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

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#521

Post by juanani » Wed, Dec 08, 2021, 5:52 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.

> Vaccines are better and less risky than having your naive immune system deal with covid.

This sounds sooo backwards. Drug companies really fucked the whole world up with these misinformations. If you could please not parrot it around, would do the future great service. lmfao, we're sooo fucked.

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#522

Post by giarc » Wed, Dec 08, 2021, 5:53 PM UTC

mwint wrote: post #99

giarc wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vaccination. Why it doesn't seem to be working is that not everyone is getting vaccinated and there are pockets where the numbers are even lower. EVERY single study shows the likelihood of hospitalization and death is much higher in unvaccinated individuals, why is this hard to understand?

Let’s suppose we won’t hit 100% vaccination rates, for whatever reason. Are we doing this lockdown thing forever, then?

No, most definitely not. Vaccinated individuals are hospitalized less, are intubated less, die less, quite simply, they use up our healthcare system less. Lockdowns are in essence a way of preserving that limited resource (hospital beds).

Where I live, in Alberta, we had a really bad 4th wave in September/October. Prior to that we were at ~75% vaccination rate in those over 18. The wave almost killed our healthcare system and it was primarily unvaccinated individuals using the beds. Had we been at 100% vaccination rate, we most definitely wouldn't have been in the same position.

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

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Post by hcurtiss » Wed, Dec 08, 2021, 5:54 PM UTC

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

Transmissivity /= mortality rate

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#524

Post by potta_coffee » Wed, Dec 08, 2021, 5:55 PM UTC

bink wrote: post #513

potta_coffee wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was in the military for years. Vaccines galore for any and every conceivable illness. I was required to have flu shots. Every single flu shot I've had gave me the flu. Full blown sickness, within a day of receiving the shot. Since leaving the military I've not had a flu shot and I've not had the flu. Obviously it's anecdotal but you'll never convince me to start taking flu shots after such repeated experiences.

That's not how flu shots work. You might have had an immune response that had you feeling down, but flu shots don't give you the flu.

It's semantics whether or not full-blown flu symptoms are "the flu" or not; I get the flu shot, then I get sick.

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#525

Post by aserdf » Wed, Dec 08, 2021, 5:56 PM UTC

milansm wrote: post #481

Can someone tell if this would be a good personal/societal strategy: once you had covid, or fully vaxxed, it’s much better to be among other people, to be exposed to the virus and continuously train your immune system.

in this layman's view of similar past events that seems to be exactly what happens. look at previous pandemics - Russian, Spanish, Hong Kong. Very similar infection and mortality waves; elderly, predisposed, poor health were the first casualties. as it made its rounds the rest developed immunity over time, along with children being incredibly resilient. as the population turns over those with immunity have low impact encounters. The corresponding viruses from those pandemics continue to circulate today as seasonal flu and cold strains. just my 2 cents.

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#526

Post by dahart » Wed, Dec 08, 2021, 5:56 PM UTC

peteradio wrote: post #518

dahart wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it tyranny if it’s what the majority wants and votes for? It seems like “tyranny” is being used to describe situations where democracy is working as expected, and some people just don’t want to accept the majority result. I feel like this word tyranny is being thrown around a lot lately without much rigorous thinking about the fact that we do need laws because we have no choice about having to share a lot of thing…

How much of your comfort in these drugs is based on who is holding power wherever you may reside? I don't really know what you are talking about with the murder analogy. Obviously the uncomfortable issue at play here is the duality of: Your right to swing your arms ends at my face or whatever. Who's doing what to who here? Are you punching me with the mandate or am I punching you with my hypothetical infection and hy…

> How much of your comfort in these drugs is based on who is holding power wherever you may reside?

Literally zero. I know enough about science and economics to know that the US president has no bearing on the efficacy of the COVID vaccine whatsoever, just like politicians have exactly zero bearing on how well the flu vaccine works or how well Ibuprofen works.

> Your right to swing your arms ends at my face or whatever.

Right, so why in your mind doesn’t that extend to my right to not get infected by you in public?

P.S. you dodged the question: why is a mandate that the majority wants equivalent to tyranny? Do you think the mandate to buy car insurance in order to drive on public roads is tyranny?

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#527

Post by hcknwscommenter » Wed, Dec 08, 2021, 5:56 PM UTC

logicchains wrote: post #40

1cvmask wrote: post #2

This is the scientific meat of the press release where it claims a 25 times neutralizing antibody titers against the Omicron strain with a third dose of Pfizer-BionTech: 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. Each serum was tested simultaneously for its neutralizing antibody titer against the wi…

It's interesting, this differs from recent results suggesting that boosting with vaccines derived from the original Wuhan variant is relatively less effective against newer variants like delta: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.12.21261952v... .

I briefly skimmed the article at the medrxiv link, but it does not seem to assay neutralizing antibody titer. Rather the medrxiv link just assays "reactivity." I suppose it would be great if the booster increased reactivity against all variants. But it is not so surprising that a booster furthers the selection of higher affinity antibodies, which tend to be more specifically adapted to the antigen. However, at the end of the day, the Pfizer data shows that either this decrease in reactivity is not enough to overcome the recovery in titer elicited by the booster or that the decrease in reactivity is not a general phenomenon. Or, hopefully not the case, we will start to see this decrease in reactivity effect as we look at larger sample sizes. I think there is a ton of data available to Pfizer about booster titers/effectiveness, so I would be surprised to see larger sample sizes change the conclusions.

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#528

Post by javagram » Wed, Dec 08, 2021, 5:57 PM UTC

dolni wrote: post #373

dragontamer wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

“ If you only know one thing, you keep your mouth shut until you know more. ”

So hiding and covering up information is the way you think scientists should build trust, rather than being open and also clear about the limitations?

The lack of trust has nothing to do with scientists publishing data and everything to do with hucksters who misinterpret or lie about it to spread anti-vaccine panic or “government control” conspiracy theories.

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#529

Post by ericmay » Wed, Dec 08, 2021, 5:57 PM UTC

m-i-l wrote: post #441

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…

I got the flu when I was in my late 20s. Up until that point, in common I suspect with most teens and twenty-somethings, I had thought myself pretty much indestructible, so would never have even thought about getting a flu vaccine - I thought that was only for the old and vulnerable. However, since that experience, I try and get one every year - even if you are young and healthy it can be pretty rough, and why risk h…

> about whether catching something gives you better protection than having a vaccine

It's also medically incorrect. When you get a vaccine you are literally getting a live virus injected into you. There's no difference for your immune system. One isn't "fake" and the other "natural". Period.

To your point, viruses mutate and so similar to the flu and flu vaccine, if COVID-19 continues to mutate in ways that are different enough we'll have to get new COVID shots which use modeling to predict the likely virulent strains. People that are aghast about this concept are not really understanding the new reality we're in. The only hope is that if enough people get vaccinated quickly enough, a new strain won't mutate and cause the vaccines to lose some effectiveness. I think that's a wildly naive hope, though and the best path forward is just treating this like a worse flu and moving on with our lives.

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#530

Post by javagram » Wed, Dec 08, 2021, 5:58 PM UTC

lambdaba wrote: post #193

avsteele wrote: post #160

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…

Not the expert you were asking but one thing I know is natural immunity isn't just antibodies, which is why traditional inactivated vaccines yield more robust and long-lasting protection.

FYI, vector vaccines and mRNA vaccines also create t-cell immunity , not just antibodies. It’s not just “inactivated vaccines” that do so.