject is in great pain. Gaslighting? Sadism? Righteousness? Bullying? Genuinely caring people have no problem with acknowledgement and apology, the ones who do are... you name it.
And before accusations of intent to kill grandma, I haven't stepped out of my house for two years now, such repulsive reaction I have to masks and some other "measures". Do not and did not care about covid a tiniest bit. There is no light in sight, so I'm preparing to take my life, if not consumed by ailments, old and new, that flared up. If, by some miracle, "we get over this" and I'm alive, then all the time second-guessing each fellow human on whether they were actual bully or accidental accomplice is not a great perspective either. But bullies do not deserve cooperation or compassion. So the only way forward I see is absolute sabotage of all government initiatives. All within the boundaries of law and regulations, of course.
> As somebody who was bullied in my childhood and early youth, I can say that there is no way one could go back to their bullies and collaborate with them politely. The only way to "get rid of the baggage" is to cut these people out of one's life, completely. No cooperation possible, unless a genuine profuse apology is given, and convincing demonstration of good intention is presented. The other way is to become a bully, which is not an option for many.
From one person who was bullied and now manages to work quite successfully with government and private institutions, you don't deal with institutions and collectives the same was as you do an individual. It is a useless comparison.
> And before accusations of intent to kill grandma, I haven't stepped out of my house for two years now, such repulsive reaction I have to masks and some other "measures". Do not and did not care about covid a tiniest bit. There is no light in sight, so I'm preparing to take my life, if not consumed by ailments, old and new, that flared up. If, by some miracle, "we get over this" and I'm alive, then all the time second-guessing each fellow human on whether they were actual bully or accidental accomplice is not a great perspective either. But bullies do not deserve cooperation or compassion. So the only way forward I see is absolute sabotage of all government initiatives. All within the boundaries of law and regulations, of course.
Get some psychological help dude, this has nothing to do with science or medicine.
> you don't deal with institutions and collectives the same was as you do an individual. It is a useless comparison.
I agree, in general. Until they forget that they are dealing with live individuals, not abstract bits in a statistical model. Once they overreach, I have no other mental model for them.
Also, there seems to be a sniff of "I was only following superior orders" here. It was invalidated as an excuse in the court of law some time ago, and never was valid in the court of public opinion anyway. The institutions are run by individuals and it would be beneficial for them to remember that the hangman deals with individuals too. As Russian saying goes "They punch your face, not your passport" ("???? ?? ???? ? ?? ?? ????????").
> Get some psychological help dude, this has nothing to do with science or medicine.
Sure thing, it hasn't. Except I did not need any help before all this. And now, before I get anywhere, I need to beg for exemptions. Not going to happen.
This is all to say that for some unbeknownst reason covid enthusiasts insist on destroying any possibility of peaceful existence post-panic. Some people will quietly depart from the world, but some will put up a fight. Why doesn't it come to mind?
Are you talking about Israel? My friend from there told me that regardless of huge political differences, there has not been stupid rivalry because of covid.
Does that mean people who say "the science is settled" are anti-science? What about people who insist they can't be wrong, and science can't be wrong, so you better do what they tell you, in the name of science, or else? Because we have a whole lot of that going on and it is celebrated like a holy edict. Science seems to be in constant flux between infallible religion and "we weren't wrong, the facts just have been updated". How you do you know today's fact of day won't be tomorrow's fact in need of being updated? When it comes to using government force and using infallible science to require people to give up their choice in the matter, maybe a bit more introspection and humility is in order and a lot less endless gaslighting and dictatorial commanding.
Remember, this won't be the last global pandemic, but it is the last one where science has any credibility. The next pandemic hopefully is as mild as this one because you'll never see this level of cooperation with the government and medical establishment ever again. Everyone now knows "two weeks to flatten the curve" means endless abridgement of civil rights. When that happens, remember that it was the actions during this pandemic that lead to the end of societal trust and cooperation.
> Remember, this won't be the last global pandemic, but it is the last one where science has any credibility. The next pandemic hopefully is as mild as this one because you'll never see this level of cooperation with the government and medical establishment ever again. Everyone now knows "two weeks to flatten the curve" means endless abridgement of civil rights. When that happens, remember that it was the actions during this pandemic that lead to the end of societal trust and cooperation.
I have trouble believing that statement, and it seems a bit hyperbolic. If the next pandemic had a 20% to 40% fatality rate you genuinely believe everyone will ignore all science and run around concerned about their civil rights of similar restrictions were put in place at the start of the outbreak? At worst, there will be more dissidence to restrictions put in place for a similar pandemic in the future.
The pendulum does always swing in the other direction, but that's a bit extreme.
> Everyone now knows "two weeks to flatten the curve" means endless abridgement of civil rights.
Strangely despite having access to google I keep seeing this “two weeks” phrasing repeated. Please google news stories from March 2020 and find that the “15 days to flatten the curve” was a Trump Administration policy and scientists immediately pointed out that 15 days would not be enough and could not make the virus disappear[0]. The number was simply a political decision as it was hard for the US President to change from the February 2020 stance of claiming Covid was just a cold and a hoax by their political opponents to hurt the economy…
... That's literally the first line of the article.
Handy tip: When the article provides its source material and even links to it, it doesn't really matter whether you heard of it before or not.
On top of that: "Meanwhile, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) cautioned last week that there was no evidence to back a fourth booster, warning that repeat boosters every four months might actually weaken people’s immune systems". The source for that is also linked in the article.
Then they just rush-approve the mRNA vaccines with the modified payloads for Omicron and possibly Delta. The same delivery systems, merely different mRNA sequences, so I would think there's reasonable chance the (side)effects are the same. I thought this is already happening on the normal timeline.
And there's a whole lot of vaccines coming on line that use different delivery systems and/or targets. There's a chance that one of them is effective vs. Omicron. If so, there's a number of govts that have gobs of money and the ability to direct what gets manufactured if they so wish. Others can break patents on a national security justification and manufacture locally.
Whether people will take them is a different question, but Darwin might keep having some effect with this. As others have said, the ultimate goal is keeping people out of hospital not from sniffling.
FWIW, both Pfizer and Moderna have announced Omicron specific vaccines in March. Approval is at the rate set by governmental agencies. I would be curious why this is being downvoted so quickly and quietly...
> the amount of antibodies returns to the level it was after the third vaccine, not more. It’s nice, but it’s not what we expect from a booster
So basically it doesn’t confer any long term benefits - the only value from it would be if you want to keep your circulating antibodies high by perpetually boosting on a regular interval.
It remains to be seen over the long-run whether antibody levels correlate inversely with either risk of: a) _any_ Covid infection or b) _severe_ Covid infection.
Antibody levels are often cited as prediction surrogates early on because they are easy to measure. Occurrence or recurrence of infection, irrespective of antibody levels, of course, takes time. Also remaining to be seen is the role of T-cell mediated immunity in reducing the severity of Covid infection. If that role is significant, then declining antibody levels may be less worrisome than people believe currently.
We already know that T-cell immunity has a major role in reducing the severity of COVID-19. There is no real question about that. Antibody levels are transient and comparatively less important.
If I understand correctly, israel mandates a third shot (to do normal stuff), as do many places in north america, either now or soon. And I can only imagine many people would be happy to mandate a fourth as soon as possible.
What I find most frustrating is that politicians are happy to make these mandates live, during an ongoing situation where we actually don't know a lot about how effective things are (and in the case of the latest variant, we know they are not effective). It's one thing to provide treatment to people that want it, and to share the latest thinking and advice. But it becomes pretty ridiculous when the latest musings go unfiltered into mandates.
I read there is an omicron specific vaccine that will be ready in a couple months. Will that then immediately be forced on everyone, even if they've already had their 3-4 shots? What if we invent another thing?
Vaccines make sense, but real time forcing people to take them as soon as they're invented doesn't. I have my three shots, but I'm terrified now that the precident is set that a government can force me to take something that I might not want to. When was the last time anyone actually trusted a government?
> And I can only imagine many people would be happy to mandate a fourth as soon as possible.
I'm sorry but I'm not understanding the logic. The booster was recommended after several rounds of research across multiple countries suggested it was a good idea, with Israel doing some of the first testing and reaching the conclusion that it was worthwhile (and it was, by a substantial margin).
Their research is now indicating that this is about as far as it goes, which is quite reasonable as most vaccination regimens generally require two or three shots to achieve maximum effect.
The subtext of what you're saying is that politicans came to a knee-jerk conclusion that a third shot was necessary and inductively any further shot will so as well. The science does not bear this out, and the third shot was backed by science, not by politicians wanting to do something.
> I'm sorry but I'm not understanding the logic. The booster was recommended after several rounds of research across multiple countries suggested it was a good idea, with Israel doing some of the first testing and reaching the conclusion that it was worthwhile (and it was, by a substantial margin).
You are misinformed. There is a paucity of data supporting boosters, what little exists is for people over 65 (to be fair, the argument in support of boosters seems robust for this group), and the FDA and CDC advisory committees both recommended against mandatory boosting of younger populations. They were bypassed. Two long-time FDA scientists resigned over the issue:
Paul Offit (inventor of the Rotavirus vaccine, member of CDC ACIP, and vaccine advocate) is on the record saying that he doesn't advise his own 20-something son to get a booster dose:
You should probably read the data, and not just the title and conclusions:
> Among those previously infected, until the emergence of the Omicron variant, the cumulative incidence of COVID19 was not significantly different between those vaccinated and unvaccinated, even at almost a year of follow-up.
