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Moderna booster increased neutralizing antibody levels against Omicron ~37-fold

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Re: Moderna booster increased neutralizing antibody levels against Omicron ~37-fold

#71

Post by noir_lord »

gambiting wrote: post #37
forgotmyoldname wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flu shots are “updated” every year for new variants. I might be wrong, but I think covid boosters so far are all just extra doses of the same old material. I don’t think anyone would get flu shots if we were expected to get 4 doses of the same thing with demonstrated lower efficacy. I’m perfectly fine with getting boosters if they’re adjusted to be more effective against new strains. Getting a third, fourth, or fifth…

Which is why all of these companies are currently working on "v2" of the vaccine which specifically targets omicron. But since the current version of the vaccine was found the be effective anyway, that's why it's being used. I imagine by the time next year it won't be in use anymore, purely because of its lack of effectivness for whatever variant is around then.

I think that is exactly the way we are heading as pandemic becomes endemic.

A yearly shot for vulnerable people possibly rolled in with your flu shot (or at least scheduled the same way).

I go get my flu shot every year since I'm classed as vulnerable for health reasons - the exact same reasons I went and got both covid shots and the booster the second I could.

Re: Moderna booster increased neutralizing antibody levels against Omicron ~37-fold

#72

Post by impendingchange »

bipson wrote: post #29
beervirus wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When asked to grade the severity of symptoms on a scale from 1 (no symptoms) to 5 (significant symptoms), 42% (33/79) reported level 3 symptoms, whereas 11% (9/79) reported level 4 symptoms. None of the cases required hospitalisation up to 13 December 2021. I am extremely optimistic.

All this talk about "mild" cases with Omicron are failing to grasp the whole situation at two very important corners: - countries affected so far have excellent immunization rates, i.e. if I take these populations as a reference, I'm just checking how immunized people are affected. Not every country has had either a lot of cases or large/successful immunization programs - if the transmission rate in South Afrika and…

0 out of 79 cases requiring hospitalization? If we assumed a _generous_ vaccination rate of, say, 80% for SA or GB, then we could say that 16 of these cases are with unvaccinated individuals. So, 0 out of 16 is still pretty good for no hospitalizations.

Or am I figuring this wrong?

Re: Moderna booster increased neutralizing antibody levels against Omicron ~37-fold

#73

Post by NomeChomsky »

rsfern wrote: post #70
NomeChomsky wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See figure 2. Double shot of Moderna has higher chance of myocarditis than covid does. They do add this to the conclusions of the paper, but they defocus it by talking about the populations as one large unbroken dataset. When looking at people under 40, the risks for myocarditis are higher amongst Moderna double shot patients than for covid infections.

Right, that’s fair, I was overreacting a bit because you left out the age qualifier. For reference the under 40 stats are (4, 9) + (12, 16) extra events for moderna vs (7, 11) for infection

That's a 50% increase in relative risk. Or as the pharma companies would call it, 'a risk increase of 50%'

Re: Moderna booster increased neutralizing antibody levels against Omicron ~37-fold

#74

Post by whynotminot »

forgotmyoldname wrote: post #30
beervirus wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? We get a flu booster every year, and that’s fine. I’m happy to get a shot every so often if it means I can go about my life like normal.

Flu shots are “updated” every year for new variants. I might be wrong, but I think covid boosters so far are all just extra doses of the same old material. I don’t think anyone would get flu shots if we were expected to get 4 doses of the same thing with demonstrated lower efficacy. I’m perfectly fine with getting boosters if they’re adjusted to be more effective against new strains. Getting a third, fourth, or fifth…

You’re thinking about the booster wrong. Having a vaccine for the ancestral strain is actually pretty great, because it confers (or has to this point) some level of protection against all child strains due to there being at least enough similarity still.

If you make some highly specific omicron booster, it might not do anything against whatever variant comes next.

As long as the original shot keeps working, it’s the best one to ride with for now.

Re: Moderna booster increased neutralizing antibody levels against Omicron ~37-fold

#75

Post by NomeChomsky »

incrudible wrote: post #57
rsfern wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not how I read the abstract of this paper. Moderna: (2, 8) + (7, 11) extra cases per million Covid: (38, 41) (95% confidence intervals)

Averages are misleading. All the risk is concentrated in the group under 40, where it is higher for the vaccine.

