Live data from Hacker News

Pfizer and Moderna vaccines may produce lasting immunity

nature.com

281–290 of 364 posts

Re: Pfizer and Moderna vaccines may produce lasting immunity

#281
post #248
post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not ignoring but these are very rare side effects. It's something for doctors to know about in order to help treat the unlucky. But I think we have different meanings of the word safe. These vaccines are very, very unlikely to give anyone a hard time. Nothing's without risk, but even for the unlucky that doesn't even sound that bad. As soon as my son is eligible, he's getting it, too.

> Not ignoring but these are very rare side effects. It's something for doctors to know about in order to help treat the unlucky. But I think we have different meanings of the word safe. The chances that a child will experience anything other than extremely minor illness from Covid is also very rare . The current numbers are teetering on the edge of implying that children are at more risk from the vaccine than from t…

Child deaths from Covid-19 in the US as of 6/24 [1]: 336

Child deaths attributed to vaccines [2]: 0. We can break this down further: 3 deaths from blood clots attributed to adenovirus vector vaccine, none in children. 616 reports of myocarditis[3], 393 confirmed, none fatal.

[1]: https://downloads.aap.org/AAP/PDF/AAP%20and%20CHA%20-%20Chil...

[2]: https://covid-101.org/science/how-many-people-have-died-from...

[3]: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/ad...

Re: Pfizer and Moderna vaccines may produce lasting immunity

#282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of these violate your bodily autonomy.

Nor does a vaccine passport? It only prevents you from lying about a major public health threat.

it really doesn't do that, its intent is to prevent freedom of travel to the unvaccinated. Most people I know that are not vaccinated are very open about it and they can be; as there are currently very few if any prohibition on where they can go. The purpose of the vaccine passport is to end that freedom.

Re: Pfizer and Moderna vaccines may produce lasting immunity

#283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know where you're getting your information from, but what I stated is very easy to validate and I'm completely correct. Here are the links to the actual FDA trials for the different major co vid vaccines on clinicaltrials.gov as well as their associated estimated completion dates. All are currently in Phase 3 trials. (Aside, it's not clear how they will complete reporting for these trials as the companies ble…

You obviously didn’t read my link as it addresses exactly what you’re saying in your comment. Study completion date does not mean phase 3 trial completion date. “ However, these dates do not mean clinical trials will continue for this long, and instead reference continued safety monitoring after the vaccine has been approved and rolled out, which is standard practice within the industry” https://www.pfizer.com/news/p…

I'm guessing you didn't read the link you pasted as well. Note the correction at the top of the page.

It is clear that I'm correct. The vaccines are still in phase 3 clinical trials, as reported by clinicaltrials.gov, the source of truth for such questions.

Estimated Study Completion Date literally means the date that the Phase 3 trial study is estimated to be completed, at which point FDA goes through the process of approving or not approving the treatment.

The vaccines have been released due to an EUA (Emergency Use Authorization). I'm guessing you're not aware of this, even though it's clearly elucidated even in your own link.

It seems you think that the actual, you know, "study" part of Phase 3 trials is just some unnecessary bureaucratic technicality thing? As someone well acquainted with the world of pharma, I assure you it is not. It seems you think they just jab the 40k or so participants, watch them a few minutes, and then the Phase 3 trial is completed save for some paperwork. I assure you, that is not the case.

Phase 3 serves a very specific, important purpose: Identifying any long-term safety issues with medical treatments prior to their authorization for widespread adoption in the USA. The reason Phase 3 exists is because it has very often been the case that promising treatments turned out to not be so promising after long-term study.

One of the foundational, bedrock principles of bioethics is "informed consent". That is, the people undergoing medical treatment, especially experimental medical treatment, must have full information about the risks and potential benefits of treatment. You are spreading misinformation which may lead others to misunderstand the current state of the covid vaccines. They are not through phase 3 trials. According to every other situation when treatments not approved through the normal FDA process are administered, they are called "experimental" (e.g., my grandma, prior to her death, was given the option to take drugs that were currently in phase 3 of FDA trials for treating her ailment, and she was told, accurately, that she could elect this experimental drug, which often is authorized for terminal patients--but they are given INFORMED consent--i.e., told they are experimental and the safety risks are not fully understood).

Please, please stop violating bedrock principles of bioethics. These vaccines are still not through phase 3 trials. This is just a plain fact and you shouldn't lie to people to increase their likelihood of taking these vaccines.