> However, among those with prior COVID-19, vaccination was not associated with significantly lower risk of COVID-19 in either the pre-Omicron (HR 0.78, 95% C.I. 0.31-1.96) or the Omicron phase (HR 0.77, 95% C.I. 0.53-1.12).
The only thing they find is that there's a effectiveness against symptomatic illness during the Omicron wave:
> among those with prior COVID-19, vaccination was associated with significantly lower risk of symptomatic COVID-19 in both the pre-Omicron (HR 0.60, 95% C.I. 0.40-0.90) and the Omicron phase (HR 0.36, 95% C.I. 0.23-0.57).
Apparently this is based on the data in Figure 4...but Figure 4 isn't included (again, did you read this??), so I can't say either way.
So at the very worst it does nothing. How is that bad? I don't want to go around checking if people had or did not have Covid, which a lot of people are prone to lying about.
No. At the very worst the vaccine causes harm, and provides no benefit.
> I don't want to go around checking if people had or did not have Covid, which a lot of people are prone to lying about.
We're not talking about sterilizing immunity. Even the best case arguments for booster doses in the young are citing efficacy against "symptomatic illness" that is well below 100%.
Case in point: I just had it. I'm triple vaccinated. I'm not alone.
Not the parent, but in many countries in Europe you need to have a vaccine passport to lead a more-or-less normal life - and in extreme cases, you are not allowed to work and are forced to pay a fine if it expired. So often having a booster or not is not a matter of personal choice.
It was a toss up. Some reasons why I went the way I did:
1) I am of an age where risk/reward ratio is clearer. It still isn't so compelling that I rushed to do it, but far better than for college kids.
2) I was (and remain) concerned that the dark-blue city where I live is going to mandate them to participate in normal life. I find this loathsome, but I am not in a position to fight it.
3) It gives me a certain authority when I tell people that I don't believe in vaccine mandates or many of our policies, yet I am 100% compliant with the rules.
4) I thought maybe it would keep me from catching a cold.
Alas, because the universe tends toward maximum irony, a week after the booster I caught Omicron.
I agree that studies that look at natural immunity find that it actually does something (also, those who were vaccinated then later got Covid have really strong immune response [0]). My issue is with the CDC, OSHA rules, HHS worker rules, and others that totally ignore natural immunity with their policies.
It's a bit conspiratorial to suggest health authorities including epidemiologists and immunologists would 'ignore' a foundational aspect of their underlying knowledge of the system when trying to understand it and formulate policy.
Of course they are taking it into account.
Most health authorities do random sampling to try to get an idea of underlying natural immunity and the various characteristics that takes on.
If you go by the CDC’s hesitancy in accepting natural immunity, including the number of dubious conducted and/or worded studies they pushed, while ignoring studies showing the opposite and what foreign governments were doing (eg 3G), one is forgiven for believing that.
I didn't say that they were right or wrong to reject natural immunity, I said they are not ignoring natural immunity in terms of their calculus.
FYI The reason we're not going to accept 'natural immunity' as a legit form of documented immunity is because millions of idiots will go and get COVID on purpose , as they'd prefer getting it 'the natural way' as opposed to getting a jab.
This is the difference between 'Science' and 'Public Health Policy'.
I just had an anti-vaxx colleague do exactly that, and it wasn't even for some kind of immune benefit, rather, 'just to get it over with'. I was completely floored when she told me.
But I'm now convinced that my anti-vaxx cousins who are now barred from the liquor stores, would get COVID 'on purpose' if they could get their passport to alcohol and not have to get the 'Goddam Fauci Jab'.
The article was posted in September. Since then all analysis has validated the booster strategy, even in individuals who previously had COVID. The increase in incidence in pediatric COVID patients since the Omicron wave supports the assertion as well.
I'm sorry but new meta-analyses are coming up every week. It's been 4 months since that article and the conclusions in said opinion piece have been proven wrong.
Vaccine efficacy for 3rd dose, out of Ontario, is somewhere in the 30-40% range. In Denmark, secondary attack rate for 3 doses is essentially equivalent to being unvaccinated. This is the latest data we have.
In the UK, December 28, 2021:
> efficacy of a third dose of a COVID-19 vaccine waned significantly at the 10-week mark, leaving boosted individuals at risk of infection with Omicron....In a December 23 U.K. Health Security Agency (HSA) technical briefing, vaccine efficacy against symptomatic infection generally fell to around 40% some 2.5 months after a booster dose.
Also from the UK (January 6, 2022): vaccine effectiveness against symptomatic infection, 2-4 weeks after dose 3, is essentially equivalent to effectiveness after dose 2:
> data just released from Denmark (where 85% of infections are omicron) show no effect of the booster against being infected and no difference between 2 and 3 doses against severe disease except 3 doses better against severe disease for those >70.
The overall picture is of a vaccine that is temporarily elevating antibody levels, which then decline rapidly. But this isn't unexpected. It's exactly what we thought would happen. Moderna CEO, January 6, 2022:
> Bancel said the efficacy of boosters will probably decline over the course of several months, similar to what happened with the first two doses.
...but don't worry! Because the good news is that we have really solid data that after only two doses, even high-risk people remain well-protected against severe disease:
> Among 1,228,664 persons who completed primary vaccination during December 2020–October 2021, severe COVID-19–associated outcomes (0.015%) or death (0.0033%) were rare. Risk factors for severe outcomes included age =65 years, immunosuppressed, and six other underlying conditions. All persons with severe outcomes had at least one risk factor; 78% of persons who died had at least four.
> No, it hasn't. You are making things up -- which is why you keep [etc.]
Flamewar swipes have repeatedly been creeping back into your comments here. Please edit them out. Not only are they against the site guidelines, they discredit your position, which is particularly bad in the case that you happen to be correct.
Vaccine efficacy for 3rd dose, out of Ontario, is somewhere in the 30-40% range. In Denmark, secondary attack rate for 3 doses is essentially equivalent to being unvaccinated. This is the latest data we have.
In the UK, December 28, 2021:
> efficacy of a third dose of a COVID-19 vaccine waned significantly at the 10-week mark, leaving boosted individuals at risk of infection with Omicron....In a December 23 U.K. Health Security Agency (HSA) technical briefing, vaccine efficacy against symptomatic infection generally fell to around 40% some 2.5 months after a booster dose.
Also from the UK (January 6, 2022): vaccine effectiveness against symptomatic infection, 2-4 weeks after dose 3, is essentially equivalent to effectiveness after dose 2:
> data just released from Denmark (where 85% of infections are omicron) show no effect of the booster against being infected and no difference between 2 and 3 doses against severe disease except 3 doses better against severe disease for those >70.
The overall picture is of a vaccine that is temporarily elevating antibody levels, which then decline rapidly. But this isn't unexpected. It's exactly what we thought would happen. Moderna CEO, January 6, 2022:
> Bancel said the efficacy of boosters will probably decline over the course of several months, similar to what happened with the first two doses.
...but don't worry! Because the good news is that we have really solid data that after only two doses, even high-risk people remain well-protected against severe disease:
> Among 1,228,664 persons who completed primary vaccination during December 2020–October 2021, severe COVID-19–associated outcomes (0.015%) or death (0.0033%) were rare. Risk factors for severe outcomes included age =65 years, immunosuppressed, and six other underlying conditions. All persons with severe outcomes had at least one risk factor; 78% of persons who died had at least four.
I see the Lancet article is from Oct 2021, before the omicron variant. I haven't checked your other links, have you found that the perspective has changed in the last few months? Also, I haven't heard, at least in the US, much government pressure for mandatory boosting of all ages, but maybe I'm not reading the same things.
NYC is the largest city in America and has no such requirement. I imagine you’re referring to some west coast city or cities?
NYC: https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-vaccines-keyton... “ Full Vaccination: People 12 and older participating in the below public indoor activities are now required to show proof they have received two vaccine doses, except for those who have received the one dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Starting January 29, 2022, children ages 5 to 11 must also show proof of full vaccination.”
Your comment is basically entirely an appeal to authority in what is linked - these are not studies, they are specific individuals saying things and you saying we should listen to them because of who they are in general, and not because they have actual data to back their specific point.
> I mean, I can just dump a bunch of links to studies and details about how boosters are highly effective, even for young people. And I can find dozens more.
This isn't baseball cards. The person with the most URLs doesn't win. You have to read the data and understand what it says.
You clearly don't, because you're citing pop-science sources such as "The Harvard Gazette", and irrelevant papers about viral loads in breakthrough infections, as if these are meaningful to the debate.
However, it is apropos that you cited the CDC ACIP deck from their November 19 meeting [1], since it quite clearly lays out the lack of data, and shows how reluctant ACIP was to recommend boosters for all. See slides 29 and 35 for a summary.
See slide 37 for a (rather hilarious) graph showing "number needed to boost" to prevent one hospitalization in 18-29 year olds (8,000-12,000) vs 65 year olds (481-859), which goes right to the heart of the issue: boosters provide scant benefit against severe illness for younger people.
