Israel’s Covid-19 boosters are preventing infections, new studies suggest • Hacker News Board

Re: Israel’s Covid-19 boosters are preventing infections, new studies suggest

#91

Post by datameta » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 4:34 PM UTC

Natsu wrote: post #47

endisneigh wrote: post #3

Assuming it's only as effective as the original two-dose shot and prevents for the same duration, it seems like COVID will never go away. Assuming the current trend and a 9 month prevention, that pretty much aligns to what happened last year. So we'd need no new significant variants to develop or any outbreaks. Seems unlikely given that there are many countries with vaccination rates under 50% Probably better to focu…

I wonder if this is really the case. It seems like the original vaccines trained everyone's immune system on the spike protein specifically because this is exposed and highly conserved by the virus, such that it's hard to change and still leave an effective virus. Delta, however, found such a mutation that made it more virulent and it escaped. If we vaccinate against the modified spike, it's not clear how many more m…

I wonder how accurately we can run mutation simulations updated based on best current data to correct the best guess optimization function(s). It would be a breakthrough if we can predict the likeliest mutation. I'm aware of the enormous number of variables making this tremendously difficult...

Re: Israel’s Covid-19 boosters are preventing infections, new studies suggest

#92

Post by SideburnsOfDoom » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 4:35 PM UTC

[deleted] wrote: post #87

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there any reason not to increase vaccine production rates Intellectual property rights. It's not a "good" reason. But it's a reality that needs to be overcome. https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/... https://www.democracynow.org/2021/6/22/headlines/south_afric... Germany doesn't want the Pfizer vaccine made freely: https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/... and by som…

[deleted]

And my understanding is that while opening up IP does not solve all the issues, it is a necessary step to loosen supply constraints. That is why the sources above are calling for it.

Re: Israel’s Covid-19 boosters are preventing infections, new studies suggest

#93

Post by graeme » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 4:35 PM UTC

bsaul wrote: post #72

cm2187 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[edit] this is in response to the earlier version of your post where you wonder if the virus will ever go away: That I think is a given. Even if we had a bullet proof vaccine, you have such a large reserve of unvaccinated people across the world, plus animals, that the virus is endemic at this stage. Which isn't a problem. If once vaccinated the virus is mostly harmless, then it is just one more of the many endemic d…

"If once vaccinated the virus is mostly harmless" Note that even not vaccinated, the ultra large majority of people either are asymptomatic or don't get anything worst than a flu (which doesn't mean covid = flu in general) We seem to have forgotten that the original concern with the virus was the fact that it saturated intensive care units in hospitals, and thus prevented people from getting proper care.

That’s the original acute concern. Long run we still don’t know if it will have effects on brain function etc. There are some disturbing lines of evidence on this front. For example the UK biobank showing grey matter loss post infection including in mild cases:

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.11.21258690v...

Re: Israel’s Covid-19 boosters are preventing infections, new studies suggest

#94

Post by av3csr » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 4:35 PM UTC

hackingforfun wrote: post #73

I'm pretty surprised to still see some misinformation in some of the posts here. I have a friend who has a PhD in molecular biology and she described the mRNA vaccines to me. The mRNA is only a piece of the spike protein, and does not enter the cell's nucleus. It only interacts with the cytoplasm. Normally, if a cell had to deal with an actual SARS-CoV-2 virus, it would be dealing with the spike proteins and the enti…

The explanation reminds me of this wonderful (and previously posted on HN) article https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/reverse-engineering-source...

Re: Israel’s Covid-19 boosters are preventing infections, new studies suggest

#95

Post by loceng » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 4:35 PM UTC

cm2187 wrote: post #62

loceng wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why top virologists around the world have been trying to sound the alarm to warn that you don't vaccinate during a pandemic because it drives escape mutant variants; this type of response gets downvoted into oblivion by an ideological mob who are fear driven more than critical thinking, who have memorized the mainstream narrative responses to such statements by experts - or attempting character assassination…

Not that I am qualified for such a debate, but it's not clear to me that the risk of creating variants is greater than the risk of letting the virus run through the population unopposed. The variants so far seem to be variations of the same virus with similar risk profiles, and the vaccines seem to be mostly efficient against these variants.

For each variant we've given an alphabet to, like Delta, there are variants occurring from those - they seem to only give them a letter once it's a large enough step in mutation; I'm not sure of the actual labeling practices used.

But yes, I'm not qualified for the pinnacle of such a debate either, but those discussions aren't even happening - at least not in public which they need to be.

