Omicron largely evades immunity from past infection or two vaccine doses • Hacker News Board

Re: Omicron largely evades immunity from past infection or two vaccine doses

#61

Post by dsmnd » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 6:45 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #34

kgwxd wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it not just timing? I thought the effectiveness of the vaccines only lasted around 6 months. In the US 18+ were able to get it 7 or 8 months ago.

Vaccines can last your entire lifetime, but their effectiveness decays over time it largely depends on the disease and your risk of infection. Booster shots for various vaccines have been common for example, it’s recommended people take a Tdap booster every 10 years, Tetanus every 4-6 etc. The flu vaccine is a special case as it’s changed every year.

The 'T' in Tdap stands for tetanus

Re: Omicron largely evades immunity from past infection or two vaccine doses

#62

Post by somehnguy » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 6:45 PM UTC

throwawayacc2 wrote: post #46

eagsalazar2 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really think the CDC and other govt and NGO organizations, as an international coordinated group effort, are in bed with pharma companies, plotting with them to falsify data and craft false recommendations, just so those farma companies can make more $$? I mean, I actually do think that pharma companies are vile, have successfully gained significant regulatory capture, and can influence policy through their own m…

> You really think the CDC and other govt and NGO organizations, as an international coordinated group effort, are in bed with pharma companies, plotting with them to craft false recommendations, just so those farma companies can make more $$? Yes.

You believe this based on what real world evidence? Or is it just your feelings?

Because if you're not using logic to take your current position then it'll be impossible to use logic to convince you otherwise and nobody should waste their time.

Re: Omicron largely evades immunity from past infection or two vaccine doses

#63

Post by abduhl » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 6:47 PM UTC

snewman wrote: post #29

It's worth clarifying: un-boosted vaccination or past infection seem to have greatly reduced ability to prevent infection with Omicron. There is still substantial (lessened, but not as drastically lessened) protection against serious illness / death. My understanding is that protection-against-infection and protection-against-death rely on different aspects of the immune system. The primary protection against initial…

What you’re saying sounds correct, but is there any evidence that shows omicron is resulting in less serious illness/death because of the vaccines? The reports seem to indicate that the overall risk profile of omicron is lower including for unvaccinated people. Are we just parroting the same fact as for the alpha/delta variants without any substantial evidence here when we say vaccination helps avoid serious illness for omicron? Why would a variant which has apparently evolved to evade the vaccine continue to react to prior vaccination? We see the opposite with flu vaccines sometimes when vaccinations prime against the wrong strain.

Re: Omicron largely evades immunity from past infection or two vaccine doses

#64

Post by notabee » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 6:47 PM UTC

robbmorganf wrote: post #12

Does anyone understand why a third dose of the same vaccine improves immunity to Omicron? I'm willing to believe the empirical evidence that boosters make a meaningful difference, but I can't figure out intuitively why the same mRNA a third time helps to address this new spike.

From what I understand, the immune system has some capacity to anticipate mutations. The most basic function of antibodies is to stick to and neutralize the target, in this case the spike protein that the mRNA vaccine presents to the immune system via producing some copies in muscle cells. But the immune system doesn't just produce exact form-fitting duplicate antibodies, it also has something like a biological "fuzzer" that also produces antibodies to target anticipated mutations to its main target, the spike protein. Each time this system gets stimulated, it not only makes more antibodies and more memory cells to produce them, it also runs some more anticipatory mutations. So in aggregate, hopefully the increased quantity plus maturation of these various antibody tweaks produce enough antibodies that stick well enough to the virus to incapacitate or slow it down so that the other aspects of the immune system have time to react instead of getting overwhelmed. And it makes sense to have an antibody arms race like this since viruses mutate so fast. Obviously, this doesn't always work and viruses frequently out-mutate the immune memory, but the immune system is pretty smart.

By the way, if there are any actual scientists here that spot some atrocious mistake I've made describing this, please let me know. I find it really interesting to learn about but I'm certainly no expert.

Re: Omicron largely evades immunity from past infection or two vaccine doses

#65

Post by AnthonyMouse » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 6:48 PM UTC

eagsalazar2 wrote: post #36

sdeframond wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other industries they call this "sales": getting rid of current perishable stock before buying fresh one. It's there, we might as well use it.

You really think the CDC and other govt and NGO organizations, as an international coordinated group effort, are in bed with pharma companies, plotting with them to falsify data and craft false recommendations, just so those farma companies can make more $$? I mean, I actually do think that pharma companies are vile, have successfully gained significant regulatory capture, and can influence policy through their own m…

Don't think of it as a top-down conspiracy. Think of it as an alignment of perverse incentives.

New variant comes out, CDC is pressed to propose a solution. Pharma companies come in and say "here's a study we did ourselves showing that our own product provides some improvement." CDC recommends pharma product for lack of any better ideas.

You can reasonably imagine getting this result whether or not the booster actually provides more than a marginal improvement.

