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Israel data reportedly shows efficacy drop of Pfizer-BioNTech for delta variant

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Re: Israel data reportedly shows efficacy drop of Pfizer-BioNTech for delta variant

#201
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you aware how hard it is to move the needle by any significant percentage when you are dealing with sets of millions? Life expectancy is essentially an average of when people die. Not to mention life expectancy was going up. So it not only stopped whatever gains we had, but reversed it by a substantial amount. We were expected to gain 2 years from 2017 to 2030. That's 13 years to go up 2 years. About 2.8 million…

Yea, statistics can make a case for anything. Life expectancy went down, but the average age of a covid death was 82 years old, meaning half were older than 82. These octogenarians and older are pulling the average life expectancy up every year they continue living. It would be a way different story to have the average life expectancy go down because a bunch of, say, 20 year olds died.

Yes, old people living longer pulls up the average life expectancy. That's how it works.

And that's been happening every year by a little bit every year (about 0.15 years). Until this year.

When it decreased by 0.1/year for three years in a row, it was a big deal.

Having it drop by 1.2 in just a single year is effectively astronomical. It is a significant event.

Re: Israel data reportedly shows efficacy drop of Pfizer-BioNTech for delta variant

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except there would be no need for an ever present risk of lockdown if every single country simply locked down for 3-4 weeks a year and a half ago. But no, muh freedomᵀᴹ and the economy!! are far more important considerations that certainly didn't turn out to actually be incredibly short-sighted. I'm lucky to live in a place with >70% vaccination rate. So this no longer comes from a place of grievance toward personal…

> if every country simply locked down for 3-4 weeks This is an absurd fantasy that couldn’t have been possible in the real world. > But no, muh freedom, and but the economy! Your mocking tone is out of place. I do in fact think freedom and the economy are both important. Don’t you?

The importance of freedom and the economy are not in dispute. The point is that both would have suffered less in the long term if "draconian" lockdowns had been implemented in the short term. It's game theory, and NZ chose the winning strategy while much of the world chose the losing one.

Re: Israel data reportedly shows efficacy drop of Pfizer-BioNTech for delta variant

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) might not be true with Delta. There are cases of "passing" transmission of 2) is still up in the air with studies going both ways (but get your vitamin D still, it has multiple benefits outside of this) 3) is somewhat true, but there are other big comorbidities as well (Diabetes, Downs Syndrome, etc), it's just that it's one that's highly visible in Western society and hypertension is very common in obese people.

It seems like you're of the mind that every new novel virus that enters the biosphere requires several months worth of randomized control trials to determine best paths forward. The precautionary principle would tell us that it's best to ensure your immune system is as strong and healthy as it can possibly be, which requires going outside, getting fresh air and sunshine, visiting with family and friends, and getting…

Your attempt at reading my internal mindstate was wrong, I'm afraid. I was simply correcting your assertions that have not been backed up by real data, and the fact that you've glossed over the changes in the virus that have been observed in the wild over the last few months.

But let's talk about this: having an immune system be as strong as possible is not a good thing. Weak immune systems are bad. Overly "strong" immune systems result in auto-immune disease.

"Natural immunity" to COVID is no different ($) than vaccine immunity, and our vaccine-given immunity comes with far less risk. We've been given a miraculous vaccine technology, tested it at scale and found that it's safe. If you want to make some real change, focus on changing the minds of the anti-vaxxers that are extending the pandemic through their lack of action.

Sure, getting everyone fitter would help. Getting people more vitamin D will help with other things (but again, probably not to a great extent with COVID). But that doesn't change the fact that we were grappling with a deadly virus that can quickly overwhelm health care systems and cause long-term "long-COVID" damage that we are still not completely understanding.

($) I don't have the numbers at hand, but the last study I read suggested that getting COVID was slightly better at preventing future COVID than a single Pfizer dose, but worse than two Pfizer doses. Will look for this again.

EDIT: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/past-covid-19-infection-p... is the study.

Re: Israel data reportedly shows efficacy drop of Pfizer-BioNTech for delta variant

#204
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the same finger-waggers who want everyone vaccinated or quarantined Ignoring the name-calling for a moment, what is it that you want for everyone?

To have autonomy over their own medical decisions.

Ah. So I took your use of the word "want" more literally than you seem to have intended it. I "want" everyone to get the vaccine. You seem to be specifically calling out the desire to "compel" which I am much more ambivalent about. (I'd probably be in favour of "incentivising" with a careful eye on unintended blowback).

But the phrase "finger waggers" is just divisive and raises the temperature. I'd strongly suggest you moderate such phrasing on HN.

Re: Israel data reportedly shows efficacy drop of Pfizer-BioNTech for delta variant

#205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then turn off the news. You need to look for actual signals such as availability of emergency services. Hospital capacity.

Is it feasible to “turn off the news” in 2021? I’m not so sure.

