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Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

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Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#171

Post by throwawayboise »

eCa wrote: post #15
tazjin wrote: post #3

Product manufacturer recommends use of its product. Surprise!

If they can show that the product helps to save lifes and at some point get back to a normalcy, and especially if there’s no other significantly better product available, I really don’t have an issue with that.

We've been at this coming up on two years. Masks, lockdowns, vaccines, and the rest of it. Variants are still popping up and spreading all over the place. When do we admit that none of this is really working. Or do we just do this forever?

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#173

Post by goodluckchuck »

logicchains wrote: post #40
1cvmask wrote: post #2

This is the scientific meat of the press release where it claims a 25 times neutralizing antibody titers against the Omicron strain with a third dose of Pfizer-BionTech: The sera were collected from subjects 3 weeks after receiving the second dose or one month after receiving the third dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. Each serum was tested simultaneously for its neutralizing antibody titer against the wi…

It's interesting, this differs from recent results suggesting that boosting with vaccines derived from the original Wuhan variant is relatively less effective against newer variants like delta: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.12.21261952v... .

Their statement is extremely limited as to "effectiveness" and almost seems to acknowledge that their antibodies are not effective as to the 20% that's new in Omicron.

They suggest that a booster will boost the number of antibodies (obviously). They also suggest that more antibodies will help deal with the 80% that hasn't changed...

This really suggests that the vaccine has turned a corner in terms of losing effectiveness at preventing spread. It may reduce the severity of the illness, but it seems the new aspects of Omicron will be selected for and spread unabated.

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#174

Post by throwawayboise »

bertr4nd wrote: post #164
mwint wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t have to be concerned. Another commenter brought up that the death rate per 100k is in the range of 1.1 (vaccinated) to ~5 (unvaccinated). Car accidents are >10/100k/yr.

5/100k deaths among unvaccinated can’t possibly be right, can it? There have been 790k Covid deaths so far in the US out of a population of 330 million, which is over 200/100k.

Rates will change as the weakest die off. We may already be though the worst of it.

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#175

Post by rocqua »

Jenk wrote: post #14
neither_color wrote: post #11

It's not deadly enough for me to consider a booster, I'll pass on this supplementary shot https://www.marketwatch.com/story/who-has-not-seen-any-repor...

Not deadly enough _to you_. I'm sure those who are vulnerable will thank you immensely for your compassion.

Besides, the non-deadlyness comes from being able to treat people in the ICU.

That means places are running out of space in their ICUs. Hence peoples cancer treatments are being delayed because there isn't the ICU space to handle these treatments.

The treatment of very ill covid cases has a massive cost in health to the general population. And the people requiring ICU space are predominantly unvaccinated. There lies some of the crux of the issue though. Because taking a vaccine to reduce change of death from 0.5% to 0.1% would feels different than taking a vaccine to reduce chance of blocking someone else's cancer treatment from 0.5% to 0.1% (numbers here are made up by me). Essentially the vaccine mostly protects others who need access to healthcare.

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#176

Post by salawat »

altacc wrote: post #71
silent_cal wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No they should not make recommendations to the public, because they aren't a public agency - they have a conflict of interest. It's like a hedge fund manager giving public advice on stock picks.

So you're saying no company ever should undertake any promotion of the benefits of their products? The advertising industry wants a word with you!

The advertising industry wants a word with everyone, because that's what advertisers exist to do. Getting people to pay attention to what people are willing to pay them to signal boost.

Whether or not that's better off for the person on the receiving end is often entirely orthogonal to the entire arrangement.

See: The Tobacco Industry The Dairy Industry pre-FDA The Sugar Industry The Media Industry Some corners of the Supplement industry

Also see: Lobbying and Psychological anchoring

You, in fact, picked the absolute group of people to prove the virtue of taking someone at their word. Go look for the old Thalidomide adverts, then go read the rest of the history of it.

Point being: always consider the source, and incentives. There is always an angle.

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#177

Post by BiteCode_dev »

junon wrote: post #35
fractal618 wrote: post #6

Is "First Shot" "Second Shot" and "Booster" the same as 3 "doses"?

Yes. Admittedly a weird way of communicating it but I think they're trying to accommodate those who are already confused. I personally think it's having the opposite effect.

I wager it's more to avoid the "what, a 3rd dose?" reaction.

"Booster" is more positive than "we told you it would be immunization, but actually it's partial and limited, and you have to do it again. Woops, now again".

Especially since people have been talking about a 4th dose.

In the context of distrust of the pharma industry, it would be easy to have the social networks to claim pfizer is trying to become the netflix of vaccine and sell shots as a service.

So they are very careful with the wording.

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#178

Post by londons_explore »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #131
nsxwolf wrote: post #128

Why haven’t they updated the vaccine? I thought one of the major benefits of this technology was the ease with which you can modify them.

Pfizer are on it (1). They estimate that it takes around 3 months. Which actually is really easy. And the others are following suit in similar timeframes (2) The hard part is deciding if this variant is the one that you're going to vaccinate against for a year or more. That takes data, which also takes time. 1) https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/nov/26/biontech-say... 2) https://www.reuters.com/business/healthc…

Each successful varient tends to be the ancestor of the next successful varient.

That means if you develop a vaccine against any successful varient today, it will be a closer match than one made last year.

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#179

Post by AlanSE »

jptech wrote: post #149

I bet they had leaked this article to Wall st. yesterday and that's why we saw the markets rise sharply.

Really? This doesn't look like good news to me. It's fairly positive on the effectiveness of boosters, but negative on the original doses. That would still suggest a COVID spread through the vaccinated population (the bulk of the population) with vastly less social distancing that the first year of the pandemic. The US and Europe will not get boosters to even 40% of the population before the new wave's peak.

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#180

Post by throwawayboise »

rocqua wrote: post #150
altacc wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I think the path is countries which have a high vaccination level need to stop implementing restrictions whilst making mitigations such as increasing healthcare capacity (which they should have done 18 months ago but many didn't), paying for rapid testing, enabling PTO for people who think they are sick, sensible mask mandates, etc... These countries need to lead the way to accepting we've waited for vacci…

Making mitigations is difficult. Increasing healthcare capacity is not a short term project. Especially with staffing because the training pipeline is quite long. Besides, restrictions have an exponential effect (by reducing the R value) whilst mitigations only have a linear effect. That makes it hard to replace one with the other. Instead I think earlier, less stringent, restrictions to start damping the wave early,…

An entire new hospital was built near me since this all started. It has fewer beds than the one it replaced (granted, the planning was done pre-pandemic).
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