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

#241

Post by criticaltinker » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 6:48 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 amount of people suffering myocarditis and other vaccine complications is in the double-digits

This is not true, according to the CDC (as of August 18th) there at least 742 cases of myocarditis and myopericarditis associated with vaccination, potentially upwards of ~1,300 [1].

For males age 16-17 the reporting rate of myopericarditis after 2 doses of Pfizer is 71.5 per 1 million doses administered (0.0071%) [1].

Compared to natural infection, vaccination is likely still a favorable tradeoff for most people. However the tradeoffs are highly dependent on age, health, and gender. Stratifying by these factors is essential for any scientifically accurate discussion of risks.

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

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

#242

Post by cuspy » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 6:48 PM UTC

I am absolutely pro-vaccine, but can someone help me work through the relative risk calculations here?

Vaccine: -?% reduction in likelihood of infection (there is currently no monitored control group and no transparent dataset that accurately accounts for baseline infection rates, geographical and demographic variation, etc.)

-?% chance of ?% reduction in severity of disease (there is no empirical evidence that has been consistent across time and location, especially as the virus mutates. All the data I've seen is aggregated across the entire vaccination campaign, never accounting for changing rate of vaccinated vs changes in baseline infection rate in each location)

-?% chance of acute vaccine side effects (VAERS unreliable, no transparent alternative dataset accessible to the public)

-?% risk of future unknown long-term effects of vaccination (including unpredictable outcomes like ADE)

-100% chance of assuming above risk of unknown long-term vaccine side effects (simply no data available by definition)

-?% chance of getting breakthrough infected with COVID-19 if exposed (I haven't seen any challenge studies, probably not possible for ethical reasons)

-?% risk of future long-term effects for recovered breakthrough infections (again, no data available. only time will tell whether breakthrough infections are less likely to lead to potential long-term effects than unvaccinated recovered infections)

-each additional vaccine booster dose adds ?% cumulative risk of both acute and long-term side effects, with no indication that boosters will ever end.

No Vaccine: -0% chance of reduction in severity of disease

-0% chance of acute vaccine side effects

-0% chance of long-term vaccine side effects

-?% chance of getting infected and assuming a ?% risk of future long-term effects of recovered infection (my risk of getting infected is low and partially under my own control since I don't travel, work from home, self-isolate, etc)

Am I missing anything?

Even if I am relatively confident that the vaccine reduces the likelihood of infection and the severity of infection significantly and will continue to do so for variants (the data suggests this, though it less transparent than I would like, since there is no publicly accessible unaggregated dataset (e.g. infection rates for vaxxed vs unvaxxed starting AFTER 50% vaccination rate in a given region, there is no longer a control group and all "natural" control groups suffer from inherent geographical and demographic biases)

It seems to me that the number of unknowns makes the risk calculation much harder than people are making it out to be, but I would be very happy to to hear considered, thoughtful counterpoints to the above.

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

#243

Post by _red » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 6:55 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?

For me, it was when the Swedish approach was widely derided even though it was logically sound. (isolate the at-risk, everyone else get on with life and build herd immunity).

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

#244

Post by endisneigh » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 7:02 PM UTC

bart_spoon wrote: post #240

endisneigh wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

Sure, but if you like at the data in the article it's virtually identical to the 2nd dose data.

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

#245

Post by jjeaff » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 7:12 PM UTC

polote wrote: post #236

armchairhacker wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't know of studies directly studying the vaccine for prevention of long covid, but most of the studies coming out seem to indicate that long covid is more likely in severe infections. So since we know the vaccine is good at preventing severe infections, it makes sense that the vaccine would be good at preventing long covid.

I get where you are coming from on the default being not taking medicine. But to me, I just don't see a vaccine as quite the same as medicine. It's basically a training program for your immune system. It tells your immune system what to look for and then when covid does enter your system, it is prepared and your immune system naturally fights it off the same way it always would. It just has a headstart in creating antibodies.

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

#246

Post by legerdemain » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 7:16 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…

I see a lot of presumptions that Covid will "become like a common cold," but what separates this from dangerous wishful thinking?