I managed to reduce it a lot. I never tried to cut it to zero because I still want to be informed and because I think the problem is consuming a lot of news.

- The radio I used to listen to during the day had a small news segment every hour. I replaced it with listening to my own music (or use Spotify, Apple Music, etc). It was mostly repetitive and had advertising, so it was easy to replace.

- I no longer watch TV, especially news stations. They keep repeating the same thing every 30 minutes anyway and hyping up everything that happens because there's not enough content. What I used to watch on TV (eg: series) can be found somewhere else and I can watch it when I want.

- No more "news" notifications. Most "news" aren't really "news" (I don't care if a celebrity did or said something...) and most of the "breaking news" are not that important.

- Disabled/removed everything that had news on it (they're everywhere!). I don't use a news app, my browser doesn't show me news in the new tab page, left Facebook (best decision ever - I use direct messages to keep in touch), stopped following people that shared news or where always fighting with someone on Twitter.

Now I use newsletters, podcasts and RSS feeds to follow the news.

- Some news organisations have free weekly newsletters or a weekly podcast with a recap of the week. Short, direct and doesn't use much of my time.

- RSS feeds allow me to follow certain subjects or websites that I want to follow closely.

- Some news agencies seem to do a better job than some rag using clickbait titles to bring traffic to their crappy website. They're often not as one sided as certain orgs and tell you what happened without wrapping it in their opinion.

- Sites like Hacker News can be useful. I already knew this about the Pfizer vaccine, but some people made good points here.

Sometimes I'm a bit behind other people, but not by much. For some things, it's nice to follow everything as it is happening, but usually I don't miss much.

I might be interested in knowing what's happening, but not everything about who did it (eg: the sad story about the people involved - I can find more details if I want) or as if it was entertainment. The rush to be first at reporting the event also means that often they're wrong about something. I also don't really care about some accident that happened in a completely different country, need to know what's the covid situation everywhere in detail or something bad that may happen.

This works for me, but it also requires some self control and some curation. RSS feeds and podcasts won't help me much if I subscribe to all websites and multiple podcasts about news, politics, etc.

Re: Israel data reportedly shows efficacy drop of Pfizer-BioNTech for delta variant

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty common, pretty serious. - One million self-reporting long COVID in the UK, give or take - 89% of them reporting symptoms at least 12 weeks after infection - 40% of them reporting symptoms at least one year after infection - 18.5% reporting that their ability to undertake their day-to-day activities had been "limited a lot" https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan...

I’ve probably had some long COVID symptoms myself, but self reporting on something like this is next to worthless. You’ve got a mix of the placebo effect with people that had COVID attributing everything negative after to it, all backed with the media constantly reminding them of long COVID.

Even if it is placebo effect - so what? Placebo effect is still real and has real world consequences.

If someone has higher levels of fatigue, or is more susceptible to depression or anxiety after COVID (both symptoms of long COVID) - is it any consolation to them that 'it is all in their head'? It is still an effect that must be considered and that must be studied and treated.

Re: Israel data reportedly shows efficacy drop of Pfizer-BioNTech for delta variant

#207

I've lost count of how many times we've seen the same headline for different variants and relating to different underlying results, and this "less effective" headline always seems to get interpreted by people I talk to as "we'll be back to living like it's 2020 again pretty soon here" rather than the much more accurate "kinda sucks for us collectively but if you and all your close contacts get vaccinated ( if !) then…

After researching a bit and finding this: https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/israel-50-of-... I'm wondering whether this number is a population-level observational result that has more to do with someone ignoring base rates rather than delta actually being much better at causing infection.

Re: downvotes: is there good reason to believe this interpretation is definitely wrong? I wasn't able to find any details on where this number came from, and while I'd like to give Israel's public health officials enough credit that they wouldn't make this mistake, I'm hesitant to actually do that without more than a few mystery meat "percent effectiveness" numbers.

Re: Israel data reportedly shows efficacy drop of Pfizer-BioNTech for delta variant

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me its just recognizing how the news is formed and syndicated. For example, everything on the news is supposed to match your worst nightmare. The more closely it matches, the less likely it is accurate. Knowing that helps filter what you actually need to be cognizant of and react to. Actually consuming it is just to apply critical thinking to know why it isn't the complete story, and solely for conversation purpo…

> everything on the news is supposed to match your worst nightmare. The more closely it matches, the less likely it is accurate To my experience, it's the opposite.

which part? All your nightmares are accurately occurring or you dont see news that matches your nightmares?

Re: Israel data reportedly shows efficacy drop of Pfizer-BioNTech for delta variant

#209
post #37
post #2

I'm so exhausted and demoralised by this endless cascade of things-getting-worse. It's taking a really big toll on my mental health and there's no resources available in my country to offer support (and there's nothing to be done except try to learn to live with it, anyways). The future looks bleak.

