Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I think the “vaccinated individuals can have high viral loads” line is particularly bad https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.09.28.21264262v... https://www.ucdavis.edu/health/covid-19/news/viral-loads-sim... How is a statement about what some researchers are finding "particularly bad"? If vaccinated individuals routinely have viral loads as high as those seen in unvaccinated individuals, it warrants more re…
I think partly what's going on is that some people have immune systems that have a hard time generating an effective response, whether or not they area vaccinated. Vaccination gives the immune system a chance to respond and memorize, as best it can. If it can't do that effectively, there is higher likelihood of a serious outcome.
Antiviral compound blocks SARS-CoV-2 from entering cells
131–140 of 193 posts
Re: Antiviral compound blocks SARS-CoV-2 from entering cells
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
In addition, intramuscular vaccines only provide blood/serum antibodies, while nasal infection also provides nasal/mucosal antibodies. Those who recover from Covid infection gain sterilizing immunity (less than 1% will be reinfected) that stops future infections in the upper respiratory tract. That's why the CDC website says Covid (leaky, non-sterilizing) vaccines only provide protection (in blood) against serious il…
I think these things are hard to be sure about, but there still is good evidence that covid vaccines are sterilizing in a lot of cases. The rate of infection is still lower for vaccinated people right when controlling for other demographics?
What? No, there isn't. The Covid vaccines we have today are not sterilizing. Period. This isn't a conspiracy theory or anything like that, it's just a simple fact.
Re: Antiviral compound blocks SARS-CoV-2 from entering cells
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, no. You have to give a source ! Like CNN, or MotherJones! Until then there's no way to know the truth about whether ivermectin blocks this protein or not. I mean there isn't even really a right answer to that question, until we hear it from reliable sources!
All of this was flagged. Unbelievable. Welp chalk this site up as another disgusting hive of censorship.
Re: Antiviral compound blocks SARS-CoV-2 from entering cells
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
I imagine the willingness to get tested would also be a lot higher if the result of a positive test was a reasonably quick antiviral treatment instead of weeks of quarantine. Sure, there will always be sceptics, but for large parts of people, organisations and governments having less perverse incentives might improve things a lot.
I feel like I'm pointing out the obvious, but another, extremely effect and quick "treatment" is vaccination. And it works great without the constant need for testing. I have to imagine that anyone willing to undergo treatment at the very start of getting covid, would have also been willing to be vaccinated. The vaccine-hesitant aren't going to go for treatment until the outlook is dire. Additionally, in my experienc…
Re: Antiviral compound blocks SARS-CoV-2 from entering cells
#135Re: Antiviral compound blocks SARS-CoV-2 from entering cells
#136Re: Antiviral compound blocks SARS-CoV-2 from entering cells
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think this is very unlikely to significantly explain what we’ve seen. It’s much more likely just the natural result of artificial immunity waning much more rapidly than naturally acquired. As well as the fact that natural immunity involves exposure to the whole virus and therefore much broader types of epitopes for the immune system to “learn”.
In addition, intramuscular vaccines only provide blood/serum antibodies, while nasal infection also provides nasal/mucosal antibodies. Those who recover from Covid infection gain sterilizing immunity (less than 1% will be reinfected) that stops future infections in the upper respiratory tract. That's why the CDC website says Covid (leaky, non-sterilizing) vaccines only provide protection (in blood) against serious il…
Re: Antiviral compound blocks SARS-CoV-2 from entering cells
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
"The Phase 3 clinical trial of BNT162b2 began on July 27 and has enrolled 43,661 participants to date, 41,135 of whom have received a second dose of the vaccine candidate as of November 13, 2020." Wow so there was an ivermectin study with 44k people? Where is it? I agree that it should be able to be studied and probably used. But what's going on is that people are looking for an ALTERNATIVE to the vaccine... which is…
Fun fact: the trial you referenced failed to show any benefit of COVID vaccination in reducing all-cause mortality in the population they studied: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.28.21261159v... > During the blinded, controlled period, 15 BNT162b2 and 14 placebo recipients died; during the open-label period, 3 BNT162b2 and 2 original placebo recipients who received BNT162b2 after unblinding died. None…
For skeptical readers - The linked paper is a medrxiv preprint, with authors from several locations. Many of the authors list affiliations with Pfizer, and the last author is an MD at Pfizer. This seems to be a required report from the ~6-month point of a clinical trial. There really are 14 and 15 all-cause deaths reported in the placebo and treatment groups, respectively. The causes of death for each group are in table S4 [2]. The incidence of COVID in the treatment group is much lower than in the placebo group.
I'm surprised by these results because I would have expected to see significantly lower mortality in the vaccine group.
One possible reason for this surprising result is that only a small fraction of people - even in the placebo group - caught COVID at all. I'm not sure how to account for possible missed infections but Figure 2 of the main text indicates that 0.08% of the placebo group became CASES (which I think means something like "person felt bad enough to see a medical professional, who then diagnosed them with COVID"), and the table in Figure 2 indicates that there were 1034 "occurrences" out of ~22,000 people in the placebo group (which I read as "~5% confirmed infections").
So, it's possible that the beneficial effect of the vaccine is still hidden in the statistical noise since there have been so few infections in the placebo group. It's also possible that some people _were_ harmed by receiving the vaccine (see table S4 [2]), so there's a fixed harm upfront to the vaccine group, which may eventually be surpassed once more of the placebo group gets infected.
Thanks for posting this!
[1] I really do appreciate you making this post, and it helped me learn something. I would have been more willing to read it initially if it had excluded the phrases "such a joke", "since people like to be binary thinkers", "crappy associative arguments", "to quote the great...". It seems like there's a silent majority of HN lurkers that are interested in all perspectives, and really are open to quality arguments like this, but might dismiss this post before reading it because of the choice of phrases.
[2] Link to supp material PDF is on this page: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.28.21261159v...
Re: Antiviral compound blocks SARS-CoV-2 from entering cells
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think these things are hard to be sure about, but there still is good evidence that covid vaccines are sterilizing in a lot of cases. The rate of infection is still lower for vaccinated people right when controlling for other demographics?
>there still is good evidence that covid vaccines are sterilizing in a lot of cases. What? No, there isn't. The Covid vaccines we have today are not sterilizing. Period. This isn't a conspiracy theory or anything like that, it's just a simple fact.
Re: Antiviral compound blocks SARS-CoV-2 from entering cells
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
I call bullshit. Antibodies wane but the memory cell response is robust and holds up over what looks to be a pretty long period (studied intensively for 6 months but with no sign of decline). Here's a new paper that shows that in detail (paper itself is dense but Twitter thread is fairly accessible): https://twitter.com/rishirajgoel/status/1448711946010710023 By basically all measures, these vaccines work better than…
Great link, summarizing recent research showing strong post-vaccination long-term B cell response. Then Twitter surfaces a recent breakthrough infection study among 620k US veterans in the "More Tweets" section: https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1448815262522773520 After six months from initial vaccination (Mar-Aug) the J&J vaccine appears to have zero (!) VE against infection. Pfizer is holding at a modest 53% ag…
Vaccine protection isn’t binary. Even if you end up infected your disease will be less severe AND you will be less contagious.