Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

sciencemag.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 241 posts

Re: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

#81

Post by wrl »

oliv__ wrote: post #70
wrl wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live healthy. I built a home gym at the start of lockdown and have continued to train powerlifting and Olympic WL both throughout. I get my cardio in, I eat well. I didn't lose weight in the past year – I gained muscle, and my numbers are the best they've ever been. I got both Pfizer/BNT shots as soon as I could, and I'll get the boosters as soon as I can too. The belief that healthy living alone is enough to stymi…

As far as "belief" goes, you're the one on the side of belief here. All the data and numbers show the risk is incredibly low for someone like you (provided you don't have an auto-immune disease)

> As far as "belief" goes, you're the one on the side of belief here.

No.

We don't understand why COVID hits some people harder than others. We don't understand why some people end up with "long COVID" sequelae and some don't. I don't particularly want to roll those dice from immunological naivety.

The vaccines were free. The biggest risk I would have faced was myocarditis, and the risk even for that is higher from a COVID infection than from the mRNA vaccines.

Furthermore, getting vaccinated means that we all get back to a place where COVID is less of a big deal societally. While the data does show that vaccinated individuals can transmit Delta, it shows that they do so for a shorter period of time, and anything we can shave off of R0 is a good thing. Perfect, enemy of good, etc.

Getting vaccinated was close to no skin off my back. I had a sore arm for a few days. The payoff is that I reduce the (admittedly small) risk I did have, and I'm part of the herd boxing COVID in.

What's the downside?

Re: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

#82

Post by ianai »

criticaltinker wrote: post #52
danielodievich wrote: post #4

I am good friends with 3 doctors, and talk to them a lot about the amazing science behind the vaccines and the incredible speed with which those were designed and developed. All agree it was done at pretty much the software speed - custom designed on the computer in weeks and then built to order - and both them and I think it's pretty neat. It is very refreshing to talk to them because they, being good doctors, deal…

> all 3 of them told me to expect something like that - the virus mutates ... and the vaccines will likely be needing to adjust Your doctor friends were informing you about a phenomenon commonly referred to as "immune escape". The current mRNA based SARS-CoV-2 vaccines are effective at preventing severe outcomes like hospitalization and death. However, they do not necessarily prevent infection or transmission - and t…

What keeps me worried is how much community immunity is required to stop a virus as spreadable as measles. I think it’s something like 95%. That’s a hard bar to pass for a vaccine or even “natural immunity” through letting it spread. Mixed with the possibility of long covid we could see some scary disease rates for the foreseeable future.

Re: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

#83

Post by Jordrok »

landemva wrote: post #23
refurb wrote: post #9

There were several prominent epidemiologists who said early on “Covid will end up like the flu, you’ll need a yearly vaccine, we’ll have new variants and we’ll get waves of infections through out the year”. And here we are.

I havent (needed) a flu shot in a couple decades. I'm not interested in yearly jabs. Better to lose the waist inches and high BMI. Few want the self-responsibility of healthy living. And I don't agree with headline of "grim", as it was obvious a year ago this was coming. Who lost any excess weight in the past year?

If you were as responsible as you proclaim to be, you'd be doing both.

Re: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

#84

Post by oliv__ »

What I'm curious about is: what happens now?

When everyone starts realizing that vaccines and masks can't fully contain a spread, what's the next logical step to take?

Are people going to insist that you keep wearing your mask, take booster shots and live in fear for the next 50 years or are we going to collectively change our mindset from "Zero COVID" to accepting that COVID is just another risk factor in the world and move on?

Re: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

#85

Post by maxerickson »

criticaltinker wrote: post #80
maxerickson wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would have spread even faster without vaccination (it is considerably more infectious than other prevalent variants).

To be clear, the primary suggestion put forth by my original comment is: Strategies for viral elimination should therefore be diversified across molecular targets and therapeutic modalities Put another way: vaccines are a powerful and useful tool that can help us mitigate the pandemic, but if used indiscriminately they may actually work against us, so we need to proceed with caution and also use other tools where pos…

I don't know how you'd adjudicate it, but I'd bet quite a lot that indiscriminate use of a (tested, safe) vaccine is pretty much always going to be better than not using it.

There's of course no reason to stop at indiscriminate use of it, we should employ whatever vaccine strategy seems to be best (in an empirical sense), and supplement with other measures, I'm going at the banality of the point.

