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Israel Finds Fourth Covid Booster Is Ineffective

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Re: Israel Finds Fourth Covid Booster Is Ineffective

#161

Post by twofornone »

Daishiman wrote: post #37
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…

Then you have not been reading a single thing coming from the official sources because nobody has stated that vaccines do much against mild disease in Omicron, but they do prevent the hospital system from being saturated with cases and drastically reduce death rates. If at this point you're not aware of this, which has been repeated over and over again in media, you should reconsider your sources of information.

As of the posting of this comment, from the white house:

> While so-called “breakthrough infections” among this group do happen, they remain the exception: In fact, recent data indicates there is only 1 confirmed positive case per 5,000 fully vaccinated Americans per week.

The startup I work for must be incredibly unlucky given that 7+/14 vaccinated employees have recently tested positive if the odds really are 1 in 5000. I'm sure my anecdote is not unique.

The vaccines were billed as the way out of this pandemic from day one. It was assumed that they were "safe and effective" [against infection and spread] long before there was ample time to gather data, especially given the difficulty of collecting data on breakthrough cases when people have no incentive to report them, and most probably did not even presume that they were sick with covid if they experienced mild symptoms post vaccination, given that the messaging around the vaccines would have biased people to believe that they had come down with some infection other than covid.

The same way that people, and doctors, have been biased against reporting side effects. Yeah, sure, its just anecdote, except there's a hell of a lot of anecdote going around and those crazy conspiracy theorists have already been quietly proven right about vaccines interfering with womens' monthly cycles, among other suspicions.

It is incredibly difficult to properly evaluate vaccines when your test subjects and their doctors have been indoctrinated by strong messaging regarding the test's presumed safety. I'm not suggesting that it was entirely intentional (though partly on behalf of pharma) but at this point all of the official data is suspect due to an emergent faith-like bias.

That's not even getting into the ridiculousness of trusting clinical data from pfizer, moderna et al for the initial data which lead to rushed vaccine approval. This has been a political game from the start.

0. https://www.whitehouse.gov/covidplan/

Re: Israel Finds Fourth Covid Booster Is Ineffective

#162

Post by StanislavPetrov »

version_five wrote: post #18

If I understand correctly, israel mandates a third shot (to do normal stuff), as do many places in north america, either now or soon. And I can only imagine many people would be happy to mandate a fourth as soon as possible. What I find most frustrating is that politicians are happy to make these mandates live, during an ongoing situation where we actually don't know a lot about how effective things are (and in the c…

Anyone who has read the data understands that the third immunotherapy shot (the "booster") reduces the chances of death or serious illness from COVID by a few hundred thousandths of a percent. This vanishingly small reduction in risk from COVID is matched or exceeded by the similarly small risks posed by this additional dose of immunotherapy. The unsubstantiated proposition that even more injections of this experimental immunotherapy will do less harm than good is one that should be rejected by people who believe in science and objective reality unless and until hard data of the benefits is offered.

To me, this situation is very similar to someone who thinks that doubling or tripling the amount of medication they take to treat an ailment translates into double or triple the desire results. This isn't the case, and is often very dangerous. Everyone, especially young people who plan on living a long time, should be very wary and skeptical of taking multiple doses of experimental immunotherapies (or any other new, experimental drug) with unknown risks and no proven benefits.

Re: Israel Finds Fourth Covid Booster Is Ineffective

#163

Post by twofornone »

robbrown451 wrote: post #34
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…

"Testing positive" isn't the main question. Are they dying? Are they in the ICU? And those officials that you distrust so much have been quite upfront about the fact that vaccines aren't all that effective against infection with Omicron. But they are quite effective against death and serious disease. Fauci's own words are that "just about everybody" will get infected. If you want anecdotes, at least talk to an ICU nu…

>Are they dying? Are they in the ICU?

If this is the extent of protection from vaccines, why are they still being mandated to cohorts with >.01% mortality (under ≈50)?

>And those officials that you distrust so much have been quite upfront about the fact that vaccines aren't all that effective against infection with Omicron

The official whitehouse website still claims that breakthrough cases occur at a rate of 1 in 5000. This is revisionist history.

0. https://www.whitehouse.gov/covidplan/

Re: Israel Finds Fourth Covid Booster Is Ineffective

#164

Post by StanislavPetrov »

jimkleiber wrote: post #88
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…

I see the Lancet article is from Oct 2021, before the omicron variant. I haven't checked your other links, have you found that the perspective has changed in the last few months? Also, I haven't heard, at least in the US, much government pressure for mandatory boosting of all ages, but maybe I'm not reading the same things.

>Also, I haven't heard, at least in the US, much government pressure for mandatory boosting of all ages, but maybe I'm not reading the same things.

The largest cities in America, most universities and many of the largest employers all require "boosters" for even minimal participation in society.