Consider the big picture. Life is suffering with sparse sprinkles of happiness here and there. If you feel bad take a page from Budism, it's the best religion for your mind, and I am an avid agnostic. It's the "No bullshit" religion, basically it's your problem, fix it or learn to live with it. It teaches you to embrace suffering as part of living, everything is for you to endure, consider how to solve (or not) and g…

To play devil's advocate here: things are of course better today than they have been for most of human history. But for those of us in prosperous Western countries, they aren't necessarily better than they were, say, 50 years ago. In fact I would argue that we're in much worse shape. Part of the problem is that things have gotten worse on a rather short timescale. Millenials know very well the feeling of being judged by the older generations for not owning a house and two cars, not having a wife and children, not having a high-paying job to go with our university degrees.

Some of your points are true, but I would argue about these in particular:

> * There is food to survive for almost everyone, no famines in the last 100 years.

> * So much extra wealth in the world almost anyone can enjoy life a bit, have a hobbie, travel, eat out, go out, movies, theather, sports.

> * Poverty is getting smaller by the day (yeah rich are getting richer but check 1500, 1600, 1700, 1800 or 1900 out for a good perspective on what being poor was)

Many more Americans are food insecure than they were 50 years ago. The USDA estimates that 11 million children are food insecure in the US. Poverty in the US has in fact been increasing for decades, but government statistics don't reflect it because they measure poverty based on a 1950s spending model.

The West has endured decades of trickle down economics when the reality is that wealth trickles up. Of course total wealth is increasing, but the lower and middle classes have captured none of it. The vast majority of humans on Earth cannot afford to travel or even take vacations, and those in prosperous Western countries have had continually decreasing disposable income for decades.

> * No cold war, no dooms day clock

> * Democracy, information is basically free.

You have this so backwards that it's baffling. The doomsday clock is the closest to midnight it has ever been since its inception in 1947. It currently sits at 100 seconds to midnight. World leaders have become increasingly reckless, unstable and authoritarian. The last US president said, "We have all these nukes, why aren't we using them?"

Whether we lack a cold war is debatable. There has not been a significant drop in proxy wars or in militarization of world powers since the fall of the Soviet Union. The US still spends an ever increasing share of its budget on military, and it actually uses it to kill. The US has been in a continuous state of war for the longest period in its entire history. There are people voting today that were not yet born when the war with Afghanistan started.

> Basically we are the luckies people that ever lived, COVID or no COVID. Randomly pick to someone from any other year that ever lived, your life is better even if you get a king it's probably still better

This is not as true as you think, and I don't believe it will be true for long. For most of human history there were very few humans. There were probably about 100 billion humans that have ever lived, and about 8 billion are alive today. So if you were to pick a random human from history, there's a non-negligible chance that your pick would be alive today.

I've argued above that we in the West are experiencing decreasing quality of life. I worry it will start to fall much more rapidly over the coming decades due to climate change, wealth inequality and potential nuclear war. Considering the big picture is probably not a good idea; we may be better off living in ignorant bliss.

Re: Israel data reportedly shows efficacy drop of Pfizer-BioNTech for delta variant

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like you're of the mind that every new novel virus that enters the biosphere requires several months worth of randomized control trials to determine best paths forward. The precautionary principle would tell us that it's best to ensure your immune system is as strong and healthy as it can possibly be, which requires going outside, getting fresh air and sunshine, visiting with family and friends, and getting…

Your attempt at reading my internal mindstate was wrong, I'm afraid. I was simply correcting your assertions that have not been backed up by real data, and the fact that you've glossed over the changes in the virus that have been observed in the wild over the last few months. But let's talk about this: having an immune system be as strong as possible is not a good thing. Weak immune systems are bad. Overly "strong" i…

> "Natural immunity" to COVID is no different ($) than vaccine immunity

You can't find any studies to back this up, can you?

It'll be hard without clarification at first, because it's not clear what you mean--do you mean "natural immunity" as in somebody who, when encountering the virus for the first time, has an immune system which fights off the infection without any symptoms and low/no transmission to other hosts? If that's what you mean, then no, natural immunity, present in basically everyone sub-40 who's not fat, is far superior to vaccines, because it comes with zero long-term risk and from what everyone can tell has a death rate too small to measure: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/article/PIIS2213-8...

If you're talking about someone who has fought off covid and has naturally-produced antibodies, then you have I presume no citation to say it's "as good as vaccines". Natural immunity in every case it's been studied has been shown to be robust, long-lasting, and superior to vaccines. In fact, the survivors of Sars-Cov-1 from back in 2005 still have robust immunity against sars-cov-2. In fact, some large percentage of the population had t-cell reactivity to sars-cov-2 without ever having contact with the virus: https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3563

It's also super-weird to have people like hold the bar as "vaccine-level immunity". The human body is a genius achievement of evolution, and THAT is the bar.

Zero studies have ever shown any way in which vaccine-based immunity is superior.

And now we have all this talk of boosters. LOL!

Don't need no booster for natural immunity. But there sure are some people who want you to have 'em anyway!

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