Re: Pfizer and Moderna vaccines may produce lasting immunity

#284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are many many people who have confirmed positive COVID tests. At least excuse those. The virus is a moving target and what was true of the alpha variant may not be true of delta or downstream. I guess it depends on what you mean by excuse. If you mean allow people to say go on a cruise with a positive covid test as opposed to a vaccination record that seems tentatively reasonable. If you mean allow workers at…

If folks can't produce a confirmed positive covid test or antibody test, then they can effectively be treated as unprotected because there's no evidence they have protection, that's fine. > If you mean allow workers at an old folks home to opt out based on a prior positive test that is unreasonable. If it makes you even possibly slightly less likely to kill the old folks you should get the jab. Where is the line draw…

It should be drawn where it's safe to draw it based on current knowledge.

I don't believe that it's firmly established that natural immunity is as good as 2 shots or natural immunity + 1 shot.

We bought more than enough doses to vaccinate everyone and downsides are small.

Consider a population of 10 million with natural immunity. Let us suppose that vaccination with Pfizer will kill between 0 and 1.

Suppose that 1% would fall ill and 1% of those die. That is 1000 preventable deaths.

It needn't be very much of a difference just 1/100th of 1% to vastly outweigh the risk of a very safe vaccine.

Re: Pfizer and Moderna vaccines may produce lasting immunity

#285
post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even if true, this novel molecule is not floating around in a body for an entire year waiting to have some side effect. They've been shooting it into people for a year and a half now. If there was something to worry about, it would have been seen. There are lots of things we do see and we should worry about. The problem is that we can't tell right away if it's just noise, if it's a potentially rare side-effect. The…

> "the benefits still outweigh the risk" this is not handwaving, this is the foundation stone of modern medicine.

Placebo-controlled studies that verify that the benefits actually outweigh the risk can be counted into those foundations.

Speculative scenarios based on predictive factors that you could just fudge until the result looks "right" to you, those are the essentially quackery.

Re: Pfizer and Moderna vaccines may produce lasting immunity

#286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that about half of adults infected in an outbreak of the delta variant in Israel were fully vaccinated with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine Source CNBC.

Is this intended as a counterpoint, or a point in support? People have been pretty loose with their "therefore" about this Israel snippet. After all, if 100% of Israel had been vaccinated with Pfizer, then 100% of adults infected with Delta would have been fully vaccinated. I'm sure the raw number of people infected with Delta is way down compared to what it would have been w/o vaccination though.

[deleted]

Re: Pfizer and Moderna vaccines may produce lasting immunity

#287
post #271
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

87.9% efficacy https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.22.21257658v...

That's for the Indian variant? How does it compare to the previous variants? Is it noticeably worse or similar?

It’s basically identical to other real world studies which have shown 89-91% effectiveness in the general population against the prevailing mixture of variants this winter and spring in the US and the UK. Which is in turn only slightly lower than the reported 94-95% effectiveness in the clinical trial environment last summer. Long story short it’ll be a long time before the mRNA vaccines aren’t effective.

Re: Pfizer and Moderna vaccines may produce lasting immunity

#288
post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this intended as a counterpoint, or a point in support? People have been pretty loose with their "therefore" about this Israel snippet. After all, if 100% of Israel had been vaccinated with Pfizer, then 100% of adults infected with Delta would have been fully vaccinated. I'm sure the raw number of people infected with Delta is way down compared to what it would have been w/o vaccination though.

This is a frequent anti-vaxx talking point that well predates COVID-19. In most outbreaks in highly vaccinated populations, most of the cases will be in the vaccinated. We see this for measles and pertussis all the time. The rate will be much lower though.

Just googling, Israel vaccination rate is 57.0%

Re: Pfizer and Moderna vaccines may produce lasting immunity

#289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are many many people who have confirmed positive COVID tests. At least excuse those. Yes, but don't just take their word for it. Confirmed clinical test should be the bar. I fear if the "you don't need a vaccine if you've had it" narrative gains traction, even if it is undeniably true, it's going to result in the anti-vaxxers lying about having already had the virus, to manufacture another excuse for themselv…

Here is the thing (and that's something that people with kids might relate to) -- we already know that covid is not a danger to kids, and that there are potential side effects involved when vaccinating kids. There is no way in hell I would vaccinate my child because "it is good for the society as a whole".

covid absolutely is a danger to kids, it's just less of a danger than to old people. the question is whether risk of vaccination is significantly less than risk of covid. we don't really know yet, but i'd surely vaccinate my kids if it meant they couldn't transmit the disease to their grandparents.

Re: Pfizer and Moderna vaccines may produce lasting immunity

#290
post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we already know that covid is not a danger to kids We don't actually know this. We know it's less dangerous to them thus far . https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-56696907 https://www.statesman.com/story/news/politics/politifact/202...

"Thus far" is implied. We only ever know what we know thus far and we could always learn something new.

it really isn't. it should be, but you'll be much better off not expecting that.
Post reply on HN