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BNT162b2 Vaccine Booster and Mortality Due to Covid-19

nejm.org

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Re: BNT162b2 Vaccine Booster and Mortality Due to Covid-19

#11

Post by ed25519FUUU »

avalys wrote: post #8

Is it too early to conclude whether booster effectiveness will also wane in 6 months? I had some mild but persistent side effects from the second Pfizer dose (ear ringing and Eustachian tube dysfunction). It's gotten about 98% better - but not 100% - and I'm a bit nervous about the booster given that many people are reporting the side effects are somewhat more intense than the second shot. If the booster is the final…

I’m in a similar boat and I hate it. I did both vaccines and I’m otherwise healthy, very low risk of hospitalization or death. My workplace has said vaccination is a requirement (even though I’m remote!) and I think boosters will be part of that.

I don’t want to file a religious or medical exemption because I don’t have one. I want to file a “I shouldn’t have to do this” exemption.

Re: BNT162b2 Vaccine Booster and Mortality Due to Covid-19

#12

Post by kelnos »

angelzen wrote: post #5

Given that boosters are an attempt to counteract waning vaccine vaccine effectiveness, there are two fundamental questions: 1. Do boosters work at all? 2. Do boosters wane over time, just like the original shots did? They answer only 1. They didn't even attempt to shed light on 2, which is a serious letdown. Given known waning vaccine effectiveness, at a minimum claims on booster effectiveness should be bracketed by…

How could they answer #2? Boosters have only been a thing for, what, a couple months now?

Re: BNT162b2 Vaccine Booster and Mortality Due to Covid-19

#13

Post by captaincurrie »

fxtentacle wrote: post #2

TLDR it works as expected. Participants who received a booster at least 5 months after a second dose of BNT162b2 had 90% lower mortality due to Covid-19 than participants who did not receive a booster.

For people aged 50 and above.

Re: BNT162b2 Vaccine Booster and Mortality Due to Covid-19

#14

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

ed25519FUUU wrote: post #11
avalys wrote: post #8

Is it too early to conclude whether booster effectiveness will also wane in 6 months? I had some mild but persistent side effects from the second Pfizer dose (ear ringing and Eustachian tube dysfunction). It's gotten about 98% better - but not 100% - and I'm a bit nervous about the booster given that many people are reporting the side effects are somewhat more intense than the second shot. If the booster is the final…

I’m in a similar boat and I hate it. I did both vaccines and I’m otherwise healthy, very low risk of hospitalization or death. My workplace has said vaccination is a requirement (even though I’m remote!) and I think boosters will be part of that. I don’t want to file a religious or medical exemption because I don’t have one. I want to file a “I shouldn’t have to do this” exemption.

Two things I'm honestly curious about in your response:

1. I understand getting the vaccine is unpleasant (personally I was knocked out for 36 hours after the second dose with a high fever and body aches), but the linked study showed that the booster lowered chances of death by 90%. Yes, things like age and underlying health have a big impact, but many seemingly healthy people have either died or been hospitalized from that. Forgetting about mandates for a moment, on a personal level, why wouldn't you want to get something that showed such high efficacy against death and hospitalization that had such a low, temporally finite cost?

2. Just wanted to comment that I do agree that employer-initiated mandates make no sense to me if you are fully remote. Sure, restrictions on coming into an office unless you've been vaccinated make total sense to me, but mandating for remote employees makes no sense from the perspective of the reality of how the virus is transmitted.

Re: BNT162b2 Vaccine Booster and Mortality Due to Covid-19

#15

Post by captaincurrie »

angelzen wrote: post #5

Given that boosters are an attempt to counteract waning vaccine vaccine effectiveness, there are two fundamental questions: 1. Do boosters work at all? 2. Do boosters wane over time, just like the original shots did? They answer only 1. They didn't even attempt to shed light on 2, which is a serious letdown. Given known waning vaccine effectiveness, at a minimum claims on booster effectiveness should be bracketed by…

Given the profit incentive to create a booster-treadmill for humanity, i doubt the booster is much different from the previous jabs. Therefore we should expect it will wane just as before.

Re: BNT162b2 Vaccine Booster and Mortality Due to Covid-19

#16

Post by amanaplanacanal »

It makes sense that the booster might lower mortality from an already very low rate.

My question is, are we already below the risks from seasonal flu? I do normally get the seasonal flu vaccine, but I didn’t last year or this year because I’m still practicing social distancing.

I guess I’m trying to put this in perspective.

