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BNT162b2 Vaccine Booster and Mortality Due to Covid-19

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Re: BNT162b2 Vaccine Booster and Mortality Due to Covid-19

#51

Post by actually_a_dog »

timr wrote: post #48
actually_a_dog wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Any day, and twice on Sunday. If 90% of COVID deaths in the US could have been prevented (in fact, many could have been)[0][1], that cuts this whole thing down to a very bad flu season, comparable to the 1957 flu pandemic [3]. Would you rather not cut your risk by 90%? Edit: Incidentally, I have been hit by cars while walking 3 times. No injuries, luckily, since they were very low speed impacts. Why are you seem…

> Would you rather not cut your risk by 90%? Depends entirely on the cost vs. the benefit. As I said, a 90% relative reduction is meaningless without knowledge of the baseline risk. And once you know the baseline risk, you can do the math instead of just reacting emotionally.

Well, let's see: cost, $0, and a few minutes. Extremely tiny risk of serious side effects. Benefit... better immune response to the nasty virus going around. Let's also not forget this doesn't benefit just you; it benefits everybody you probably won't infect if you get exposed to the virus.

No emotion involved, at least not from me. Seems clear enough to me. You seem to be the one having an emotional response here.

Re: BNT162b2 Vaccine Booster and Mortality Due to Covid-19

#52

Post by timr »

actually_a_dog wrote: post #51
timr wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Would you rather not cut your risk by 90%? Depends entirely on the cost vs. the benefit. As I said, a 90% relative reduction is meaningless without knowledge of the baseline risk. And once you know the baseline risk, you can do the math instead of just reacting emotionally.

Well, let's see: cost, $0, and a few minutes. Extremely tiny risk of serious side effects. Benefit... better immune response to the nasty virus going around. Let's also not forget this doesn't benefit just you; it benefits everybody you probably won't infect if you get exposed to the virus. No emotion involved, at least not from me. Seems clear enough to me. You seem to be the one having an emotional response here.

> Extremely tiny risk of serious side effects.

How tiny? It matters. Your risk of a bad outcome from Covid-19 is extremely tiny.

(Also, by the way: the costs are greater than what you pay for the shot. Miss a day of work? Spend a day in bed? That's a cost.)

> it benefits everybody you probably won't infect if you get exposed to the virus.

We have no evidence of this, nor do we have any reason to believe elevated antibody levels will continue indefinitely. Antibodies from the third shot will wane, just as the antibodies from the second shot waned, and antibodies always wane after antigen exposure. It's how our immune systems work.

Re: BNT162b2 Vaccine Booster and Mortality Due to Covid-19

#53

Post by gomox »

spurgu wrote: post #50
nkurz wrote: post #42

I'm going to do this as a top-level comment because I think it's important. Throughout this thread, a number of people seem to be misreading the numbers and arguing that the results are unimportant because they show that the booster reduces a tiny risk (0.00298%) to an even tinier one (0.00016%). In general, this is a fine argument to make, but I don't think it's well supported by this paper. Here is the Results sect…

The study is somewhat skewed since its comprised of people 50+ years old, which have a significantly higher risk to begin with compared to young healthy adults. Edit: Removed false/misleading bit.

The 1 in 107 number you seem to be alluding to from the link is the odds of dying in a car crash in your entire life, not in any given year.

Re: BNT162b2 Vaccine Booster and Mortality Due to Covid-19

#54

Post by nkurz »

timr wrote: post #49
nkurz wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comparison points are great, but I think you are misreading the quote: "Death due to Covid-19 occurred in 65 participants in the booster group (0.16 per 100,000 persons per day) and in 137 participants in the nonbooster group (2.98 per 100,000 persons per day)." The death rate of the control group is .16 vs 2.98 per 100,000 people per day . If you annualize this by multiplying by 365 to make it comparable to you…

That's fair. You can't annualize a daily risk by multiplying by 365 (volatility must be taken into account), but the broader point that annual vs. daily risks are different orders of magnitude is well-taken. Unfortunately, I don't have any examples of risks that low measured on a daily basis. > over 1000 deaths per 100,000 people per year for the double vaccinated but not boosted. We know this isn't even close to tru…

> You can't annualize a daily risk by multiplying by 365 (volatility must be taken into account)

Could you expand on this, or suggest the right search terms? My intuition is that it will be a little bit lower than straight multiplication, but that this a low enough probability that we can get a pretty good approximation by ignoring the "impossibility" of an individual dying multiple times during that year. Is there another complicating factor?

>> over 1000 deaths per 100,000 people per year for the double vaccinated but not boosted. > We know this isn't even close to true by looking at aggregate numbers.

I agree it seems extremely high, but I think this is the clear claim of the paper. There were 85,000 people who were never vaccinated, and over the 54 day period of the study, 137 of them died. Thus if you were to extend the study to a year, you should expect more than 1000 deaths. As I see it, the possibilities are a) the paper is lying, b) I'm grossly misinterpreting what it says, or c) the current death rate in Israel for those older than 50 is about 1% even among the doubly vaccinated. If you have time to read it more closely, I'd love to hear what your thoughts on the discrepancy.

