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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

#151
post #136

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…

> when it is now known that vaccinated people can still spread the virus Why wear your seatbelt if you can still die in a collision? Why bother with refrigeration when cold food can still rot? You can't think of risk in terms of binaries; bad things are still possible with the best safety technologies, but that doesn't mean those technologies aren't worthwhile. As an aside, the virus is actively changing over time, a…

> As an aside, the virus is actively changing over time, and delta variant is putting a lot more young people in the hospital.

If this is the case, this is not hugely more than the previous variants as we can't see it on hospitalizations charts

> Why wear your seatbelt if you can still die in a collision?

Why not wear a helmet in a car I'm sure it would help in some cases ?

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

#152
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…

A lot of people get a flu shot every year so on the level of abstraction of "a vaccine" it's not that big of a problem. These vaccines are slightly more side effecty than the average flu shot (flu shots don't usually make you feel as bad for the day or two after the shot) so who knows.

I've never felt weird after a flu shot other than slight pain in my arm. Each shot of moderna knocked me the f out in horrible ways. My pfizerwife was fine.

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

#153

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…

> Look at the states with the highest amount of unvaccinated individuals in the US. They are running out of hospital beds [1]. This is not about taking our freedoms, this is about getting this under control.

> [1] https://fortune.com/2021/08/25/states-icu-beds-covid-cases-d...

I can't see the article due to paywall, but based on how you're presenting I have to say: Due to the phrasing it isn't a straight lie, but it's definitely not true either and is meant to be misleading. Hospitals are not being overrun by covid patients, most of the capacity is being used by things from last year that people were putting off.

For example in the least vaccinated state, Idaho [0], most hospitals are running at around 50% capacity [1], and even then only around 10% of beds are covid-19 cases.

On top of this you have to remember that hospitals are for-profit institutions, and beds are counted not just by physical beds but by having nurses to attend to them. Empty beds cost the hospital money, so they try to run fairly full anyway. I remember reading 80-90% in the past, but have found a source [2] that says 60-70% is the average across all hospitals, and another that gets into the 80-90% range for only large hospitals [3].

[0] https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/2021-07-27/...

[1] https://data.commercialappeal.com/covid-19-hospital-capacity...

[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/185904/hospital-occupanc...

[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4191350/

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

#154
post #29
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…

Annual flu jabs aren't exactly uncommon. Obviously the mechanism isn't quite the same but there's no real reason to expect a high chance of issues at that rate of revaccination.

I wouldn't exactly call a comparison between gene therapy "isn't quite the same".

Flu shots contain inactivated/weakened flu virus (depending on the version), to the presence of which/antigens the body reacts by creating antibodies.

RNA vaccines are a different technology, which transfect (reprogram in IT speak) your own cells to produce spike proteins similar to the ones sars-cov-2 does (the consensus seems to be that this spike variant is, unlike the real one, harmless and is not free floating) which are then detected by the the body and antibodies are created.

The result is esentially the same, but the way you get there contains an extra step and it is this extra step that is the source of the vast majority of (rare) adverse reactions. Blood clots etc.

The ironic thing is that most people who are very strongly opinionated on this (both sides) have no idea what the actual difference is and blindly trust whatever either the government or a local anti-vax facebook group tells them.

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

#155

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…

> They are running out of hospital beds

I find that hard to believe, considering that these states didn't run out of hospital beds in any of the previous waves that also had higher incidence and far higher mortality.

I quote:

> "Another nine states have less than 20% of their ICU beds available."

This is still on the high end, by international standards. Optimal occupancy rate is estimated at 70-75%:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24373914/

Running near capacity doesn't mean there isn't emergency capacity that can be made available, otherwise ICUs wouldn't be able to run above 100% capacity.

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

#156

> 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 re…

>> 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)

Irrelevant. The vaccine mRNA cannot interact with your DNA, because it doesn't enter the nucleus at all. It is used to produce spike proteins within the cell, outside of the nucleus.

The mRNA vaccine is not as exotic or unnatural as people seem to think. Cells have ribosomes. Ribosomes process mRNA instructions to build proteins. All the time.

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

#157

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

Continues with anecdote of conversation with anonymous molecular biology PhD.

-

Isn't that the optimal breeding ground for misinformation?

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

#158
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

We don't have the technology to stimulate that accurately in software. It would have to be done using transgenic animal models and/or human tissue cultures. Essentially it would be a form of gain-of-function research, and there are concerns that a lab accident could result in an even more dangerous variant escaping into the wild.

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

#159
post #95
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

(Replying here since your original post is dead)

It's not that nobody's talking about it, it's just that people have done the research, and they've proven people like Dr. Montagnier wrong.

Why give air to people who keep saying things that are wrong? https://twitter.com/GKangInd/status/1397429770028158978

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

#160

The headline doesn't quite do the article justice. Boosters in this one study reduced measured infection (they didn't measure actual hospitalization/disease!) by some amount in the very short term. But experts say this tells us very little about what effect they will have over even months, instead of weeks/days. Last paragraph: > If the booster’s additional immunity fades quickly, or if the booster campaign distracts…

It's almost as if we can't science our way out of this. Instead we need selfish, ignorant people to take the smallest steps to make a real impact.
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