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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

#91
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clinics routinely require staff and physicians to be vaccinated against the flu lest there be an exemption on file. Granted this article shared that the rate is low, it also surfaced mandates for healthcare: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3020194/

I have never heard of a population wide mandate for a flu vaccine however. And since 2004 the average effectiveness for the flu vaccine is about 40% so I guess if you are in a high risk group it might increase your survival a bit, but not enough effectiveness for a national mandate. The death rate of the flu is about 0.01% for all populations. I mean, would you get a surgery that had a 40% success rate if your chance…

That's a false equivalence .

A jab isn't as evasive as surgery, it doesn't carry the same risks,costs,time etc

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

#92
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…

South Africa has 20,000/day cases which is about the same they had in July, yet they peak at 30 deaths/day vs 400 deaths/day in July. To estimate the fatality rate of a variant, you need to do it within the same population. At the current rate, Omicron is literally as deadly as influenza in South Africa [1] and, as the current wave passed its peak, it might be even less deadly than that.

PS: parent post is sarcastic

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/globalhealth/countries/southafrica/what/...

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

#93
post #51

Quoted post unavailable.

Your claim is directly contradicted by the abstract of the paper you linked to: "We estimated an extra two (95% confidence interval (CI) 0, 3), one (95% CI 0, 2) and six (95% CI 2, 8) myocarditis events per 1 million people vaccinated with ChAdOx1, BNT162b2 and mRNA-1273, respectively, in the 28 days following a first dose and an extra ten (95% CI 7, 11) myocarditis events per 1 million vaccinated in the 28 days afte…

OPs comment is deleted, so I can't see the paper.

Is there a reason to believe the risk of myocarditis will continue to rise with each booster?

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

#94
post #51

Quoted post unavailable.

Your claim is directly contradicted by the abstract of the paper you linked to: "We estimated an extra two (95% confidence interval (CI) 0, 3), one (95% CI 0, 2) and six (95% CI 2, 8) myocarditis events per 1 million people vaccinated with ChAdOx1, BNT162b2 and mRNA-1273, respectively, in the 28 days following a first dose and an extra ten (95% CI 7, 11) myocarditis events per 1 million vaccinated in the 28 days afte…

I’m not so sure 1 and 2 preclude 3. Is it not increasingly likely you get it even if vaccinated, especially with Omicron, thereby suffering the increased risk of all three (four with booster?)?

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

#95

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…

The response to the COVID shots isn't linear, so it doesn't come down to just doing the same thing 3 times.

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

#96
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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... ?

It means that if (big ifs!) (a) the South African peak is truly a peak and (b) vaccine-acquired immunity staves off severe illness to the same extent that infection-acquired immunity does[*], Europe is not in for “quite a ride.” As in South Africa, cases will briefly peak at a very high level, but without a corresponding high level of hospitalizations or deaths.

[*] while only ~30% of SA’s population has been vaccinated, some estimate an additional 40% of the population have been infected, for an overall immunity rate of ~70%, which is comparable to the vaccination rate in the US/Europe.

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

#97
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.

Pre-covid, if you picked a random hospital at a random point in time in the U.S. there was a 16% chance it would be at max capacity and something like a 30% chance it would be over 80% capacity. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3840149/

It amazes me that hospitals are shutting down, healthcare worker numbers have barely recovered to 2018 numbers, bed capacity is shrinking in many areas and even still people think we have a healthcare crisis.

We've created 80% of all dollars ever created in the past two years. We have the money. It seems obvious (to me, anyways) our healthcare spending would explode in that sector and solve simple issues like capacity and worker shortage, if in fact that was an issue to begin with.

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

#98
post #32
post #4

sounds like vaccine marketing is crossing into the "25% more nuts and 8g protein per serving" territory. I suppose that regular consumer isnt ready to evaluate all the aspects of the difference between say 20-fold and 37-fold antibody levels beside the "bigger is better" (is it? does high antibody levels come for free? i remember a study where methotrexate treatment to kill B-cells which were of high levels after flu…

I want to know why they never fully investigate why there is such a disparity of outcomes between people who catch SARS2. One can say obesity, but what does that mean physiologically? Is it just they already how too much inflammation? https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/CIRCRESAHA.119.... Of is it that they are deficiency in some nutrient that causes the inflammation? https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar…

>I want to know why they never fully investigate why there is such a disparity of outcomes between people who catch SARS2.

It's been, and is being very intensively investigated. We know an awful lot about some aspects of it, but the factors that lead to different immune system responses are very difficult to figure out despite many decades of research into the mechanisms.

In the first instance, the specific sites and pathways in the body the virus initially infects and propagates through make a big difference. It might initially infect the nasal passage, throat, lungs or even the nervous system. Even the specific sites in those areas and the initial viral load make a big difference to the progression of the disease.

As the infection spreads the many, many different combinations of which systems in the body are infected, in what order, how severely and in combination with what stages in the immune response, together with the weaknesses and strengths of different systems in an individual leads to a massive explosion in the number of possible different scenarios and hence likely outcomes.

A big problem though is our limited understanding of the various failure modes of the immune system, or at least in our ability to manage it. Inflamation is our immune system causing collateral damage to our own bodies. There are many, many diseases related to this and they can all be extremely difficult to treat.

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

#99
Meta: Let say I'm 30 years old, healthy, vaccinated with JJ over 6 months ago. Denmark, Sweden, Finland have banned Moderna for younger than 30. Some countries were recommending it to people over 50. Whole communication is a mess.

Should I get a booster shot? What are the pros and cons? Is there any data on that? I asked a friend doctor and she said that I should get a test for antibody count (a lab one, not garbage test you can buy anywhere)

I was quite sick from the last shot so I'd like to avoid it. I probably had Covid in April 2020. (no tests, I had a unusually mild cold-like symptoms and my partner lost the sense of taste for a few days)

Risks (Yes, I know some of them are extremely small)

- Booster won't help with stopping transmission

- myocarditis[1], allergy reaction (boosters are only Pfizer and Moderna, which I haven't taken), driving to and from, catching COVID and other diseases in the walk-in centre.

- I could spread COVID to people in the queue for booster shots, doctors and nurses.

[1]hence the ban it for younger males in some countries.

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

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> surely it would be easier to produce an antiviral for home use that would alleviate the symptoms of Covid-19, rather than relying on the development of a vaccine What makes you think that? Honest question.

Vaccines are specific and usually take years to produce (this time being the exception), it was more of a question than a statement of fact because I genuinely don't know (hence the use of 'surely', it seems intuitive to me but I really can't say.)

Making an anti-viral is hard. No where near as easy as making an antibiotic (and even that can be hard, because: evolution).
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