Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta • Hacker News Board

Re: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

#111

Post by Auracle » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 6:18 AM UTC

smt88 wrote: post #107

busymom0 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Long term side effects won't be known for 5-10 years, especially as vaccinated people have kids. Reminder of the Thalidomide drug: > Thalidomide is a sedative drug discovered at the end of the 50s, which caused a worldwide tragedy. The drug has been prescribed to many pregnant women in order to relieve pregnancy nausea. It was later found that thalidomide caused irreversible damages to the fetus and thousands of chil…

> Long term side effects won't be known for 5-10 years, especially as vaccinated people have kids. Good news, then. Viral vector vaccines (like the J&J version) have been studied and tested since the 1970s, and mRNA vaccines (like Pfizer) have been studied since the 1980s[1][2]. What ingredient in Covid vaccines do you suspect will become the new thalidomide? We know that the actual viral vector and mRNA components o…

We know that the spike protein itself causes damage. For adults that’s almost never an issue, but I feel like the overarching recommendation that pregnant women get the vaccine is misguided. It doesn’t make much sense to get it if they’ve already had COVID or are still working from home.

If those aren’t true then the risk is probably worth it as a raging infection would almost certainly be worse for the baby. I just wish there was some nuance in our government’s recommendations.

Re: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

#112

Post by loteck » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 6:23 AM UTC

smt88 wrote: post #20

loteck wrote: post #10

If we had effective treatments and OTC therapies for this illness, the pressure to vaccinate against every resurgence and new mutation would basically disappear. With so much social difficulty with vaccines, this seems like the most likely long term path. Where's my cherry flavored Covidquil?

This is absolutely wrong. A vaccine is a fraction of the cost of treatment, and it has no long-term side effects. Even better, a vaccine reduces the chance for a virus to mutate. Treatments, even if they work, are going to have side effects, and there are still unknown risks from a severe (unvaccinated) infection anyway. Vaccines are a miracle of proactivity, and there's no reason to try to replace them with somethin…

Goodness. Vaccine rates in the U.S. are stalling at 60%. Now the plan is to do booster shots after 8 months. What do you think is going to happen to those rates with the first booster? The second?

Vaccines are great. Therapies are also great. This is absolutely not wrong.

Re: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

#113

Post by Auracle » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 6:24 AM UTC

smt88 wrote: post #99

cickpass_broken wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the cost of these vaccines is largely hidden, no? Each country made deals behind closed doors AFAIK. I've seen some estimates of $12-$30 a shot, but have no idea the validity of this. How much do the treatments cost? Is it vastly different? > No long term side effects. How do you know? I thought the only study/data from Pfizer covered 6 months. That's not very long term? https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.0…

> How much do the treatments cost? Is it vastly different? An average hospitalization costs $73,000 in the US, according to data collected from insurance claims[1]. That means that a single hospitalization costs the same as vaccinating 2,400 people (using your $30/shot estimate). > How do you know? I thought the only study/data from Pfizer covered 6 months. That's not very long term? Although I'm not an expert, a fri…

Pandemrix was also similar to previous vaccines but caused an increase in narcolepsy, no? Immune systems are complicated.

Re: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

#114

Post by lamontcg » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 6:26 AM UTC

graderjs wrote: post #37

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…

I don't know if we have this, but it would be good if we had a technology that enhanced your body's immune system to identify and kill viruses, rather than prime it to respond to a particular viral signal, that then may need to be updated as the virus changes (that's how I understand how vaccines work, but that could be false). You might think it's a subtle difference, but I think the former technology would be leani…

The immune system already does that and its the responsibility of CD4+ helper T-cells.

The 2009 pandemic was significantly blunted because people born before 1957 had partial immunity from cross-reactive T-cells to H1N1 which was endemic in humans from 1918-1957. So after mutating in probably billions of pigs for 50 years the H1N1 virus that hopped back to humans was still sufficiently recognized by the immune system of older people to take any edge off of that pandemic.

I'm also fairly skeptical of the data coming out of Israel about waning immunity. Everyone is taking that data at face value while entirely ignoring the disclaimer: "(Potential confounders include the fact that the very oldest Israelis, with the weakest immune systems, were vaccinated first.)".

