Israel’s Covid-19 boosters are preventing infections, new studies suggest • Hacker News Board

Re: Israel’s Covid-19 boosters are preventing infections, new studies suggest

#41

Post by endisneigh » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 4:14 PM UTC

pradn wrote: post #39

endisneigh wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If so, I'm not sure how that's relevant to COVID at the present. Per the article we're discussing it's unclear how long a 3rd dose will be effective for, hence my comment to begin with. If we were to pre-suppose you gain a decade of prevention then yeah, that'd be great.

I think they're saying that we can hope that three shots gives long term resistance, as it happens for other vaccines. We can only hope, and it's not a totally unrealistic hope given how other vaccines work.

What are these other vaccines? are the vaccinations for other coronaviruses? I'm not a biologist so I'm not seeing the connection. Is there reason to believe adding more doses would make the prevention jump from less than a year to a decade?

Re: Israel’s Covid-19 boosters are preventing infections, new studies suggest

#42

Post by amluto » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 4:14 PM UTC

xattt wrote: post #8

I am fascinated to know what the effects are of over-vaccination. Is there some spillover effects where a highly-primed immune system begins to get into weird autoimmune reactions? Do weird plaques develop or a build-up of antibodies begin to form in random parts of the body, like in a blood dyscrasia? Or does nothing happen? Chronic vaccine overdoses are so exotic, as access to vaccines had been historically so tigh…

It's not unusual to get very large numbers of lifetime doses of flu vaccines, and people frequently get quite a few doses of the tetanus vaccine. As far as I know, nothing goes wrong, although I've heard that side effects from tetanus vaccines are more likely if doses are administered too close together.

Re: Israel’s Covid-19 boosters are preventing infections, new studies suggest

#43

Post by nradov » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 4:14 PM UTC

tumblewit wrote: post #32

I have little understanding of this but someone who actually works on vaccines told me this theory: Your body upon coming in contact with the vaccine starts to product antibodies (the first shot). This is generally enough for a normal immune system to fight the disease if in the future the body was to come in contact with the virus. The second shot is for hyper immunity after 4 weeks. What it does is that it basicall…

There's more to immunity than the antibodies generated as a short term response to infection or vaccination. Memory cell activity is more important to long term immunity.

Re: Israel’s Covid-19 boosters are preventing infections, new studies suggest

#44

Post by Tostino » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 4:14 PM UTC

swader999 wrote: post #19

Great, let's degrade our immune systems in an over reaction to this by vaccinating every five months in a never ending saga.

Do you have any source for the claim that any of the vaccines degrade your immune system?

Re: Israel’s Covid-19 boosters are preventing infections, new studies suggest

#45

Post by JumpCrisscross » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 4:14 PM UTC

endisneigh wrote: post #3

Assuming it's only as effective as the original two-dose shot and prevents for the same duration, it seems like COVID will never go away. Assuming the current trend and a 9 month prevention, that pretty much aligns to what happened last year. So we'd need no new significant variants to develop or any outbreaks. Seems unlikely given that there are many countries with vaccination rates under 50% Probably better to focu…

> as effective as the original two-dose shot and prevents for the same duration

We're giving boosters of a vaccine developed against the Beta variant. That's better than nothing. But it's inefficient against Delta.

Pfizer/BioNTech are working on a Delta-specific booster [1]. If we can get approvals rolling faster without compromising safety, it might mean being able to release variant-specific boosters earlier in their transmission cycle.

[1] https://investors.biontech.de/news-releases/news-release-det...

Re: Israel’s Covid-19 boosters are preventing infections, new studies suggest

#46

Post by Covzire » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 4:15 PM UTC

brightball wrote: post #33

endisneigh wrote: post #3

Assuming it's only as effective as the original two-dose shot and prevents for the same duration, it seems like COVID will never go away. Assuming the current trend and a 9 month prevention, that pretty much aligns to what happened last year. So we'd need no new significant variants to develop or any outbreaks. Seems unlikely given that there are many countries with vaccination rates under 50% Probably better to focu…

It's why I'm more interested in companies that can treat the symptoms effectively than only the vaccines right now. IMO the only way this ever truly gets better is if the effects can be mitigated quickly. Whoever figures that out is going to make a lot of money.

