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

#231

Post by lovegoblin » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 6:12 PM UTC

NalNezumi wrote: post #164

Griffinsauce wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when it is now known that vaccinated people can still spread the virus I imagine this is not binary but you are likely to be less sick and less contagious.

That's a good point. The article that mentioned it (I think it was based on study in Boston or Manhattan?) did mention that vaccinated people carried/spread it for _shorter amount of time_

Exactly. Getting vaccinated is not just about you, but everyone you come in contact with - especially those who may be at higher risk than you are. Maybe even people you care about?

I'm in my 30s and in good health. I've not been particularly concerned about dying myself from covid[0]. But I do have a mom and grandparents. I do have immunocompromised friends and family. How could I live with myself if I got one of them sick and hadn't taken even that simple step of a shot in the arm?

[0] though long-covid is another story, or even short-term "being sick for days/weeks" doesn't sound like a particularly good time.

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

#232

Post by lovegoblin » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 6:16 PM UTC

bondarchuk wrote: post #98

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.

> I'm genuinely curious to know why you feel the need to point it out.

I haven't seen it in this thread either, but it's been a very common [false] talking point in the conspiracy/anti-vax circles.

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

#233

Post by linuxftw » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 6:18 PM UTC

mikepurvis wrote: post #217

linuxftw wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do people act like a completely unreasonable plan (and plan is generous) created by the morons in charge was ever going to be followed, let alone work? Garbage in, garbage out.

Looking back with the benefit of hindsight, what do you suppose the decisions makers could have done in the moment that would have persuaded you and other contrarians that they had a plan worth following, or at least worth trying?

> could have done in the moment

Which moment? The moment we invaded Afghanistan 20 years ago and racked up trillions in debt killing people over seas instead of investing in infrastructure? The moment when the Bush administration lied about WMD and the media just cheered the war on?

The moment nursing home residents were left untreated in their rooms because the 'data' said you couldn't treat anybody with steroids?

It's hard to pick a moment, because the 'science' has been junk from the jump. The bulk of 1st world governments are liars and criminals. Why would I believe a solitary thing they ever have to say?

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

#234

Post by beerandt » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 6:21 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 mRNA is only a piece of the spike protein, and does not enter the cell's nucleus. It only interacts with the cytoplasm.

>it would also invade the actual cell.

Before complaining about misinformation, you might want to freshen up on your basic microbiology.

I get that this has become more about the narrative than the facts, but this comment gets quite a few fundamentals very very wrong for it to be up top with the HN crowd.

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

#235

Post by incrudible » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 6:25 PM UTC

raphlinus wrote: post #175

hackingforfun wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> Considerably greater risk of myocarditis and other heart issues from infection than the vaccine.

Citing your source:

2.7 events per 100,000 persons (vaccinated)

11.0 events per 100,000 persons (SarS-COV2 positive)

This already doesn't look that great, considering that the risk of a PCR-confirmed infection is not 100%. More importantly, it doesn't take into account age.

The age group at highest risk from Myocarditis following vaccination is 16-17 year-old males, latest numbers from the CDC[1]:

5.1/71.5 events* per 100,000 first/second Pfizer doses administered (within 7 days)

This has a strong bias towards the second dose, it's not clear yet how booster shots fare here, which may need to be administered at 5 months intervals.

It stands to reason that the Myocarditis risk from COVID infection in that age group should also be higher, but it's not clear whether the benefit outweighs the risk in that age/sex group, considering that both infection count and side-effect cases tend to be under-reported.

*) It's not clear whether that number includes the cases "under investigation". If so, this would further raise the risk by up to 66%.

[1]: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/meetings/downloads/slides-... (Page 13)

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

#236

Post by polote » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 6:25 PM UTC

armchairhacker wrote: post #221

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…

The risk of suffering long-term damage from getting covid unvaccinated is way higher than the risk of any long-term side effects from the vaccine or getting Covid vaccinated. Even if the former is low, there's no downside to getting the vaccine anyways. I can kind of understand if someone is avoiding the vaccine and also isolating themselves to protect against the virus, but I really just don't understand the risk-be…

> The risk of suffering long-term damage from getting covid unvaccinated is way higher than the risk of any long-term side effects from the vaccine or getting Covid vaccinated

Honest question, there were studies about the effect of the vaccine on hospitalizations. But is there any studies about the effect on long covid ? And especially is there studies showing that people under the age of 40 in healthy condition have any benefit regarding long covid by taking the vaccine ?

> I really just don't understand the risk-benefit analysis where the vaccine is too risky but catching Covid isn't.

