Live data from Hacker News

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

science.org

291–300 of 354 posts

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

#291

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…

I see a lot of presumptions that Covid will "become like a common cold,"

Could do, yeah. I'm no evolutionary biologist, but I guess that for this to happen, it needs to mutate in various directions, and the strains to feel selection pressure to become non-lethal to humans. Which I guess means that a lot of people need to die of more lethal strains faster than they spread it, and that way the surviving strains will become the dominant strains while the people-killing strains wipe themselves out by killing their hosts quickly.

This does not feel like a great solution; using human deaths as a way to select for the less lethal variants. Feels like that involves a lot of humans dying, which people have a strong bias against.

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

#292
How much time before this flawed study is retracted ? Who pays for it ? Who gets the money when booster after booster is inefective ? Most grave cases in Israel are vaccinated people. Number of cases exploded since population is mostly vaccinated. Wake up people. You're being lied to in a major way. Don't let your intelligence be insulted any more.

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

#293

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…

There are several arguments supporting the idea that covid will become like the common cold, it is not a generic "all viruses turn into the common cold".

We already have 4 endemic coronaviruses that cause common colds, and we suspect that they started as deadly pandemics too, which were historically reported as the flu. Many specialists suspect that the OC43 coronavirus caused the 1889 "Russian flu".

Covid seems to follow the same path: a disease that is mostly harmless to the young but potentially deadly to older adults with no acquired immunity. It is likely that in a generation or two, everyone will be infected at a very young age, building immunity and occasionally get breakthrough colds. Breakthrough cases already look a lot like colds.

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

#294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Literally billions of people around the world have been vaccinated against Coronavirus now. How high can the chance of serious short-term side effects be?

Again, depends on age, condition. I'm currently fighting long COVID symptoms that have showed up after vaccination. I never had COVID, but the vaccine has given me - chronic fatigue - chronic headaches - brain fog. From JJ vaccine.

If you look into the Australia, Canada and Norway data you see that the numbers are higher than initially expected. Serious side effects like TTS were thought to happen around 1 in 100k, but they now think it would be something like 1 in 20 000. Perhaps less, if you account for people that don't even realise they're getting it.

The vaccine are something like 5x reduction in mortality, but they are not perfect.

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

#295

Since the daily cases are now up to where they were before the vaccine. Its pretty clear the original promise of the vaccine has been a giant failure. And serious erosion of trust with major medical and political implications. A more sensible approach would be have the at risk group vaccinate. And let the young and strong opt for natural immunity, which it turns out is superior and much more longer lasting anyway. In…

>natural immunity, which it turns out is superior and much more longer lasting anyway

where are you getting this from?

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

#296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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://s…

[1] is an interesting lit review on what drug strategies have been tried where in the world.

None of these papers seem to present strong clinical evidence that these drugs have actually been effective, vs some hidden covariate or something. A couple include interesting small-sample observational studies, but as I understand it those haven’t panned out in follow-on randomized controlled trials that have been done.

There are also a couple essentially viewpoint articles that are interesting. [2] is basically a pharmacokinetic calculation motivating further study, but no clinical data.

[4] is a hypothesis piece about hydroxychloroquine that draws on nine other studies. Haven’t been able to evaluate those because [4] is not open access, but this is one of the drugs that has not lived up to expectations in various RCTs that have been completed…

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

#297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think of it this way, you have two choices: 1. You have a 0.0001% risk of death, and a 0.001% risk of hospitalization, and will maybe spread covid to 5-8 people. Long term effects unknown. 2. You have a 0.00001% risk of death, and a 0.0001% risk of hospitalization, and will maybe spread covid to 1-2 people. Long term effects unknown. Which choice would you take? (note the 2nd option is a conservative estimate of the…

you forgot to add an important argument: You forget to say that probably both are manmade. Who do you trust more? 1) something probably created in a chinese lab? 2) something created by a list of different corporations and tested independently by at least 50 countries?

Lab released, maybe. Lab created, seems unlikely, although the line between lab released and created gets blurry. Genetically engineered (rather than created via "husbandry"), seems very unlikely given that nobody has noticed anything to suggest that it might be. So either it isn't, or China has gotten so good at it that we can't tell when they do it, which is terrifying!

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

#298

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…

> lipids

These "nano"-bubbles of fat were advertised as nano-particles. It was just this old doctor that wanted to be cool for once but it has become a grave mistake...

That said, I don't see the current concern in that regard. People believe they will be lied to when there are counter-indications for the efficiency, that side-effects won't be reported on, that they need to provide vaccination and medical passes. And to be honest, these fears are 100% valid. It is very likely there will be media blackouts about such issues. Especially if you know a bit about politics and how people build a profile. Safety sells better than sex in politics.

And the hysteria about misinformation isn't at all conductive for real scientific debate. On the contrary, it is far more disruptive than conspiracies of any form. The self-imposed defenders of science are fools in their approach to contain information.

While there are no cures yet, there was a political campaign against substances that helped, even if the benefit was small. This should be a scandal on its own.

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

#299
I'm starting to feel that when people protest things they disagree with that it has less to do with the actual issue than with a desire to voice a contrary opinion in general.

I suspect that the opposition—even anger sometimes—is a lot less about vaccines, or abortion than some other unmet need that finds expression though this kind of opposition.

And I also think that even discussing these issues with the intent to persuade is futile and giving the protesters exactly what they are seeking.

I think it's deeply ironic that an army of well intentioned people fan out on the internet to 'educate' people who are against X actually end up giving the protesters what they actually want, free therapy for some sort of frustrated need to be heard.¹

Even funnier is that both sides are playing out this psychodrama while being completely ignorant of the actual motivations behind their behaviour.

1. Or maybe the need to exercise the power expressed by holding an entire state or country hostage via a virus...?

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

#300
post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has this been updated for the delta variant which is estimated be twice as likely to cause hospitalization? https://www.politico.eu/article/delta-coronavirus-variant-do...

So ~0.004% then. Are you suggesting that is statistically significant?

I'll get downvoted, but people keep forgetting that covid spread is exponential, not linear.
Post reply on HN