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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

#141

Post by meheleventyone »

mfer wrote: post #89
meheleventyone wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's got to be something like how much of the population are getting sick. I presume when a disease is endemic you have a fairly steady rate of illness and death taking into account seasonal variation. Whereas right now covid still seems to be spreading quickly through the population and causing large numbers to get sick at once.

When I think about this I think of two parts of it. First, there are other endemics. Influenza is one of them. In the US along millions get sick from it and tens of thousands die each year. We live within that realm. There will be people with different degrees of risk and levels for being ok with going back to "normal" as COVID-19 is just out there. How do we decided (as groups in the world population) what we are ok…

For me before we can even talk about covid being endemic it needs to reach a steady state and we're nowhere near that right now.

In terms of risk management flu is a good example because most humans encounter various versions in childhood but we still offer vaccination every year against the most likely variants. And we can still have flu pandemics. It's largely in a steady state though but the reality of that means we actually need to do a lot of management as risk profiles change locally. And largely this is a medical issue not a political one.

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

#142

Post by polote »

wyldfire wrote: post #134
NalNezumi wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I lack the background on biology, just a layperson take. > 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. There's unknowns about the long-term effects of infection, too. Several viral infections result in prolonged symptoms or decades-later re-emergence.…

So it just doesn't give any benefit. Reducing the risk of something which is already close to zero, is still 0. If we follow your argument, why not take the vaccine ten times ?

The excess mortality of people under 49 years in a country like france is zero in 2020 [0].

About long term effects of infections. Well the same can be said of the vaccine. In both case we have no idea

[0] https://www.insee.fr/en/statistiques/4493806?sommaire=449384...

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

#143

Post by steeve »

NalNezumi wrote: post #123
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…

Let's put it another way: with Delta, the chances of you getting COVID are pretty high. If you do, the chances of you getting bad side effects may be low, but they're a few orders of magnitude higher than the vaccine.

In this case, why not take the vaccine?

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

#144

Post by op00to »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #45
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…

> as effective as the original two-dose shot and prevents for the same duration We're giving boosters of a vaccine developed against the Beta variant. That's better than nothing. But it's inefficient against Delta. Pfizer/BioNTech are working on a Delta-specific booster [1]. If we can get approvals rolling faster without compromising safety, it might mean being able to release variant-specific boosters earlier in the…

As to whether the current batch of mRNA vaccines are "inefficient" against delta, the science is far from settled.

There are no changes to the mRNA vaccines composition in the booster. Moderna has been testing a lower "dosage" of the booster at 50 mcg vs. 100mcg for the current vaccine, but other than that it's the same stuff it's always been.

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

#145

Post by serf »

bluedevil2k wrote: post #106
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 mRNA is only a piece of the spike protein The mRNA produces a piece of the spike protein once inside the cell, it’s not the protein itself.

these are the kind of small detail slip-ups that bother me about the commenters (everywhere, not just HN) that decide to try to educate people in broad-strokes and general overviews.

it's hopeful and altruistic to try to educate the ignorant, but politically-charged topics have a characteristic that when misrepresented -- even accidentally -- someone may use that foul-up to reduce the efficacy of the advice by injecting the shadow of doubt.

(to be clear, issues with data should be corrected by others; my issue is with the grandparent poster getting the small details wrong while Speaking From On High and quoting scientist friends)

This not only hurts the credibility of 'scientist friends' by proxy, but it also just creates another foot-hold for the already suspicious to continue being suspicious; something that is trying to be remedied by the whole speech in the first place.

Please, if you feel the need to educate on something politically charged like this, gather the facts first and triple-check -- otherwise you will likely harm your base motivating premise incidentally through loss-of-trust.

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

#146

Post by bsaul »

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…

Your comment is pretty interesting, because i've had the intimate suspicion that the debate around public health measure to fight covid have been rendered impossible because of the trump / biden US election. The Dem vs Rep political fight seems to be ruining every single scientific debate it gets a hold on.

FYI: i'm french, so i have absolutely no interest in that Dem vs Rep debate, and people here i know that are the most reluctant about vaccination with mRNA vaccines are the ones that are the closest to being ecologist activists.

EDIT: as for other compulsory vaccines, that's why i mentioned "new product" / technology. We're not even talking about a new vaccine, we're talking about a completely new technology to produce an immunity response.

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

#147

Post by [deleted] »

bluedevil2k wrote: post #106
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 mRNA is only a piece of the spike protein The mRNA produces a piece of the spike protein once inside the cell, it’s not the protein itself.

[deleted]

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

#148

Post by Griffinsauce »

prox wrote: post #12
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…

We might also see the first batch of medicines appear in 2022, if we can successfully prevent ICU visits with effective medicines for starters, that would mean a lot to healthcare professionals worldwide.

Is there any actual development here? It's definitely not a given that we can do this.

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

#149

Post by op00to »

eganist wrote: post #51
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as effective as the original two-dose shot and prevents for the same duration We're giving boosters of a vaccine developed against the Beta variant. That's better than nothing. But it's inefficient against Delta. Pfizer/BioNTech are working on a Delta-specific booster [1]. If we can get approvals rolling faster without compromising safety, it might mean being able to release variant-specific boosters earlier in the…

> If we can get approvals rolling faster without compromising safety, it might mean being able to release variant-specific boosters earlier in their transmission cycle. This is basically it. We'd need an approval process similar to what exists for flu shots today. I'm not versed on what that process is, but if that can happen with covid, it'll be the biggest batch of red tape cut.

pfizer and moderna have essentially filed for rolling submissions. the biggest impediment to vaccines stopping the virus is morons not getting the vaccine.

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

#150

Post by sim_card_map »

hackingforfun wrote: post #131
NalNezumi wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> If the chance of me getting hospitalized is so low to begin with I just don't think this is true. Again, look at the states in the US with the lowest levels of vaccination. They are running out of ICU beds due to the amount of cases. I'm not sure where you're located. Maybe there's a low amount of cases there, but in general, the risk of being hospitalized (and maybe not having a bed to go to) is rather high. The d…

It is true. There's an Oxford Covid risk calculator, and for an average 20 something person, the risk of hospitalization is ~0.002%.

https://qcovid.org/

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