Pfizer CEO Says Third Covid Vaccine Dose Likely Needed Within 12 Months (cnbc.com) 408
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said people will "likely" need a booster dose of a Covid-19 vaccine within 12 months of getting fully vaccinated. His comments were made public Thursday but were taped April 1. From a report: Bourla said it's possible people will need to get vaccinated against the coronavirus annually. "A likely scenario is that there will be likely a need for a third dose, somewhere between six and 12 months and then from there, there will be an annual revaccination, but all of that needs to be confirmed. And again, the variants will play a key role," he told CNBC's Bertha Coombs during an event with CVS Health. "It is extremely important to suppress the pool of people that can be susceptible to the virus," Bourla said. The comment comes after Johnson & Johnson CEO Alex Gorsky told CNBC in February that people may need to get vaccinated against Covid-19 annually, just like seasonal flu shots. Researchers still don't know how long protection against the virus lasts once someone has been fully vaccinated.
I have no issue with that. (Score:5, Insightful)
But as someone who lives in Europe, it sure would be nice to be able to get my *first* shots at some point before the sun goes nova.
Re: I have no issue with that. (Score:2)
FWIW only about half the people that want one have got their first shot in US (though I know we're hardly the paragon of good health system here).
Re: I have no issue with that. (Score:4, Informative)
Meanwhile, Iceland is still vaccinating the 70+ age group, not yet having started on the chronic-risk-conditions group. And we're above average in Europe.
Just vastly insufficient supply over here.
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But as someone who lives in Europe, it sure would be nice to be able to get my *first* shots at some point before the sun goes nova.
Yeah - what's the deal with that? Over here, for all of the reports that would have Americans massively anti-vax, we've organized and dispensed a lot of vaccines.
In my area, we're opening up eligibility for everyone soon and in some places now, I got mine in February, my wife just got her second shot last week - she's a lot younger than me, and my son who's in his late 20's just got his first.
So what's the deal?
Re:I have no issue with that. (Score:4, Informative)
Supply. It's 100% about supply. We get a batch use all within 1-2 days, then sit around on our arses waiting for more :(
The US has been awash in supply compared to most of the world. Which makes it so frustrating to see vaccine at times going to waste or taking long periods of time to distribute due to rollout incompetence in the US, when we're sitting over here just waiting to get our hands on some.
Moderna is a US company, and all stages of production are in the US. Pfizer is a US company. BioNTech is a German company, but the first two stages of the vaccine have been produced exclusively in the US, and the third stage predominantly in the US, with only a small plant in Belgium. They're commissioning a new plant for the second and third stages in Germany which should eventually help.
Europe had planned on AstraZeneca being the biggest part of its supply, but its rollout turned out to be a trainwreck. J&J was also supposed to be a lesser but meaningful portion of the supply.
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Moderna is a US company, and all stages of production are in the US. Pfizer is a US company. BioNTech is a German company, but the first two stages of the vaccine have been produced exclusively in the US, and the third stage predominantly in the US, with only a small plant in Belgium.
That is because Americans work too hard. They don't get eight weeks of vacation like you enlightened people. They are all slaves to Big Western Corporations. Well at least you have your Tesla to drive around in, right Rei?
Re:I have no issue with that. (Score:5, Insightful)
So your "American hard work ethic" has exactly what to do with adenovirus vaccines turning out to be problematic in production, efficacy and side effects?
Yeah, it's nice not having to go to gas stations in a pandemic :)
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As an American, I can verify. A large number of us ARE stupid, fat, lazy and racist. A larger number of us are intelligent, fit, industrious and perfectly lovely to our fellow man.
Pretty much how I've seen every country. Though, lately, our stupid, fat, lazy and racist have gotten a bit louder than normal.
Re:I have no issue with that. (Score:4, Insightful)
Though, lately, our stupid, fat, lazy and racist have gotten a bit louder than normal.
Well sure, but she just got a new $1.4 million house: https://nypost.com/2021/04/10/... [nypost.com]
You can ignore those types of people.
