U.S. plans to begin administering Covid-19 booster shots in September • Hacker News Board

Re: U.S. plans to begin administering Covid-19 booster shots in September

#31

Post by revolvingocelot » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 7:51 PM UTC

silent_cal wrote: post #27

revolvingocelot wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I’d rather have robust variety of antibodies provided by prior infection than get a leaky vaccine every 8 months. Sucks that I’m going to lose my job for that decision but having a IaaS (Immunity as a Service) subscription from Pharma sounds worse than getting longcovid again. Er, what? It sounds like you're saying that you'd rather get COVID-resistance from a bout with COVID rather than from a vaccine, but then you…

He's saying he'd rather depend on his natural immunity than be mandatorily jabbed over and over again.

What natural immunity? He implies that he's already got two vaccine shots, and would rather lose his job than get a third...

Will his vaccine-induced resistance to the virus result in a more robust protection, after the immune system successfully fights off the Delta infection he'll surely eventually get? Or will the immunity fade, leaving him at an unvaccinated-like risk some time in the future? Given the chance of the latter, and given that he's likely already gotten two, I just don't understand the logic -- unless one's willing to venture into slightly paranoid territory, as I note above.

Re: U.S. plans to begin administering Covid-19 booster shots in September

#32

Post by fighterpilot » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 7:57 PM UTC

tboyd47 wrote: post #24

fighterpilot wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elementary economic thinking answers this question. Benefits asymptote, so you'll stop at the point where the marginal benefit of an additional shot is less than the marginal financial cost, marginal opportunity cost and marginal cost of side effects all combined. That's definitely not the case before two and may not be the case before three based on data we've seen. It might be the case before four. And this doesn't…

> until COVID mutates into something less deadly perhaps. How do we know that that hasn't already happened? If we don't know, when will we know?

We will know when CFR/IFR goes down among unvaxxed people who haven't had COVID before.

Re: U.S. plans to begin administering Covid-19 booster shots in September

#33

Post by halfjoking » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 8:07 PM UTC

revolvingocelot wrote: post #31

silent_cal wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's saying he'd rather depend on his natural immunity than be mandatorily jabbed over and over again.

What natural immunity? He implies that he's already got two vaccine shots, and would rather lose his job than get a third... Will his vaccine-induced resistance to the virus result in a more robust protection, after the immune system successfully fights off the Delta infection he'll surely eventually get? Or will the immunity fade, leaving him at an unvaccinated-like risk some time in the future? Given the chance of…

I didn't get any shots. I had longcovid from Mar 2020 - Jun 2021.

I think having the shot will ruin my robust immunity. If you train your immune system to create very specific antibodies to one part of the virus, that is already being evaded by breakthrough infections btw - you will be more susceptible to variants. Anyone who had covid and takes this vaccine is ruining their existing immunity IMO - but people can do what they want, just don't force it on me.

Re: U.S. plans to begin administering Covid-19 booster shots in September

#34

Post by halfjoking » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 8:10 PM UTC

csb6 wrote: post #19

halfjoking wrote: post #12

Will the two shot people lose their jobs next year if they refuse the third shot? I’d rather have robust variety of antibodies provided by prior infection than get a leaky vaccine every 8 months. Sucks that I’m going to lose my job for that decision but having a IaaS (Immunity as a Service) subscription from Pharma sounds worse than getting longcovid again.

Who said you are going to lose your job? You seem to accept that as a fact, but I’m not sure where you are getting confirmation of this. Are you just assuming that all employers will require you to get a booster shot in the future, even though as of now most employers do not require you to get even a single COVID shot?

My employer has a mandate so it looks like I'm going to be fired in October. I didn't take the vaccine and won't be taking it.

Re: U.S. plans to begin administering Covid-19 booster shots in September

#35

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 8:36 PM UTC

fighterpilot wrote: post #32

tboyd47 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> until COVID mutates into something less deadly perhaps. How do we know that that hasn't already happened? If we don't know, when will we know?

We will know when CFR/IFR goes down among unvaxxed people who haven't had COVID before.

[deleted]

Re: U.S. plans to begin administering Covid-19 booster shots in September

#36

Post by AndrewBissell » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 9:04 PM UTC

halfjoking wrote: post #33

revolvingocelot wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What natural immunity? He implies that he's already got two vaccine shots, and would rather lose his job than get a third... Will his vaccine-induced resistance to the virus result in a more robust protection, after the immune system successfully fights off the Delta infection he'll surely eventually get? Or will the immunity fade, leaving him at an unvaccinated-like risk some time in the future? Given the chance of…

I didn't get any shots. I had longcovid from Mar 2020 - Jun 2021. I think having the shot will ruin my robust immunity. If you train your immune system to create very specific antibodies to one part of the virus, that is already being evaded by breakthrough infections btw - you will be more susceptible to variants. Anyone who had covid and takes this vaccine is ruining their existing immunity IMO - but people can do…

> Anyone who had covid and takes this vaccine is ruining their existing immunity IMO

"Ruining" may be too strong a word but something like this has already been observed with the second Pfizer dose: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.22.436441v1

Re: U.S. plans to begin administering Covid-19 booster shots in September

#37

Post by revolvingocelot » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 9:12 PM UTC

halfjoking wrote: post #33

revolvingocelot wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What natural immunity? He implies that he's already got two vaccine shots, and would rather lose his job than get a third... Will his vaccine-induced resistance to the virus result in a more robust protection, after the immune system successfully fights off the Delta infection he'll surely eventually get? Or will the immunity fade, leaving him at an unvaccinated-like risk some time in the future? Given the chance of…

I didn't get any shots. I had longcovid from Mar 2020 - Jun 2021. I think having the shot will ruin my robust immunity. If you train your immune system to create very specific antibodies to one part of the virus, that is already being evaded by breakthrough infections btw - you will be more susceptible to variants. Anyone who had covid and takes this vaccine is ruining their existing immunity IMO - but people can do…

I appreciate your judicious use of "I think" and "IMO". I don't think that you have much justification to think that way about your natural immunity.