Re: Omicron largely evades immunity from past infection or two vaccine doses

#66

Post by throwaway_2009 » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 6:49 PM UTC

valine wrote: post #39

makomk wrote: post #15

This news came out shortly after the UK mandated proof of two vaccine doses (or a negative test, though there's some suspicion this option will be removed like in many other European countries) for access to nightclubs and other large events. It is also not surprising and was expected when the decision was taken. Between this and other recent news I don't think trust in the establishment is exactly high right now.

The sooner they mandate a third does the better. Not sure why this news would lower trust in the government, can you elaborate on that?

So they "mandate" a third dose, nothing happens long term, so they do a fourth lockdown, close some businesses again, do some travel bans, tell people to put things on their faces, nothing happens long term, so they "mandate" a fourth dose, do a fourth lockdown...

And then the virus is still everywhere, it's still significantly more dangerous to be outside than it was in February 2020, and now it's a tremendous administrative pain in the arse to do everything, everyone is terrified due to your big marketing campaign, and we all get it anyway repeatedly.

But this time, of course, it'll be different.

Re: Omicron largely evades immunity from past infection or two vaccine doses

#67

Post by 1123581321 » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 6:49 PM UTC

eagsalazar2 wrote: post #36

sdeframond wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other industries they call this "sales": getting rid of current perishable stock before buying fresh one. It's there, we might as well use it.

You really think the CDC and other govt and NGO organizations, as an international coordinated group effort, are in bed with pharma companies, plotting with them to falsify data and craft false recommendations, just so those farma companies can make more $$? I mean, I actually do think that pharma companies are vile, have successfully gained significant regulatory capture, and can influence policy through their own m…

It’s a valid opinion. The principle is regulatory capture and it happens when a regulatory agency isn’t competent and effective enough to remain independent in its acquisition and evaluation of knowledge. Likewise, the “capturing” is not malicious but happens when the pharmaceutical company persuasive over time, or, in extreme situations, when it appears to have the only solution. This can be exacerbated by inherent limitations to the industry in question, e.g. the difficulty of conducting long-term medical trials in an emergency. Regulatory capture is a natural drift and so believing it has occurred does not require believing in a conspiracy.

(I haven’t studied whether it’s happened in the case of Pfizer boosters.)

Re: Omicron largely evades immunity from past infection or two vaccine doses

#68

Post by Symmetry » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 6:49 PM UTC

snewman wrote: post #29

It's worth clarifying: un-boosted vaccination or past infection seem to have greatly reduced ability to prevent infection with Omicron. There is still substantial (lessened, but not as drastically lessened) protection against serious illness / death. My understanding is that protection-against-infection and protection-against-death rely on different aspects of the immune system. The primary protection against initial…

I think it's more like, after a vaccination or infection you're now producing 20 different antibodies targeting different sites on the Covid spike. You start out producing high levels of the antibodies and less over time, but when you encounter the same virus you ramp up production of all 20 if your levels weren't high enough to prevent infection in the first place.

With Omicron maybe only few of those antibodies still work and not as well. That won't be enough to prevent infection. But you can still ramp up production of the ones that work after infection and your body has a good blue print, though the wonders of memory B cells and somatic hypermutation, to start work on more effective Omicron specific antibodies that makes the process easier than developing covid antibodies from scratch.

Re: Omicron largely evades immunity from past infection or two vaccine doses

#69

Post by thinkharderdev » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 6:49 PM UTC

drewg123 wrote: post #8

From the article: this translates into vaccine effectiveness estimates against symptomatic Omicron infection of between 0% and 20% after two doses, and between 55% and 80% after a booster dose What I'm wondering is: Is this due to the timing of a booster, since most boosters have been given in the last few months? Or is there some kind of cumulative impact on the immune system? Eg, If I got a booster early, am I stil…

The booster dose increases antibody titers significantly above what they were after the second dose (or first in the case of J&J) so someone who is boosted should be more protected than someone who got their second dose at the same time. Additionally, through the process of affinity maturation, the antibodies you have after a booster will be more likely to recognize Omicron because your immune system has learned to recognize more features of the virus spike protein and is more robust to mutations.

Re: Omicron largely evades immunity from past infection or two vaccine doses

#70

Post by api » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 6:52 PM UTC

snewman wrote: post #29

It's worth clarifying: un-boosted vaccination or past infection seem to have greatly reduced ability to prevent infection with Omicron. There is still substantial (lessened, but not as drastically lessened) protection against serious illness / death. My understanding is that protection-against-infection and protection-against-death rely on different aspects of the immune system. The primary protection against initial…

> There is still substantial (lessened, but not as drastically lessened) protection against serious illness / death.

My understanding so far is that the vaccine is much better at blunting the effects than preventing infection generally, even with "classic" COVID and delta.

In Ohio where I live the statistic so far has been that >90% of all hospitalized cases are unvaccinated, and of the ~10% who are vaccinated the majority have other conditions that boost risk of severe COVID such as being immunocompromised, diabetes, obesity, etc. There are very very few healthy vaccinated people in the hospital.