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And explain how that comment was racist? Stating facts != racism.
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For a lefty, "anything I don't like" is the definition of racist. Just like, for the right, "anything you enjoy that I don't" is the definition of satanic.
As Eric Hoffer pointed out in The True Believer [amazon.com], for the cult member, the nature of the belief isn't important, only its strength (and for a true cult to thrive, it has to have unrealistic goals so loony it isolates the members from normal society.)
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As an American, I can verify. A large number of us ARE stupid, fat, lazy and racist. A larger number of us are intelligent, fit, industrious and perfectly lovely to our fellow man.
Pretty much how I've seen every country. Though, lately, our stupid, fat, lazy and racist have gotten a bit louder than normal.
There was a survey about racism, and as it turned out, the US was one of the lesser racist countries.
That's probably difficult for some to imagine, but the first thing is that we have a lot of different "races" here. A lot of countries are pretty much monoracial.
There's a reason for that.
Second thing is that unlike many countries, we bare it all to the world. So if people want to believe that the USA is chock full of redneck Maga hat wearing Civil war re-enacting, NRA Gun kook, southerners who hate
Re:I have no issue with that. (Score:5, Informative)
The three stages, FYI, are:
1) Breeding bacteria to produce DNA plasmids that code for the spike protein, then harvesting those plasmids
2) Using the plasmids to mass produce mRNA that codes for the spike protein
3) Combining the mRNA with lipid nanoparticles and other vaccine components, and bottling
It used to take about 120 days from start to finish. Now it takes about 60 days (half of that is quality assurance). The new plant in Marburg, Germany (which still gets its DNA from the US, but does everything else) was supposedly completed around the end of March.
Another piece of upcoming supply should hopefully be CureVac. They've never targeted becoming a huge supplier, and they're very late to the game, but with a mRNA vaccine similar to Pfizer and Moderna, it's probably a good one. Phase 3 results should be unveiled soon, followed by (if everything goes right) approval in a week or two. We don't know how much vaccine they've produced thusfar, but their target for 2021 is 300M doses.
Re: I have no issue with that. (Score:4, Insightful)
Strange. It's almost as if having an expensive for-profit healthcare system leads to better outcomes for people during significant global health events. Or maybe it's as if socialized healthcare suffers from focusing so much on being fair, that it prefers being fair over being healthy.
I wonder why no one has thought of this before and written countless articles about the different dynamics of different approaches to healthcare...
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Re: I have no issue with that. (Score:5, Interesting)
You're partially correct.
America's healthcare system has lead to a better vaccination rollout but we handled the overall pandemic pretty poorly amongst developed nations and even badly compared to some undeveloped nations.
Overall though in terms of health many of the countries with universal/socialized health systems tend to have better overall health outcomes in terms of chronic conditions, life expectancy and overall satisfaction with the system. You can absolutely get the best care in the USA if you can afford it
If anything with all the coverage extensions and the program that is making vaccination free on site for everyone the pandemic has shown many people here a bit of the potential of what a universal system could look like in the US.
Re: I have no issue with that. (Score:5, Interesting)
I love when people do that... "Just take out some of the most populous states in the country and the numbers change" well of course they do, it's still a sign of an overall weak response in the USA. There's plenty of blame to go around, lack of Federal guidance from the outset, much of it contradictory and counter-productive combined with some pretty bad governorship all around (There are less states that handled things well than didn't)
Overall the pandemic exposed lots of the problems with our system. Just because we were able to buy ourselves out of trouble at the last minute doesn't mean those problems don't exist.
Re: I have no issue with that. (Score:5, Insightful)
Strange.
I got my vaccine for free from a state run site staffed by the national guard with doses provided by the federal government.
The only more socialized experience available in the US is probably going to a state run prison.
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Re: I have no issue with that. (Score:5, Funny)
I got my vaccine for free from a state run site staffed by the national guard with doses provided by the federal government.