For whatever it's worth, this preprint [0] suggests that your immunity, caused by a COVID infection, and my immunity, caused by two doses of the Pfizer vaccine, are similar, and have similar durations of functional protection. Note that, for both our cases, durable protection against Alpha and Delta was found after one year (but, interestingly, not against the dying variants Beta and Gamma).

I hope that you'll be willing to get the vaccine. I've experienced long term medical complications from something unrelated to COVID, and I can't imagine why anyone would want to risk something like long COVID, especially someone who's already had it.

[0] NB that I've linked to the second version uploaded https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.12.21261951v...

Re: U.S. plans to begin administering Covid-19 booster shots in September

#38

Post by revolvingocelot » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 9:33 PM UTC

AndrewBissell wrote: post #36

halfjoking wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't get any shots. I had longcovid from Mar 2020 - Jun 2021. I think having the shot will ruin my robust immunity. If you train your immune system to create very specific antibodies to one part of the virus, that is already being evaded by breakthrough infections btw - you will be more susceptible to variants. Anyone who had covid and takes this vaccine is ruining their existing immunity IMO - but people can do…

> Anyone who had covid and takes this vaccine is ruining their existing immunity IMO "Ruining" may be too strong a word but something like this has already been observed with the second Pfizer dose: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.22.436441v1

I note that the parent doesn't attempt to provide a summary. I'm no immunologist but it seems to me that this study examines a third-order consequence (levels of IFN-gamma in whole blood samples) to infer a second-level consequence (levels of CD4 helper and CD8 cytotoxic T-cells, which are secreting the IFN-gamma), which is presumed to be indicative of a root-level occurance ("a detrimental effect in the overall magnitude of the spike-specific humoral response in COVID-19 recovered individuals"). It's not clear to me how the second order consequence clearly implies the root-level occurance.

This [0] is the paper in the fifth citation from the parent's article. It seems to come to similiar conclusions, but, like the parent's article, doesn't assess any real world data, just lab conditions and inferences.

I urge everyone reading this to remind themselves of the specific language used in these articles -- they don't actually know whether these correlates they're observing are affecting immunity, just one component of what we consider to be a single aspect of an appropriate immune response in a blood sample.

Does my linked article, above and in a different thread, also measure blood sample conditions? Absolutely. But the article I linked directly analyses (spike protein) antibody levels -- an appropriate immune response in a blood sample -- while the articles here examine inferred T cell presence. One is a direct measure of something straightforward, and the other an inferential examination of something complex.

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7885942.1/

Re: U.S. plans to begin administering Covid-19 booster shots in September

#39

Post by AndrewBissell » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 9:45 PM UTC

revolvingocelot wrote: post #38

AndrewBissell wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyone who had covid and takes this vaccine is ruining their existing immunity IMO "Ruining" may be too strong a word but something like this has already been observed with the second Pfizer dose: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.22.436441v1

I note that the parent doesn't attempt to provide a summary. I'm no immunologist but it seems to me that this study examines a third-order consequence (levels of IFN-gamma in whole blood samples) to infer a second-level consequence (levels of CD4 helper and CD8 cytotoxic T-cells, which are secreting the IFN-gamma), which is presumed to be indicative of a root-level occurance ("a detrimental effect in the overall magn…

In reality we have no "real world data" and know very little about what the effects will be of piling Covid vaccinations on top of immunity from a prior infection, because it was never studied before pushing the shots to everyone including the Covid-recovered (who were explicitly excluded from the trials). Obviously spike protein antibodies are not the be-all and end-all of immunity to SARS-CoV-2, or we would not be observing relatively robust immunity even among recovered individuals who've had their antibody levels wane.

Re: U.S. plans to begin administering Covid-19 booster shots in September

#40

Post by revolvingocelot » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 9:53 PM UTC

AndrewBissell wrote: post #39

revolvingocelot wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I note that the parent doesn't attempt to provide a summary. I'm no immunologist but it seems to me that this study examines a third-order consequence (levels of IFN-gamma in whole blood samples) to infer a second-level consequence (levels of CD4 helper and CD8 cytotoxic T-cells, which are secreting the IFN-gamma), which is presumed to be indicative of a root-level occurance ("a detrimental effect in the overall magn…

In reality we have no "real world data" and know very little about what the effects will be of piling Covid vaccinations on top of immunity from a prior infection, because it was never studied before pushing the shots to everyone including the Covid-recovered (who were explicitly excluded from the trials). Obviously spike protein antibodies are not the be-all and end-all of immunity to SARS-CoV-2, or we would not be…

>the Covid-recovered (who were explicitly excluded from the trials)

Excluding these people from the initial trials makes perfect sense to me. The various understood complications of COVID, like blood clots or minor strokes, could have been mistaken for consequences of vaccination.

Why do you suppose that there aren't any papers being generated on the topic of the recovered-from-COVID who get vaccines?

>Obviously spike protein antibodies are not the be-all and end-all of immunity to SARS-CoV-2, or we would not be observing relatively robust immunity even among recovered individuals who've had their antibody levels wane

No, but serum antibody levels against the methods viruses use to hijack our cells is a long, storied, well-understood and widely-accepted means of assessing overall systemic immune response to whatever the antibodies are against, in a way that third-order inferences about T cells aren't.