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

#101

Post by AnthonyMouse » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 7:36 PM UTC

eagsalazar2 wrote: post #89

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 actual…

Are all these studies and conversations from or led by pharma outsiders? If so can you provide any evidence of that? I mean it sounds like people are starting with a strongly held belief that there is a conspiracy and everyone is evil/corrupt (true of pharma I admit), then accepting, rejecting, and constructing arguments and evidence just to suit their preexisting beliefs which in turn have simply been constructed to…

It's because of human psychology.

You start off with a small group of "vaccines cause autism" crackpots, and they're irrelevant. Because vaccines still cause R But the crackpots are really loud and refuse to be defeated by science or logic. So some genius decides that what we need to own the refuseniks are vaccine mandates.

From a human psychology perspective, this was an incredibly bad idea. Because now you've gone from fighting seven lizardmen crackpots to fighting millions of regular people who don't believe in non-consensual medical treatment and can point to a long list of historical precedent for why that's a bad idea.

They literally changed the dictionary definition of "anti-vaxxer" to include people who oppose vaccine mandates:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anti-vaxxer

So now that you've put millions of people on "the other side," they are, by human nature, going to follow confirmation bias into being more likely to believe anything that helps "their side." So now large numbers of people start to believe that vaccines are dangerous and people should be afraid of getting them and they're less effective than claimed and they're only getting pushed by greedy pharma companies to make money, because that's what helps "their side" so they're more inclined to believe that it's true.

Conversely, the other side dismisses the possibility that any of those things are true for the same reason, even if some of them might be.

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

#102

Post by SomewhatLikely » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 7:36 PM UTC

andy_ppp wrote: post #14

Realistically we are probably going to be exposed to Omicron in the next 3 weeks here in the UK, is there much point in having a booster right now? Are we sure that it will actually be providing protection if I got a booster today and got COVID in, say, the next 7 days?

Past spikes in infection have played out over many weeks, so you'd probably still be fully boosted for most of the wave. 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."

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

#103

Post by wooque » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 7:36 PM UTC

So like a common cold?

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

#104

Post by corin_ » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 7:40 PM UTC

thinkharderdev wrote: post #53

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 it is about affinity maturation. Basically, when you get an initial vaccine (or infection) your immune system learns how to recognize the antigen (the virus spike protein) and produces a bunch of antibodies to recognize it. But your immune system also preserves the spike protein in antigen presenting cells so it can continue to produce antibodies to recognize more features of the spike protein.…

> So when you get a booster (or a breakthrough infection) your immune system kicks into gear again but now it produces a broader range of antibodies.

Would/could it not also be the case for exposure to the virus that doesn't result in a breakthrough infection i.e. the body detects it and fights it off successfully? (I daresay you didn't mean to imply that, just checking.)

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

#105

Post by chiefalchemist » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 7:44 PM UTC

mypalmike wrote: post #82

chiefalchemist wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the promises aren't panning out, and with each stutter step comes another heavy handed proposal (e.g., tracking, vax passports, etc.) In desperation the public has abandoned "trust but verify." Put another way, given the lessons of history, governments should be trusted less, not more. The default shouldn't not be, "Sure, whatever you say."

Governments are adapting to new information. If you expect government policy to be based on an all-knowing oracle, of course you are going to be disappointed.

If I said that. If I implied that. Please point it out to me.

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

#106

Post by jwineinger » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 7:47 PM UTC

mbfg wrote: post #88

Has there been any studies if switching vaccines for the booster is more effective or less effective?

When the CDC released the statement that you could mix, my dad (a physician) was a bit upset. I remember him telling me that they seem to have based that on a single paper that had a sample size far too small to generalize for the different combinations of vaccines, age groups, genders, and races.

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

#107

Post by corin_ » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 7:48 PM UTC

1123581321 wrote: post #67

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…

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…

In the case of covid vaccines there's plenty of real world data and lots of governments, universities, etc. running different studies all the time. Pfizer would be stupid to fake some initial data because it would be very quickly found out once real world results didn't stack up. For example, this thread you're commenting in is about research from a prestigious London university which found 3 jabs provides better protection than 2.

It wouldn't shock me at all to find out examples of pharma companies including Pfizer acting that way, but in this particular case of Covid vaccines there is evidence and plenty of reason to believe that it's not the case and you don't have any counter evidence, so no it's not a reasonable opinion it's just a conspiracy theory.

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

#108

Post by triactual » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 7:49 PM UTC

13years wrote: post #98

triactual wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While anecdotal data isn’t very useful, it is good to remember that people actually do get this disease. It seems like it’s always at arms length in online discussions; that someone else will get it surely, probably due to some implied moral failing, but not OP. Thanks for sharing and I hope you get better soon.

> good to remember that people actually do get this disease. Why does it continue to be significantly important to call this out when the trajectory places Omicron and possible future variants within the realms of cold/flu ?

To remember that normal people from our own social circles get infected and usually survive just fine. Rather than pretending that every infection is an overweight, anti-vaxxer, etc. who dies immediately after destroying the local medical facilities. I think both sides of the severity discussion would benefit from keeping the human consequences in mind, whether they are more or less severe than imagined.

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

#109

Post by 13years » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 7:54 PM UTC

triactual wrote: post #108

13years wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> good to remember that people actually do get this disease. Why does it continue to be significantly important to call this out when the trajectory places Omicron and possible future variants within the realms of cold/flu ?

To remember that normal people from our own social circles get infected and usually survive just fine. Rather than pretending that every infection is an overweight, anti-vaxxer, etc. who dies immediately after destroying the local medical facilities. I think both sides of the severity discussion would benefit from keeping the human consequences in mind, whether they are more or less severe than imagined.

Agreed, yet at some point society has to be productive again. Living in constant anxiety will ultimately be more destructive than the disease everyone fears if it has not already.

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

#110

Post by astrange » Fri, Dec 17, 2021, 8:00 PM UTC

abduhl wrote: post #92

snewman wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard information regarding serious illness / death from Omicron is scanty; it's still early. I've read indications that the vaccines (and/or previous infection with another variant, such as Delta) do seem to provide substantial protection against serious illness/death, but I don't have a link handy. IIRC at least some of the data we're working with is based on lab experiments of how various immune system components r…

Your argument boils down to “well the body learns what it looks like and so discriminates against similar looking viruses with more exposure allowing more targeted responses.” Under this theory, shouldn’t a natural immunity (as obtained from prior infection with alpha/delta) result in better immune response because it has learned “more” way to discriminate than the spike protein? Boosters seem inappropriate if the th…

It might, but you don't want to get natural immunity because that would mean getting sick first.

Getting booster shots doesn't simply give you more antibodies, it gives you better ones; each round finds new ways to match the spike protein.