Omicron evades Moderna vaccine too, study suggests, but boosters help • Hacker News Board

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

#61

Post by JPKab » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 12:34 AM UTC

rsynnott wrote: post #46

raxxorrax wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Unvaccinated people under the age of 60 certainly do not put any significant pressure on ICUs. In countries with near-universal vaccination of over-60s, they actually do. In Ireland, over the past 5 months, 60% of ICU admissions have been under 65. Only 10% have been over 75 (in Ireland, vaccination rates for over 75s are virtually 100%). 10% are aged 25-35: https://www.hpsc.ie/a-z/respiratory/coronavirus/novelcoro…

You stated the percentage of COVID patients in the ICU who are under 65. What you didn't state is:

1) Are ICUs in Ireland being pushed to capacity or not? 2) What percentage of ICU beds are occupied by the totality of covid patients?

These two details are crucial to understanding whether the small percentage of covid CASES that become HOSPITALIZATIONS is significant enough in number to impact the ICUs. Based on every piece of data I've seen regarding the percentage of young people without comorbidities who get hospitalized after infection, it's probably overblown.

Based on this dashboard, there are a TOTAL of 108 people currently in Irish ICUs for covid. This is out of a total population of just over 5 million people.

https://covid19ireland-geohive.hub.arcgis.com/pages/hospital...

At the peak of delta, there were 218 people in the ICUs in Ireland for COViD. Ireland doesn't have enough ICU beds is what I would infer if this is "overwhelming the hospital system" there. I live in Colorado, and these numbers are nothing compared to the hospitalizations we had, and we have a similar population.

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

#62

Post by JPKab » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 12:47 AM UTC

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #30

raxxorrax wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of these articles have any sources and are known for fear mongering by now. It is not reflected by numbers. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmed.2020.56068... or specifically: https://www.frontiersin.org/files/Articles/560685/fmed-07-56... And even they have a questionable method by aggregating people of age 40-69. If you would split it further 40-59, the middle aged group would look just as the you…

If you're going to dismiss a wide range of mainstream media "unsourced, known for fear mongering" then I'm going to stop listening, it's not a worthwhile conversation. Again, what is so "very obvious" about something that a wide range of sources contradict?

The media sites you linked to are not "broad" at all. They are all very much left-of-center and toe a very ideologically consistent line of standard left of center COVID Hawkishness. The kind of people that told us we definitely needed to mask up outdoors last year and never apologized when it was quietly acknowledged that masking outdoors was utter nonsense and never backed by science.

This cabal of ideologues in media have done nothing but back "abundance of caution" policies with zero limiting principle of analysis of costs. Rather than critique and hold the public health officials accountable, they have simply licked their boots the entire pandemic.

I'm a lifelong Democratic voter, and it's become utterly transparent and obvious that the western media is filled with quantitatively/statistically illiterate activists masquerading as journalists.

The CDC numbers on the risk of young people with covid speak for themselves.

https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#demographics

All age groups under the age of 30 COMBINED make up LESS THAN 1% OF DEATHS.

For all age groups under the age of 50, the total is less than 6% of deaths.

If you're going to complain about "worthwhile conversation", I would suggest understanding statistics before you get into conversations where you are clearly out of your depth.

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

#63

Post by JPKab » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 12:51 AM UTC

peteradio wrote: post #25

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unvaccinated people under the age of 60 certainly do not put any significant pressure on ICUs However: "Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine a day earlier warned of a “startling” rise in Covid hospitalizations among young people." https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/22/unvaccinated-covid-patients-... "I’m treating more and more young, unvaccinated people in ICU" https://metro.co.uk/2021/11/10/most-covid-patients-i-treat-i... "We're seei…

Those are not statistics related to ICU occupancy, except for this line: "We're seeing younger people, unvaccinated, who take up around 75 percent of the intensive care beds and that's not just here, that's nationally." How do you read that? 75% of ICU bed are being taken up by young unvaccinated covid patients? I'd bet all my money that is not true. These sentences are being put together to drive the cattle not info…

Here's the data on Ireland, and your suspicions are correct. It's not anchored in any fact. We're in a world where Rolling Stone and CNN will parrot a completely false story about a mass of gunshot victims in rural Oklahoma (because that makes sense....?????? How many shootings do you think happen in rural OK) being blocked from ICUs by an initial mass of ivermectin victims.....

The fear-mongering in the Irish press was clearly intended to drive behavior, rather than inform with real facts.

https://covid19ireland-geohive.hub.arcgis.com/pages/hospital...

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

#64

Post by hcknwscommenter » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 3:47 AM UTC

mensetmanusman wrote: post #24

Omicron is an evolution in the spike, which is what the mRNA vaccines focused on. When the spike changes sufficiently, there is no mechanism by which the vaccine works, except in so much as that person may have already had sars-cov-2 with no symptoms and built additional immunity to other topologies of the system. Since everyone will eventually host the virus at some time scale, the best one could hope for is initial…

> When the spike changes sufficiently, there is no mechanism by which the vaccine works

this is not entirely correct T cell response uses a vast array of much smaller epitopes as compared to the antibody response. These much smaller and much more numerous epitopes almost certainly cannot be entirely mutated away while maintaining function.