Good luck with that in 2021, someone is already making a lot of money, and ostensibly weaponizing big tech into preventing anyone from even talking about alternatives.

Re: Israel’s Covid-19 boosters are preventing infections, new studies suggest

#47

Post by Natsu » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 4:15 PM UTC

endisneigh wrote: post #3

Assuming it's only as effective as the original two-dose shot and prevents for the same duration, it seems like COVID will never go away. Assuming the current trend and a 9 month prevention, that pretty much aligns to what happened last year. So we'd need no new significant variants to develop or any outbreaks. Seems unlikely given that there are many countries with vaccination rates under 50% Probably better to focu…

I wonder if this is really the case. It seems like the original vaccines trained everyone's immune system on the spike protein specifically because this is exposed and highly conserved by the virus, such that it's hard to change and still leave an effective virus. Delta, however, found such a mutation that made it more virulent and it escaped.

If we vaccinate against the modified spike, it's not clear how many more mutations exist like Delta. Maybe we can still get ahead of it, but I don't think anyone knows yet.

I do wonder if we'll see reformulated boosters against Delta's spikes, though.

Re: Israel’s Covid-19 boosters are preventing infections, new studies suggest

#48

Post by mikepurvis » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 4:15 PM UTC

serial_dev wrote: post #6

It's like Linux on the desktop and fusion reactors. It seems like we are always one jab away from being safe and overcoming covid.

In fairness, I think it's been just as frustrating to the health officials setting out those targets— between non-compliance with the initial guidelines (both due to idiocy, and due to governments dragging their heels on the income/rent supports that would have allowed poor people to actually stay home), and then the appearance of the delta variant just as vaccination campaigns were getting seriously under way, I'm sure it has very much felt like fighting a battle against moving goalposts.

Re: Israel’s Covid-19 boosters are preventing infections, new studies suggest

#49

Post by JackFr » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 4:15 PM UTC

cm2187 wrote: post #5

endisneigh wrote: post #3

Assuming it's only as effective as the original two-dose shot and prevents for the same duration, it seems like COVID will never go away. Assuming the current trend and a 9 month prevention, that pretty much aligns to what happened last year. So we'd need no new significant variants to develop or any outbreaks. Seems unlikely given that there are many countries with vaccination rates under 50% Probably better to focu…

[edit] this is in response to the earlier version of your post where you wonder if the virus will ever go away: That I think is a given. Even if we had a bullet proof vaccine, you have such a large reserve of unvaccinated people across the world, plus animals, that the virus is endemic at this stage. Which isn't a problem. If once vaccinated the virus is mostly harmless, then it is just one more of the many endemic d…

I am not a virologist, but based on my reading, in 100 years COVID will still be with us. At worst it will be the flu, and at best it will be just another strain of a cold.

COVID has the very helpful quality of being least impactful on the very young. As new children are born they will be exposed to COVID multiple times over their lives, to the point when they are at ages we now consider vulnerable, they likely will have developed as much resistance as one can have.

Re: Israel’s Covid-19 boosters are preventing infections, new studies suggest

#50

Post by JumpCrisscross » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 4:17 PM UTC

dv_dt wrote: post #7

endisneigh wrote: post #3

Assuming it's only as effective as the original two-dose shot and prevents for the same duration, it seems like COVID will never go away. Assuming the current trend and a 9 month prevention, that pretty much aligns to what happened last year. So we'd need no new significant variants to develop or any outbreaks. Seems unlikely given that there are many countries with vaccination rates under 50% Probably better to focu…

Is there any reason not to increase vaccine production rates so we have the capacity to vaccinate the world population faster than every 9 months?

> Is there any reason not to increase vaccine production rates so we have the capacity to vaccinate the world population faster than every 9 months?

Capital constraints. Most specifically, human capital. mRNA production methods, including for critical precursors, are complicated. There is a limited number of people who can build and monitor the productions systems.