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Omicron evades Moderna vaccine too, study suggests, but boosters help

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Re: Omicron evades Moderna vaccine too, study suggests, but boosters help

#11

Post by unmole »

JPKab wrote: post #3

Less virulent, less dangerous than delta by far, according to the South African medical authorities who first identified and reported it. It's been a long established medical fact that viruses evolve to become less severe over time, due to selective pressures of being able to spread easier if you don't incapacitate your host. Micheal Crichton's Andromeda Strain featured this as a key plot point, written in the 70s. F…

> It's been a long established medical fact that viruses evolve to become less severe over time

HIV, Smallpox and Rabies would like a word.

Re: Omicron evades Moderna vaccine too, study suggests, but boosters help

#12

Post by Amezarak »

bigodbiel wrote: post #6
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #2

Is the Moderna booster not just more of the vaccine?

Even if lower neutralization, higher antibody loads post booster (much larger than post second dose). I wonder how this works with Moderna’s lower dosage shots.

I have been skeptical that antibodies are a good proxy for vaccine effectiveness. Your immune system "remembers" how to create antibodies, and there's no clear reason why it would continue to produce them after an infection has been eradicated. So I would expect antibody levels to always drop off naturally over time until your next exposure (or vaccine) with little or no impact on actual effectiveness, regardless of the virus or vaccine.

I mean, I suppose that also suggests that "high antibody loads" indicate your immune system is an a high-alert state against coronavirus, actively fighting the virus (or what it thinks is the virus, the vaccine) and a "low" load a less alert state, so perhaps the rapid immune response in a "high alert" state is better...but surely there is some reason our immune system doesn't remain in a high-alert state indefinitely?

[Edit - plus, of course, antibodies are far from the only immune response, they're just the easiest to measure, something that also makes me very leery of their use as a metric.]

Re: Omicron evades Moderna vaccine too, study suggests, but boosters help

#13

Post by refurb »

Anyone feel like covid has exposed the western obsession with optimization. There were even people who preferred Pfizer’s vaccine over Moderna’s because the risk reduction was some marginal number like 96.5% versus 94.7%? Clearly statistically insignificant?

Just because the Moderna vaccine is 50x less effective (measure by neutralizing ability of generated antibodies) doesn’t mean it doesn’t offer substantial protection.

There is this weird obsession with driving risk as close to 0% as possible with no regards to relative risk.

2x as man people in BC, Canada have died of drug overdoses over the past 2 years than Covid. And nobody blinks an eye at those deaths.

Re: Omicron evades Moderna vaccine too, study suggests, but boosters help

#14

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

JPKab wrote: post #3

Less virulent, less dangerous than delta by far, according to the South African medical authorities who first identified and reported it. It's been a long established medical fact that viruses evolve to become less severe over time, due to selective pressures of being able to spread easier if you don't incapacitate your host. Micheal Crichton's Andromeda Strain featured this as a key plot point, written in the 70s. F…

> It's been a long established medical fact that viruses evolve to become less severe over time,

Is it? The evolutionary pressure is only that reproductive success, succeeds. A virus that spreads better, well, spreads more.

There is no real reason why COVID-19 would have to get less severe to be more successful, as most transmission is pre-symptomatic or asymptomatic already. If the host is more likely or less likely to die later on in the disease, is irrelevant to the virus' fitness.

https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1468225625764814859

https://twitter.com/Devilstower/status/1465332043005501448

Re: Omicron evades Moderna vaccine too, study suggests, but boosters help

#15

Post by michelb »

refurb wrote: post #13

Anyone feel like covid has exposed the western obsession with optimization. There were even people who preferred Pfizer’s vaccine over Moderna’s because the risk reduction was some marginal number like 96.5% versus 94.7%? Clearly statistically insignificant? Just because the Moderna vaccine is 50x less effective (measure by neutralizing ability of generated antibodies) doesn’t mean it doesn’t offer substantial protec…

I think that is mostly a communication and education problem, and a general problem most people have when dealing with a crisis with a lot of unknowns and an easily transmissible disease.

In my country you can't choose your vaccine, but there also wasn't much education about how it works, why the protection is sufficient, etc. This then leads to people valuing their own 'researched' opinions higher than facts from experts/scientists/biology.

Also, nobody really understands statistics.

