Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study • Hacker News Board

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

#961

Post by ADSSDA » Wed, Dec 15, 2021, 5:18 PM UTC

native_samples wrote: post #944

ADSSDA wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Failed as in the vaccines, that were being advertised as being 95% effective with no talk of any boosters only 6 months ago, no longer provide any protection at all. It's disappointing to see complete lies like this on HN. Vaccines have been, and remain, incredibly effective in preventing hospitalization/death, even without a booster (although everyone should also get their booster).

And why do we think that? Because public health agencies said so? It's not because the trials proved it - they didn't. At only ~64,000 participants the e.g. Pfizer trial was not powered to show any difference to deaths and didn't use hospitalizations as a goal metric either, only infections. And so we're forced to rely on the testimony of the same people in charge of the program, where their data is often missing or…

I don't have to trust public health agencies. I can go look up the numbers in my local hospital or ask family members who work there. >90% of ICU cases and deaths are unvaccinated. Hand wavy arguments about "the data is bad!" from a non-peer reviewed paper with 0 citations does not convince me that you're arguing in good faith.

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

#962

Post by legutierr » Wed, Dec 15, 2021, 5:33 PM UTC

ipaddr wrote: post #881

legutierr wrote: post #703

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would have been much faster if regulators and ethicists hadn’t been so squeamish about challenge trials. In order to save dozens of lives that might have been lost in challenge trials, we sacrificed hundreds of thousands of lives so that we could wait for more ethically-sound vaccine trials to complete.

Were 100,000 of lives lost because of a delayed vaccine? Considering the third world hasn't had access to the vaccine and death rates are lower with delta I'm not sure skipping trials would have done much good.

Vaccine challenge trials are faster not because they are any less rigorous. They are faster because you are actively infecting people, instead of just waiting for participants to be randomly infected as they go about their lives. You can have a much higher level of reliability with a trial that is orders-of-magnitude smaller, and you can have definitive results within weeks compared to months.

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

#963

Post by legutierr » Wed, Dec 15, 2021, 5:40 PM UTC

betwixthewires wrote: post #907

legutierr wrote: post #703

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would have been much faster if regulators and ethicists hadn’t been so squeamish about challenge trials. In order to save dozens of lives that might have been lost in challenge trials, we sacrificed hundreds of thousands of lives so that we could wait for more ethically-sound vaccine trials to complete.

Throwing ethical standards in the bin "for the greater good" is never a good idea.

Challenge trials can be ethically designed, and they have been used to test vaccines for malaria, influenza, and other potentially-fatal diseases.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_challenge_study#Vaccines...

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

#964

Post by robbedpeter » Wed, Dec 15, 2021, 5:44 PM UTC

somewhereoutth wrote: post #926

robbedpeter wrote: post #916

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41576-018-0055-5 https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/11/26/1413339111?wit... https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200918-why-some-deadly-... https://journals.asm.org/doi/full/10.1128/JVI.00694-10 Covid related links have saturated any searches on viruses in general, and the doom&gloom "reporting"is at the top. There are a lot of papers and examples of what I'm talking about, thoug…

SARS and HiV are certainly not examples where a human virus has evolved to become more contagious but less deadly. SARS was not contagious enough to escape our control efforts, and HiV is mitigated by our anti viral drugs. Indeed it would be nice if a less severe strain out competed current COVID, but such a thing has never happened before (as far as we know) - and as you point out there is no selection pressure for…

There are multiple strains of hiv. One of the papers I linked to is a detailed study investigating a less lethal, more infectious strain. Sars-cov1 also evolved a few strains that were more infectious and less lethal. Both effects, by the way, are usually associated with separate individual mutations. It's rare that a single change in DNA results in both effects.

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

#965

Post by cudgy » Wed, Dec 15, 2021, 6:06 PM UTC

smukherjee19 wrote: post #934

johnisgood wrote: post #788

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

This is honestly one of my concerns (double-vaccinated with mRNA, no issues and I am not anti-vax). The thing is, before the COVID-19, the world had barely heard of mRNA vaccines and suddenly there are billions of people vaccinated across the world in 2 years. I have no intention of denying that these vaccines have saved millions, if not billions of lives by preventing hospitalization, death and further overloading o…

“…if not billions of lives by preventing hospitalization, death and further overloading of medical systems worldwide.”

No remote way that it saved billions of lives. Covid is nowhere close to that level of mortality. The level of exaggeration that people have allowed themselves to succumb to over Covid is frankly quite alarming.

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

#966

Post by s1artibartfast » Wed, Dec 15, 2021, 6:06 PM UTC

ashildr wrote: post #957

s1artibartfast wrote: post #775

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can split hairs on what constitutes experience, or when it starts. but the point still stands: We have a lot more experience with the flu vaccine. This is the answer for why not all annual flu vaccines need clinical trials.

