Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant • Hacker News Board

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#401

Post by hcurtiss » Wed, Dec 08, 2021, 4:21 PM UTC

ethbr0 wrote: post #232

listless wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's the usual way it goes, as long as relatively high mortality virus is circulating in most of the world population. Both infection- and vaccination-produced immunity decays over time. So everyone's choice is between keeping up their vaccination, or getting COVID repeatedly. Which boils down to a question of whether you think being vaccinated or getting COVID is less risky. Yes, there's some +/- on the decay rate…

“Relatively high mortality”? Can you think of any virus even close to COVID mortality that we take these kinds of draconian measures to prevent?

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#402

Post by m0llusk » Wed, Dec 08, 2021, 4:21 PM UTC

lordlimecat wrote: post #272

rich_sasha wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From reading around (not a biologist), I get the impression that there's some kind of super-linear immunity building, not just waning protection. Standard children's vaccines often have a few doses, and not evenly spaced. Soo... you're building up better immunity against the "baseline" virus with each dose. That immunity translates to some (reduced) immunity to the variants. But if the "baseline" is high enough, you…

My understanding is that there is poor evidence that any of the vaccines cause a statistically significant increase in blood clots over any other vaccine-- that the act of getting an immunization can (very rarely) trigger a blood clot regardless of what it is and COVID just happens to be in the hyper-sensitive spotlight.

It is likely that the cause or at least a cause of rare blood clots has been found. There is a chance that adenovirus used to make vaccines can bind to a specific clotting factor in the blood which then in rare cases may be attacked by antibodies created by the immune system to fight the infection.

https://www.biospace.com/article/researchers-find-possible-c...

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#403

Post by ptaipale » Wed, Dec 08, 2021, 4:22 PM UTC

dolni wrote: post #333

mitchdoogle wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We get flu vaccine every year, what's wrong with getting vaccinated forever?

First of all, "we" don't all get the flu vaccine every year. Those of us who are healthy can elect not to get it and be just fine. Secondly, the flu vaccine isn't the same vaccine every year. It is reformulated to target the flu strains that are predicted to be dominant that season. Thirdly, the flu vaccines effectiveness varies wildly from pretty darn good to almost worthless. Usually depending on how accurately flu…

You cannot "elect" to not get a vaccine and be just fine. You're just relying on your luck after electing not to reduce the risks.

The risks vary with different diseases, and in different people, and in different demographic environments. But with covid, it's quite clear that for all adults, the risk reduction by vaccine far outweighs the risks of vaccine complications.

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#404

Post by christkv » Wed, Dec 08, 2021, 4:22 PM UTC

TechBro8615 wrote: post #320

invalidusernam3 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but I'm willing to bet most of the hospitalised are not vaccinated, or at least a disproportionate amount of them aren't vaccinated

How much are you willing to bet? Keep in mind that if the population is 90% vaccinated, you expect something approaching 90% of ICU beds to be vaccinated (well, with an effective and sterilizing vaccine you wouldn’t expect this, but that’s not where we are). In England last month, 79% of Covid deaths were vaccinated. Currently about 36% of hospitalizations are unvaccinated. The raw data is here, good luck parsing any…

A majority of deaths in the winter months will be elderly people with underlying health conditions that might have died from a flue or cold virus if covid was not circulating. It's more interesting to see excess deaths for this winter. I have a hunch excess death rates will be similar to 2019.

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#405

Post by jaywalk » Wed, Dec 08, 2021, 4:22 PM UTC

tallanvor wrote: post #380

jaspax wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who's "we"? I don't intend any hostility here. But I have never gotten a flu vaccine in my life, and it seems deeply silly to me to get a yearly shot just to cut down on the chance of mild illness. A quick poll of my acquaintances reveals that almost no one in my social circle gets flu shots, either. This makes me wonder whether the antagonism to mandatory COVID boosters is just an intensification of an existing divi…

"We" are people intelligent to recognize that vaccination against diseases like the flu is a good idea even if we're healthy and unlikely to have significant complications. "We" know that the shot will make it less likely for us to get sick, and that we're more likely to have a mild case if we do get it after being vaccinated. "We" also recognize that getting vaccinated helps reduce the number of people who spread a…

"You are not intelligent because you make different personal medical decisions than I do."

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#406

Post by freeflight » Wed, Dec 08, 2021, 4:23 PM UTC

freemint wrote: post #194

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 fami…

> 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?

Because case numbers are actually not easy to measure.

I'm basing this of my personal experience working in a German healthcare company, we took up testing during the pandemic; All the tests we do are on unvaccinated people.

That's because unvaccinated people are the only ones who need mandatory, and up to date, tests for pretty much everything from the barber to eating at a restaurant. Recently, it's become so strict that unvaccinated people even need a test to use public transport.

Vaccinated people do not need these mandatory tests, I have no clue who tests them and at what intervals, it certainly ain't the public testing stations, as those are now literally swarmed by the unvaccinated and nobody would go there if they didn't have to.

Which means that in practice we have a massive sampling bias going on; Somebody who's unvaccinated will be very likely to get flagged as positive very quickly, while somebody who's vaccinated would need to decide on their own to do a test.

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#407

Post by pseudalopex » Wed, Dec 08, 2021, 4:23 PM UTC

gonehome wrote: post #142

cure wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to this source https://www.statnews.com/2021/02/02/comparing-the-covid-19-v... the original Pfizer dose was 30 micrograms of vaccine, while Moderna's was 100 micrograms. If that is correct, then Moderna's booster would still be more vaccine (50 micrograms) than Pfizer's original dose. Of course more is not necessarily better!

Though in this case I suspect more was better. At least that’s my hypothesis for why moderna vaccine immunity held up better against delta than Pfizer

Moderna had more time between doses too.

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#408

Post by Slartie » Wed, Dec 08, 2021, 4:23 PM UTC

Kliment wrote: post #257

johnchristopher wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

However doctors cannot currently order Comirnaty "directly" from anywhere except from the government-controlled distribution system, which operates along the same basic distribution lines that are also used for other vaccines and medicine products, but is governed by special rules (for example the government can limit the number of doses a single doctor can order if demand outstrips supply).

And when it comes to ordering from the manufacturer, whether it's Pfizer or BioNTech, AFAIK nobody except nation states can do that. They just don't accept anyone else as customers - with very rare, but notable exceptions (there was this occurrence where the company TSMC ordered some millions of doses of Comirnaty as a proxy for the Taiwan government because some weird Chinese intervention, of which I didn't fully understand the exact mechanism how it worked, prevented Taiwan from ordering directly).

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#409

Post by timr » Wed, Dec 08, 2021, 4:23 PM UTC

peter422 wrote: post #254

listless wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

https://www.science.org/content/article/having-sars-cov-2-on...

> The natural immune protection that develops after a SARS-CoV-2 infection offers considerably more of a shield against the Delta variant of the pandemic coronavirus than two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, according to a large Israeli study that some scientists wish came with a “Don’t try this at home” label. The newly released data show people who once had a SARS-CoV-2 infection were much less likely than never-infected, vaccinated people to get Delta, develop symptoms from it, or become hospitalized with serious COVID-19.

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#410

Post by hcurtiss » Wed, Dec 08, 2021, 4:23 PM UTC

Spare_account wrote: post #315

nahqz wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is absolutely no way to stop the spread forever. Just suggesting it is crazy. It is an option you have to forget about. Stalling the spread is useless as well - we have already had two major mutations in less than two years.

>we have already had two major mutations in less than two years. How frequently do equivalent Flu mutations occur?

Every. Single. Year.