Re: Omicron evades Moderna vaccine too, study suggests, but boosters help

#16

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

vpavicic wrote: post #9
JPKab wrote: post #3

Less virulent, less dangerous than delta by far, according to the South African medical authorities who first identified and reported it. It's been a long established medical fact that viruses evolve to become less severe over time, due to selective pressures of being able to spread easier if you don't incapacitate your host. Micheal Crichton's Andromeda Strain featured this as a key plot point, written in the 70s. F…

As I understand it, the SA population is quite young and we are waiting for more data to come in on the effects of omicron (says so in the link you provided as well)... let's not forget we dismissed the whole virus as "just a common cold" at the beginning of the whole story as well. The problem with letting others deal with their consequences is that they are overworking the medical staff, and are disregarding the po…

> the SA population is quite young

Quite young, and quite highly likely to already have had COVID-19: over 3/4 of the population has had it.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-18/deaths-da...

Re: Omicron evades Moderna vaccine too, study suggests, but boosters help

#17

Post by rsynnott »

JPKab wrote: post #3

Less virulent, less dangerous than delta by far, according to the South African medical authorities who first identified and reported it. It's been a long established medical fact that viruses evolve to become less severe over time, due to selective pressures of being able to spread easier if you don't incapacitate your host. Micheal Crichton's Andromeda Strain featured this as a key plot point, written in the 70s. F…

> according to the South African medical authorities who first identified and reported it

Well, according to the doctor who did. Other South African medical authorities have been a lot more cautious.

> Most everyone is vaxxed that is high-risk. Let the rest deal with their consequences.

The trouble is, the consequences for the rest involve filling up hospitals, ICUs (and ultimately morgues, though this is less disruptive). That impacts everyone. People are dying unnecessarily because their routine medical care is canceled or because they can't get an ICU bed due to pressure on hospital systems created primarily by unvaccinated patients.

Re: Omicron evades Moderna vaccine too, study suggests, but boosters help

#18

Post by rsynnott »

dombesz wrote: post #8
JPKab wrote: post #3

Less virulent, less dangerous than delta by far, according to the South African medical authorities who first identified and reported it. It's been a long established medical fact that viruses evolve to become less severe over time, due to selective pressures of being able to spread easier if you don't incapacitate your host. Micheal Crichton's Andromeda Strain featured this as a key plot point, written in the 70s. F…

100% agree with you. If it turns out that it’s so much less deadly than the other strains, we should definitely be positive about it and stop the fear mongering. But all you can hear these days, is that how so much contagious Omicron is, without mentioning the chance of being a lot less harmful. This biased representation in the news turns me into being a skeptic of all the media outlets, regardless of their politica…

> But all you can hear these days, is that how so much contagious Omicron is, without mentioning the chance of being a lot less harmful.

We _know_ that it's spreading very quickly (there is some legitimate question over how much of this is inherent spreading ability vs immunity evasion). The idea that it's "a lot less harmful" is largely speculative; there just isn't the data to say that right now. Now, it may emerge that it is, and that would be great, but it would be extremely dangerous to assume it at the moment.

Re: Omicron evades Moderna vaccine too, study suggests, but boosters help

#19

Post by credit_guy »

JPKab wrote: post #3

Less virulent, less dangerous than delta by far, according to the South African medical authorities who first identified and reported it. It's been a long established medical fact that viruses evolve to become less severe over time, due to selective pressures of being able to spread easier if you don't incapacitate your host. Micheal Crichton's Andromeda Strain featured this as a key plot point, written in the 70s. F…

> We have a few treatments that are highly effective, including monoclonal AB and the new Pfizer pill

Monoclonal antibodies are not highly effective and Paxlovid is not FDA approved yet (oe EUA”d).

> Let the rest deal with their consequences

Let me fix this for you: let all of us deal with their consequences.

Re: Omicron evades Moderna vaccine too, study suggests, but boosters help

#20

Post by raxxorrax »

rsynnott wrote: post #17
JPKab wrote: post #3

Less virulent, less dangerous than delta by far, according to the South African medical authorities who first identified and reported it. It's been a long established medical fact that viruses evolve to become less severe over time, due to selective pressures of being able to spread easier if you don't incapacitate your host. Micheal Crichton's Andromeda Strain featured this as a key plot point, written in the 70s. F…

> according to the South African medical authorities who first identified and reported it Well, according to the doctor who did. Other South African medical authorities have been a lot more cautious. > Most everyone is vaxxed that is high-risk. Let the rest deal with their consequences. The trouble is, the consequences for the rest involve filling up hospitals, ICUs (and ultimately morgues, though this is less disrup…

Unvaccinated people under the age of 60 certainly do not put any significant pressure on ICUs. Saying otherwise is a blatant lie and demonizes people. Doing so and searching blame in others is a symptom of severe inferiority complex which is dangerous to other people, so take care what you say.
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