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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

#611

Post by dahart »

spurgu wrote: post #600
dahart wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 whatev…

Oh you mean the Americans who think they have a 15-25% chance of dying from Covid if they get it? I wouldn't trust the majority to be well-informed. https://covid19pulse.usc.edu/ (granted the numbers have been going down recently, but it still illustrates the hysteria quite well) And I also wouldn't trust big pharma to have my best interest in mind.

> Oh you mean the Americans who think they have a 15-25% chance of dying from Covid if they get it?

Absolutely not. I meant the total number of people who have actually died from it compared to the near zero vaccine fatalities.

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#612

Post by monopoledance »

fluidcruft wrote: post #594
sjg007 wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eventually you clear the infection in most cases. How do you think that happens?

It happens the same way. This is just talking about rates. When naive B cells see that existing antibodies are already present on the virus they take that as a signal that memory B cells already exist and the search for new antibodies is called off. So there's a balance between the quantity of virus, how quickly the virus replicates, quantity of antibodies, how well the antibodies bind to the virus, and how many boun…

> When naive B cells see that existing antibodies are already present

I don't think this is how this works.

They "see" antibodies sticking to a target, as successful antibodies are presented for replication and refinement. This implies a functional response. If the vaccine antibodies wouldn't work on a new strain, the B cells wouldn't recognize them as suitable candidates.

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#613

Post by bsder »

listless wrote: post #206
nostrebored wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the problem suggested by other research is that when vaccinated people are infected with a functionally different strain they don’t appear to create new antibodies. This is consistent with other research showing that people who are vaccinated then infected are more likely to get reinfected than those who were simply infected and recovered. The alternative outlook here is that vaccinated people are more likely to…

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.

Would you have preferred to have a 103F fever for 2 weeks, your stamina be shot for almost a year, and a bunch of auxiliary symptoms?

Speaking as someone who got Covid Original Flavour(tm) before vaccines, I'd gladly trade our positions. And my case would be considered "mild"--I never lost my sense of smell, for example.

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#614

Post by jmnicolas »

junon wrote: post #601
ostenning wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I did take the vaccine, twice. It gives me great anxiety to think about taking it again given what I have gone through. My situation improved significantly but I might not be so lucky next time. I shouldnt have to weigh up potential damage to my heart, versus my right to freedom of movement (im an expat). Personally im holding out for Novavax now.

There have only been a handful of cases of myocarditis or pericarditis in mRNA vaccine recipients, generally young males. A handful . And none of them have died from it. Remember that VAERS is pretty much the most garbage 'signal' you can possibly get when it comes to side effect reporting as there is pretty much no barrier to entry to get a 'side effect' in there - much less the requirement that you're a medical pro…

> There have only been a handful of cases of myocarditis or pericarditis in mRNA vaccine recipients, generally young males. A handful. And none of them have died from it.

Didn't you see the wave of cardiac problems in sports? It's much more than a handful, I here about it almost daily.

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#615

Post by GuB-42 »

junon wrote: post #601
ostenning wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I did take the vaccine, twice. It gives me great anxiety to think about taking it again given what I have gone through. My situation improved significantly but I might not be so lucky next time. I shouldnt have to weigh up potential damage to my heart, versus my right to freedom of movement (im an expat). Personally im holding out for Novavax now.

There have only been a handful of cases of myocarditis or pericarditis in mRNA vaccine recipients, generally young males. A handful . And none of them have died from it. Remember that VAERS is pretty much the most garbage 'signal' you can possibly get when it comes to side effect reporting as there is pretty much no barrier to entry to get a 'side effect' in there - much less the requirement that you're a medical pro…

You have pretty large hands... For young men, it is about 1/10000 with the Moderna vaccine. No fatal cases AFAIK, but considering that we are talking about young men who are less likely to get severe covid, it is less than ideal. Benefit/risk is still good, but will it still be the case if we need a new dose every 6 months?

Anyways, for that reason, health authorities recommend Pfizer/Biontech over Moderna for people under 30. And it is probably what encouraged the use of half doses of the Moderna vaccine for booster shots.

