381–390 of 717 posts
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Is every six months (and, keep in mind, "every" is one six month increment so far) really that different from every twelve months, the schedule I've received a flu shot on for some number of years?
Flu shots are not required for any healthy individual
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.
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…
Hospitalization and death numbers are definitely directly connected to how long its been since you got your shot. So for now, it does not seem like the whole long immunity/T-B-cell thing is happening with Pfizer/Moderna/J&J at least There is a very real per month affect, every month after your latest mRNA shot, your chances of getting seriously sick get a little bigger. After 6 months they get so big that scientists…
There has never been a RCT which showed covid vaccination reduces mortality. I believe they do but this has not been rigorously shown.
Unfortunately, even though we've had gigantic RCTs on covid none of them showed statistically significant covid-mortality in the unvaccinated population (potentially due to prescreening eliminating people who were at risk of dying), so they weren't able to show any improvement.
Numbers from the population have been suggestive, but unfortunately you can get the same graphs -- an initial spike of reduced mortality with a pronounced fall off in effectiveness -- from a simulation where the vaccine has no effect on mortality at all.
The reason for this is that our stats on the public measure time lagged mortality against current vaccination numbers. People reported dead today actually died a week before and got sick two weeks before that. When the increase in new vaccination is high, you will overestimate the size of the population for the people who died and falsely think the vaccine is more effective than it is. And you end up with your 'per month effect' -- the same statistical error will make the cycle nicely repeat with boosters due to the same population size error for the newly boosted population.
This is the sort of bias that is structurally eliminated in RCT design and hard to avoid in population monitoring.
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> 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…
They also have a licensee (and early R&D investor) in China, Fosun Pharma. I don't know if Fosun is actively manufacturing and distributing, but I think they have the exclusive rights for the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau.
Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fosun_Pharma#COVID-19
I cannot find any references via Google that prove Fosun Pharma has exclusive rights for Taiwan. If anyone has any specifics, please reply. Honestly, I doubt it, as Fosun in a mainland Chinese corporation and China was actively blocking Taiwan out of international COVID efforts efforts vis-a-vis WHO (World Health Org).
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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.
>It's like a hedge fund manager giving public advice on stock picks. Why not? Stock picking is their job. Given that logic, a teacher shouldn't tell people how to teach their kid to read, and a plumber shouldn't tell people how to change a faucet.
The hedge fund manager has access to billions in managed capital. If he can advertise positions to the public, and the public takes his advice; he can manipulate his billions of dollars vs the known positions he gives out to hedge his own positions.
This is a 5 years olds description of how this works.
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> This is exactly the problem with pandemic messaging There's two parts to the pandemic. Gathering information, and spreading information. You need to spread the currently known things, so that scientists know what else to look for. Welcome to the world of science and learning. You know one thing, and then it changes as new tests come in. Its impossible to get to the truth from the beginning in one step.
On the contrary -- welcome to the world trust building. If you only know one thing, you keep your mouth shut until you know more. And if the thing you know isn't actually known, like how effective the vaccine really is, that goes double. Notice that doesn't require you to "know the truth from the beginning in one step." It requires the people in charge to show some restraint. You only get so many opportunities to be…
Antivaxxers are spreading blatantly wrong information and are building trust among their base far faster. I still see bullshit about ivermectin pop up these days.
And instead, a little nitpicky mistake like 'vaccines work against COVID-19 90% but only vs Delta 60%' is enough to erode your trust?
Delta didn't even exist when the original 95% claims were made. Furthermore, the 95% claim is still true for Alpha and the original strain.
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Misinformation is everywhere, and no one I know has managed to ween themselves off of it. You talk about "breaking trust", except I've got plenty of friends and family who have been on the Hydroxychloroquine / Ivermectin / Vitamin D bullshit train, none-the-wiser to the moving goalposts and faulty logic that has bombarded them.
Misinformation does _NOT_ erode trust. It in facts builds it up. People who eat up the Hydroxycholorquine stuff from last year still don't want to be wrong and have double-downed upon the subject (although they've changed it up to other drugs).
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> There is little evidence right now that immunity through a natural infection is better than immunity from a vaccine. This is a very strong claim to make without any evidence or proof. To the contrary, there is strong evidence that natural infection brings considerably better immunity than any vaccination does. [0] Study analyzed: > 2.5 million people in Israel, spanning March 1st 2020 to August 14th 2021. Full stud…
There is a more recent U.S. study [1], which comes to a different conclusion, and neither of these studies take into account boosters (or a longer delay between shots), which by all accounts improves vaccine effectiveness by ~10x. Being vaccinated and then boosted offers as worst equal protection, probably better, against infection and disease, with much much lower risk of side effects, serious disease, long covid or…
It basically says unvaccinated people who are already or recently sick (with any "covid-like" symptoms) are more likely to go to the hospital once they catch covid (vs vaccinated). (Duh.)
Worse, it presumes any of those sick people with respiratory symptoms had natural immunity to covid without any confirmation.
So it's not comparing natural immunity to vaccinated immunity, but vaccinated individuals vs anybody-unvaccinated-thats-been-sick-with-anything-in-the-last-6-months.
Put another way, it presumes any "covid-like" symptoms results in natural immunity to covid, then puts that assumption to the test.
And instead of admitting it's a bad assumption and that most of this group didn't previously have covid, they attribute it to natural immunity not being effective.
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They also have a licensee (and early R&D investor) in China, Fosun Pharma. I don't know if Fosun is actively manufacturing and distributing, but I think they have the exclusive rights for the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau.
Doses of BioNTech vaccine distributed by gov'ts in Hongkong and Macao were manufactored by Fosun Pharma. As vaccination rate has dropped dramatically since the initial rush, I don't know if Fosun Pharma is still manufacturing the BioNTech vaccine. Weirdly, I still don't think any foreign made vaccines are approved in mainland China. Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fosun_Pharma#COVID-19 I cannot find any reference…
https://investors.biontech.de/news-releases/news-release-det... (2020)
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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.
> not taking it and dying COVID survival rate is > 99%
1 in 100 odds isn't super great, and that's ignoring the unknown impact of long-COVID. The risk of bad vaccine side-effects is lower than the chance of death.
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This is a good point. Hospitalization and death are really all that matter. People will be getting sick (to lesser degrees, likely, but it will still happen) from this for generations to come. What really matters is whether or not you are sick in bed at home and missing a few days of work vs sick in the hospital, occupying emergency health resources and facing potential death.
And case numbers are the best metric we have to predict deaths and hospitalization. Together with vaccination rates, age and so on. But overall, if cases go up, hospitalization will go up a couple of weeks later. Why would we not use that to enable to us act instead of reacting once it's too late?