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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

#191

Post by mrtksn »

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…

> Does anyone have a list where BionTech distributes directly?

It's Germany and Turkey.

In a press release earlier this year[0], BioNTech described their relationship with Pfizer and they listed the countries it covers. Also, for China they have another company instead of Pfizer.

Why Germany and Turkey, you may ask? Well, the inventors and founders of the company are Turkish immigrants to Germany. So they are able to give the vaccine on special terms to the country they came from and the country that made them. To be honest, Turkey is extremely lucky that they feel like helping out the motherland. Thanks to them, Turkey has abundance of the vaccine and probably at a good price.

[0] https://investors.biontech.de/news-releases/news-release-det...

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#192

Post by robotmay »

swayvil wrote: post #168

Now they want us to take the vax every 9 months forever. The pharmacorps have become our landlords. Which is the whole point of course.

Ignoring that the vaccines are free to the individual and therefore not at all similar to a landlord/tenant relationship, you always have the option of not taking it and dying, which is a cool loophole that gets you out of the implied contract. Life hack.

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#193

Post by lambdaba »

avsteele wrote: post #160

If there is an expert in immunology here I'd really like to ask a question: Aren't antibody titers just one measure of immunity? Since ~everyone with just two shots get them a while ago, and people receiving the boosters are receiving them now, wouldn't we expect must higher levels of neutralizing antibodies in boosted people? I know the number of antibodies fades over time, (whether from vaccine or infection) but th…

Not the expert you were asking but one thing I know is natural immunity isn't just antibodies, which is why traditional inactivated vaccines yield more robust and long-lasting protection.

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#194

Post by freemint »

stolenmerch wrote: post #146

If I'm reading this correctly, this is "protection against severe disease" and has little to do with transmission. The National Airport Data from Israel seems to suggest "the absolute number of infected individuals in the Vaccinated (boosted) group is likely to be at least as high as in the Unvaccinated" [0] So it seems to me that as long as we all remain obsessed with case numbers and not actual hospitalizations and…

The reason why people are obsessed with case numbers and not deaths is that case numbers control the case numbers in the insufficiently immunized which predicts death toll 3 weeks ahead of time.

Why would you want to control a system with 2-3 weeks of additional lag in your input data when case numbers (a thing that is somewhat easy to measure) correlates so well future deaths?

Ideally politician would have some family of models the equivalent of the CDC runs 3 weeks into the future which accounts for seasonality, social events so we could model predictive control on the death numbers but my impression is that is not done (transparently), due to mistrust in experts.

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#195

Post by hef19898 »

stolenmerch wrote: post #146

If I'm reading this correctly, this is "protection against severe disease" and has little to do with transmission. The National Airport Data from Israel seems to suggest "the absolute number of infected individuals in the Vaccinated (boosted) group is likely to be at least as high as in the Unvaccinated" [0] So it seems to me that as long as we all remain obsessed with case numbers and not actual hospitalizations and…

Maybe, maybe not. It is clear, even to someone with zero background in vaccines, that the COVID vaccines are no resulting in sterilizing immunity. Everyone said as much since the first trials.

What does this mean? IMHO it means that once we reached sufficient levels of vaccinations (no idea what that would be, definitely above 70%) COVID will be nothing more than a severe flue / cold for most of the population, if they get it at all. It would also, I would assume, push mutations down the more infections and less severe route in order to overcome the limited spread among the vaccinated (they are still overall less infectious then unvaccinted people) and the vaccines themselves. Both are good news.

And that drives me so crazy with the anti-vaxxers (among a lot of things with them). They don't want the shots because a) COVID is just a flew (and simultaniously a deadly bio weapon the Chinese spread in order to win a global economic war...) and b) vaccinated people are also infectious and can get it. Well, they kind of have it backwards there, don't they? it actually will be like a cold because people are vaccinated, not before. At which point the fact that vaccinated people can also transmit COVID is not really important anymore.

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#197

Post by detaro »

cblconfederate wrote: post #187
stolenmerch wrote: post #146

If I'm reading this correctly, this is "protection against severe disease" and has little to do with transmission. The National Airport Data from Israel seems to suggest "the absolute number of infected individuals in the Vaccinated (boosted) group is likely to be at least as high as in the Unvaccinated" [0] So it seems to me that as long as we all remain obsessed with case numbers and not actual hospitalizations and…

This is neither about transmission nor severe disease. The study itself is a lab test to see how the new virus holds up against the vaccines, their suggestions about protection are still conjecture

Yes, as far as I understand it's somewhat of an indicator for infection risk, but can't capture overall consequences, and I think right now any strong statement for "it's going to be this bad/not bad" should be taken with a large grain of salt - we just don't know yet and are watching datapoints coming in day by day.

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#198

Post by formerly_proven »

detaro wrote: post #183
stolenmerch wrote: post #146

If I'm reading this correctly, this is "protection against severe disease" and has little to do with transmission. The National Airport Data from Israel seems to suggest "the absolute number of infected individuals in the Vaccinated (boosted) group is likely to be at least as high as in the Unvaccinated" [0] So it seems to me that as long as we all remain obsessed with case numbers and not actual hospitalizations and…

> all remain obsessed with case numbers and not actual hospitalizations and death It's a balance. E.g. Germanys current trouble is a direct consequence of official policy that had a core of "we only care about hospitalizations now", but ignored "... and based on case numbers and other statistics, what will future hospitalizations look like if we don't change anything about our approach" - not helped by election campa…

The superseded government (by way of Jens Spahn) admitted that it held back on acting w.r.t. COVID in 2021 to avoid negative impact on their campaign. General inaction or adverse action in other areas (e.g. ICU staffing, leerdenker) did not help, either.

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#199

Post by Enginerrrd »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #177
junon wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 netfl…

Booster is also established immunology nomenclature that perfectly fits the situation, I don't think it's an attempt to "spin" it.

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#200

Post by codeulike »

avsteele wrote: post #160

If there is an expert in immunology here I'd really like to ask a question: Aren't antibody titers just one measure of immunity? Since ~everyone with just two shots get them a while ago, and people receiving the boosters are receiving them now, wouldn't we expect must higher levels of neutralizing antibodies in boosted people? I know the number of antibodies fades over time, (whether from vaccine or infection) but th…

There's the whole t-cell and b-cell stuff that protects from serious disease but it's much harder to test/measure so you don't get these rapid headline grabbing lab studies. T-cells as I understand it are much less likely to be thrown off by spike mutations because they react to whole genome of virus (edit: T-cells from an infection that is).
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