Edit: I realize I should've added another option d) the statistics are hopelessly confounded and the results don't mean anything. My current suspicion is that if people who contract Covid early are no longer eligible for receiving a booster, the apparent Covid incidence in the not-boosted arm may be drastically inflated, but I'm not sure if this is a large enough effect to negate the result.

Re: BNT162b2 Vaccine Booster and Mortality Due to Covid-19

#55

Post by spurgu »

gomox wrote: post #53
spurgu wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The study is somewhat skewed since its comprised of people 50+ years old, which have a significantly higher risk to begin with compared to young healthy adults. Edit: Removed false/misleading bit.

The 1 in 107 number you seem to be alluding to from the link is the odds of dying in a car crash in your entire life, not in any given year.

Oops you're right! My bad, I was mixing it up in my head. Was mixing it up with this interesting comment I read here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29523605

Re: BNT162b2 Vaccine Booster and Mortality Due to Covid-19

#56

Post by ohCh6zos »

sterlind wrote: post #46
avalys wrote: post #8

Is it too early to conclude whether booster effectiveness will also wane in 6 months? I had some mild but persistent side effects from the second Pfizer dose (ear ringing and Eustachian tube dysfunction). It's gotten about 98% better - but not 100% - and I'm a bit nervous about the booster given that many people are reporting the side effects are somewhat more intense than the second shot. If the booster is the final…

Countering this anecdata with my own: I have several rare diseases and I'm quite disabled. I didn't get noticeable effects from my first two Pfizer doses (at least nothing I could distinguish from my chronic illness), while the third gave me flu-like symptoms for 2-3 days. I was happy about this because it told me it was working, and I returned to my (crappy) baseline afterwards with no lingering effects. I wonder if…

I'm sorry to hear it was flu-like for you. I'm in the same boat, and it was flu like for me too.

Re: BNT162b2 Vaccine Booster and Mortality Due to Covid-19

#57

Post by peteradio »

exegete wrote: post #40
jimmyearlcarter wrote: post #25

I want to know what percentage of those who died also suffered form comorbidities. Also this is for people aged 50 and above, what about healthy young people? Do the math, death rate is 0.008% (boosted) vs 0.16% (unboosted) for aged 50 and above. Still super low. And we're getting better and better at treating this thing. Get it if you *want* it. Don't if you don't. I do not want it or need it thank you very much.

Agree that we’re getting better at treating it. You seem to be praising those treatments and not wanting to get the vaccine. I don’t understand the idea that medicine that prevents the disease is bad but medicine after the disease is ok?

I think people like it because it scales with the actual disease. It may be irrational as far as resource allocation but it is maybe a bit more transparent.

Re: BNT162b2 Vaccine Booster and Mortality Due to Covid-19

#58

Post by avalys »

ulnarkressty wrote: post #19
avalys wrote: post #8

Is it too early to conclude whether booster effectiveness will also wane in 6 months? I had some mild but persistent side effects from the second Pfizer dose (ear ringing and Eustachian tube dysfunction). It's gotten about 98% better - but not 100% - and I'm a bit nervous about the booster given that many people are reporting the side effects are somewhat more intense than the second shot. If the booster is the final…

Same here, no vertigo before in my life - had it for both doses, longer the second time, still not 100% recovered. I even voluntarily filled in my info on the Pfizer side-effects page, but didn't hear anything back. Did you manage to find out what exactly goes wrong with the inner ear after the vaccine? Still, regarding the study, it appears that taking the booster would be the better choice, considering most of us w…

I filled out a VAERS report and never heard from anyone about it.

Unfortunately I haven't learned anything interesting about what the mechanism of action might be. Especially with respect to the most interesting question - does this reaction to the vaccine mean I might have had an even worse reaction to a COVID infection? There are plenty of people who report tinnitus following COVID.

Re: BNT162b2 Vaccine Booster and Mortality Due to Covid-19

#59

Post by spurgu »

drno123 wrote: post #21

There is a low risk of heart inflammation related to the Covid vaccine for young males. Is this risk the same regardless of number of booster doses that you take, or does it go up with each additional booster? If it goes up - is the function linear, slower than linear or faster then linear?

Good question. Very relevant question. It seems to be looked at in a vacuum.

Re: BNT162b2 Vaccine Booster and Mortality Due to Covid-19

#60

Post by jimmyearlcarter »

exegete wrote: post #40
jimmyearlcarter wrote: post #25

I want to know what percentage of those who died also suffered form comorbidities. Also this is for people aged 50 and above, what about healthy young people? Do the math, death rate is 0.008% (boosted) vs 0.16% (unboosted) for aged 50 and above. Still super low. And we're getting better and better at treating this thing. Get it if you *want* it. Don't if you don't. I do not want it or need it thank you very much.

Agree that we’re getting better at treating it. You seem to be praising those treatments and not wanting to get the vaccine. I don’t understand the idea that medicine that prevents the disease is bad but medicine after the disease is ok?

There are treatments, prophlaxis, for before and after covid now. See https://covid19criticalcare.com/covid-19-protocols/.

If stuff like this hadn't been censored a billion times, alot of deaths would have been prevented. Big Pharma wants us all to think that *their* vaccine is the only thing that works. What a *big* lie.

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