Re: Israel Finds Fourth Covid Booster Is Ineffective

#165

Post by yed »

ghaff wrote: post #114
colechristensen wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Locally, the mayor decided to mandate vaccines for restaurant customers. I really doubt he has the legal authority if tested in court, but here it is. I am vaccinated but excluded from basically all of the public sphere if I don’t want to go around proving it (I don’t, might for certain circumstances still).

And it's still in place for federal contractors, and it's still in place for states, and it's presumably still in place for private businesses.

The federal contractor mandate is not in place, it was put on hold by the courts and none so far has sided with the Feds. The federal private business mandate is gone, it was quashed by the Supreme Court. What states decide is separate from what the federal government decides and varies from state to state, which is how the system is supposed to work.

Re: Israel Finds Fourth Covid Booster Is Ineffective

#166

Post by Jimmc414 »

sofixa wrote: post #145
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?

> Is fear of the unvaccinated clogging up hospitals the primary motivation? Yes? Hasn't it always been? Beds in ICUs are the main limiting factor of how much Covid we can handle. Lowering hospitalisations is great, that way it can end up as "just a bad flu" we have ( as in, a virus that's present, and spreading, and people get it, and some unfortunate people die from it, but doesn't grind whole countries to a stop).

In your opinion, would you say that the vaccine program has been a success?

Re: Israel Finds Fourth Covid Booster Is Ineffective

#167

Post by lordloki »

epgui wrote: post #152
the_doctah wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Revisionist history at its best. If that was the intended effect, officials sure weren't very clear about it.

Uhmm, I don't know where you were getting your information, but yes, it was pretty clear.

"I would say 50% would have to get vaccinated before you start to see an impact," Fauci said. "But I would say 75 to 85% would have to get vaccinated if you want to have that blanket of herd immunity." https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/1...

the fraction of people who would need immunity to SARS-CoV-2 (either through vaccination or recovery from prior infection) to extinguish the spread of the virus was initially estimated to be 60% to 70%. https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/90445

Estimates based on measles and other diseases suggest that herd immunity occurs when 70%-80% of the population is vaccinated. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/17/dr-fauci-what-herd-immunity-...

I'm not sure if you have a very poor memory or you're just lying, but everyone was pushing the idea that the covid vaccines were sterilizing and would push us to reach herd immunity and eradicate Covid-19.

Re: Israel Finds Fourth Covid Booster Is Ineffective

#168

Post by [deleted] »

jollybean wrote: post #154
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?

Because you have misunderstood the statement. Vaccines reduce infections considerably. This is something the CDC has repeated over and over. From the CDC's website [1]: "In October, the unvaccinated were 5x more likely to become infected." Not only that - 'breakthrough infections' of the vaccinated are more likely to be less severe, and infection severity is correlated with shedding, meaning, even the 'vaxxed and inf…

[deleted]

Re: Israel Finds Fourth Covid Booster Is Ineffective

#169

Post by nootropicat »

rhema wrote: post #41

I was thinking about immunity generally, from a Shannon information theory perspective. It's impossible that the human body has an infinite ability to absorb immunity, because otherwise we could store an infinite amount of information. Therefore, there must be some kind of forgetting that happens. Likewise, the body can only learn so much from repeated exposure. Is anyone aware of any writing that explains immunity f…

"Why must T cells be cross-reactive?"

https://www.nature.com/articles/nri3279

Re: Israel Finds Fourth Covid Booster Is Ineffective

#170

Post by chrononaut »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #87
Daishiman wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how science works: when the facts become updated you update your decisions. Israel has been among the most science-driven governments in Covid policy. I'm not really sure why your "impression" should be mentioned given that you expressly state that you're not a specialist.

Does that mean people who say "the science is settled" are anti-science? What about people who insist they can't be wrong, and science can't be wrong, so you better do what they tell you, in the name of science, or else? Because we have a whole lot of that going on and it is celebrated like a holy edict. Science seems to be in constant flux between infallible religion and "we weren't wrong, the facts just have been u…

> Remember, this won't be the last global pandemic, but it is the last one where science has any credibility. The next pandemic hopefully is as mild as this one because you'll never see this level of cooperation with the government and medical establishment ever again. Everyone now knows "two weeks to flatten the curve" means endless abridgement of civil rights. When that happens, remember that it was the actions during this pandemic that lead to the end of societal trust and cooperation.

I have trouble believing that statement, and it seems a bit hyperbolic. If the next pandemic had a 20% to 40% fatality rate you genuinely believe everyone will ignore all science and run around concerned about their civil rights of similar restrictions were put in place at the start of the outbreak? At worst, there will be more dissidence to restrictions put in place for a similar pandemic in the future.

The pendulum does always swing in the other direction, but that's a bit extreme.

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