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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

#81

Post by throwaway894345 »

impendingchange wrote: post #76
toolz wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Well, a lot of people died, mostly.

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

#82

Post by dahfizz »

impendingchange wrote: post #76
toolz wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

By letting people die. If covid came around in the 1200s, then everyone would have gotten it and ~3% of the world population would have died. Definitely suboptimal but nowhere near an extinction event.

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

#83

Post by bostik »

impendingchange wrote: post #76
toolz wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Law of large numbers. The widespread plagues of the past were never 100% lethal, or we wouldn't be here - a sizable fraction of the population survived, and over several rounds of infection/reinfection gained something we'd think of sterilising immunity.

In the meanwhile, the plagues and their knock-on effects may have eliminated approximately HALF of the entire population of their times.[0]

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death ("is estimated to have killed 30 percent to 60 percent of the European population")

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

#84

Post by bipson »

impendingchange wrote: post #72
bipson wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Infection also leads to immunization.

Both GB and SA had considerably higher incidence numbers over the last 12 months than most of the EU, with GB running a very successful vaccination program.

Particularly in SA researches estimate that almost anyone has had one or more infections in the last 24 months.

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

#85

Post by simonh »

mjfl wrote: post #28
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.

I don't get a severe fever from flu shots.

Many people do.

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

#86

Post by bipson »

MontyCarloHall wrote: post #77
bipson wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

And this means... ?

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

#87

Post by ed_balls »

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 really hard to compare UK and SA.

- average age 28 SA vs 40 UK

- a lot of immunocompromised people in SA (AIDS)

- UK has most of it immunity from vaccination which was mainly targeting AC2 receptor. It's possible that natural immunity or Sinovac (attenuated virus) has better protection than mRNA vaccines - not confirmed.

- SA is doing fewer tests.

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

#88

Post by maxerickson »

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.

Michigan has certificates of need for hospital beds. Capacity is centrally planned (no doubt the incumbents are good friends with their regulators).

That's in addition to the games CMS plays with Medicare certification and funding.

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

#89

Post by hcurtiss »

throwawayxmas wrote: post #23
crate_barre wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t lose your job for not getting the flu vaccine. Again, it’s an unprecedented situation and I’ll accept the mandate for the three shots, but this has to have an end at some point.

Of course it ends, when the hospitals aren't a mess? Until then, we have to keep getting vaccines. It's clear that the wave after wave it's getting easier in the hospitals. Remember, that hospital systems in pretty much all countries has collapsed. They have to move surgeries and some patients are even afraid to go to hospitals at this point.

> Remember, that hospital systems in pretty much all countries has collapsed.

This is just factually incorrect. This kind of fearmongering is helping nobody.

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

#90

Post by throwaway894345 »

whynotminot wrote: post #74
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…

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…

With how much more contagious omicron is, I wonder what the odds are that future strains will come from it or an earlier strain? In particular, I assume there is some zero-sum competition going on between strains—if someone gets infected with Omicron it becomes very unlikely that they would later contract Delta—thus at a certain point Omicron is everywhere and less contagious strains largely die out? This has happened in the past with syphilis, for example.
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