I got my vaccine free from the state in the park. I was just standing there minding my own business, then someone popped out of the bushes in a gilly suit. Popped my ass from 30 yards away. It was a great shot.
I heard they are going to use helicopters to vaccinate the local community college next week.
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Let's not get carried away. The US still has a pretty awful COVID morbidity and mortality rate compared to most countries. They are vaccinating pretty quickly, but not as quickly as the UK, Israel, or a couple other countries, and are only doing so because of a massive collective (i.e. socialized) effort.
Re: I have no issue with that. (Score:4, Insightful)
3. The way EU handled orders ensured that EU was at the end of the queue, and that money would mostly go to European (read: French first, UK second, German third, everyone else last) providers. And French provider provided French performance. They'll be lucky to have something resembling functional vaccine by early 2022. That is why vaccinations in EU are mainly done in Ox/AZ and BioNTech/Pfizer.
Re: I have no issue with that. (Score:5, Interesting)
By the way, yes, the Sanofi/GSK vaccine appears to be a failure. There has been other failures as well. Not all vaccines succeed.
But the USA bought Sanofi/GSK as well. So did Canada and the UK. So the EU was not the only one to bet on that slow horse.
And there has been no successful vaccine developed in the rest of the EU. Curevac is German and will likely be ready soon.
Janssen is Belgium/Netherlands, but the EU bought it too. It's not as if the EU refused to buy a successful vaccine from Italy or Poland.
Most of the EU money will likely go to Pfizer/BioNtech, AstraZeneca, Moderna and Janssen/Johnson&Johnson... nothing French in those 4.
And in case you didn't get the memo, the UK is no longer in the EU. So why would the EU favor UK-based corporations over their own?
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Moderna is also making in Switzerland (and filling vials in Spain).
The Puurs Pfizer plant in Belgium is not a small plant by any standard. It's one of the biggest COVID-19 vaccine plant worldwide so far. It is supplying the whole world except the USA.
Anyways the location and nationality of the producer shouldn't matter that much. The UK got a lot of Pfizer vaccines from Belgium. Israel too. Israel didn't produce any vaccine locally, and yet they are pretty much done with vaccinating the 16+ years old.
Howeve
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We put up boatloads of cash. But we bet on the wrong horse (AstraZeneca).
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This is wrong in every aspect.
First, EU haggled like mad, because this was supposed to be "the project to show eurosceptics how critically important EU is" and "how efficient EU is". It's why they insisted and pushed through doing centralized distribution forbidding nation states from making their own purchase agreements rather than allow nation states to do it, in spite of EU having no relevant competency whatsoever. It was hilarious to watch pro-EU German media have an internal meltdown as they were force
Re:I have no issue with that. (Score:5, Interesting)
forbidding nation states
They did no such thing. The EU has zero power to forbid nation states to do their own haggling. Not that countries would be stupid enough to do so as they would end up literally at the bottom of the pecking order compared to a larger customer.
just how grossly incompetent EU is on this issue
Considering the vaccine shortages are a 100% supply constraint issue that isn't magically resolved if you just try and buy them yourself, calling the EU incompetent because all companies involved have so far missed every single delivery target to date is a bit stupid. What next, you're an incompetent moron because NVIDIA can't deliver you an RTX3080?
Second is what EU bet on. It didn't actually bet on Ox/AZ as much as Sanofi, from whom they agreed to buy far more than from anyone else. Because in EU, everything is about corruption first and foremost. And Sanofi is French.
Yeah great conspiracy, because it's not like the Pfizer vaccine isn't ... German. The reality is the EU did exactly what the USA did and what the UK did. Each country favoured the suppliers that manufactured locally, and each did so with a degree of protectionism. The fact that Sanofi fizzled is unfortunate. Throwing all their money into Pfizer or Az/Ox would not have netted a single extra vaccine because (and I can't stress this enough) THEY ARE MANUFACTURED ELSEWHERE. Let's talk about those other vaccines when the USA permits exports, or when the UK withdraws its priority clause. Until then they the EU is stuck with what trickles out.