See slide 61 for the CDC ACIP final recommendation, which clearly shows that healthy people under age 50 MAY receive a booster, but weren't recommended to get one.
This is exactly what I said above, what is written in the articles I quoted, and what you dismiss as "appeals to authority". It's right there in the source you linked. It couldn't be clearer. Did you read it?
Given that a pediatric hospitalization is a hellish and expensive affair and early long COVID may have life-long effects, while a vaccine is cheap and trivially accessible, how is that still _not_ a winning strategy? _Just_ 8000 vaccinations to prevent a hospitalization? How could you even consider that to be bad? Are we in a surplus of hospital beds or guardians or am I the only person that lives in a metro area where routine hospital procedures have to be cancelled and there's a 15% rate of absenteeism due to Covid, which likely includes parents that have to take care of their sick children?
The ACIP slide deck goes into this. The vaccines also have risks, which you are ignoring, in favor of fixating on "early long Covid", which is a documented risk of exceptionally low magnitude.
8000 vaccinations to prevent one hospitalization sounds like a really bad trade-off when you don’t specify the severity of the hospitalization and you don’t take into account the side-effects and efficacy of the vaccination (other than to prevent hospitalization). Also, did you just add ‘pediatric’ to this stream of words to make it about the kids?
From a pure money perspective, let's say a shot is worth about $25, which I think is a low estimate. 8000 shots is $200k. From what I've seen, a hospital stay for covid is about $50k on average.
Of course, it is only when we consider trading between 1 hospital stay to 8000 shots. It assumes the numbers are right and doesn't consider anything else, like potential life-long sequelae, non-hospitalization risks and side effects of vaccination.
Anyways, while my intuition is that vaccinating kids is worthwhile, it isn't as obvious as it is for adults.
"You are misinformed. There is a paucity of data supporting boosters, "
I think the misinformation might be your own here, or rather, at least based on the time frame.
In September, there was little data, because very few had their 3rd shot.
Now, we have Omicron - a huge, new, material development - and - large numbers of people with their 3rd shots.
Here is some fairly definitive data from one source [1] which clearly shows a drop in protection against infections as Omicron hits, and then an acute rise in protection against infection people start receiving their 3rd shots. During the entire time protection against hospitalization and death remained pretty good, faltering somewhat, then improving after the 3rd doses started happening.
According to this [2] it seems we have 100's of millions of boosters administrated across dozens of high quality health authorities each of which can provide similar data.
Unfortunately it turns out that the way vaccination effectiveness is measured could create this apparent effect even in the case that the vaccination was saline. This sounds absurd and wrong, but, as is sometimes the case with statistics, it's possible.
Prof Norman Fenton has described the issue and also demonstrated it visually in Excel:
The cause is the definitional game playing public health engages in, whereby people are labelled as unvaccinated for a period of time even after they've already taken a vaccine. This effectively makes the vaccinated "immortal" for two weeks, because if they'd died within that two week period they'd have been counted as unvaccinated. Thus even if a vaccine did nothing at all it would be given positive effectiveness by the methodology public health researchers are using.
The problem with COVID vaccines is especially serious because there's increasing amounts of evidence that they may have some sort of immunosuppressive effect, and that people are much more likely to catch COVID in the period immediately after taking the vaccine than they were normally. Up until a few days ago this effect could only be seen by observing that many countries experienced a case surge coincident with the start of their vaccination programme. Then it was discovered that somebody in a Canadian public health agency who didn't get the memo had accidentally published proof this was happening:
(scroll down to the graph labelled "number of days between first immunization and COVID diagnosis").
I have to link to the Wayback Machine because the moment this graph was noticed, it was deleted from the website. Hence why I say someone didn't get the memo. It's extremely likely that other public health agencies have the same data but they consistently refuse to publish data in which "vaccinated" is defined correctly. Public health will not allow the population to see un-distorted data about VE.
> number of days between first immunization and COVID diagnosis
Survivorship bias. People end up in this graph because they got a COVID diagnosis after the first immunization, but before getting the second immunization. That's only a very short time window on most vaccination schedules (3-6 weeks), so the only surprise here is that there is a long trail of people who got the first shot and then held off on the second shot for a long time.
I can understand why they took down that graph. It's very misleading when taken out of context.
People not getting second shots is not a surprise, anyone who has a bad reaction to the first will do that. The lack of any proper tracking of such reactions means it has to be inferred from the data, but the explanation there is fairly obvious.
W.R.T. taking it down, if public health statistics is open to misinterpretation they should explain why and how to correctly interpret it. Doing that sort of work is the reason we have statistical agencies in the first place.
W.R.T. survivorship bias, you seem to be implying that the shape of the graph is expected for any such plot for any vaccine? I don't quite understand what argument you're getting at, sorry. Could you be more explicit? If we zoom in then there's a clear wave shape in which after immunization cases quickly peak at 1000/day about a week after the first shot, then declines again. This is very different to the same data plotted from date of second immunization, where we see a small wave that subsides (same pattern) but then the much bigger one as immunity wears off after about 180 days.
> People not getting second shots is not a surprise, anyone who has a bad reaction to the first will do that.
I don't know any such person, but I know lots of people who had immune reactions to the first shot (like a localized inflammation) and who got the second shot anyway because that's nothing out of the ordinary. Including myself. In fact, most doctors will tell you outright that this is probably going to happen when you get the shot. After all, the vaccine is supposed to elicit an immune reaction. I would personally be more worried if I receive a vaccine and there is no immune reaction at all.
> you seem to be implying that the shape of the graph is expected for any such plot for any vaccine
For any vaccine with a two-shot schedule, yes. Most people will be getting the second shot after N weeks, so if you plot the incidence of anything across all people who have only received the first shot, you will have the bulk of the distribution between 0 and N weeks because receiving the second shot removes people from the statistical population.
That's true, but there seem to be two problems with explaining the data that way.
Firstly, the second shot graph shows the same thing: a clear wave that peaks 10 days after vaccination.
Secondly, if that were the cause you'd expect to see a very different almost square wave like graph, with a steady background rate of cases that the shot failed to stop followed by a clear drop as the cohort moves on more or less simultaneously. The data doesn't show that.
It seems in Alberta the window between first and second shots is 8 weeks or 56 days. I've been using two weeks as an example but that's too short.
If we select the 56 day period (the graph is zoomable by dragging a region), then we see a large wave that starts near zero, peaks near day 10 and then by day 56 has dissipated. This cannot be the result of people moving into the other cohort because it's all over before anyone becomes eligible for the second shot.
W.R.T. reactions - it's interesting how much people's experiences here vary. Almost everyone me and my girlfriend know locally who took the vaccines have had some kind of bad side effect. I suspect there may be several causes of this divergence:
1. Differences in brands used. Moderna is 3x the strength of Pfizer. All data shows Moderna causes way worse side effects and especially after boosters. But, some places use Moderna a lot (like where we live) and others don't. Of the people I know who live in the UK, where AZ was standard, none have reported any side effects.
2. Differences in age groups? Side effects seem to be worse or at least more noticeable amongst the young.
3. Filter bubbles. Our friends know we didn't take the vaccines (so far), so we're "safe" to talk to about side effects and reactions. If you're the sort of person who has publicly proclaimed that you Fucking Love Science!™ - as many people have done - then it seems likely people won't want to mention any effects they did have with you.
It's especially easy for that to occur because all the bad reactions we have heard about are the sort of thing that isn't going to be immediately visible if you meet someone: a day off work due to "sickness", disrupted or stopped periods, and in one case sadly a heart attack. That sort of thing is invisible if the affected person doesn't confide.
I don't think either of your examples of stats shenanigans apply here.
And also: " there's increasing amounts of evidence that they may have some sort of immunosuppressive effect"
No, you don't get to say vaccines have an immunosuppressive effect without providing evidence for that.
If you have evidence that vaccines have some sort of immunosuppressive effect then you have to provide it, peer reviewed, not 'some guy blogged it'.
...
1) In terms of 'Dead Time Bias' - well, that doesn't apply if we are looking at daily data points of cases from the rates of those who contract COVID among vaxxed/unvaxxed population.
There is no 'dead time' artefact by that kind of measure.
We're looking at a large group of people, and watching who gets covid and not on a daily basis.
If we were looking over larger time periods, it would start to play a factor. But especially for case counts, then all persons who 'get covid' on a particular day have obviously 'survived' to be in the sampled cohort on that day.
2) The links to Prof Fenton's data is interesting, but flawed.
a) Particularly for infection and not mortality - rates of the former are very low among the general population for both vaxxed and unvaxxed. The 'distortion effect' due to delayed reporting in infections, is not really going to be a big deal.
b) The distortion fades as quickly as the reporting delay. So the effect is null 1 week after vaccination rates stabilise (by his example of 1 week delay). His own 'real world data' comparison show vaccine effectiveness waning over a much longer periods.
3) The 'Datacrime' substack is rubbish, right from the start.
In his examples, he tries to show that, if you don't count positive covid cases during the two weeks after the booster as belonging to the 'booster cohort' and instead group those positive cases into the '2 dose' cohort, then you get a false positive vaccine effectiveness for the booster.
The obvious failure in his reasoning, would be that people would use for the 'numerator' a group of people counting as 'boosted' after a 2 week waiting period ... but then using for the 'denominator', using time at which people receive the jab to count them as boosted.