Re: BNT162b2 Vaccine Booster and Mortality Due to Covid-19

#17

Post by timr »

actually_a_dog wrote: post #3

Here's a summary, quoted from the article: > RESULTS > A total of 843,208 participants met the eligibility criteria, of whom 758,118 (90%) received the booster during the 54-day study period. Death due to Covid-19 occurred in 65 participants in the booster group (0.16 per 100,000 persons per day) and in 137 participants in the nonbooster group (2.98 per 100,000 persons per day). The adjusted hazard ratio for death du…

> I'll take a 90% lower mortality rate any day.

Really? Any day?

Read the part you quoted carefully: the death rate in the control group is 3 per 100,000. And if you read the rest of the paper, you'll see that the study population was entirely over age 50.

Remember that the risk of death from Covid-19 goes up exponentially with age -- something like 90% of all fatalities are over age 50 [1]. If you're in the typical HN demographic (I want to put this in perspective. Per The Book of Risks (chapter 8; annual risks) [2], your overall chance of dying in a typical year is 1 in 115 (~870 per 100,000) Your chance of being murdered is 1 in 11,000 (9 per 100,000). The chance you'll die of an accident is 1 in 2,900 (34 per 100,000). From a fall: 1 in 20,000 (5 per 100,000). By getting hit by a car while walking: 1 in 40,000 (2.5 per 100,000).

In other words, your all-ages chance of dying from Covid-19 after two doses is somewhere between your annual chance of dying from a fall, and dying after being hit by a car -- and it's much lower than that if you're under age 50! Divide that number by ten, and you're in the realm of risks that any sane person wouldn't even consider: the annual chance of dying by freezing, for example (1 in 3,000,000).

Point being: dividing a very small number by 10 is indeed a 90% risk reduction, but you have to weigh it against the costs very carefully. There are tons of reasons why I wouldn't take a 90% relative risk reduction, if the baseline risk were quite small (as it is here).

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1254488/us-share-of-tota...

[2] https://www.amazon.com/Book-Risks-Fascinating-Facts-Chances/...

Re: BNT162b2 Vaccine Booster and Mortality Due to Covid-19

#18

Post by mrtksn »

avalys wrote: post #8

Is it too early to conclude whether booster effectiveness will also wane in 6 months? I had some mild but persistent side effects from the second Pfizer dose (ear ringing and Eustachian tube dysfunction). It's gotten about 98% better - but not 100% - and I'm a bit nervous about the booster given that many people are reporting the side effects are somewhat more intense than the second shot. If the booster is the final…

Maybe you can consider another vaccine as a booster if this one did not acted well on you?

I don't see how the booster is guaranteed to be the final answer as the virus keeps mutating and spreading among the very large unvaccinated population.

I personally think that it will become endemic, thanks to the vaccine we would have enough immunity to keep us out of hospital and each time we get the virus it would act as a booster.

This thing is not going to end without something like world wide super strict lockdown(Wuhan style) or world wide vaccination(and probably some combinations as the vaccine itself reduces but doesn't completely stop the spread).

Re: BNT162b2 Vaccine Booster and Mortality Due to Covid-19

#19

Post by ulnarkressty »

avalys wrote: post #8

Is it too early to conclude whether booster effectiveness will also wane in 6 months? I had some mild but persistent side effects from the second Pfizer dose (ear ringing and Eustachian tube dysfunction). It's gotten about 98% better - but not 100% - and I'm a bit nervous about the booster given that many people are reporting the side effects are somewhat more intense than the second shot. If the booster is the final…

Same here, no vertigo before in my life - had it for both doses, longer the second time, still not 100% recovered. I even voluntarily filled in my info on the Pfizer side-effects page, but didn't hear anything back. Did you manage to find out what exactly goes wrong with the inner ear after the vaccine?

Still, regarding the study, it appears that taking the booster would be the better choice, considering most of us will catch the omicron variant at some point.

Re: BNT162b2 Vaccine Booster and Mortality Due to Covid-19

#20

Post by whb07 »

kelnos wrote: post #12
angelzen wrote: post #5

Given that boosters are an attempt to counteract waning vaccine vaccine effectiveness, there are two fundamental questions: 1. Do boosters work at all? 2. Do boosters wane over time, just like the original shots did? They answer only 1. They didn't even attempt to shed light on 2, which is a serious letdown. Given known waning vaccine effectiveness, at a minimum claims on booster effectiveness should be bracketed by…

How could they answer #2? Boosters have only been a thing for, what, a couple months now?

Israel is effectively forcing everyone to be at the 4th booster by now.

Guess how things are looking? Ready to take the 5th booster shortly.

Lol, “never again” and Nuremberg code are just words easily forgotten.

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