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Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study

washingtonpost.com

811–820 of 1001 posts

Re: Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study

#811

Earlier quoted context omitted.

mRNA vaccines have been a thing in labs for a few decades and first human clinical trials against a pathogen in 2013 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MRNA_vaccine

> Before 2020, no mRNA technology platform (drug or vaccine) had been authorized for use in humans, so there was a risk of unknown effects.[79] The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic required faster production capability of mRNA vaccines, made them attractive to national health organisations, and led to debate about the type of initial authorization mRNA vaccines should get (including emergency use authorization or expanded acce…

Are you talking about Pandemrix? https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/history/narcoleps... says there was a lot of follow up on that and no link to narcolepsy was found

Re: Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study

#812
post #50

There are a few important bits here: First: "The study by Discovery Health, South Africa’s largest health insurer, of 211,000 positive coronavirus cases, of which 78,000 were attributed to omicron, showed that risk of hospital admissions among adults who contracted covid-19 was 29 percent lower than in the initial pandemic wave that emerged in March 2020." and second: "At the same time, the vaccine may offer 70 perce…

Don't forget this part: "South Africa has a quite high seroprevalence of prior infection, particularly after delta, and in some parts of South Africa up to 80 percent of people were exposed to previous infection" So it could simply be that the mild cases were previously infected, what happens to an unvaccinated without prior infection is a different story.

Are you suggesting that natural immunity exists and works?

Re: Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study

#813
post #674

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a math classroom, you are right. But when we're in a context of talking about the disease on an internet forum, you are being needlessly pedantic and extremely nitpick-y if you expect people to describe the ways infections grows as "similar to a sigmoid function" rathan than the well-understood and extremely common "exponential growth" term.

I don’t really care if you say sigmoid when you mean exponential, my point is that both of those are wrong. People shudder in fear of the phrase “exponential” but disease does not spread exponentially. It never does. That’s a laymen fairy tail and it does a great deal of harm in understanding the disease. Exponential is not well understood. People don’t know what it means, as evidenced by the fact that they consisten…

>disease does not spread exponentially. It never does. That’s a laymen fairy tail and it does a great deal of harm in understanding the disease.

>Exponential is not well understood. People don’t know what it means, as evidenced by the fact that they consistently use it incorrectly.

Well, in typical Dunning-Krüger fashion you're lecturing us laymen about the wrong use of "exponential", but it seems that you are the layman when it comes to epidemiology modelling.

Diseases of course spread in an initially exponential phase, not logarithmically as you boldly claim in another comment.

Epidemiologists talk about exponential disease growth all the time, here's one example : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6962332/

Re: Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study

#814
post #655

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That article strikes me as largely playing a semantic game. From the article: >The classic tale of sterilizing immunity unfolds something like this: A pathogen attempts to infiltrate a body; antibodies, lurking in the vicinity thanks to vaccination or a previous infection, instantly zap it out of existence, so speedily that the microbe can’t even reproduce. No symptoms manifest, and most of the body’s immune cells ne…

Sometimes I feel like I repeat myself. Would someone who is flagging this comment please, instead, respond to it? If it is so trivially dismissed, please show the rest of us.

The argument that this is a semantic game is not a very good one. The whole point of the article is to demonstrate that there really is no such thing as a sterilizing vaccine; As our scientific knowledge and technology has improved over the years we see that.

Re: Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study

#815

Out of curiosity, do we really require these studies? Like it is good to have more and more sources, but wouldn't the expected outcome to be the following: - vaccines that replicated the spike protein will be less effective since omicron has a modified spike protein, because the immune system only was trained to notice the spike protein and not the payload - naturally induced immunity from prior exposure to Sars-Cov-…

Do you really need to check the safety on your gun if you expect that it’s on?

Going to definitely need you to explain that analogy though

Re: Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study

#816
post #748

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your reply is totally off-topic for the parent you replied to.

I see why you're saying that, but I think you missed their point. Challenge trials might well allow us to make a safe vaccine available sooner to those who want it, but if we mandate a vaccine that has only undergone challenge trials and then that vaccine kills someone, it would certainly be politically disastrous for challenge trials.

You just make vaccine optional and only mandate once enough data is available.

Re: Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study

#817
post #748

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your reply is totally off-topic for the parent you replied to.

I see why you're saying that, but I think you missed their point. Challenge trials might well allow us to make a safe vaccine available sooner to those who want it, but if we mandate a vaccine that has only undergone challenge trials and then that vaccine kills someone, it would certainly be politically disastrous for challenge trials.

Challenge trials have nothing to do with adverse side effects in the original clinical safety trial. We also have good proxies for challenge trials for COVID.

Re: Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study

#818

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moderna CEO equity sales for the last couple years. Nothing to see here, no reason to distrust them pushing endless boosters: https://finance.yahoo.com/screener/insider/BANCEL%20STEPHANE...

I scrolled thru the last 2 years, and honestly I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. Too much profit? Sure. I don't think the boosters are going to be what solidifies that issue for corporations though.. Some timing issue with selling? I don't see it.

[deleted]

Re: Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study

#819

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pointing to one person's death and claiming a specific cause... I assume you have very specific autopsy evidence to prove it?

Yes, I do. Well, not me personally but a "five-member commission, namely, three doctors (neurologist, infectologist and vascular specialist), a pharmacologist and Zoran Simonovič, a representative of the epidemiological profession" has. https://www.gov.si/en/news/2021-11-30-expert-commission-conf... > Minister of Health, Janez Poklukar, the head of the regional unit of the Maribor National Institute of Public Health,…

I think the clinical guidance for younger women (<50) is that they get a two dose mRNA vaccine and not Janssen or AZ for this very reason.

Re: Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study

#820
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget this part: "South Africa has a quite high seroprevalence of prior infection, particularly after delta, and in some parts of South Africa up to 80 percent of people were exposed to previous infection" So it could simply be that the mild cases were previously infected, what happens to an unvaccinated without prior infection is a different story.

Furthermore SA got hit quite badly by Beta. Beta and Omicron are closer than either to Delta, so there may be some immune protection from the prior Beta wave. Beta never got established in Europe/US.

Interesting point hadn't heard made before. Did you notice this yourself or were there epidemiologist analysis on this?
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