Obviously if you count people as 'boosted' for a time period (in the denominator, at the moment they get the jab) ... and then move 'positive covid cases' out of that group into the '2 dose' group ... data will be skewed.
I think it's a ridiculous thing to assume.
Why on planet earth would people use two different criteria for 'who is boosted' literally in the same calculation. That would be stupid.
The implication that health authorities 'count as boosted' anyone who received a jab, but then only count COVID cases based on 'received a jab + 2 weeks' makes no sense at all.
As far as I can tell, it seems that health authorities are using the 'jab + 2 weeks' as the definition of 'who is boosted' in all calculations.
By that obvious criteria, then this 'saline solution data misrepresentation' goes away. At least as presented in this article.
I seenno evidence that Health authorities are doing otherwise.
...
I will trade you a 'Boriquagato' for a 'Brandollini': "Brandolini's law, also known as the bullshit asymmetry principle, is an internet adage that emphasizes the difficulty of debunking false, facetious, or otherwise misleading information:[1] "The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude larger than is needed to produce it."
I just did provide evidence for it, from a public health agency. You haven't given any justification for why you think that data was wrong. At least majewsky implies a specific problem (albeit I didn't understand what they think it is).
That's as good as it's possible to get because academics don't have access to the raw data with the correct definitions, so there can be no peer reviewed evidence. Not that peer review is any good anyway.
"that doesn't apply if we are looking at daily data points of cases from the rates of those who contract COVID among vaxxed/unvaxxed population. There is no 'dead time' artefact by that kind of measure. Especially for case counts, then all persons who 'get covid' on a particular day have obviously 'survived' to be in the sampled cohort on that day."
It does apply. Those populations are still classified as vaxxed/unvaxxed in a way that creates immortal time bias. Perhaps the explanation I give above isn't clear enough, but any classification system in which someone is assigned to a group some time after the intervention for that group actually started will have this problem. This was true both for the trials but also all government released stats (except it seems, those Alberta graphs which were so rapidly pulled).
Again with cases this time: if you take the vaccine then it's not possible for you to be considered infected within the first two weeks after the shot, because if you were, that infection would be allocated to the unvaccinated cohort. This creates an "infection free period" for the vaccinated which would create an appearance of effectiveness even if the vaccine were a placebo.
Fenton talks about it in the form of 'delayed reporting', but the underlying issue is more likely to be immortal time.
"The distortion fades as quickly as the reporting delay. So the effect is null 1 week after vaccination rates stabilise (by his example of 1 week delay). His own 'real world data' comparison show vaccine effectiveness waning over a much longer periods."
They didn't stabilize yet, did they? The vaccination campaign proceeds in waves in which new people are constantly becoming eligible, for the initial shots and then the boosters.
His point is that for as long as we're doing this we will see what looks like fast-fading efficacy and we would see this even if the vaccine did nothing. We would also see the impossible data artifacts found in the ONS data, like vaccination increasing the non-vaccinated risk of non-COVID deaths. It's extremely problematic that this problem exists and creates the exact patterns in the data that are being used to drive the campaign forward.
"The implication that health authorities 'count as boosted' anyone who received a jab, but then only count COVID cases based on 'received a jab + 2 weeks' makes no sense at all."
That's his point. It doesn't make sense but that's what they do.
When calculating how many people have been boosted by a given date, they report the total number of booster shots actually administered up to that point, because that's what their total records show. They aren't subtracting the number of people who received it recently. But when classifying the status of someone specific who has been infected/hospitalized/died, they classify people who have received a booster dose within the past 2 weeks as double vaxxed (because, they claim, it doesn't have any effect until 2 weeks later). And then when they sum those specific reports it creates immortal time, just phrased differently. You can see the effects of it in the ONS stats where you see the artifacts Fenton describes.
>and the FDA and CDC advisory committees both recommended against mandatory boosting of younger populations. They were bypassed. Two long-time FDA scientists resigned over the issue
> When was the last time anyone actually trusted a government?
My feeling is that people trust the government to the extent it does things their perceived enemies dislike. It's not about evaluating what's good for yourself or others; just knowing that your enemy dislikes it is a good enough signal that it's the right thing to do. Also, if your perceived enemy likes something that happens, that means it was automatically a wrong thing to do.
The government is just a cudgel each side uses against the other. And each side adds nails to the cudgel each time they possess it, even though they know its possession is likely to return to the enemy.
When considering how much power the federal government should ideally have, it’s wise to always remember that: one day, a party that you dislike will wield that power. Don’t think about what good you could do with all that power (because you’ll likely undershoot your positive intent anyway), but think about what bad someone who thought the opposite of what you want could do. It’s easier to destroy things than to build then up, so even if they also undershoot their positive intent, they can likely deliver on the things you’d find negative.
Locally, the mayor decided to mandate vaccines for restaurant customers. I really doubt he has the legal authority if tested in court, but here it is. I am vaccinated but excluded from basically all of the public sphere if I don’t want to go around proving it (I don’t, might for certain circumstances still).
The federal contractor mandate is not in place, it was put on hold by the courts and none so far has sided with the Feds. The federal private business mandate is gone, it was quashed by the Supreme Court. What states decide is separate from what the federal government decides and varies from state to state, which is how the system is supposed to work.
> and in the case of the latest variant, we know they are not effective
I assume you are talking about stopping spread, which could be accurate. I further assume you are not referring to reducing illness severity, because they obviously are effective at that. But that benefit extends beyond the individual insofar as it reduces strain on the overall healthcare system -- ensuring that even those who have injuries or illnesses that have nothing to do with the disease in question receive adequate care. Therefore a vaccine mandate (or restrictions placed upon those who aren't vaccinated) can still be justified.
It's moving the goalpoasts. The reason the vaccine enjoyed so much initial support was because it was supposed to make covid go away. The politicians seem to think even though the reality has changed, support for the vaccine has remained constant.
> The reason the vaccine enjoyed so much initial support was because it was supposed to make covid go away.
Eh, not really. Even that didn't actually come from the vaccine trials; Pfizer and Moderna never tested for infection/transmission, and only made claims on symptoms/disease. Stopping infection/transmission just sorta popped out of politicians/media in early 2021, not actual research - that came a month or two later, and from what I remember the strongest claim was that it might help.
That's not really how vaccines work. No force fields are deployed, you'll still catch COVID, but, you're immune system is now got some training in how to handle the situation.
I don't remember the promise that, the vaccine would end COVID, I do remember seeing somewhere that if vaccination rates were high enough ( greater than 90%??, been quite awhile now since I read that article ) that herd immunity could be achievable and the spread would eventually end. At least in the US, vaccination rates never even got close.
> That's not really how vaccines work. No force fields are deployed, you'll still catch COVID, but, you're immune system is now got some training in how to handle the situation.
We do have and continue to make "sterilizing vaccines" which for nearly all common use of the words do "deploy force fields". The small pox vaccine was one of the best examples, the measles vaccine is also up there. The COVID vaccines just aren't as good and people aren't educated enough to understand why some vaccines are basically perfect while the COVID ones aren't.
Sterilizing immunity probably wasn't real, and we just didn't have the technology to know better back in the day: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/09/steriliz... Plenty of after-vaccination cases of measles have been documented in modern times. Obviously nobody is going around giving people smallpox to test that one.
> Post-vaccination measles infections, though still uncommon, are much more “regularly observed” than they were once believed to be, Griffin said.
99.99% is close enough for me in terms of a sterilizing immunity.
> Eventually, all discussions about sterilizing immunity become nerdy quibbles over semantics.
I think the article nails it very clearly we have made vaccines that are for all effective purposes sterilizing. Some people might argue over the world choice but our COVID vaccines are not in the same league as these.
No, small pox vaccines were not sterilizing by any definition of the term. There is debate about measles. Otherwise there is only one vaccine in common use that offers durable sterilizing immunity (HPV), and the fact that it works so well is somewhat of a medical mystery.
To put this in perspective, the unvaccinated are 400% more likely to catch COVID than the vaccinated, and they're 1,200% more like to die from COVID than the vaccinated[1].
I think it’s hard to get good data anymore since so many people are vaccinated. I’ve heard one news outlet report that some scientists were trying to analyse the unvaccinated data only and initial findings were showing Omicron may be just as bad as Alpha. But small sample size etc etc so we really don’t know.
But the meaningful data which is increased illness severity and higher chances of death are concentrated in 65+ age brackets which are 95%/88%/62% (1/2/3 shot vaccinated) in the US. As you fall in ages it’s less % vaccinated, but also the chance of a severe case among the unvaccinated drops too…dramatically.
So yes, tens of millions unvaccinated, but also tens of millions that can’t really be measured as effectively either.
If we can have statistically valid results from 40k clinical trial participants, 5% of the 65+ population being unvaccinated is plenty of data to base conclusions on.
One issue I'd could imagine is that it might be difficult to slice a representative sample out of those 5% of people, whereas a clinical trial is set up from the get-go to enroll individuals that would make up a representative sample of the intended recipients of the drug/procedure/device that's being studied.
I think there would be difficulty just to get enough willing participants out of the 5%. I suspect that group at this point has to be the most extreme skeptical holdouts or religious objectors and would likely be adverse to any clinical trials.