Humanity suffered from smallpox for centuries before it was finally eradicated. It's not clear that it was becoming meaningfully less severe.

Dengue is endemic in tropical regions. A reinfection often leads to severe disease.

Yellow fever did not get better over time.

We vaccinated actual measles in children somewhere close to oblivion. Pockets of vaccine resistance still lead to localized outbreaks in the US. Measles is, according to most estimates, significantly more infectious that Delta, and yet we still managed to reach crowd immunity instead of throwing up our hands and relying on hopes and prayers.

Finally, HIV is perhaps our most recent experience with a viral epidemic. If we expect Covid to turn into a cold, maybe we should expect AIDS to turn into a cold first. It has a 40-year lead!

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

#247

Post by admax88qqq » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 7:20 PM UTC

NalNezumi wrote: post #212

deathanatos wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why should I take a vaccine > when it is now known that vaccinated people can still spread the virus Because just because you "can" doesn't mean that you're as likely to[1]: > Fully vaccinated people with Delta variant breakthrough infections can spread the virus to others. However, vaccinated people appear to spread the virus for a shorter time […] This means fully vaccinated people will likely spread the virus fo…

Hi thanks for the reply and the perspective. >I have people around me who are not so young or not so healthy; while I might live, I do not want to transmit a a virus that could be potentially lethal to them. This is also the reason I did sign up for vaccination,(traveling with work and all) but it also put a dent in the reasoning that the people I'll meet will highly likely be vaccinated due to their age. >I also don…

> but it also put a dent in the reasoning that the people I'll meet will highly likely be vaccinated due to their age.

Gotta stop thinking in binary terms.

Breakthrough cases happen though. So even if the people you're seeing are vaccinated, if they are unlucky they can still pick up the virus from you, and if they are even more unlucky they can still have a pretty bad infection from it.

Vaccination reduces spread, and reduces severity, but it doesn't just flip those from 1 to 0.

Vaxed you + vaxed them is less risk to them than unvaxed you + vaxed them.

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

#248

Post by mikepurvis » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 7:20 PM UTC

_red wrote: post #243

mikepurvis wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

For me, it was when the Swedish approach was widely derided even though it was logically sound. (isolate the at-risk, everyone else get on with life and build herd immunity).

Interesting. I never thought it was logically sound, and my impression is that the the data has borne that out, basically all along (and that it was quite valuable to have Sweden and New Zealand as the two outlier examples for what it looked like to handle the pandemic especially poorly and especially well). A recent example with some hard numbers:

"Sweden has recorded more COVID-19 cases per capita than most countries so far: Since the start of the pandemic, roughly 11 out of every 100 people in Sweden have been diagnosed with COVID-19, compared with 9.4 out of every 100 in the UK and 7.4 per 100 in Italy. Sweden has also recorded around 145 COVID-19 deaths for every 100,000 people — around three times more than Denmark, eight times more than Finland, and nearly 10 times more than Norway.

Had Sweden implemented tighter rules, experts told Insider, the country might have seen a COVID-19 death toll more similar to those Nordic neighbors."

https://www.businessinsider.com/sweden-covid-no-lockdown-str...

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

#249

Post by greenhatman » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 7:22 PM UTC

unknownOrigin wrote: post #154

Tenoke wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

>your own cells to produce spike proteins similar to the ones sars-cov-2 does

Does this destroy the cell used to make the spike proteins? Or does your immune system destroy the cells that made spike proteins?

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

#250

Post by ostenning » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 7:23 PM UTC

criticaltinker wrote: post #241

armchairhacker wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 amount of people suffering myocarditis and other vaccine complications is in the double-digits This is not true, according to the CDC (as of August 18th) there at least 742 cases of myocarditis and myopericarditis associated with vaccination, potentially upwards of ~1,300 [1]. For males age 16-17 the reporting rate of myopericarditis after 2 doses of Pfizer is 71.5 per 1 million doses administered (0.0071%) [1]…

Personally, my heart & chest are still recovering from the second Pfizer shot, after having ECG, bloodwork and nearly going to the ER. Wont be getting a booster, thats for damned certain.

I suspect the number to be significantly higher than whats reported.