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Israel Finds Fourth Covid Booster Is Ineffective

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Re: Israel Finds Fourth Covid Booster Is Ineffective

#101

Post by RhysU »

not2b wrote: post #5

There are two separate questions: Does an extra booster prevent infection? Does an extra booster reduce hospitalizations and deaths? Seems this study only addressed the first question. But instead of giving a fourth shot based on the OG Covid, seems an updated version based on omicron, delta, and any new variants of concern would be a better idea.

> Does an extra booster reduce hospitalizations and deaths?

A meta question: how do these studies control for the fact that people who care enough to get a booster are more likely to care proactively about their health?

Lots of good outcomes correlate with caring.

Re: Israel Finds Fourth Covid Booster Is Ineffective

#102

Post by usrusr »

danhor wrote: post #26
top_post wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't for the life of me understand why your last statement isn't what the world is driving for at the moment. mRNA vaccines are easily(-ish) updated, so punch out an Omicron specific dose and get on with the regular single/dual (if needed) regime. It seems strange we'd opt for 3-4-5 shots given the benefit of mRNA was its ease of creation and modification.

Biontech (and probably all other vaccine manufacturers) are working on it and expect to have it available in march: https://investors.biontech.de/news-releases/news-release-det... The omicron surge is happening now so health authorities are looking at solutions and a third shot worked great, so a fourth one is an obvious (short term) solution. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to work.

But the fourth dose did work, just not significantly better than the third. So for people who might have had their third too long in the past to still be confident about their imminent encounter with omicron, it is exactly the obvious short term solution you describe.

Re: Israel Finds Fourth Covid Booster Is Ineffective

#103

Post by Daishiman »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #89
Daishiman wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, there's a lot of baggage left over with a lot of regulations that were made at the beginning and which don't make much sense now. It annoys me. It's not the end of the world, and much in the same way that we had vaccine passports and quarantines throughout history when diseases came and went, once we get over with this I trust we work to get rid of the baggage.

Just like we got rid of the Patriot Act and all of its tag alongs?

No, just like how we had quarantines for people coming by ship in the 50s or how you have required vaccinations to enter certain countries on certain disease outbreaks and that has just been reduced drastrically as a lot of endemic diseases have been tamed.

Re: Israel Finds Fourth Covid Booster Is Ineffective

#104

Post by lambdaba »

kashunstva wrote: post #58
twofornone wrote: post #24

Record cases across the planet regardless of vaccination rates...how much longer until official sources are willing to acknowledge that these vaccines are not nearly as effective as claimed? How long before official sources acknowledge that breakthrough cases are probably drastically underreported? I can't be the only one surrounded by fully vaccinated individuals testing positive. Its happening far too often for me…

The intended effect of the vaccines was to reduce the mortality and the severe morbidity of infection and thereby reduce the human burden of the disease and indirectly protect the capacity of healthcare systems to function. In this respect, the vaccines have been enormously successful. Were that not so, the incidence of the omicron variant would have already caused healthcare systems worldwide to collapse.

Having omnicron "rip through" would actually be a great thing, I've just read an article from Belgium saying they have no patients with omnicron in ICUs. It does seem some people need supervision but I presume the load is much much reduced. Also omnicron doesn't seem to spare vaccinated neither in symptoms nor in infection rate, but that's just anecdotal, maybe someone has other information?

Re: Israel Finds Fourth Covid Booster Is Ineffective

#105

Post by mmmrtl »

Jimmc414 wrote: post #59

Rochelle Walensky, the CDC director, has stated that vaccines do reduce severity, but they do not stop transmission. Assuming her words represent the scientific and expert opinion, could someone offer a coherent argument as to why there is so much pressure for others to get vaccinated? Is fear of the unvaccinated clogging up hospitals the primary motivation?

stopping transmission is an impossibly high bar. Vaccines reduce transmission. Really really shockingly unexpectedly well for the first few months, in previous waves, but that sterilizing antibody-mediated immunity wanes. The booster restores that efficacy against transmission, but omicron's immune evasion means that even a booster only gets to ~70% efficacy against cases/transmission, compared to the surprise finding of ~95% efficacy for the first two doses. Fewer people spreading the virus -> fewer cases -> not as bad of a time.

The other important factor is that because your immune system is primed to recognize SARS-CoV-2 after vaccination, even if you do get infected, it responds and clears the infection more quickly than it would otherwise. That could mean you're never infectious, or infectious for fewer days, reducing transmission. Pre-omicron, breakthrough infections were infectious for 5.5 days on average, compared to 7.5 days for infections in unvaccinated people (https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2102507). Yes, all this to maintain some semblance of healthcare for society, and to fill up fewer reefer trucks with body bags.