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

#65

Post by SideburnsOfDoom » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 8:25 AM UTC

JPKab wrote: post #52

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Could you please cite a source that says most transmission is pre-symptomatic or asymptomatic? Is that new with the delta variant? The studies I've seen have more recently concluded that asymptomatic transmission is far lower than previously thought. Although it probably doesn't matter, since the plurality of symptomatic people below the age of 55 are going to have symptoms hard to distinguish from a cold. Regardless…

> Could you please cite a source that says most transmission is pre-symptomatic or asymptomatic?

Both links above say as much. Please don't waste our time with "cite a source" when the sources are right there. No it is not new with Covid-Delta.

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

#66

Post by SideburnsOfDoom » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 8:27 AM UTC

raxxorrax wrote: post #47

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let us just disagree here what we think is correct or false information Are you saying now that it's not obvious? So ... not blatant? > But if you want to blame others for their life risk, That's not the issue. But people's life risk doesn't exist in a vacuum, it impacts people around them. If their life risk impact me (which it does) then it's an issue. In order to deny that, you have to also deny e.g. that they e…

You have to live with that and the risk does not warrant blaming others. Because if they are under a certain age and therefore not in a risk group, the risk to you is marginal, completely independent from anyones vaccination status. You can reduce your risk by getting vaccinated yourself or by isolating.

> You have to live with that and the risk does not warrant blaming others

You could say that about any risk, e.g. "you have to live with the risk of drunk drivers, and the risk does not warrant blaming others, we just have to live with drunk driving."

it's certainly an opinion that you have there, but societies in general have not chosen to treat serious risks that way, so the "have to" part isn't correct, no: we can and often do choose better than that.

I see that you're no longer trying to defend your "blatant lie" comment. Good, it's indefensible.

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

#67

Post by SideburnsOfDoom » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 8:31 AM UTC

JPKab wrote: post #62

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're going to dismiss a wide range of mainstream media "unsourced, known for fear mongering" then I'm going to stop listening, it's not a worthwhile conversation. Again, what is so "very obvious" about something that a wide range of sources contradict?

The media sites you linked to are not "broad" at all. They are all very much left-of-center and toe a very ideologically consistent line of standard left of center COVID Hawkishness. The kind of people that told us we definitely needed to mask up outdoors last year and never apologized when it was quietly acknowledged that masking outdoors was utter nonsense and never backed by science. This cabal of ideologues in me…

> They are all very much left-of-center and toe a very ideologically consistent line of standard left of center COVID Hawkishness.

BBC, "leftist" after being pro-UK-government (right of centre) for a long time? I do not recognise your characterisation as grounded in reality at all. It looks like you just use that as a slur-word to dismiss what you don't like.

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

#68

Post by native_samples » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 1:40 PM UTC

supermatt wrote: post #29

Why would the antibodies be more effective after 3 shots than 2? Shouldn't they be the same/similar antibodies? Is it more a case of the 3rd dose being more recent than the 2nd dose was for participants so there are more present? If so, why are we talking about number of vaccines instead of recency of vaccination?

They wouldn't but there are other possible mechanisms.

As a hypothetical example, if the body doesn't consider Omicron to be particularly threatening then it wouldn't devote much resources to fighting it. The vaccine would override that response by forcing a massive counter-response (antibody titers after vaccination are much higher than after infection), and those antibodies would then help suppress the symptoms. If you assume symptoms to what appears to be a common cold is all that matters, then this is "effective". If you assume flooding the immune system with dangerous proteins to make it manufacture tons of antibodies isn't free, then you'd have to weigh up the costs and benefits of doing things this way. However COVID is a magical disease in which costs and benefits don't apply - for whatever the public health community wants to do there are only ever benefits, never costs. Hence: effectiveness.

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

#69

Post by JPKab » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 2:17 PM UTC

n8henrie wrote: post #35

peteradio wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are not statistics related to ICU occupancy, except for this line: "We're seeing younger people, unvaccinated, who take up around 75 percent of the intensive care beds and that's not just here, that's nationally." How do you read that? 75% of ICU bed are being taken up by young unvaccinated covid patients? I'd bet all my money that is not true. These sentences are being put together to drive the cattle not info…

> 75% of ICU bed are being taken up by young unvaccinated covid patients? FWIW, I think this roughly represents my experience WRT our 4-bed ICU on the Navajo Nation. Extremely high vaccination rate, with the exception of young people who didn't think they would get very sick, and they've ended up representing most of our ICU players.

The Navajo Nation has a sky-high obesity rate. As a physician there you know this. And you also know that obesity is a primary driver of hospitalization in younger people. Fry bread is poison.

It's not representative of the whole. As unhealthy as most of the US population is, it's far worse on the rez.

There's absolutely nothing remotely statistically significant about a four bed ICU. You can't draw conclusions about broader trends based on that.

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

#70

Post by JPKab » Sat, Dec 18, 2021, 2:34 AM UTC

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #65

JPKab wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you please cite a source that says most transmission is pre-symptomatic or asymptomatic? Is that new with the delta variant? The studies I've seen have more recently concluded that asymptomatic transmission is far lower than previously thought. Although it probably doesn't matter, since the plurality of symptomatic people below the age of 55 are going to have symptoms hard to distinguish from a cold. Regardless…

> Could you please cite a source that says most transmission is pre-symptomatic or asymptomatic? Both links above say as much. Please don't waste our time with "cite a source" when the sources are right there. No it is not new with Covid-Delta.

Neither of the links above said anything about asymptomatic transmission.

Neck beard of doom indeed.