EU member nation states can no longer do timely national purchase orders
That fantasy is your misunderstanding. There's no such thing as a "timely purchase order" for vaccines. And there wouldn't have been earlier either. Whether the deliver targets are missed to the EU or the deliver targets are missed to individual member states doesn't put any extra vaccines into their hands.
Not only has EU failed in a spectacular fashion, but it also ensured in the way it failed that there would be no way to correct its failures on nation state level.
Except as I already said, that's not how the EU works, and not a single member state was in any way prevented from doing their own thing. There is absolutely no legal basis to prevent a country from going out and buying something. That's simply not how the EU works. But it just doesn't make sense for any of them to do their own thing due to the craptacular market power a small country has, they realise this, you don't. Your solution would produce no extra vaccines at a great extra cost. Hurrah!
Except that one member who left before the shit hit the fan. UK. Brexit saved them from gross incompetence
LOL Is that the same Brexit they held up as evidence for how they negotiated and approved vaccines only for the EU to publically retort that they would have been completely free to do that within the EU?
Yes I'm salty, because I followed this insanity
That's not the reason you're salty. You're salty because you're reading too much Daily Mail.
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In the case of the US, though, somehow the central authority bet on the right horses.
The US bet on every horse. The cost of betting on a specific vaccine was negligible compared to the cost to the economy of delaying the rollout. So throwing gobs of money at all of them was actually the most prudent policy. It is something that Trump actually did right.
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That's what european "continentalism" (continent-level nationalism) gets you.
They wanted to screw the US and use their own developments. Their bet failed, and now they have to wait in line.
I like this, though. I like that this kind of shit happens to "europe for europeans". It's not nice being bullied around like you do with smaller nations when you trade with them as a block and then subsidize internally and block imports, right? It's the same now. The bigger player is bullying you around.
But hey, at least
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Europe also shared with Canada when the US said nope.
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Look, I was not replying to you but to hjf who stupidly claimed that it was because of "continentalism" that Europe failed.
I asked why there was a shortage in Europe, and was told it was the USA and GB's fault.
Just because you don't like the answer doesn't mean it's not true. The EU didn't make the decision that the USA wouldn't export any vaccine. It didn't choose to be the only western exporter.
But maybe you are right. The EU should have made the decision to ban exports, like the USA. It would be in a better position today.
But the UK/Israel/Canada/many others would be in a far worse positio
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But as someone who lives in Europe, it sure would be nice to be able to get my *first* shots at some point before the sun goes nova.
Let's not forget that one of the most virulent and common COVID variants in circulation right now is the British one thanks to our favourite pandemic fighting wunderkind Boris Johnson and his genius idea of achieving herd immunity by doing nothing to stop the spread of COVID. The EU messed up the original rollout by overlying on Astra Zeneca but they now have something like 2-3 billion COVID vaccine doses coming down the pipes in the next few months from seven different companies not counting AZ. The Marbur
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Wait, your argument is "The countries immunizing more than us are responsible for our tepid rollout, but you see, we'll be better than you, mark my words. Plus, we care!"?
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European continentalists. They are as imbecile as american nationalists, but on a continental level.
Re: I have no issue with that. (Score:2)
Isn't the British variant from South Africa, though?
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Come on, you will get your dose, and so am I (I live in France, which is average for the EU). If all goes well, and I don't see why it wouldn't, probably around September or so, because I am considered low risk.
Europe is lagging a month or two behind the US, itself about one month behind the UK, but after a year of not being able to do anything, I can wait a couple of months. Selfishly, I would have liked me and my country to be first in line but you don't make billions of doses magically appear overnight.
He's right (Score:3)
COVID19 will probably hang around in animals for a long time, possibly forever, so even if it were eradicated from the human population, it could easily jump back to our species again from wild animals.
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If only preventing this from happening were as easy as leaving those known carrier species off plates.
