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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

#171

Post by mrtesthah »

polote wrote: post #151
n8cpdx wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ?

Wearing a helmet in a car is a PITA. Getting vaccinated causes literally no ongoing inconvenience 24-36 hours later. It's effectively a cost-free intervention with enormous upside in terms of protection from death and hospitalization. Helmets are better compared to interventions like masks and social distancing, as they must be used constantly.

Edit: taking your analogy less literally, it seems the issue here is the socially acceptable level of risk. The health risks of covid are demonstrable and apparent. If we can mitigate those risks by ~90% with no ongoing cost, then that intervention makes sense. On the other hand, if additional interventions mitigate it by only an additional 5%, then those may not be worth the trouble.

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

#172

Post by hackingforfun »

NalNezumi wrote: post #162
hackingforfun wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Thank you for the rapid and informative reply. I appreciate it (esp when the topic is a bit politicized right now) I'm not from US so I haven't checked the stats closely for those states. My current city of residence is Tokyo. Afaik right now hospitalization seems quite bad, and there's no strict lockdown. I'm trying to work from home and dodge rush hours as much as possible to reduce the risk for now. Do you have an…

I don't have numbers on "old vs young" hospitalization. I'd have to do some more googling for that and I need to get back to work.

However, regarding efficacy on the delta variant, from here [1]: Data so far suggests efficacy rates of approximately 67 percent for the J&J vaccine, 66 to 95 percent for the Moderna vaccine, and 42 to 96 percent for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

Seems like pretty good efficacy to me.

[1] https://www.healthline.com/health-news/heres-how-well-covid-...

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

#173

Post by Spellman »

Griffinsauce wrote: post #148
prox wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There actually is!

Two studies in Brazil have shown a pretty significant reduction in hospitalizations in a RCT of fluvoxamine. More data obviously required.

Plus there has been more work on other treatments, but most are pretty expensive.

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22619137/fluvoxamine-covi...

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

#174

Post by mafuy »

bsaul wrote: post #133
graeme wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

i remember this study, but i'm surprised we don't have more papers on the same topic since. It seemed like a pretty big news, and yet i don't hear people recommending mass-vaccination mention it. Any idea why ?

I recommend mass vax and this point is one of the main points I use. But I agree with you that sadly, this danger is not well known.

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

#175

Post by raphlinus »

hackingforfun wrote: post #137
incrudible wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever is causing the severe side-effects, it's probably not the MRNA or the spike protein. With Pfizer/Moderna vaccines, it's likely the lipid nanoparticles causing Myocarditis. With the J&J vaccine, it's likely the viral vector that is causing TTS. Both technologies have never been widely deployed before. The fact that we could not predict and still do not understand these side-effects is quite concerning. It als…

I've read that Myocarditis can happen with actual COVID cases as well [1]. To me that makes sense, considering that the mRNA-based vaccines generate a portion of the spike protein similar to the actual virus. [1] https://www.clinicaltrialsarena.com/comment/myocarditis-covi...

Considerably greater risk of myocarditis and other heart issues from infection than the vaccine. See Fig 4 of [1] in particular.

When reading that chart, keep in mind that lymphadenopathy is just swelling of the lymph nodes, and is an expected and not-serious effect of the vaccine; it's a sign that an immune response is being triggered.

[1]: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2110475

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

#176

Post by criticaltinker »

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.…

> there's little/no treatment for the infection resulting from this virus.

This is not true. Since the beginning of the pandemic front line doctors have been successfully reducing hospitalization and death through early treatment with antivirals, corticosteriods, and antithrombotics.

[1] Multifaceted highly targeted sequential multidrug treatment of early ambulatory high-risk SARS-CoV-2 infection (COVID-19) https://scholarlycommons.henryford.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?a...

[2] Timing of Antiviral Treatment Initiation is Critical to Reduce SARS-CoV-2 Viral Load https://ascpt.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/psp4.1...

[3] Clinical outcomes after early ambulatory multidrug therapy for high-risk SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) infection https://rcm.imrpress.com/EN/article/downloadArticleFile.do?a...

[4] Early multidrug treatment of SARS-CoV-2 infection (COVID-19) and reduced mortality among nursing home (or outpatient/ambulatory) residents https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03069...

[5] Multidrug treatment for COVID-19 https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/ddt/advpub/0/advpub_202...

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

#177

Post by makomk »

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…

The question is how useful variant-specific boosters are at this point in time, though. As I understand it there are two things working against them. Firstly, one of the main ways Delta seems to beat vaccination is by replicating more efficiency before the immune system can respond, and tailoring the vaccine more specifically to it won't really help with that. Secondly, a booster for a very similar variant might just boost the existing immune response for the previous variant rather than creating new, more specific antibodies ("original antigenic sin") - this is apparently one factor limiting the effectiveness of flu vaccines.

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

#178

Post by dfawcus »

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, and does not enter the cell's nucleus."

and with the AZ vaccine, due to the vector chosen, supposedly it (spike protein) does enter the nucleus. Oops.

(note I'm not suggesting the AZ vaccine causes any alteration of our DNA)

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

#179

Post by Arainach »

Izkata wrote: post #153
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…

> 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…

That "80-90%" might have been a thing before COVID, but now more and more facilities are running at capacity.

Even in Washington (70+% with one shot) and Seattle (83% one dose, 77% complete series) a number of hospitals are full enough to be cancelling elective surgeries again.

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

#180

Post by Griffinsauce »

JackFr wrote: post #58
mikepurvis wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fairness, I think it's been just as frustrating to the health officials setting out those targets— between non-compliance with the initial guidelines (both due to idiocy, and due to governments dragging their heels on the income/rent supports that would have allowed poor people to actually stay home), and then the appearance of the delta variant just as vaccination campaigns were getting seriously under way, I'm s…

> due to governments dragging their heels on the income/rent supports that would have allowed poor people to actually stay home Government supports or not, you do realize everyone can't stay home?

Why do so many discussions around this have to devolve to reasoning against absolute straw-men arguments?

The point wasn't for "everybody" to stay at home but to expand "everybody who can" to the highest possible number, by removing economic and other barriers.

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