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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

#631

Post by bigodbiel »

ohyes wrote: post #587
Leparamour wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like the vaccine is the deadly roulette ticket: risk of fatal bloodclotting every time a new vaccine is administered while ironically being at a higher risk against new, potentially more dangerous, mutations compared to people who recovered from a Covid infection naturally. I guess it comes down how much you trust pharmaceutical companies having the payday of a lifetime and politicians on a power trip.

To be clear, there is no evidence for any of your claims.

Risk of blood clotting / thromosis (VIIT) with adenovirus vector and Peri / Myocarditis with mRNA based are known risks, even if extremely rare overall (but worrying for specific groups; <50 females and <30 males respectively)

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#632

Post by microtherion »

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…

I've been trying to get a clear answer to this for some time, because at least in Switzerland, and apparently in other countries as well, vaccination status of hospitalizations and deaths is well published, while vaccination status of ICU occupants is reported only anecdotally.

As you say, a sizable percentage of deaths (~50% in the 60+ age group) are vaccinated — because those tend to skew elderly (85 in Switzerland) and highly vaccinated (>90%).

Likewise, a sizable percentage of hospitalizations (~40% in 60+) are vaccinated — those are a bit younger (66 in Switzerland) because many of the very elderly patients never make it to a hospital.

All the ICU administrators I've seen interviewed, however, say that their ICU occupants are ~90% unvaccinated. One explanation for this might be that the ICU median age is considerably younger than the above ages, about 55 in Switzerland, and younger population groups are less vaccinated.

But IF this is in fact the case, I wish the statistics were public.

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#633

Post by swader999 »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #604
timr wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's good evidence that natural infection is more robust than vaccination alone, and that a combination of infection + a booster is best overall: https://www.science.org/content/article/having-sars-cov-2-on...

That may be a silver lining, but the statement was "is COVID infection preferable to a vaccination". COVID infection, if you're not aware, also can have downsides. This evidence does not make "lets get COVID" a good idea on balance.

For low risk groups I think it's preferable to let your immune system have a go at it. Training it on only a portion of the spike with an alpha based vax will get you into the endless booster game. Especially if you have things like ivermectin and vitamins at your disposal.

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#634

Post by bigodbiel »

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…

As for breakthroughs a common problem with analyzing vaccinated with unvaccinated is that among the unvaccinated there will be disproportionally higher percentage of naturally immune (recovered), who are if not equal, better protected from reinfection than naive vaccinees.

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#635

Post by spurgu »

dahart wrote: post #611
spurgu wrote: post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Your question (not me though, but) was:

> why is a mandate that the majority wants equivalent to tyranny?

I doubt the dead people (the vast majority being 60+) are the ones mandating it.

It's the same people who think it's imperative that we vaccinate children when a) children are barely affected by the virus b) the vaccine doesn't do much for the transmission rate anyways.

And if that's a majority then the majority is simply misinformed (or stupid).

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#636

Post by bigodbiel »

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…

And that's why academics shouldn't be the face of policy making. But I guess they liked the spotight too much to step out of it.

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#637

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

swader999 wrote: post #633
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be a silver lining, but the statement was "is COVID infection preferable to a vaccination". COVID infection, if you're not aware, also can have downsides. This evidence does not make "lets get COVID" a good idea on balance.

For low risk groups I think it's preferable to let your immune system have a go at it. Training it on only a portion of the spike with an alpha based vax will get you into the endless booster game. Especially if you have things like ivermectin and vitamins at your disposal.

> I think it's preferable to let your immune system have a go at it.

Again, citation needed, as you appear to be saying that a COVID infection is preferable to a vaccination.

> Especially if you have things like ivermectin and vitamins at your disposal.

Are you joking? I can't tell if this is supposed to a serious suggestion for discredited quack remedies, or sarcasm.

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#638

Post by dahart »

ifyoubuildit wrote: post #630
dahart wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I say bodily autonomy, you might say we mandate all sorts of vaccines […] talk to me in 5 or 10 years when we have long term data It’s strange to me that the arguments against vaccines are all self-centered, about personal risk, and the arguments in favor are all addressing net social benefit. I kinda want the bodily autonomy to not get infected by someone refusing to take any social precautions over political beli…

We're going to have to agree to disagree on your usage of autonomy there, but your point is taken. We should be looking out for each other, and I think you'd find that a lot of people probably are, even if they disagree with you about various covid/vaccine issues. Regular testing, distancing, masking, foregoing normal activities are examples of other ways to look out for each other. Maybe I'm crazy, but I think we'll…

> I think we’ll eventually find that folks who just got vaccinated and went about life like normal probably caused more spread than folks who didn’t

Why do you believe this? What evidence do you have to ignore the overwhelming conclusions of all the experts actually studying the disease and the vaccine? The idea that vaccinations cause more spread has in fact been studied on the COVID vaccine and on others. It’s generally not true for most vaccines, why do you think it’s true for this one?

Why are you talking about spread and not also hospitalizations and fatalities? The vaccine considerably lessens the risk of dying. Even if the spread rate were to increase a little (which I don’t really buy), but the risk decreases by an order of magnitude, isn’t a lower total death rate a social net benefit?

How many people have died of COVID to date? How many people have died of COVID vaccines so far? Seriously, please find and compare those two numbers.

Tyranny is defined in many dictionaries. It’s not my opinion, the word has a specific meaning. You haven’t answered the question of why a vaccine mandate should be considered tyranny, or how it compares to any other case of action mandated by law, or personal freedoms limited by law, of which we have many.

It would be lovely if anti-vaxxers were distancing and wearing masks, but that seems like a fantasy to me. How many anti-vaxxers really are wearing masks and taking all other precautions? There seems to be a lot of data that there’s a large correlation and significant overlap between people who are anti-vax and anti-mask and anti-lockdown. We had the chance to stop COVID spread, and we bungled it by politicizing the solutions, people are screaming tyranny over mask mandates and social distancing mandates too.

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#639

Post by bigodbiel »

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…

This is a Human Challenge Trial: have vaccinated participants exposed to either covid or placebo (rhinovirus)! There are heavy ethical dilemmas here, even when using young and healthy candidates. IIRC there was one Human Challenge Study being run in the UK, though they've been awfully quiet for months.

Re: Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

#640

Post by dahart »

spurgu wrote: post #635
dahart wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Your question (not me though, but) was: > why is a mandate that the majority wants equivalent to tyranny? I doubt the dead people (the vast majority being 60+) are the ones mandating it. It's the same people who think it's imperative that we vaccinate children when a) children are barely affected by the virus b) the vaccine doesn't do much for the transmission rate anyways. And if that's a majority then the majority…

> I doubt the dead people (the vast majority being 60+) are the ones mandating it.

What’s with the silly straw man? Your last comment was a straw man too. I’m interested in a rational discussion if we can have one. Are you uninterested in that?

> if that’s a majority then the majority is simply misinformed (or stupid).

Then it seems like you’re saying the vaccine mandate is not tyranny, it’s just in your opinion stupid people, right?

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