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#616

Post by monopoledance »

boc wrote: post #557
bavell wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t think that your model of how vaccines work really makes sense. I believe OP is referencing "Original antigenic sin" [0]. "This leaves the immune system "trapped" by the first response it has made to each antigen, and unable to mount potentially more effective responses during subsequent infections." [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_antigenic_sin

If this was true vaccines would be ineffective against Delta and other mutated variants, but it turns out the vast, vast majority of cases that are severe or result in death are among the unvaccinated. This is just bad science and isn't supported by real-world outcomes.

Also adaptation of antibodies evidently works, as cross-vaccination schemes improve response rates. E.g. 2 doses Moderna, then 1 dose BionTech and vice versa, is better than 3 doses of the same for either one.

https://twitter.com/Karl_Lauterbach/status/14516437827855564...

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#617

Post by AndrewUnmuted »

peter422 wrote: post #586
AndrewUnmuted wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You start out by saying their interpretation is wrong, but their interpretation is that it: > presumes any of those sick people with respiratory symptoms had natural immunity to covid without any confirmation. This is an accurate statement to make about the study. Until you can effectively prove somehow this is not the case, it's only you who > shows your internal bias in this matter

No it doesn’t. Read the study. People being hospitalized with covid-like symptoms is the broader population and those with prior confirmed covid infections and those with prior confirmed vaccines within that population are the sample groups where the covid infections rates are compared. Do you genuinely believe a study with such a massive and obvious methodology problem would get published and cited by the CDC? (and…

I read the study, it's a few pages-long PDF with no description of computational methodology, no indication of the statistical approaches taken, and no justification for the arbitrary decisions made by the people who carried out the study.

The criteria for inclusion in the study:

> Hospitalized adults aged ≥18 years with COVID-19–like illness were included if they had received testing at least twice: once associated with a COVID-19–like illness hospitalization during January–September 2021 and at least once earlier (since February 1, 2020, and ≥14 days before that hospitalization).

This is a terrible methodology. It says nothing of a positive or negative test result, and the duration of time in between hospitalization and testing is absurdly arbitrary. It is simply assumed to be a COVID infection with no reasoning for this decision.

We've then got this nugget:

> Laboratory-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection was identi-fied among 324 (5.1%) of 6,328 fully vaccinated persons and among 89 of 1,020 (8.7%) unvaccinated, previously infected persons

Perhaps they should have found 5,000 more unvaccinated people before concluding their study. They are not hard to find.

> Do you genuinely believe a study with such a massive and obvious methodology problem would get published and cited by the CDC?

This is a joke, right? The CDC are frequently derided for their terrible methodologies and this goes back for decades. Not an uncommon outcome where you are an inherently political organization that is also in charge of distributing enormous sums for research funding. So of course, I would expect a terrible study like this from the CDC.

You're actually going to compare this crap-tastic shitfest of a study with the rock-solid study I provided, containing ~3mil participants and a far more verbose & informative outline of the study's methodology?

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#618

Post by monopoledance »

jessriedel wrote: post #284
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.

Isn't the reason a vaccinated person's immune system might not specialize to wild covid as much during infection as an unvaccinated person's that the disease in the former is shorter lived? Like, the way the never-vaccinated person would get slightly lower risk in the future is by taking a much larger risk now. You're still way better off with the vaccine.

Also selecting for survivors.

In the group of vaccinated survivors there will be more folks who would have died from infection without the vaccine, because of insufficient immune response.

People who survived an infection without prior vaccination are more likely to have a good immune response to the disease.

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#620

Post by CountDrewku »

biztos wrote: post #589
CountDrewku wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes an authoritarian police state enforcing quarantine in Germany sounds like a great idea. I'm sure there are historical examples they can follow.

Or, you could be honest with the public and call it voluntary. In many countries, compulsory quarantine was enforced. In Germany it never was, but they still presented it as compulsory and held out the possibility that it might be enforced. I don’t wish they had enforced it, I wish they had been honest about the arrangement.

Well, this is the issue you have with a lot of these lockdown, mask laws. Are they enforceable? No, unless you have a compliant population and in that case no law is probably necessary.

Almost all western governments did a piss poor job of preventing facts which why we're in the situation we are now. They appear untrustworthy because they've presented partial truths or completely changed their stance throughout.

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