If they don't mandate, people will die. If they do mandate, potentially less people will die. By mandating before there's some kind of irrefutable proof that it'll help, they're saying that saving people's lives is worth any social or economic headache.
Also: your government is, I take it, some form of representative democracy? Saying you don't trust the government is identical to saying you don't trust the people of your nation. My suggestion is to try to fix that rather than just accept it blithely.
edit: Haha, I love how quickly I get downvoted for giving rational views of cost/benefit and politics.
a) Billions of doses of vaccines have been administered. We know a lot about their effectiveness.
b) Current vaccines with a booster are effective at preventing hospitalisations. It is enough to get the world through Omicron but special vaccines maybe useful for those who are immuno-compromised.
c) Children have been forced to take vaccines for decades. It's not new.
d) People trust their government every day. Who do you think builds the roads, operates the hospitals and other essential services, sets out safety regulations etc.
In the US hospitals are private, charge astronomical amounts for the tiniest things and their price lists are secret. It is horrifying, brutal, inhumane.
Also hospitals intentionally understaff, and pay their staff the absolute minimum while paying millions and millions to their CEOs.
In addition to recommending procedures treatments and drugs as profit maximizers.
Is it difficult to imagine that U.S. nurses can be paid better than nurses in other countries but at the same time not paid well enough and exploited beyond their breaking point?
Summary: Hospitals cut costs by staffing the bare minimum. Patients aren’t receiving the care the should be. Nurses are experiencing moral distress and leaving en masse.
I work at CHLA. We are losing experienced nurses due to the lowest wages in the LA area for the level of care we give. Shameful for a hospital that is Best Children’s Hospital in the west.
The pay discrepancy between the executives and staff is criminal
We need more publicity about this. Help the nurses out and let’s get more eyes on this issue, particularly CHLA. Celebrities love that place and use it for PR often.
Let’s give the nurses some badly needed PR. They are non-union and notoriously underpaid. Best care for kids maybe but also best kept secret in worker’s dissatisfaction
> Current vaccines with a booster are effective at preventing hospitalisations
From the second part of the article:
> Meanwhile, the latest research from South Africa, New York City and California show that the vast majority of people hospitalised by the COVID-19 Omicron variant are unvaccinated – but that they still experienced less severe disease than those infected with Delta.
Comparing the 3rd and 4th waves in SA, hospitalizations dropped by 72%, ICU admissions dropped by 89%, and deaths dropped by 90% in South Africa even though, per the article, "82% of those hospitalised during its Omicron-fueled fourth wave were unvaccinated."
Similar trends are being seen everywhere so I think it's legitimate to question the magnitude of any benefit from boosters vis-a-vis the hospitalization endpoint, particularly for people who are not in high-risk groups. Are the boosters really responsible for a meaningful reduction in hospitalizations among the already vaccinated, or is the reduction in hospitalization a result of the initial 2-dose vaccine series? Even the WHO casts doubt on the boosters here[1]:
> To date, the evidence indicates a minimal to modest reduction of vaccine protection against severe disease over the 6 months after the primary series. Waning of effectiveness against all clinical disease and infection is more pronounced.
Antibodies aren't the end-all and be-all of immunity and protection. There's plenty of reason to believe (and some data showing) that the cell-mediated immunity from the initial 2 shots is long lasting and provides substantial protection against bad outcomes, even against omicron. What cell-mediated immunity doesn't do is prevent you from getting infected. But, clearly, given the situation in places like the US and Israel, where boosters are being given, antibodies generated by original vaccine boosters aren't doing a great job at preventing infection either.
On a tangential note, I think a lot of people are concerned about long COVID but it's pretty remarkable that at this stage of the pandemic and vaccination campaign, we still don't have a clear answer as to whether vaccination even reduces long COVID risk, or by how much[2].
MSHA has no Covid mandates, including virus masks. Having worked at sites regulated by MSHA, I respect their safety mandates. OSHA is ineffective and now politicized.
UL tests electrical devices for safety. I would prefer more voluntary certification and testing organizations.
The roads in my town are owned by the property owners, as it should be.
> d) People trust their government every day. Who do you think builds the roads, operates the hospitals and other essential services, sets out safety regulations etc.
If they are going to take my money , I expect at least _something_ of benefit to me in return. That doesn’t mean I trust them.
It's well known by now that that case specifically addresses a state, not the federal government, and that it was a matter of a fine, not a forced injection.
The OP said "a government" and I'm willing to bet that they also think that a vaccine mandate enforced with a fine is "force", because they seem to think that they're being forced to be vaccinated already.
In many college's Boosters are mandated for students, who are simultaneously the least likely to benefit from more protection and have a higher likelihood of side effects.
Unfortunately several European countries consider people with 2 shots unvaccinated by now, and more countries are scheduled to follow that strategy. France, Italy and Austria are the ones I know of.
They consider the original 2nd shot to "expire" after 6 months, so you are forced to take the booster unless you want to live like a hermit.
I strongly dislike this.
To the people asking for caution about these vaccines, how long did it take from development to roll out for the polio shot? Was there the same reluctance?
Apples and oranges. One disease killed and maimed millions of children while the other disease is nothing more than a flu (for most of the population).
How many "boosters" did the polio vaccine need ? The polio vaccine was a real vaccine that provided 90% LIFELONG immunity protection to all three types of poliovirus not this Covid vaccine crap that required "re-definition" of the word vaccine.
Covid vaccines have created many, many new billionaires.
Covid is Big Pharma's ultimate wet dream where they can continually keep pushing mandated 'boosters' for every new variant onto the gullible public through uncertainty and fear. And make sure to 'generously donate' to the health-committee politicians enforcing recommendations/mandates.
Abstract: The Salk inactivated poliovirus vaccine is one of the most rapid examples of bench-to-bedside translation in medicine. In the span of 6 years, the key basic lab discoveries facilitating the development of the vaccine were made, optimization and safety testing was completed in both animals and human volunteers, the largest clinical trial in history of 1.8 million children was conducted, and the results were released to an eagerly awaiting public. Such examples of rapid translation cannot only offer clues to what factors can successfully drive and accelerate the translational process but also what mistakes can occur (and thus should be avoided) during such a swift process. In this commentary, we explore the translational path of the Salk polio vaccine from the key basic science discoveries to the 1954 Field Trials and delve into the scientific and sociopolitical factors that aided in its rapid development. Moreover, we look at the Cutter and Wyeth incidents after the vaccine’s approval and the errors that led to them.
In April 1955 more than 200 000 children in five Western and mid-Western USA states received a polio vaccine in which the process of inactivating the live virus proved to be defective. Within days there were reports of paralysis and within a month the first mass vaccination programme against polio had to be abandoned. Subsequent investigations revealed that the vaccine, manufactured by the California-based family firm of Cutter Laboratories, had caused 40 000 cases of polio, leaving 200 children with varying degrees of paralysis and killing 10.
This isn't restricted to the past. It can still happen today.
LONDON -- Four African countries have reported new cases of polio linked to the oral vaccine, as global health numbers show there are now more children being paralyzed by viruses originating in vaccines than in the wild.
Anyone who has read the data understands that the third immunotherapy shot (the "booster") reduces the chances of death or serious illness from COVID by a few hundred thousandths of a percent. This vanishingly small reduction in risk from COVID is matched or exceeded by the similarly small risks posed by this additional dose of immunotherapy. The unsubstantiated proposition that even more injections of this experimental immunotherapy will do less harm than good is one that should be rejected by people who believe in science and objective reality unless and until hard data of the benefits is offered.
To me, this situation is very similar to someone who thinks that doubling or tripling the amount of medication they take to treat an ailment translates into double or triple the desire results. This isn't the case, and is often very dangerous. Everyone, especially young people who plan on living a long time, should be very wary and skeptical of taking multiple doses of experimental immunotherapies (or any other new, experimental drug) with unknown risks and no proven benefits.
I really don't get this 'precedent being set' argument. I do agree that these extraordinary powers being granted to governments should have a due date build into the law as to make clear that this is a temporary measure for an extraordinary situation. Unfortunately, in many places, that's not the case. In my view, extraordinary situations do however require and justify extraordinary measures. You didn't hear people during WWII saying they were terrified of precedents being set by the government forcing blackouts and curfews on them? It was understood that that extraordinary situation required extraordinary measures and nobody expected governments to continue those measures after the imminent danger had passed because some precedent was set.
People are rioting all over the world in the middle of a pandemic because they have to stay indoors a bit, and life is being made a bit more difficult if you don't want to get a shot. What do you seriously think the response will be if those types of measures would continue once the pandemic has passed?
Record cases across the planet regardless of vaccination rates...how much longer until official sources are willing to acknowledge that these vaccines are not nearly as effective as claimed? How long before official sources acknowledge that breakthrough cases are probably drastically underreported?
I can't be the only one surrounded by fully vaccinated individuals testing positive. Its happening far too often for me to dismiss as anecdote. And if officials are this wrong regarding effectiveness, why should we trust them regarding safety? How can anyone have any trust in these institutions after the last two years?
And those officials that you distrust so much have been quite upfront about the fact that vaccines aren't all that effective against infection with Omicron. But they are quite effective against death and serious disease. Fauci's own words are that "just about everybody" will get infected.
If you want anecdotes, at least talk to an ICU nurse. Ask what they are seeing regarding vaccinated or unvaccinated.
