Biontech founder Livestream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nojokAK2vgU
Damn thanks. I like the German accent.
Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant
251–260 of 717 posts
Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Well, it was effective as promised against the strains it was marketed as effective against. Those strains have been effectively eradicated. The issue is Delta, and now Omicron, which developed after the vaccine was designed.
They also said the vaccine targeted the spike protein, which was said to be very unlikely to mutate since it's such a vital part of the virus and there is little room for variation.
Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
How long does it take to ramp up production? I'm at 6 months and a few days since my 2nd shot. Do I get a booster now or wait a few months in hope of an updated one?
Get a booster when you can, it is worth it. I had mine last week. We don't know if and when there will be an omicron-specific jab, and a mRNA 3rd dose cuts your chances of bad outcome (severe illness, hospitalisation) from omicron or previous variants to a lot lower than 2 doses ever did. https://twitter.com/PaulMainwood/status/1458020957457731585 https://twitter.com/PaulMainwood/status/1460191035531878405
I'll likely do that. For what it's worth I was not eligible for a booster where I live until very recently.
Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well the problem suggested by other research is that when vaccinated people are infected with a functionally different strain they don’t appear to create new antibodies. This is consistent with other research showing that people who are vaccinated then infected are more likely to get reinfected than those who were simply infected and recovered. The alternative outlook here is that vaccinated people are more likely to…
This has always been my fear. I'm vaccinated (Moderna) and got COVID in September. I recovered quickly - about 3 days. But I'm worried that my body did not get to have a proper immune response and that as such, I'll have to continue get vaccinated forever whereas if I had just gotten COVID without the vaccine maybe I would be set. But I haven't found _much_ data to back up this concern.
There is little evidence right now that immunity through a natural infection is better than immunity from a vaccine.
Given the strains circulating now I don’t think your concern is valid. Vaccines are better and less risky than having your naive immune system deal with covid. Maybe that will change with a future strain (though I’d bet against it), but it isn’t the case now.
Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
And that’s not including the recent studies of high death rates for those with severe covid within a year.
Link? My initial impression is that this would be confounded by people who have severe covid also tending to be old or otherwise sickly, unless they found a way to control for that.
Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
I don't really care about having a vaccine every 6 months but the masks are very restrictive IMO. That can't be forever. There needs to be an actual solution. I know it's not there now but I mean in the long run.
Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
BioNTech distributes directly in Germany for sure. Also as far as I know in all European Union countries, because they basically bulk-ordered their vaccine supply together (though the deliveries are individually split up to each country). But in the end it shouldn't matter anyway from a financial perspective, since BioNTech and Pfizer have a 50:50 split agreement on all costs and revenues related to the vaccine. That…
Is it possible to officially buy a BioNTech dose in Germany ?
Yes and no. You can order Comirnaty in Germany if you're a doctor's practice, and the deliveries will come from the central distribution facilities in each German state. Those facilities are receiving shipments from the Marburg production facility that BioNTech owns and operates. Similarly, if you were to do the same as a Belgian physician, you would receive shipments that originate in Pfizer's production facility in Belgium. It's exactly the same product though. I don't know if there's a difference in the labeling beyond specifying production site. The production lot labels you get for each dose to be added to patient vaccination records look exactly the same (other than the lot serial numbers of course).
Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant
#258Earlier 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.
A big chunk of US deaths were elderly in nursing homes when officials made uninformed decisions to put infected individuals back into the homes (when we knew a lot less about the virus) and it ripped through. Very sad, but that's where we get a big portion of that 790k.
Given that we've learned a lot, tactics and strategies have evolved, and therapeutics are getting better, death rate should continue to go down.
That's why many places in the US feel somewhat back to normal.
Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant
#259If 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).
This is not my area but isn't the point of the mRNA vaccines that that virus' DNA is never introduced into your body? You only end up with a narrow transcribed slice of that DNA targeting a specific protein.
I've also never heard of your immune system targetting a genome; how is it generally gaining access to that genome when it is encapsulated?
My understanding of the spike targeting is that COVID is only so infectious because of the specific configuration of that spike protein. Change it too much, and it stops being nearly as infectious (and thus stops being COVID as we know it).
Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
As someone who has quite some experience in running operations based on data, numbers and metrics the German approach to COVID on that front alone really puzzled me from the beginning. First the incidence of 50 that they pulled out of their ass for contact tracing, which was ignored basically the next day. Then the fact that resources weren't really increased to improve contract traceability. Then the decision to use…
German government staff is as un-digital as you can get. They have no idea how a small modeling group would have helped. Maybe the incoming government will do better, but I am not holding my breath.
Access to modeling isn't even the issue, given RKI, Charité, ... Asking those resources the right questions and turning their results into policy and communicating it is the problem, which is even more fundamental "that's what a government is for" skills...