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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

#121

Post by jtc331 »

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…

South Africa has extremely low vaccination rates, correct?

Edit: Yes, your premise seems to be quite wrong. South Africa has only 26% vaccination rate.

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

#122

Post by incrudible »

sega_sai wrote: post #46
NomeChomsky wrote: post #36

Quoted post unavailable.

I'm not sure that your reading of the paper is correct. For example, see this figure https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01630-0/figures/1

It is correct, note the qualification for under 40:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01630-0/figures/2

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

#123

Post by dahfizz »

hcurtiss wrote: post #94
skuhn wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?)?

Its also not a guarantee you get Covid. Current stats are that 50 / 330 million of the USA population have had Covid. So comparing the risk factors of the vaccine to covid directly is a bit misleading, IMO.

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

#124

Post by jtc331 »

dahfizz wrote: post #82
impendingchange wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Given COVID’s risk/age relationship and already lower life spans in that time period plus higher vitamin D exposure rates it’s quite likely rate of death would have been lower in that population.

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

#125

Post by najqh »

kypro wrote: post #109
ed_balls wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> average age 28 SA vs 40 UK I think this is definitely part of the explanation. > A lot of immunocompromised people in SA (AIDS) Wouldn't this mean more deaths or am I missing something? Are COVID deaths in AIDS patients attributed to AIDS not COVID? > 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 prot…

>Wouldn't this mean more deaths or am I missing something? Are COVID deaths in AIDS patients attributed to AIDS not COVID?

I don't know about SA but many countries count any dead person who was infected with COVID as a COVID death, which is a convenient way of padding the numbers.

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

#126

Post by incrudible »

nojito wrote: post #43
NomeChomsky wrote: post #36

Quoted post unavailable.

How is this a bombshell? VAERS data isn’t reliable and should not be used to determine adverse reactions.

> VAERS data isn’t reliable and should not be used to determine adverse reactions.

FDA and CDC do use VAERS as their source for estimating risk of adverse events:

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/meetings/downloads/slides-...

https://www.fda.gov/media/151733/download (page 23)

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

#127

Post by zosima »

This number is unfortunately fairly meaningless. Neutralizing antibody-titer is of course somewhat related to ability to resist infection, but how much is unclear.

Also there is no reason to expect the antibody-titer to stay high and it will probably go down quite a lot within the next 3-6 months, just like antibody-titers did after first round of vaccinations and seems to do after Covid-infection.

At this point it almost seems a bit disingenuous for Moderna to not study and publish numbers on expected antibody-titer half-life.

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

#128

Post by nradov »

dahfizz wrote: post #82
impendingchange wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The infection fatality rate was never as high as 3%. The CDC estimated it at 0.6% back when almost no one was vaccinated.

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

#129

Post by ed_balls »

nharada wrote: post #104
ed_balls wrote: post #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…

I'd get it -- J&J is already known to be weaker coverage, and Omicron spreads so easily that the odds you get COVID are fairly high if you interact with people regularly. If you're looking at it from a sickness perspective, the expected value of sickness without the shot is probably higher (lower chance of many days of feeling bad vs high chance of a single day). Single person anecdote: I was quite sick from J&J and…

Sickness from the shot is not my main concern. I'd love to see the whole risk profile for my case. I have a feeling that governments are doing "booster for everybody" for political reasons. They don't want to single out particular age group.

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

#130

Post by ericb »

ucha wrote: post #92
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…

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…

You can't go by cases/day though--there's a cohort problem.

In the slow growth scenario, when you are at 20,000 cases a day, the deaths on that day are from the seeds of cases that started "long" ago. When you get to 20k on the back of a growth explosion, those cases are all "brand new."

This is not to say that it won't be less deadly, just that judging it that way is very flawed.

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