Two doses of Pfizer is effective against Omicron for severe disease or death, especially for young folks. That doesn't stop some colleges from mandating boosters.
If this is the extent of protection from vaccines, why are they still being mandated to cohorts with >.01% mortality (under ˜50)?
>And those officials that you distrust so much have been quite upfront about the fact that vaccines aren't all that effective against infection with Omicron
The official whitehouse website still claims that breakthrough cases occur at a rate of 1 in 5000. This is revisionist history.
Then you have not been reading a single thing coming from the official sources because nobody has stated that vaccines do much against mild disease in Omicron, but they do prevent the hospital system from being saturated with cases and drastically reduce death rates.
If at this point you're not aware of this, which has been repeated over and over again in media, you should reconsider your sources of information.
>
While so-called “breakthrough infections” among this group do happen, they remain the exception: In fact, recent data indicates there is only 1 confirmed positive case per 5,000 fully vaccinated Americans per week.
The startup I work for must be incredibly unlucky given that 7+/14 vaccinated employees have recently tested positive if the odds really are 1 in 5000. I'm sure my anecdote is not unique.
The vaccines were billed as the way out of this pandemic from day one. It was assumed that they were "safe and effective" [against infection and spread] long before there was ample time to gather data, especially given the difficulty of collecting data on breakthrough cases when people have no incentive to report them, and most probably did not even presume that they were sick with covid if they experienced mild symptoms post vaccination, given that the messaging around the vaccines would have biased people to believe that they had come down with some infection other than covid.
The same way that people, and doctors, have been biased against reporting side effects. Yeah, sure, its just anecdote, except there's a hell of a lot of anecdote going around and those crazy conspiracy theorists have already been quietly proven right about vaccines interfering with womens' monthly cycles, among other suspicions.
It is incredibly difficult to properly evaluate vaccines when your test subjects and their doctors have been indoctrinated by strong messaging regarding the test's presumed safety. I'm not suggesting that it was entirely intentional (though partly on behalf of pharma) but at this point all of the official data is suspect due to an emergent faith-like bias.
That's not even getting into the ridiculousness of trusting clinical data from pfizer, moderna et al for the initial data which lead to rushed vaccine approval. This has been a political game from the start.
> The startup I work for must be incredibly unlucky given that 7+/14 vaccinated employees have recently tested positive if the odds really are 1 in 5000. I'm sure my anecdote is not unique.
Now do the comparison of hospitalization and death of the unvaccinated against the vaccinated.
> The same way that people, and doctors, have been biased against reporting side effects. Yeah, sure, its just anecdote, except there's a hell of a lot of anecdote going around and those crazy conspiracy theorists have already been quietly proven right about vaccines interfering with womens' monthly cycles, among other suspicions.
There's a ton of papers, literally coming out every week, on studies of side effects of vaccines. The conclusions are always the same: minor and predictable side effects, with a few exceptions that were studied and analyzed and adjusted for risk, still demonstrating that the rewards go far and beyond.
> It is incredibly difficult to properly evaluate vaccines when your test subjects and their doctors have been indoctrinated by strong messaging regarding the test's presumed safety. I'm not suggesting that it was entirely intentional (though partly on behalf of pharma) but at this point all of the official data is suspect due to an emergent faith-like bias.
I'm sorry, you don't have a single clue of what you're talking about. There's papers that have been published by every single government, relevant NGO, hospitals, literally the entirety of modern medicine dedicated towards working on this. The conclusions are always the same. Stop talking about things you don't understand. You don't have the knowledge or capacity to judge the biases of the medical system. There are tons of qualified experts who are more than happy to talk about the failures, doubts, and validated skepticism of big pharma in a myriad of drugs and medical trials. Vaccines are just not it.
>Now do the comparison of hospitalization and death of the unvaccinated against the vaccinated
Official UK data shows approximately equal rates of death between vaccinated and unvaccinated.
>There's papers that have been published by every single government, relevant NGO, hospitals, literally the entirety of modern medicine dedicated towards working on this. The conclusions are always the same
Yes, because the orthodoxy is rigid and pervasive.
>There are tons of qualified experts who are more than happy to talk about the failures, doubts, and validated skepticism of big pharma in a myriad of drugs and medical trials.
But there are exceedingly few fields where questioning the orthodoxy is career and social suicide. Your faith in the system blinds you its politics. The bottom line is that, again, there is no incentive to report breakthrough cases, few people are doing so. All data is therefore suspect, and all current conclusions stem from this faulty data. And officials have yet to acknowledge this problem. Meanwhile despite high vaccination rates the virus continues to spread at record pace, while we are lied to about the effectiveness of the vaccines, now retroactively with emergent claims by apologetic laypersons, that the vaccines were never intended to stop the spread of the virus.
The same bias at the heart of this collective goalpost shift has infested the academic and political establishments and is kept in place by the implicit threat of being labeled an "antivaxxer".
Step outside of the argument and consider, for a moment, how many political, corporate, and academic careers would be destroyed, how much credibility would be irreversibly trashed, if it were proven that the vaccination campaign was a failure, or worse, that it caused more harm than good? Same for social distancing, masking, and lockdown campaigns. Don't you see that there is a mountain of momentum behind the official dogma regarding covid vaccination? Ultimately these are people with families to feed and career aspirations to maintain, with lifetimes of sunk costs to protect. It is reasonable to presume that the truth may be suppressed in an implicit, emergent manner, especially considering the current unabated state if the pandemic. At the very least I hope you would acknowledge that the messaging is not quite lining up with the statistics. We can pretend that this is just part of the scientific process, but I am alleging that because of political pressure (both state and corporate) the process has been heavily biased from the start. It is trivially easy to massage data, models, and analyses to match preconceived conclusions, intentionally or otherwise, especially when turning against the consensus comes with severe social and career costs.
And that shows, very clearly, huge differences in rates. EG, here:
January 40-49 Unvaccinated 1,015 447,582 224.9
January 40-49 Within 21 days of first dose 15 19,088 76.0
January 40-49 21 days or more after first dose 3 3,808 77.0
January 40-49 Within 21 days of second dose <3 1,232 :
January 40-49 21 days or more after second dose <3 229 :
The intended effect of the vaccines was to reduce the mortality and the severe morbidity of infection and thereby reduce the human burden of the disease and indirectly protect the capacity of healthcare systems to function. In this respect, the vaccines have been enormously successful. Were that not so, the incidence of the omicron variant would have already caused healthcare systems worldwide to collapse.
Having omnicron "rip through" would actually be a great thing, I've just read an article from Belgium saying they have no patients with omnicron in ICUs. It does seem some people need supervision but I presume the load is much much reduced. Also omnicron doesn't seem to spare vaccinated neither in symptoms nor in infection rate, but that's just anecdotal, maybe someone has other information?
Do you have a source on Belgium? I found this article from a week ago that says that a single hospital (as far as I can tell) had no omicron icu patients at time of publication, but it also indicates that they might not be tracking it that systematically?
Anyway, I don’t really think there’s all that much mitigation possible, but I’m not convinced “let it rip” is necessarily a good thing depending on vaccination rates (I’m in the US, we’ll see how it goes)
"I would say 50% would have to get vaccinated before you start to see an impact," Fauci said. "But I would say 75 to 85% would have to get vaccinated if you want to have that blanket of herd immunity."
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/1...
the fraction of people who would need immunity to SARS-CoV-2 (either through vaccination or recovery from prior infection) to extinguish the spread of the virus was initially estimated to be 60% to 70%.
https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/90445
I'm not sure if you have a very poor memory or you're just lying, but everyone was pushing the idea that the covid vaccines were sterilizing and would push us to reach herd immunity and eradicate Covid-19.
That might all be true, but it’s all cherry picked out of context. Had we had broad vaccine immunity in the early days of the pandemic, the situation may have turned out differently. Over time, things change.
Officials, Pfizer, and Moderna were loudly celebrating the "94%" or "95%" effectiveness, which was measured in symptomatic cases. Now its 0-20% w/o a booster. The vaccine is clearly less effective than before, which is understandable given the new variant. But it's definitely disappointing--a lot more people will die because the herd immunity clock got reset.
This take I can get behind, because it's a contextual description of what really happened.
(It's funny getting downvoted on this topic, because not only have I been following the pandemic with great interest just as anyone else, but this is actually very close to my area of expertise.)
Nonsense. That is not what was originally stated. I'm not sure if you're intentionally gaslighting here or what, but the original premise of the vaccine was to reach herd immunity. That is what Fauci was preaching every day last spring to convince the populace to get vaccinated. Once it was realized that the vaccine was not immunizing the population, the narrative changed to what you claim.
And you can see how you get treated if you question today's narrative. I agree with you, and I think most people are starting to realize that the vaccines didnt live up to their initial promise, but try and question it anywhere and you have people coming out of the woodwork telling you we've always been at war with eastasia and that nobody expected vaccines to do anything other than "limit severe infection"
It's not only that they didn't live up to their initial promise; it's that those who were skeptical were executed in the court of public opinion. Suddenly, real science didn't matter, and everyone was told to "trust the experts"--the same experts who have made companies and careers out of grift, lies, and psychopathic behavior.
> how much longer until official sources are willing to acknowledge that these vaccines are not nearly as effective as claimed?
They'll never do that.