Re: Israel Finds Fourth Covid Booster Is Ineffective

#106

Post by Proven »

jollybean wrote: post #30

This is click bait verging on vaccine minsinformation. The headline could be: "4 doses may not more effective at reducing Omicron infections than 3 doses, but 3 doses is actually very good at preventing infection, hospitalization and death from all known variants - and even 2 doses - while not providing a lot of protection against Omicron infection ... does actually provide good protection against infection from othe…

No post body was provided.

Re: Israel Finds Fourth Covid Booster Is Ineffective

#107

Post by cthalupa »

timr wrote: post #65
Daishiman wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And I can only imagine many people would be happy to mandate a fourth as soon as possible. I'm sorry but I'm not understanding the logic. The booster was recommended after several rounds of research across multiple countries suggested it was a good idea, with Israel doing some of the first testing and reaching the conclusion that it was worthwhile (and it was, by a substantial margin). Their research is now indicat…

> I'm sorry but I'm not understanding the logic. The booster was recommended after several rounds of research across multiple countries suggested it was a good idea, with Israel doing some of the first testing and reaching the conclusion that it was worthwhile (and it was, by a substantial margin). You are misinformed. There is a paucity of data supporting boosters, what little exists is for people over 65 (to be fai…

I mean, I can just dump a bunch of links to studies and details about how boosters are highly effective, even for young people.

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/meetings/downloads/slides-... https://www.mdpi.com/2076-393X/10/1/23/pdf https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/01/no-omicron-im... https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01575-4 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.13.21267748v... https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/2022-01...

And I can find dozens more.

Your comment is basically entirely an appeal to authority in what is linked - these are not studies, they are specific individuals saying things and you saying we should listen to them because of who they are in general, and not because they have actual data to back their specific point.

Re: Israel Finds Fourth Covid Booster Is Ineffective

#108

Post by jollybean »

kyrra wrote: post #70
timr wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm sorry but I'm not understanding the logic. The booster was recommended after several rounds of research across multiple countries suggested it was a good idea, with Israel doing some of the first testing and reaching the conclusion that it was worthwhile (and it was, by a substantial margin). You are misinformed. There is a paucity of data supporting boosters, what little exists is for people over 65 (to be fai…

And many (most?) of these policies ignore natural immunity that people are getting from catching COVID.

It's a bit conspiratorial to suggest health authorities including epidemiologists and immunologists would 'ignore' a foundational aspect of their underlying knowledge of the system when trying to understand it and formulate policy.

Of course they are taking it into account.

Most health authorities do random sampling to try to get an idea of underlying natural immunity and the various characteristics that takes on.

Re: Israel Finds Fourth Covid Booster Is Ineffective

#109

Post by timr »

Daishiman wrote: post #80
kyrra wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And many (most?) of these policies ignore natural immunity that people are getting from catching COVID.

They do https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid... .

You should probably read the data, and not just the title and conclusions:

> Among those previously infected, until the emergence of the Omicron variant, the cumulative incidence of COVID19 was not significantly different between those vaccinated and unvaccinated, even at almost a year of follow-up.

> However, among those with prior COVID-19, vaccination was not associated with significantly lower risk of COVID-19 in either the pre-Omicron (HR 0.78, 95% C.I. 0.31-1.96) or the Omicron phase (HR 0.77, 95% C.I. 0.53-1.12).

The only thing they find is that there's some effectiveness against symptomatic illness during the Omicron wave:

> among those with prior COVID-19, vaccination was associated with significantly lower risk of symptomatic COVID-19 in both the pre-Omicron (HR 0.60, 95% C.I. 0.40-0.90) and the Omicron phase (HR 0.36, 95% C.I. 0.23-0.57).

Apparently this is based on the data in Figure 4...but Figure 4 isn't included (again, did you read this??), so I can't say either way.

Re: Israel Finds Fourth Covid Booster Is Ineffective

#110

Post by hourislate »

Folks shouldn't worry whether it's effective or not. Just go get it because it's never a bad thing to keep everything topped up. I hope they mandate everyone to take those new pills Pfizer came out with, that will probably make us super human Covid fighting machines. If we just keep taking boosters and those new pills Covid doesn't stand a chance.

Please make sure you tell everyone who isn't vaccinated to get vaccinated so they don't make a vaccinated person catch Covid.

https://ifunny.co/picture/don-t-talk-to-me-unless-you-re-gig...

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