There are mutations that are occurring however just in vaccinated, that aren't occurring in the non-vaccinated, the virus mutating to escape the immunity of the vaccinations - which then makes those variants easier to spread to other vaccinated [and potentially easier to spread to unvaccinated as well]; UCSF recently released study of 1,300+ patients with COVID,78% had specific variants associated with vaccinated vs. 48% of unvaccinated having those same variants - various conclusions of possibilities could be made from that.

Re: Israel’s Covid-19 boosters are preventing infections, new studies suggest

#96

Post by bsaul » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 4:36 PM UTC

titzer wrote: post #75

bsksi wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, we have acknowledged it. The question is, have our politicians acknowledged it, or will they keep taking our rights?

Try going out in public naked or running a few red lights and then come back and troll some more about your "rights". The world is full of rules to prevent you from being a jerk and endangering others.

rules preventing you from doing something is one thing, but injecting a new product some people still have doubts about (no matter if they're correct or not) is a very different matter.

I'm amazed that people still come with the "safety belt" argument.

We've had decades of increase protections about food additives, GMOs, hormones in animals, etc on the principle of precaution with everything related to health, because things in this matter are complex. And now for some reason, we should stop thinking about tradeoffs and unknown unknowns over long terms consequences eventhough we're talking about treating the whole world population.

Re: Israel’s Covid-19 boosters are preventing infections, new studies suggest

#97

Post by Revenant-15 » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 4:36 PM UTC

vkou wrote: post #10

> Probably better to focus on the minimum number of vaccinations necessary to make hospitalization/death unlikely and move on from there. It would be nice if we could meet even that bar, but the US is currently at 53% of the population vaccinated, and much of its medical system is collapsing. Which is fine for that 53%, until they have a heart attack, get in a car accident, cancer, are immuno-compromised, etc, etc. G…

I'm losing my patience with how comments are downvoted on HN. He's right. People are dying from common illnesses in the US because of a lack of hospital beds/staff. "Elective" surgeries cover a lot of essential surgeries that prevent much suffering, high health costs and even deaths.

Re: Israel’s Covid-19 boosters are preventing infections, new studies suggest

#98

Post by bondarchuk » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 4:36 PM UTC

hackingforfun wrote: post #73

I'm pretty surprised to still see some misinformation in some of the posts here. I have a friend who has a PhD in molecular biology and she described the mRNA vaccines to me. The mRNA is only a piece of the spike protein, and does not enter the cell's nucleus. It only interacts with the cytoplasm. Normally, if a cell had to deal with an actual SARS-CoV-2 virus, it would be dealing with the spike proteins and the enti…

The amount of times I've seen text to the extent of "mRNA does not alter DNA" vastly exceeds the amount of text I've seen that claims mRNA does alter DNA. As far as I could see nobody in this thread is claiming such a thing, so I'm genuinely curious to know why you feel the need to point it out.

Re: Israel’s Covid-19 boosters are preventing infections, new studies suggest

#99

Post by imwillofficial » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 4:36 PM UTC

> I'm pretty surprised to still see some misinformation in some of the posts here.

“Anything I don’t agree with is misinformation”

The data on COVID related subjects has been murky, inconsistent, and poorly collected. The label of misinformation should be used with care.

> It's also worth noting that the mRNA does not interact with a person's actual DNA. Like this gem. This is false. RNA can burn back into DNA via reverse transcriptase(sp) Making assumptions on something so important, like your DNA is foolish. Anyone remember Viox? https://www.jefferson.edu/about/news-and-events/2021/6/disco...

Re: Israel’s Covid-19 boosters are preventing infections, new studies suggest

#100

Post by tinus_hn » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 4:37 PM UTC

hackingforfun wrote: post #73

I'm pretty surprised to still see some misinformation in some of the posts here. I have a friend who has a PhD in molecular biology and she described the mRNA vaccines to me. The mRNA is only a piece of the spike protein, and does not enter the cell's nucleus. It only interacts with the cytoplasm. Normally, if a cell had to deal with an actual SARS-CoV-2 virus, it would be dealing with the spike proteins and the enti…

You are contradicting yourself. You say this is about getting things under control, but then you say there is no way of controlling things.

Because vaccinated people can still spread infections vaccinations, just like lockdowns, do not help ‘getting things under control’. They only delay progression of the pandemic.

You say ‘it will probably be a common cold, once humans have enough antibodies’. Humans do not get permanent antibodies from the vaccines. They get antibodies from getting infected. Lockdowns and vaccines only delay the inevitable.

The only argument there is is that vaccinated people get less seriously ill than unvaccinated people. But then it affects only themselves so it’s pretty hard to argue for schemes that force people to get vaccinated against their will.