They didn't admit they were wrong about masks (they said the lie was for our own good). [0]
They didn't admit they were wrong to say it's not airborne. [1]
They didn't admit that a Wuhan lab leak was not only possible, but likely. [2]
There are other examples to pick and choose from - Pfizer's sneaky contracts [3], [4], their manufacturing concerns [5], women missing periods for months after taking mRNA vaccines [6].
Governments all around have lied about the duration of emergency powers, lied about lockdown lengths, lied about having parties while the rest of us were in lockdown. We've been lied to about vaccine passports, natural immunity, antigen tests, mortality rates, on and on.
And many, many good people have had their careers destroyed for taking principled stands, for telling the truth, for speaking up. Many have been vilified, smeared, threatened with death. Millions of posts were removed from Facebook, Twitter, Reddit [7].
And no, you are not the only one surround by double and triple vaccinated individuals testing positive. Omicron has *32* mutations on its spike protein, so it's not all that surprising. What's surprising is how rabid the "anti-vaxx" hate remains. If anything, it's more intense than ever.
For me, the worst part is that this has all played into the hands of far right extremists. They were happy to scoop up the ground that the left were scared to stand on, and keep growing stronger for it.
The vaccines are preventing hospitalizations and deaths which is really most of why Omicron is considered to be "mild".
How much longer will it take to admit that its still the unvaccinated driving all the hospitalizations?
And I'm not at all surprised that a shot given in the arm doesn't give sterilizing mucosal immunity in the upper respiratory tract. It was never expected to (which is why the nasal vaccines are still garnering considerable interest).
Call it a communications flaw if you like, but this was more or less expected.
Fauci himself was setting expectations lower for a VE of around 50% back in the summer of 2020 before the Phase III trials published the 90% numbers. Those didn't account for waning immunity or escape variants like Omicron though, although their 90% VE against severe disease and hospitalization is still holding up fine.
We really need to get people from countries that don’t have the resources to buy up all the supply vaccinated. It will help the richer countries, too, if variants aren’t mutated there.
Are we sure variants are mutated there? I know South Africa does a disproportionate amount of sequencing so it's possible variants are only discovered there and not necessarily originate there.
> A similar trend was reported by the New York City (NYC) Health Department, which reported that about 2% of Omicron cases were hospitalised in comparison to around 5% of Omicron cases.
Huh? I'm assuming they meant: "...in comparison to around 5% of _Delta_ cases." but who knows?
For further comparison, according to data from the U.S. CDC for the 2018-2019 influenza season, the hospitalization rate was about 1.3%.[1]
This is click bait verging on vaccine minsinformation.
The headline could be: "4 doses may not more effective at reducing Omicron infections than 3 doses, but 3 doses is actually very good at preventing infection, hospitalization and death from all known variants - and even 2 doses - while not providing a lot of protection against Omicron infection ... does actually provide good protection against infection from other variants but also hospitalization and death from all variants, including Omicron."
1) 3 doses are actually fairly effective at stopping Omicron infections, at least for 12 weeks - we can see this definitively in data from around the world.
They indirectly mention this in the article.
Ontario data [1]
In the first graph, you see COVID 'cases' increase with the onset of Omicron, even among those with 2 doses - clearly 2 doses are less effective at preventing Omicron cases - but still pretty good at stopping Hospitalization and Death. Later in the time series, precisely when people started getting their boosters, you see a rapid increase in levels of protection against infection, hospitalization and death.
2) The vaccines by all accounts still seem to be effective at preventing cases (and hospitalizations and death) of previous, more deadly variants.
3) The difference between 4 and 3 doses is noteworthy, but it's definitely misleading to indicate 'ineffective when the baseline of comparison, i.e. 3 doses, is actually 'effective'.
4) As we can see from the Ontario - even 2 doses - but certainly 3 doses - are very effective in reducing hospitalization rates and death.
(From that data 'minimum 2 doses' reduces Hospitalization by 5x and death by 20x. That is mixed data from 2 and 3 doses, given the ratio of those having 3rd dose, we can estimate that 3 doses is even considerably more effective than those numbers).
Given the inconsistency between the headline, their own stated information, and easily available data from various legitimate authorities - I suggest that this article, at least the headline, constitutes purposeful misinformation.
I was thinking about immunity generally, from a Shannon information theory perspective. It's impossible that the human body has an infinite ability to absorb immunity, because otherwise we could store an infinite amount of information. Therefore, there must be some kind of forgetting that happens. Likewise, the body can only learn so much from repeated exposure.
Is anyone aware of any writing that explains immunity from an information theory perspective?
It is a good perspective. I mean invoking Shannon part. There are definitely limitations to the antibody levels because otherwise we would just explode, right? But it makes sense to try to keep levels high in the event of pandemic. Our bodies unfortunately could not do it on their own so we have to beat them to do this.
I'm curious about the argument that giving too many boosters takes away the vaccine from "people in low and middle-income countries."
Surely we have the capacity to make enough vaccines for everyone by now. It's just a matter of economics. Giving more boosters really shouldn't reduce supply, if there is money to make vaccines for everyone in the lower income countries, they will be made.
At some point the economics involves construction of a new facility, which is a pretty significant cost and, perhaps, only makes sense to a company if they expect there to be a persistent need for what they can produce in that facility. So, if company decision makers don't perceive that they can sell more vaccines, for a long time (many years), building a new factory will be off the table.
But, we could, at 12 billion doses a year already realizable, getting to 14+ isn't far fetched -- distribution and convincing people to take them would be much more challenging. I'm not which of distribution and cooperation is the hardest, but, manufacturing is certainly not the blocker.
I would imagine we'd have the capacity to make as many vaccines as someone will pay for.
Yes the factories have to be ramped up but that can be done quickly enough. If those low to middle income countries were offering big bucks for vaccines, the vaccine makers would have just put more resources on it.
The only reason it might make sense that we should stop boosting because it is taking them away from people who need them more, is if the vaccine makers made more than needed, or built more capacity than needed, simply because they didn't anticipate hesitancy.
It would be great if the US and other wealthy countries wanted to subsidize vaccines for poorer countries.... I mean, I'd vote for that. That just means we have less money, though, not fewer doses of vaccine.
(and just to be clear, I'm not saying we should overdo it if there is no point. I'm just saying the article and the position of the WHO is not logical)
Factories have already ramped up. Additional factories take about 5 years to build.
With a constrained supply (from continual boosting), it is logical that the wealthy countries want to keep it for themselves rather than subsidize other countries. Hopefully they'll stop at 3 doses, as recommended, and then they can roll out to the poorer countries.
"as many as someone will pay for" doesn't contradict "we don't have the capacity". This is a capital allocation problem and dedicating 100% of the world gdp to vaccine production will not improve our overall health and prosperity.
But no one was suggesting " dedicating 100% of the world gdp" to vaccine production.
I'm simply saying that using more boosters in wealthy countries in no way depletes the vaccine, or raises the prices for it, in poorer countries.
I mean, would you agree that wealthy people buying more television sets does not in any way reduce the ability of poorer people to buy television sets?
If rich people decide to throw away their TVs every six months and get a new one, this may affect our ability to make sure everyone in the world has a TV without beginning to sacrifice other things like bread or clothing.
But this analogy sucks because a TV is a luxury purchase and there's no network effect whereby I become safer if everyone in the world has a TV.
--- healthpolicy-watch.news -----
According to Regev-Yochay, the third dose resulted in “much higher antibodies, neutralization and the antibodies were not just higher in quantity but also in quality” than the second dose – but the fourth vaccine did not show significant antibody increase.
”Maybe there are a few more antibodies but not much more compared to the third dose,” said Regev-Yochay.
-----
--- cnn.com -----
"We have a follow-up of the Pfizer vaccine for two weeks now, and we have a follow-up of the Moderna vaccine just for one week at this time point. And what we see is that the Pfizer vaccine, after two weeks, you see an enhancement or increase in the number of antibodies and neutralizing antibodies -- a pretty nice increase. It's even a little bit higher than what we had after the third dose," Regev-Yochay said.
-----
>Despite a significant increase in antibodies after the fourth vaccine, this protection is only partially effective against the Omicron strain, which is relatively resistant to the vaccine,” lead researcher Prof Gili Regev-Yochay, told a media briefing on Monday.
Cnn has a narrative to maintain. They are deliberately reporting selectively. Who could possibly have predicted that a non sterilizing vaccine would put selection pressure on a rapidly mutating coronavirus, right?
> Who could possibly have predicted that a non sterilizing vaccine would put selection pressure on a rapidly mutating coronavirus, right?
Are you referring to the Omicron variant? Current theories suggest that Omicron evolved inside a HIV patient. There is no reason to believe the patient was vaccinated.
Omicron evades the body’s antibodies generated from infection by the delta or alpha or wild type variants, so there’s no plausible case for vaccine “selective pressure” especially as it emerged from a region of the world with very low vaccination rates.
Stop spreading this bullshit. You make yourself look stupid. Only thing that has appeared because of vaccine pressure is maybe delta plus in UK and it is now dead.
My understanding is that a fourth booster doesn't seem to prevent breakthrough infections (which are very common with Omicron), but it does seem to reduce severity and hospitalizations (which are very uncommon with Omicron). Maybe it reduces the chance of a breakthrough but it's still common.