We really need a lot better data on much better matched cohorts to determine actual immune waning in the presence of the same viral variant.

Re: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

#115

Post by landemva » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 6:27 AM UTC

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…

"I'm part of the herd boxing COVID in."

The 'rona is in cats and deer, so it will be around for approximately forever. Vaccinated humans still get it and transmit it, though may have less severe symptoms. Will you please explain what you are boxing in?

Re: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

#116

Post by lamontcg » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 6:29 AM UTC

loteck wrote: post #10

If we had effective treatments and OTC therapies for this illness, the pressure to vaccinate against every resurgence and new mutation would basically disappear. With so much social difficulty with vaccines, this seems like the most likely long term path. Where's my cherry flavored Covidquil?

> Where's my cherry flavored Covidquil?

Where's my portable cold fusion generator?

Vaccines just fucking work right now. Much like wind and solar.

Effective antivirals are like thorium nukes and carbon capture. Very hard problems that nobody can adequately solve.

Re: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

#117

Post by ashildr » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 6:32 AM UTC

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…

Covid19 already has well-known short- and mid-term downsides for >> 1% of grown-ups infected. The hard “downsides“ are so dangerous that we had trouble to properly treat the sick.

BNT/Pfizer has so little short- and mid-term downsides that it is difficult to properly spot them statistically, even after about a half billion vaccinations.

Both may have long-term downsides, but: all vaccinations we know didn‘t have any long term downsides. The problems were either visible immediately or they were relatively rare so that they were only detected after a significant number of people had been vaccinated. The downsides of Covid-19 are not rare compared to that, for any age. There is no reason to consider the vaccine more frightening than Covid19. On the other hand everything about the virus SARS-CoV-2 and the disease Covid-19 is experimental because this virus has not been tried on humans until now! The infection it causes is way more complex than the immune reaction BNT/Pfizer causes and it definitely would not have passed a phase-1 study.

If you are afraid of BNT you should basically panic about Covid-19.

Re: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

#118

Post by graderjs » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 6:38 AM UTC

lamontcg wrote: post #114

graderjs wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if we have this, but it would be good if we had a technology that enhanced your body's immune system to identify and kill viruses, rather than prime it to respond to a particular viral signal, that then may need to be updated as the virus changes (that's how I understand how vaccines work, but that could be false). You might think it's a subtle difference, but I think the former technology would be leani…

The immune system already does that and its the responsibility of CD4+ helper T-cells. The 2009 pandemic was significantly blunted because people born before 1957 had partial immunity from cross-reactive T-cells to H1N1 which was endemic in humans from 1918-1957. So after mutating in probably billions of pigs for 50 years the H1N1 virus that hopped back to humans was still sufficiently recognized by the immune system…

Oh yeah definitely of course the immune system that already does that, the idea is just enhance its ability so that everyone has sort of Best in class defence against these viruses.

it can be kind of slow on an individual level, but on a population level you will have some people who have evolved better defenses, or more resilient immune systems. If we can share that around that's the idea.

It's very interesting though about that immunity thing you say. People born then.

Re: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

#119

Post by perryizgr8 » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 6:40 AM UTC

Isn't that kind of true even for the earlier variants? I personally know fully vaccinated people who got infected. Their symptoms were mild, and recovery was smooth. So yes, vaccination "blunted" but didn't defeat.

Re: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

#120

Post by lamontcg » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 6:41 AM UTC

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…

Hospitals are collapsing again, we can't ignore it.

Get people vaccinated.

Or else we're going to wind up "flattening the curve" again until we finally burn through enough dead people that everyone is effectively either recovered or immunized and then the endemic burden should be an order of magnitude lower.

And hospitals only have so much throughput going through the ICU and into the morgue that they can sustain, which is limited by burned-out human resources, that have been strained and quitting during the pandemic.

If you want to totally let it rip and destroy the ICUs then you better drive really fucking carefully for a few months and hope you don't get a poor diagnosis of something or other fairly nasty. Have a bit of a chat with your appendix and make sure its feeling happy and doesn't blow up.