Well, some people don't like to take drugs, so if they know that their immune system can cope with it (even if that means difficult time for a short time) they would prefer it. It is not risk-benefit positive. It is just more aligned with some people feelings. Some people make preventing death as the almost most important things in their life, so they will take drugs, be careful in life and so on. While some people are just ok dying in certain conditions, and are not willing to engage in risk-free life

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

#237

Post by lolwut987 » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 6:28 PM UTC

whatshisface wrote: post #139

lolwut987 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The claims that rare side effects have been well-characterized and can be predicted from the mechanism alone are simply not true - the FDA itself required further postmarketing studies (to be finished around 2023) as a requirement in their approval letter. The foundation of convincing people that taking the vaccine is safer than not taking it cannot be the false claim that the probabilities of each side effect are kn…

That’s absurd.

Yes, I still test my code.

But when I write it, I do it with the lessons I’ve learned over decades, and it’s usually close to working before the first test comes into the picture.

That’s where we are with vaccine production: we’ve been cranking them out for decades, and the process is so robust that failures at in the six plus nines range of outliers.

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

#238

Post by cuspy » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 6:28 PM UTC

divbzero wrote: post #195

NalNezumi wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Indiana currently has about 44% of overall population vaccinated (3.0M out of 6.8M). Since January the state has recorded the following numbers of COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths: [1] Unvaccinated Vaccinated C 278,508 6,740 H 16,322 226 D 5,709 78 (The article did not provide a full breakdown by age, but did note that Indiana’s vaccinated population skews older and would have higher baseline risk for com…

I'm not trying to deny that the vaccine has a positive effect, but this data as presented (aggregated across the entire year) is extremely misleading. Here's why:

1) The infection/hospitalization/death rates were highest last winter, and relatively few people were vaccinated during the peak of the infection

2) A large proportion of the people in the Unvaccinated column here were infected long before we reached the current vaccination rate.

3) Therefore, suggesting that the numbers in this table represent the outcome of vaccination is simply not correct. This data is aggregated across the entire vaccination campaign and is completely confounded by the timing of waves vs that of vaccination rates.

If the goal is to build trust and present data transparently and fairly, why not show the same data with aggregation starting in July or starting AFTER reaching 40% vaccination rate?

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

#239

Post by bart_spoon » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 6:33 PM UTC

Izkata wrote: post #192

hackingforfun wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: As of Tuesday Aug. 24, six states—Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, and Texas—had less than 10% of ICU beds available according to data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I'm happy to hear Idaho is fine. It doesn't sound like these other states are.

Alabama: https://data.commercialappeal.com/covid-19-hospital-capacity... - Scrolling through these, it still looks like only 20-30% are covid. Arkansas: https://data.commercialappeal.com/covid-19-hospital-capacity... - Mostly not being overrun, and again covid is only like 20-30%. Florida: https://data.commercialappeal.com/covid-19-hospital-capacity... - Similar to Alabama, and like Alabama, mostly not covid. Georgia…

So why, in your opinion, are elective surgeries and deferred treatments only overrunning hospitals in states with lower vaccination rates? That's an especially strange assumption to make, given that said states also generally had the least restrictive lockdown measures from last year, meaning that if anything they would likely have fewer deferred treatments to perform now than states taking more intensive steps to halt the spread of the disease.

You also seem to think that somehow 20-30% of hospital beds being occupied solely by people sick with Covid is somehow not significant. Hospitals aren't designed to have so much capacity that they run on empty. Nor are they meant to be running at near max capacity at all times. But if a hospital is generally running on having 50-60% of beds occupied normally, and there is a surge like we've seen over the last 6 weeks that adds 20-30% on top of that solely because of Covid, then yes, its Covid that is causing hospitals to be overrun.

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

#240

Post by bart_spoon » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 6:46 PM UTC

endisneigh wrote: post #114

irishsultan wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Expecting that we would be aware of vaccines that provide a decade long protection against a disease that has been around for less than 3 years. I mean we could have those vaccines already, but we couldn't possibly know that we have them until they've been around for a decade or more.

Per the article we already know 3-dose of Pfizer does not offer a decade of prevention. What the article states is that it offers a level of protection similar to when one first completes the two-dose regimen, so we don't have to wait a decade to know. All we know is that an additional dose does increase your protection, but it doesn't necessarily give you a decade of protection since there were people who got the 3r…

> All we know is that an additional dose does increase your protection, but it doesn't necessarily give you a decade of protection since there were people who got the 3rd dose and still got COVID.

That doesn't mean anything regarding protection longevity. There will always be instances of individuals who fail to receive immune protection from a vaccine. The vast majority of people could potentially receive years of protection with a 3rd dose, while a small group doesn't get any protection at all. That isn't specific to covid.