This is what the third booster does and probably also what being vaccinated closer to infection date does. This is exactly what happens when you have more antibodies.
How many goes at vaccine whackamole results in the immune system being much worse off and/or side effect incidence exceeds the incidence of the original virus's problems?
Rochelle Walensky, the CDC director, has stated that vaccines do reduce severity, but they do not stop transmission. Assuming her words represent the scientific and expert opinion, could someone offer a coherent argument as to why there is so much pressure for others to get vaccinated? Is fear of the unvaccinated clogging up hospitals the primary motivation?
stopping transmission is an impossibly high bar. Vaccines reduce transmission. Really really shockingly unexpectedly well for the first few months, in previous waves, but that sterilizing antibody-mediated immunity wanes. The booster restores that efficacy against transmission, but omicron's immune evasion means that even a booster only gets to ~70% efficacy against cases/transmission, compared to the surprise finding of ~95% efficacy for the first two doses. Fewer people spreading the virus -> fewer cases -> not as bad of a time.
The other important factor is that because your immune system is primed to recognize SARS-CoV-2 after vaccination, even if you do get infected, it responds and clears the infection more quickly than it would otherwise. That could mean you're never infectious, or infectious for fewer days, reducing transmission. Pre-omicron, breakthrough infections were infectious for 5.5 days on average, compared to 7.5 days for infections in unvaccinated people. Yes, all this to maintain some semblance of healthcare for society, and to fill up fewer reefer trucks with body bags.
Also, recent reports from Denmark seem to indicate that vaccinated at best have equal protection against Omicron. Too early to declare this as fact, but the initial data actually favors a slight negative efficacy.
Even if Ct values are unchanged between vaccinated and unvaccinated cases, this is conditioned on being infected in the first place, and isn't the whole story. Duration of infectiousness matters.
Yes, boosters are necessary to reduce infection with Omicron, the antibodies from the original vaccine are just too big of a mismatch. That's not news. I'm glad to hear you're not taking those negative efficacy estimates at face value - it's almost certainly the result of missing confounders present at the start of their omicron wave. Unvaccinated individuals are probably less likely to live in urban areas, travel internationally, or even seek a covid test, for example.
Ct value is just a proxy to viral load and it has been found that the same Ct value results in less cultivable virus for vaccinated.
This negative effect is really most likely because of some confounding factors as others have said. I have seen claimed ADE as always but for that to be true I would expect recent vaccination to offer less protection not more and boosting offer less protection and not more.
There are two sides to the coin: susceptibility to infection, and infectiousness after infection.
Given that vaccination reduces disease severity, it seems likely that vaccination decreases your viral load after infection.
Therefore, though vaccination may not help much in preventing omicron infection, it will nevertheless reduce both disease severity and your infectiousness.
> Is fear of the unvaccinated clogging up hospitals the primary motivation?
Yes? Hasn't it always been? Beds in ICUs are the main limiting factor of how much Covid we can handle. Lowering hospitalisations is great, that way it can end up as "just a bad flu" we have ( as in, a virus that's present, and spreading, and people get it, and some unfortunate people die from it, but doesn't grind whole countries to a stop).
That's a rather vague question. I don't pretend to be an expert, but i do consider the vaccine rollout and management to be a success in the country i live in and have followed most closely - France. The global vaccine rollout is decent, but severely lacking in many poorer countries that should be helped.
that sounds revisionist to me. If that were the reason for (attempted) vaccine mandates then why do vaccine advocates feel the need to compel young, healthy people who have a vanishingly small chance of hospitalization to vaccinate? The story has always been about reducing spread.
Because those young people still have a chance to end up in the hospital, even if they're in great health ( as far as they know it). And it's not like a vaccine mandate can only apply for people in bad health - how would that even be decided? Erring on the side of caution seems to be a decent idea.
This is something the CDC has repeated over and over. From the CDC's website [1]:
"In October, the unvaccinated were 5x more likely to become infected."
Not only that - 'breakthrough infections' of the vaccinated are more likely to be less severe, and infection severity is correlated with shedding, meaning, even the 'vaxxed and infected' are less likely to spread.
Vaccines do not stop transmission, but they definitely reduce transmission and have a very material effect on R0.
In fact, by far the largest limiting factor on R0 are vaccines. Far more so than masks, for example.
If you think about it from a systematic perspective, the advantage is reducing transmission is the 'big advantage'.
If a giant wave of COVID wallops through the country and everyone gets it, a lot of people will die even those that are vaxxed. 'Flattening the Curve' is a very real thing. If you watch the % hospital beds occupied, it gets scary sometimes, in some places.
By reducing R0 - especially keeping it below 1 (i.e. not growing in the community) - means you reduce the likelihood that people will get it in the first place (and not take up hospital beds etc..).
Omicron has a bit different characteristics, but it's much the same story.
“Our vaccines are working exceptionally well,” Walensky told CNN in an interview on Thursday, Aug. 5. “They continue to work well for Delta, with regard to severe illness and death – they prevent it. But what they can't do anymore is prevent transmission.”
I did not interpret her statement or misunderstand it. I quoted her directly.
R9 for measles is even higher - 10-12 but it has long incubation period that makes is much slower. Omicron is the fastest spreading virus in history so far.
I've done literally everything wrong according to the so called experts - I do not wear a mask. No vax. Live about my life normally and do not think of COVID at all. Still go everywhere I went before - Costco when it is packed full - local grocery stores - downtown restaurants - etc. Haven't gotten COVID. Neither has my SO. The only people I know who've gotten COVID have all been vaxd. I don't care whether you decide to get the shot or not - but when someone comes along and says - do this or lose your job, your healthcare, your ability to go about my life - I say F** you. I never signed your damn social contract and I never will.
For the vax, with omnicron being so mild, it seems like a bad trade-off to get vaccinated with v1 Covid with it's presumably more nasty spike protein rather than risk infection (which seems unavoidable anyway?)
also, it's known that 2 weeks past vaccination your immune system is weakened, you are more susceptible so it seems like a particularly bad idea during a surge
Given that the (vast, vast) majority of doctors are strongly recommending it, do you believe that they are lying, or that they are simply mistaken and you know better?
I don't know, I just see the virus has evolved into a very mild variant that even triple-vaxed don't seem protected from, and that the original vaccine has been designed with a spike protein that has since greatly mutated.
It seems very selfish to me, knowing you are maximizing the risk of passing the infection on to other people, and prolonging the pandemic for everyone.
Maybe you are fearful of the vaccine, but the sheer number of people who have received one should, if you understand basic statistics, cure you of that fear.
Even if it doesn't, refusing to wear a mask is just plain arrogant.
Arrogance is attempting dictate others actions via emotional manipulation (shame in this case), and selfishness is exhibited by people who want others to do a certain thing because it benefits themselves.
The mask/vaccine conversations are completely worn out at this point. Let it go.
The vaccinated still get and spread COVID and it is quite possible vaccinated individuals may actually contribute more than unvaxxed to more dangerous variants.
New variants need more mutation cycles. If vaccines slow down transmission (what they do) then they contribute to lower probability of emergence of new variants.
There is already plenty of proof that vaccines cause viruses to mutate to become more virulent, and with Omicron transmission and replication are not being slowed down like before. In fact, recent studies show triple-vaxxed more likely to get Omicron than unvaxxed.
You mean that chicken thing? Total different. But it could have happened. Sars-cov died off because it was too deadly and not enough infectious. Imaging there was a vaccine against Sars-cov to make it less deadly. Perhaps we could have kept it in circulation and natural selection would have eliminated all the anti-vaxxers...
But Sars-cov-2 is different. It is without doubt in circulation and mutating. Less it mutates, less new versions it can make. Because COVID-19 vaccines limit replication and transmission, they also limit new variant emergence. Had this person that gave omicron to the world been vaccinated, omicron would have lost its change.
Now about omicron infecting more people who have gotten booster is completely wrong. Totally. It is just your anti-vaxxer mind messing with you. This is the way your dark mind functions - making things up.
Right, those negative efficiency numbers that drive every anti-vaxxer crazy and anybody ignoring them like there is there nothing to see. Must be hard. It is right there.
Has it occurred to anybody that there really is nothing to see there? Can it for example be that delta and omicron are circulating in slightly different populations where omicron is more prevalent among vaccinated and delta among unvaccinated?
Or there could be some disparities in populations, for example young people not getting vaccinated but getting infected by delta instead of omicron not not getting infected because of some other measures like school antigen testing?
Some countries don't have enough vaccine not because they can't pay for it. They are just way down in the queue cos others with more cash did a lot of bulk pre-orders.
Folks shouldn't worry whether it's effective or not. Just go get it because it's never a bad thing to keep everything topped up. I hope they mandate everyone to take those new pills Pfizer came out with, that will probably make us super human Covid fighting machines. If we just keep taking boosters and those new pills Covid doesn't stand a chance.
Please make sure you tell everyone who isn't vaccinated to get vaccinated so they don't make a vaccinated person catch Covid.
I hope this is sarcasm.. it has to be. Although the term top up sounds like something the government would say, just like boosted. I'm waiting for the ads on television where they show old people getting "boosted" and talk about how great they feel afterwards, when in reality I've known several people that had to stay in bed for a few days after their vaccinations and acted like it was a normal thing.
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