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Yes, if only it were that easy. Unfortunately "known carrier species" are many and are likely to increase over time, and people will can still come into contact with wild animals if they do anything outdoors, and also indirectly through farm animals and pets.
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SARS-CoV-2 and closely related viruses like SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV, bind to ACE2 inhibitors, which not only give them access to a wide variety of human tissues, but also many potential mammalian hosts.
If it is allowed to persist in the human population at a high level, eventually we'll see it jump to new zoonotic reservoirs like domestic animals and livestock.
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The way this virus first entered the human population isn't known, and may have nothing to do with people "eating bats". It could well be the same story as MERS, which is presumed to have gotten into camels (which then infected people) because their feed was contaminated by bat poop. Sometimes bats like to roost in barns where other animals are kept, and you're not going to bat-proof every barn in every part of the world that has bats.
If we completely stopped animal farming and meat eating, it would help be
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We've seen SARS-CoV-2 jump to other species easily since infecting humans, to tigers in zoos and to minks for example. Do you think there's a chance it was a product of gain of function research for infecting those species too? Made to target Siegfried and Roy, or Joe Exotic perhaps?
It likely has these unusual abilities because it spent a lot of time infecting bats, which have highly advanced immune systems, and now it blows through the relatively simple immune systems of everything else it encounters.
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Re:He's right (Score:4, Insightful)
Zoonotic diseases (i.e. originated in wild animals) are rare and unlikely to be very virulent.
Complete nonsense.
Have you ever wondered why avian and swine influenza are named as such?
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So no, if COVID19 were eradicated from the human population it could not easily jump back. However, it is exceedingly unlikely it will ever get fully eradicated.
Especially not if pharma companies button up vaccine formulas for profit, rather than licensing it free to third world countries so it can be freely distributed to their citizens, like AstraZeneca did with the Oxford vaccine. This was after Oxford was bullied into giving AstraZeneca an exclusive license [fortune.com]. Oxford had previously intended to open source the vaccine, but was coerced into the change by the Gates foundation, a major donor to Oxford. The Gates foundation also just happens to be a major shareholde
and the government will need to cover the cost (Score:2)
and the government will need to cover the cost with no changes to the patient no matter what plan they are on.
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They get money from TAXATION!
You are paying for it anyway.
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We can print as much money as we want (Score:3, Insightful)
The Government printing money is only a problem when it causes inflation without increasing economic activity. Per worker Productivity since the 50s is up by a factor of 4. That means you're 4 times more productive than your granddad. And your grandma was stay at home, your mom, let alone your wife, almost certainly works.
This is why when the debt to GDP hit 1 to 1 the country didn't collapse like we were told in the 80s
Only an issue if we can't wipe it out (Score:5, Insightful)
This is really only an issue if we can't wipe COVID-19 out. This means it is really important to get as many people as possible vaccinated. That has to include populations which are getting low rates of vaccination now, whether due to lack of easy access or do to actual vaccine hesitancy. In the US, white, rural southerners https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/04/15/987412681/its-not-a-never-thing-white-rural-southerners-are-waiting-to-get-the-vaccine [npr.org] , and urban blacks are two of the groups which have the lowest vaccine uptake rates. In the first case, this seems to be largely due to vaccine hesitance, while the second is a combination of access and hesitance https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/03/18/978609955/addressing-racial-divides-in-health-care-seen-as-key-to-boosting-black-vaccinati [npr.org]. Outside the US vaccine uptake rates vary a lot to very high (Israel and the UK), to very low (Brazil).
Unfortunately, the very well publicized pause of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine has likely increased vaccine hesitance in the US https://abc7news.com/pause-on-johnson-and-covid-vaccine-jj-/10513216/ [abc7news.com] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/vaccine-pause-hesitancy/2021/04/14/e2728742-9c7a-11eb-9d05-ae06f4529ece_story.html [washingtonpost.com]. Worse, the pause means that some crucial groups are not getting the vaccine one would want them to. For example, a migrant worker may not have an easy ability to schedule for two different vaccine appointments weeks apart. So getting such a person the J&J vaccine helps out. Overall, seems likely that the Johnson and Johnson pause is going to cost lives and make it much more likely that we need to do something like what the article is talking about.
