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

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

#121

Post by yonaguska »

brightball wrote: post #33
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…

It's why I'm more interested in companies that can treat the symptoms effectively than only the vaccines right now. IMO the only way this ever truly gets better is if the effects can be mitigated quickly. Whoever figures that out is going to make a lot of money.

It's been figured out, but we're waiting on Pfizer to bring it's protease inhibitor to market before we acknowledge existing, out of patent medications that do the same thing.

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

#122

Post by tzs »

mfer wrote: post #21

A question to consider is, how to we move from pandemic to endemic? COVID-19 isn't going away and will join the other endemic viruses like chicken pox, the other widely out there coronaviruses, etc.

If it goes like the other four coronaviruses that are endemic it will reach a state where (1) if you catch it but already have some immunity (from a prior infection or a vaccine) your chances of serious illness are low, (2) if you are a kid your chances of serious illness are pretty low even if you don't yet have any immunity, (3) you catch it every year or two or three for the rest of your life which keeps boosting your decaying immunity so there is a good chance we may not need vaccine booster shots (a lot depends on what variants become endemic and what vaccines are available).

At that stage we probably won't even bother to track it. It will just be another of a large group of viruses (including those other four endemic coronaviruses) that cause similar symptoms and risk that we lump together and collectively call a "common cold".

Right now we are at the stage where we have a lot of people who aren't kids and who have no prior immunity. For past pandemic => endemic transitions that meant everyone went through their first infection without immunity (and often without good treatments available for the serious illnesses that resulted because these past pandemics were often before modern medicine). We have better treatments in general nowadays, so that route would not be as bad as it was for pandemics a couple hundred years ago, but it still would kill a lot of people.

With this one we've got a chance via vaccination for almost all of the teen and above population that hasn't yet been infected to get some immunity before their first infection. (Eventually pre-teens will be included once vaccines are authorized for them).

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

#123

Post by NalNezumi »

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…

I have never ever on HN seen an argument about DNA and mRNA, but then again I don't follow the conversation too much.

As it seems like you know someone with correct background on the subject, so I wanted to ask you something I've always wanted to know as a young,(late 20s) healthy person with no existing risky precondition in this pandemic:

Why should I take a vaccine, when it is now known that vaccinated people can still spread the virus, there's an almost neglible chance of side effect, and with no information about possible long-term side effect. If the chance of me getting hospitalized is so low to begin with, what's the benefit of the vaccine to me.

It's an genuine question, as I soon have to travel (to a country that still force quarantine even with vaccine) and have vaccine session booked by next month.

With my limited info the risk vs benefits of vaccine seems to solely end on "we know too little about the vaccine".

Edit: thanks for all the thoughtful replies. It's a hard question to ask (without anonymity) these days so all the sincere replies are much appreciated. I'll read through the given links (and credibility of the link) when I wake up

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

#124

Post by p_j_w »

cm2187 wrote: post #5
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…

[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…

>Which isn't a problem. If once vaccinated the virus is mostly harmless, then it is just one more of the many endemic diseases we live with without worrying about.

It's a problem if you're one of the many people who, for whatever reason, can't be safely vaccinated.

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

#125

Post by [deleted] »

vkou wrote: post #30
pwned1 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Collapsing" is a serious overstatement.

How else would you describe a situation if ICU beds in your area are full? [1] Do you think a bed will appear for you, if you get into a serious car accident? Will you even want to be going to the hospital for chemotherapy, right now (And that's assuming the oncologists are actually doing their jobs, instead of treating COVID patients)? To the doctor's office for some routine care, if you have a vulnerable person in…

[deleted]

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

#126

Post by babesh »

titzer wrote: post #107
bsaul wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, becaus…

You gotta be joking, right? You realize the same people who are mouthing off about freedom believe in absolutely zero protections for consumers against food additives and are in a constant state of denial about environmental pollution that has drastically harmed human health and ecosystems right? They very same politicians hemming about freedoms and how vaccines are dangerous just give carte blanche to the marketplac…

Totally not true about tetanus and other vaccines to go to college.

EDIT: Meningitis is the exception.

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

#127

Post by haswell »

whatshisface wrote: post #117
bondarchuk wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Everyone knows you can't predict what a treatment will do just by knowing its mechanism - if you could, clinical trials would never fail. Talking about the mechanism is the least effective way to explain how it's safe, because most people realize that well-controlled studies are the only true authority.

A hypothesis still must precede a trial, and many hypotheses are formed based on an understanding of fundamental concepts/mechanisms and prior studies.

Studies are still required because a hypothesis is just that - a hypothesis - but I wouldn't completely dismiss a discussion of the mechanism, because this may still provide meaningful context and/or help form an initial understanding of risk before having real study results.

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

#128

Post by zeku »

xattt wrote: post #8

I am fascinated to know what the effects are of over-vaccination. Is there some spillover effects where a highly-primed immune system begins to get into weird autoimmune reactions? Do weird plaques develop or a build-up of antibodies begin to form in random parts of the body, like in a blood dyscrasia? Or does nothing happen? Chronic vaccine overdoses are so exotic, as access to vaccines had been historically so tigh…

I'm not an expert, but my intuition is that it shouldn't be a big deal since vaccines are meant to start your body's response to a pathogen. I'm sure we build antibodies to all kind of weak baby viruses all the time throughout our lives without even knowing it.

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

#129

Post by titzer »

babesh wrote: post #126
titzer wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You gotta be joking, right? You realize the same people who are mouthing off about freedom believe in absolutely zero protections for consumers against food additives and are in a constant state of denial about environmental pollution that has drastically harmed human health and ecosystems right? They very same politicians hemming about freedoms and how vaccines are dangerous just give carte blanche to the marketplac…

Totally not true about tetanus and other vaccines to go to college. EDIT: Meningitis is the exception.

This is where I went to undergrad:

https://www.purdue.edu/push/Immunization/

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

#130

Post by lolwut987 »

whatshisface wrote: post #117
bondarchuk wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Everyone knows you can't predict what a treatment will do just by knowing its mechanism - if you could, clinical trials would never fail. Talking about the mechanism is the least effective way to explain how it's safe, because most people realize that well-controlled studies are the only true authority.

Except we’ve been studying this for well over a hundred years, and it’s not a medication, it’s only presenting something to the immune system so it can perform it’s singular task on.

So, by this point, you’re telling me I can’t understand what editing a cell in my excel spreadsheet will do without a huge test of hundreds or thousands of people all making the same edit to figure out if it’ll work.

We know it works. We know how it works. It works by handing the task to the immune system and getting the fuck out of the way.

Clinical trials are to assess if it works well enough to consider widespread use.

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