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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

#491

Post by [deleted] »

mafuy wrote: post #300
hamburglar1 wrote: post #239

Is there a comprehensive white-paper anywhere with sample sizes and error bars? Otherwise this seems like an anecdote. "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" How do we know this study isn't just measuring the effect of that additional week? Also how many subjects was this sera pulled from? Are…

I have no idea why you believe a third dose is just marketing. It is plainly obvious that immunity decreases over time, as is the case for all vaccines against flus and similar. A booster is the normal way to handle it. If there were a way to avoid it, at least one of the many companies working on this would have created it. And one for the regular flu, too, while they are at it, which has not happened in decades.

[deleted]

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#492

Post by makomk »

ptaipale wrote: post #439
TechBro8615 wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Not really. With population vaccination rate nearly 90 % we have something approaching 30-40 % of hospital and ICU bed users vaccinated. The risk of ending up on ICU is about 30 x higher here, when comparing similar demographics. Risk of needing to go to hospital is 19 x higher currently.

The UK is interesting in that only about 70% of the population is fully vaccinated, which seems to be less than the proportion of Covid-releated deaths that were fully vaccinated. This isn't because the Covid vaccines are ineffective at preventing death - it's just that age has a much bigger effect than vaccination on someone's risk of dying from Covid, and the high-risk age groups are almost 100% vaccinated whereas the lowest risk are largely unvaccinated.

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#493

Post by mooncitizen »

johnchristopher wrote: post #226
Slartie wrote: post #96

Earlier 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 ?

Why would you want to buy a vaccine dose straight from pharmacy? It doesn't make too much sense tbh.

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#494

Post by bluGill »

yumraj wrote: post #266

Has anyone seen research around mix and match? As in which is better, stay with the original or get a different booster? Especially mRNA followed by J&J, and J&J followed by mRNA? Additionally, is there any benefit to Pfizer followed by Moderna and vice versa.

There hasn't been a complete matrix. Using moderna as the booster when you started with the other two is best. In the case of J&J moderna as a booster is significantly better, pfizer slightly. However if you had moderna to begin with we don't know. There are many other vaccines out there have haven't been studied at all as well.

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#495

Post by throwaway2037 »

Hekioi wrote: post #477
throwaway2037 wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Nice tip! I didn't know about it. I found this: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250280374

Author: Joe Miller with Dr. Özlem Türeci and Dr. Ugur Sahin >>

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#496

Post by pseudalopex »

Auracle wrote: post #322
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Delta now, which the original jab wasn't designed for. Current vaccines have still been "highly effective" against Delta, so I think that's why this hasn't been done: there's no point in using the big guns now when the existing weapon works well, and you might really need the big gun soon (and you can't know when). So it's better to keep it in reserve. The question now is, is Omicron "it" ?

(Fairly) effective at preventing serious disease/hospitalization. It seems to me the original plan on the vaccines was to reduce r0 below 1 in the population as a whole, but when Delta came along we changed the metrics the vaccines were to be judged by.

Over 90% is more than fairly effective.

All vaccines are judged by preventing serious disease and death. Not meeting higher hopes doesn't change that.

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#497

Post by js2 »

president wrote: post #470
stolenmerch wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hospital beds were "maxed out" before the pandemic. [0] at around 64%. They are sitting at around 78% on average now, with hard hit areas at around 80-85% according to your link. These are almost all at-risk and unvaccinated people. That's my point. If mandates and lockdowns are based on case counts instead of actual dire outcomes, then I fear we're going to continue seeing strange policies and laws for people at lit…

Apparently there was a flu epidemic during 2017-2018 and hospitals were being overwhelmed by flu patients [1]. [1] https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patie...

2017-2018 was an unusually deadly flu season:

> More than 80,000 Americans died of the flu in the winter of 2017-2018, the highest number in over a decade, federal health officials said last week. Although 90 percent of those deaths were in people over age 65, the flu also killed 180 young children and teenagers, more than in any other year since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began using its current surveillance methods.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/01/health/flu-deaths-vaccine...

Other contemporaneous reporting:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/26/health/flu-rates-deaths.h...

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/02/health/flu-symptoms-virus...

Meanwhile:

> Overall, more than 771,000 COVID-19 deaths have been reported in the U.S. during the pandemic. About 385,000 were reported in 2020, according to CDC data, and more than 386,000 have been reported this year.

https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20211122/us-covid-deaths-202...

So 2021 alone has nearly 5x the Covid19 deaths as the 2017-2018 flu season. Also:

> As of last Monday, nine hospitals in Michigan were 100 percent full (https://www.michigan.gov/coronavirus/0,9753,7-406-98159-5236...), and at least 20 others were at or above 90 percent capacity. Statewide, nearly one in four hospital patients (https://www.bridgemi.com/michigan-health-watch/michigan-hosp...) has a confirmed or suspected case of Covid-19. In the last few weeks, my hospital has been consistently at or near capacity and nearly every day the vast majority of those patients are sick with Covid-19. Nearly all have been unvaccinated.

> On some shifts, the stress in the air is palpable. My colleagues and I know the patients are piling up, but there just are not enough nurses to properly triage everyone. A patient experiencing heart failure waits in an emergency room because inpatient rooms upstairs are all occupied. Patients who need surgery can’t be transferred because nearly every hospital within a two-hour drive is near or at capacity, too.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/08/opinion/covid-michigan-su...

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#498

Post by oezi »

nullc wrote: post #383
shmatt wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Hospitalization and death numbers are definitely directly connected 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 a…

The good thing is you don't need a RCT to see that vaccines are effective against mortality. For this you just have to talk to any clinician who is witnessing this winter wave and let them tell you about the difference in age profile of people on the ICU.

Or you look at incidence and observe that with even higher incidence than last year, we do have reduced mortality overall.

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#499

Post by [deleted] »

smus wrote: post #473
hcurtiss wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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

[deleted]

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#500

Post by artificialLimbs »

arisAlexis wrote: post #431
hcurtiss wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except for many cohorts, the overwhelming — near certain — odds are that they’d be fine after contracting COVID.

Why draw a deadly roulette ticket?

Because this:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2021/11/04/fed...

despite this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lepqvdXoA2E&feature=youtu.be

Oops, you can't watch that. Senators holding an expert panel is "dangerous misinformation". Here you go:

https://rumble.com/vokrf7-sen.-johnson-expert-panel-on-feder...

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