Re: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

#86

Post by peytn »

suchire wrote: post #16
MisterBastahrd wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's going to mutate regardless of how many people are vaccinated. The entire point is to make it so that people don't have the runaway immune system responses that are melting lungs and brains.

The likelihood of mutation is directly proportional to how widespread a virus is multiplied by the amount of time it stays that way (more specifically, the area under the curve for infections over time). Vaccination and control of spread is critical to preventing further variants

Only if you ignore the fact that viruses compete for hosts.

Re: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

#87

Post by oliv__ »

wrl wrote: post #81
oliv__ wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as "belief" goes, you're the one on the side of belief here. All the data and numbers show the risk is incredibly low for someone like you (provided you don't have an auto-immune disease)

> As far as "belief" goes, you're the one on the side of belief here. No. We don't understand why COVID hits some people harder than others. We don't understand why some people end up with "long COVID" sequelae and some don't. I don't particularly want to roll those dice from immunological naivety. The vaccines were free. The biggest risk I would have faced was myocarditis, and the risk even for that is higher from a…

> What's the downside?

We don't know what we don't know. That's the downside. You've just taken an experimental drug which has yet to be approved by the FDA, and was designed using novel technology we haven't broadly tested on humans. What's more, the companies providing the shots cannot be held liable for these vaccines.

Who's to say we don't discover issues with mRNA delivery 5 years from now? That risk seems much higher to me than the risk of long COVID for individuals such as yourself (and me).

Re: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

#88

Post by maxerickson »

oliv__ wrote: post #84

What I'm curious about is: what happens now? When everyone starts realizing that vaccines and masks can't fully contain a spread, what's the next logical step to take? Are people going to insist that you keep wearing your mask, take booster shots and live in fear for the next 50 years or are we going to collectively change our mindset from "Zero COVID" to accepting that COVID is just another risk factor in the world…

Getting booster shots to lessen the risk to people that are at greater risk from the virus isn't a huge imposition.

We should make it easier for more people to do it (people that don't have sick leave or aren't sure they can take it and so on).

Re: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

#89

Post by ashildr »

bob33212 wrote: post #29
smt88 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that it is still much more dangerous for unvaccinated people than the flu, which is an important distinction.

The original strain of the flu was also more deadly. But it eventually mutated and became less

With that high number of young people dying of the flu back then you may say that the host mutated and became less susceptible to the original strain of the flu.

Since SARS-CoV-2 seems to be especially dangerous for people after reproductive age I don‘t expect the same pressure as with flu. It may influence our inverted age pyramid, though. And it may have influence on the number of highly educated people >50 and older people with disposable income. (I belong in this group)

Re: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

#90

Post by wrl »

oliv__ wrote: post #87
wrl wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As far as "belief" goes, you're the one on the side of belief here. No. We don't understand why COVID hits some people harder than others. We don't understand why some people end up with "long COVID" sequelae and some don't. I don't particularly want to roll those dice from immunological naivety. The vaccines were free. The biggest risk I would have faced was myocarditis, and the risk even for that is higher from a…

> What's the downside? We don't know what we don't know. That's the downside. You've just taken an experimental drug which has yet to be approved by the FDA, and was designed using novel technology we haven't broadly tested on humans. What's more, the companies providing the shots cannot be held liable for these vaccines. Who's to say we don't discover issues with mRNA delivery 5 years from now? That risk seems much…

You realise that COVID, like other viruses, replicates by injecting mRNA into cells, yes? That mRNA does a lot more than print some spike proteins. Hell, we don't understand what most of the COVID accessory proteins do. Again, I stand by what I said – "foolhardy".

> We don't know what we don't know.

So you think we should all try our luck with live COVID and just hope for the best? Demonstrated long-term health problems vs potential ones?

I fully acknowledge that there could be some side effect from the vaccines down the line that I'm now on the hook for. However, people who have been working in this field for their entire careers say it's unlikely, and that's the best information we have right now.

I trust the experts who have trusted their own expertise enough to get their own shots.

> That risk seems much higher to me than the risk of long COVID for individuals such as yourself (and me).

It isn't. There's not really a nicer way to phrase it. Your sources are questionable, you should fact check them better, you should do your own research. The papers are free to read, there's no excuse.

You're Dunning-Kruger-ing this. Get your shit together.

Post reply on HN