That group is also men and women. If it were broken down even further to just 'men' the effect would likely be even more pronounced.

Re: Moderna booster increased neutralizing antibody levels against Omicron ~37-fold

#76

Post by impendingchange »

toolz wrote: post #39
pixiemaster wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in terms of covid hospitalisations overwhelming our hospitals: i‘m optimistic as well that this might not happen at scale. but in terms of a large part of society getting sick (level 3 still makes you stick in bed) at the same time - this will lead to worker shortage - i’m kind of neutral-pessimistic. in terms of longterm long covid effect on our demographic - i’m fearful. in terms of society getting their act togeth…

I can't stress enough how dangerous it is to pretend society can end a virus that is not only incredibly contagious between humans but also has many animal carriers. There is nothing more dangerous than society with no trust and this completely fabricated idea that people's behavior is to blame for the continued existence of covid serves no purpose other than to erode trust.

How did humanity ever survive this long without modern medicine?

Re: Moderna booster increased neutralizing antibody levels against Omicron ~37-fold

#77

Post by MontyCarloHall »

bipson wrote: post #29
beervirus wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When asked to grade the severity of symptoms on a scale from 1 (no symptoms) to 5 (significant symptoms), 42% (33/79) reported level 3 symptoms, whereas 11% (9/79) reported level 4 symptoms. None of the cases required hospitalisation up to 13 December 2021. I am extremely optimistic.

All this talk about "mild" cases with Omicron are failing to grasp the whole situation at two very important corners: - countries affected so far have excellent immunization rates, i.e. if I take these populations as a reference, I'm just checking how immunized people are affected. Not every country has had either a lot of cases or large/successful immunization programs - if the transmission rate in South Afrika and…

Hospitalizations [0], and perhaps even cases [1,2], appear to have peaked in South Africa.

[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-17/s-africa-...

[1] https://twitter.com/pieterstreicher/status/14718990936853954...

[2] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/amp/2021/12/the-south-africa...

Re: Moderna booster increased neutralizing antibody levels against Omicron ~37-fold

#78

Post by simonh »

kypro wrote: post #63

I only realised how serious a threat omicron was when I looked at the South African data recently and you can see how much of a impact it's had on deaths in a largely unvaccinated population. Even if you just compare the case numbers in South Africa to the UK (where most are double or triple vaxed) you get a good idea of how well vaccines are working. For example, in South Africa deaths have gone from about ~15 a day…

I think you're right overall, but that the data doesn't yet support the conclusion. Omicron got traction in the UK at least a week later than SA, probably 2 weeks, so the death rate will lag by the same margin. We need to compare the death rate in the UK now to the death rate in SA a few weeks ago.

All the early indications are that the complete data will support your conclusion when it comes in, but frustrating as it is we'll have to wait and see.

Re: Moderna booster increased neutralizing antibody levels against Omicron ~37-fold

#79

Post by throwaway894345 »

kypro wrote: post #63

I only realised how serious a threat omicron was when I looked at the South African data recently and you can see how much of a impact it's had on deaths in a largely unvaccinated population. Even if you just compare the case numbers in South Africa to the UK (where most are double or triple vaxed) you get a good idea of how well vaccines are working. For example, in South Africa deaths have gone from about ~15 a day…

With respect to comparing South Africa to UK, there’s probably a lot more going on besides vaccine availability. Presumably as a wealthier country, UK healthcare is better and not as thinly stretched as South Africa (where Omicron was first detected), for example.

Re: Moderna booster increased neutralizing antibody levels against Omicron ~37-fold

#80

Post by ajuc »

ianhawes wrote: post #61
toolz wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is inaccurate https://www.michigan.gov/coronavirus/0,9753,7-406-98159-5236...

Most people don’t realize that hospitals typically run at 98%+ capacity in the winter in a pre-COVID environment. This maximizes their profitability and allows them to operate relatively at a loss for the rest of the year.

This varies greatly between countries. In many countries hospitals don't have profits - they operate like courts or army with yearly budgets assigned by the government.
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