„the flu vaccine“? Which one?

The first vaccines in 1933 were against A type influenzas, followed by vaccines against against B type influenzas in 1942.

Here is a pretty good summary of the history of vaccine development.

https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/812621_1

While nearly all influenza vaccines generate similar antibodies, Covid and influenza vaccines generate significantly different antibodies

Influenza vaccines generate antibodies against influenza Hemagglutinin proteins targeting sialic acid receptors

Covid vaccines generate antibodies for (S) glycoproteins targeting ACE-2 receptors.

In short, we have 80+ years of experience generating antibodies for hemagglutinin, and much less for (S) glycoproteins.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronavirus_spike_protein

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemagglutinin_(influenza)

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

#967

Post by cudgy » Wed, Dec 15, 2021, 6:08 PM UTC

johnisgood wrote: post #951

nikolay wrote: post #821

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No vaccine would have been authorized on billions of people before 2020 if it had such prevalent incidence of peri- and myocarditis! But now it's authorized even of toddlers, which have even higher chance for future heart issues! And all this, because politicians didn't have the balls to keep the face mask mandates!

And in comparison to COVID-19? Do they actually need a vaccine to protect against COVID-19? If not, are we giving it to them in the chance that it reduces spread, or why? It has been said it reduces spread, but this is not what you observe in countries that are >80% fully vaccinated (at least double dose), so I do not get it.

The vaccine does not prevent spread of Covid. Period. The smallest amount of research proves this to be the case.

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

#968

Post by clairity » Wed, Dec 15, 2021, 6:18 PM UTC

mensetmanusman wrote: post #941

clairity wrote: post #906

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "aerosol risk can be >50 ft for hours after a spread event" no, that's cringeworthy fearmongering. the virus is fragile and falls apart relatively quickly outside the body. the main risk behavior is having long conversations in close quarters where you're constantly exposed to a warm airstream of live virus.

In the right humidity conditions with poor airflow it has been found to be stable for hours, this is how there were super spreader events from 1>500 in certain types of factories.

no, any explanation of a ‘super spreader event’ is making a post hoc rationalization, arising from the biases of the explainers. thermo-fluid models of such conditions are often similarly biased, but have the additional proof burden of not representing observed phenomena, just assumptions and suppositions about it. it’s just as likely that factory workers having lunch together is the cause of such a ‘super spreader event’. occam’s razor suggests we start with the simplest explanations before considering convolutions like that.

make no mistake, if covid menacingly floating in the air to catch you unaware were actually a meaningful method of spread, we’d have evidence all over the place being reported feverishly by those very same biased reporting sources.

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

#969

Post by clairity » Wed, Dec 15, 2021, 6:25 PM UTC

johnchristopher wrote: post #500

clairity wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it’s worth always keeping in mind that the only dichotomy that matters in political economies is that between the wealthy and powerful and everyone else, not left-right, black-white, east-west, socialist-capitalist, or anything else. it’s been this way for all of human history past and will likely be so for the rest of it too. that’s a sober position to take, not a cynical one, as some might argue. the more dynamic o…

Your second paragraph assumes our governments have the means to do that. They don't. Which breaks the logic of your conclusion. And masks do add protection. Their political leverage is null. What is gained by authorities ? There's no advantages. > if we were worried about public health, vaccination status wouldn’t be considered at all, only infection status. Ww are worried. Infection status is considered. Vaccination…

you are building a counter stance to drive a point that aims to maximize the covid problem.

you can fight reality with fearmongering and projection, but facts don’t care. hospitals are only irregularly overwhelmed because of greed, not covid. the people dying are overwhelmingly likely to have a comorbidity, and the virus doesn’t care about our hysteria over masks and political misguidance when it kills them. we know that if we do exactly the wrong things, the pandemic and the panic is prolonged for maximal mediopolitical benefit.

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

#970

Post by johnisgood » Wed, Dec 15, 2021, 6:30 PM UTC

cudgy wrote: post #965

smukherjee19 wrote: post #934

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is honestly one of my concerns (double-vaccinated with mRNA, no issues and I am not anti-vax). The thing is, before the COVID-19, the world had barely heard of mRNA vaccines and suddenly there are billions of people vaccinated across the world in 2 years. I have no intention of denying that these vaccines have saved millions, if not billions of lives by preventing hospitalization, death and further overloading o…

“…if not billions of lives by preventing hospitalization, death and further overloading of medical systems worldwide.” No remote way that it saved billions of lives. Covid is nowhere close to that level of mortality. The level of exaggeration that people have allowed themselves to succumb to over Covid is frankly quite alarming.

What can I do to convince them that it is not as bad as they think it is?