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Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

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471–480 of 717 posts

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#471
post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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…

Either you’re using the medical definition of mild (didn’t require hospitalization) or you haven’t gotten a true influenza infection in a long time. So many people call strong colds a “flu”, which creates confusion around its severity and contributes to people avoiding the vaccines. But real influenza will have you in bed for a week and set back your fitness for a month (making you tired after even moderate exertion).

Getting my first real flu since childhood is definitely what got me back on the vaccine train. All this talk about mortality, I want to minimize even basic inconvenience to myself!

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#472
post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This preprint also shows reduced antibody neutralization of omicron in comparison to delta (including for double vaccinated + previous infection). Note the sample sizes for all these studies is small. 12 participants for the AHRI paper and 8 to 20 per group for this one. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.07.21267432v...

Sample size doesn't really matter much in this kind of study.

Ideally you'd match it to some population of interest. For my own medical affairs, I don't care what grand-pappy's results are here, I want to know how cousin Tim fairs.

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#473
post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yeah let's play this game! Let me count all the viruses that killed close to a million Americans in the last 2 years!

1. COVID

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#474

This paper from Africa Health Research Institute shows a 41x reduction in effectiveness of pfizer vaccine for omicron. https://www.ahri.org/omicron-incompletely-escapes-immunity-i... https://www.ahri.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/MEDRXIV-2021...

This paper doesn't even attempt to measure effectiveness. It measures neutralization titers which is a totally different thing.

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#475
post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This preprint also shows reduced antibody neutralization of omicron in comparison to delta (including for double vaccinated + previous infection). Note the sample sizes for all these studies is small. 12 participants for the AHRI paper and 8 to 20 per group for this one. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.07.21267432v...

Sample size doesn't really matter much in this kind of study.

Why not? I’m no statistician, so my basic understanding is you should always prefer bigger sample sizes to ensure statistically significant findings.

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there's no need for the scare quotes around "optional", its still optional regardless of how much fearmongering and conspiracy stuff you spew

Fearmongering? I was literally forced to take it, with my company directly referencing Biden's order for companies > 100 to require it. I'm not sure where you get off calling it a conspiracy.

You're "literally forced" to do tons of things in order to participate in society in any major degree for the sake of public safety and standards of living. I don't know why you people get so obsessed about this effort to avoid spreading transmissible disease and not things like the requirement to not be naked in public, or requiring your vehicle to be considered safe to drive on public roadways.

Don't pretend like the government acting in the name of public safety is somehow completely unique here, and that governments have never made requirements to help prevent needless deaths before.

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#477
post #191

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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…

You wrote: > I double checked on Wiki. There are two founders -- husband and wife. While both have Turkish heritage, only one is a Turkish immigrant. To be fair, I agree with the overall sentiment of your comment! Husband: Uğur Şahin was born in Turkey, and immigrated to Germany at age 4 Wife: Özlem Türeci was born in Germany. Her parents immigrated to Germany from Turkey. If anyone is interested to learn more about…

They also wrote a book

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#478
post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Indeed. Every time I read a post like the grandparent I move closer to full-blown antivaxx.

Pedantically, basing your stance purely on being tired of being told what to do _isn’t_ an intelligent strategy. Not saying that’s your entire stance, but emotional contrarianism is not a good reason to update your priors.

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#479

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…

I watch This Week in Virology occasionally. A discussion among virology professors. Vincent Racaniello who kind of seems to run TWiV has been skeptical about boosters. His argument is that they're not needed (unless you got the J&J) because your first 2 vaccinations will protect you from serious illness. You might something akin to a nasty cold but you'll be protected from hospitalization or worse. His argument is also that we need to get the rest of the world fully vaccinated before we start looking at boosters here in the US.

Also, Pfizer is only looking at antibody responses here, not T-Cell & memory B cell responses and other parts of the immune system that were primed by vaccination.

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Checking out your replies that got flagged and killed. Mob style censorship is alive and well here.

It's a lost battle, the majority on HN decided to suspend doubt about the vaccines and the crooks at Pfizer (look at their judiciary past, the name crook is warranted). It's funny how smart people can read regularly articles that show that 90% of scientific papers aren't reproducible (so it's actually not science) then will proceed to trust blindly the next scientific paper they read.

Blind faith in so-called science is the religion of this age.

Pfizer's history (and J&J...and every pharma company) is shocking. It seems like a couple of years ago I heard about the evils of "Big Pharma" constantly.

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