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Outside the US, UK, Israel, and a couple other countries, "vaccine uptake rates" are extremely low because we can't get ahold of the friggin' vaccine. Well over 90% of our country polled wants to be vaccinated. We're still only vaccinating the over-70 group, and haven't even started the chronic-conditions groups. There is no global "vaccine hesitancy" crisis; there's a global vaccine supply crisis.
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Outside the US, UK, Israel
Notice what is common between those countries? That is due to leadership: those countries had strong leaders who figured out what to do in regards to obtaining the vaccines. By the way, these are the same leaders that you guys shit on every day here on Slashdot.
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What they "have in common" is that the US is home to Pfizer and Moderna, the UK is home to AstraZeneca, and Israel got a sweetheart deal from Pfizer for a herd immunity study (we tried in Iceland but our COVID rates were too low :P). Some other countries also struck deals for large amounts of vaccine from Sinopharm (Hungary, Bahrain, UAE, Chile, Serbia, etc), but fat lot of good it's done them; their COVID rates are terrible. Sinovac appears to be a major flop.
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Right and in the US we have a lot of supply because of Operation Warp Speeds strings - Thanks Donald Trump.
This the problem with the left. When their moon beams fail to materialize its always due to some externality. This is true at a personal level and political level. Its never because they did not work hard enough, because they were wrong, because they just are not talented enough etc - its always someone or something however nebulous that is at fault
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I get a flu shot every year (Score:5, Insightful)
What's driving me nuts is the number of people who are saying they're not going to get the vaccine because they still have to wear masks and social distance for an undetermined period of time. These are grown adults and I don't think it's unreasonable to say they're acting like children.
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What's driving me nuts is the number of people who are saying they're not going to get the vaccine because they still have to wear masks and social distance for an undetermined period of time.
I think you are hearing what you want to hear, not what is likely being said. What I hear in private conversations, because I am not out to uncover heretics or score outrage likes on the social media, is along the lines of "what the point of getting everyone vaccinated if everyone continues acting as if nobody is vaccinated". Meaning, the complaint isn't about vaccinations but about lack of return to normalcy for vaccinated people.
Re:I get a flu shot every year (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you are hearing what you want to hear, not what is likely being said. What I hear in private conversations, because I am not out to uncover heretics or score outrage likes on the social media, is along the lines of "what the point of getting everyone vaccinated if everyone continues acting as if nobody is vaccinated". Meaning, the complaint isn't about vaccinations but about lack of return to normalcy for vaccinated people.
That's literally what he said.
The misunderstanding appears to originate with you.
Even with your reformulation of his statement, I agree with his conclusion.
People who are deciding not to vaccinate because, "what's the point if we're not going to return to normalcy" are still acting like children.
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I think you are hearing what you want to hear, not what is likely being said. What I hear in private conversations, because I am not out to uncover heretics or score outrage likes on the social media, is along the lines of "what the point of getting everyone vaccinated if everyone continues acting as if nobody is vaccinated". Meaning, the complaint isn't about vaccinations but about lack of return to normalcy for vaccinated people.
This is very well put. Many of these people just want to know when they can start planning the future of their businesses, their families, their children's or their educations. They want to know when the goal posts will stop moving.
Re:I get a flu shot every year (Score:4, Informative)
What's driving me nuts is the number of people who are saying they're not going to get the vaccine because they still have to wear masks and social distance for an undetermined period of time.
the complaint isn't about vaccinations but about lack of return to normalcy for vaccinated people.
That points to a fundamental lack of understanding. The idea that a vaccine makes you "immune" to a virus is misleading. Vaccines train the body to recognize the virus and mount a quick immune response. The response is not immediate and not foolproof, but in general it should lead the vaccinated person to have greatly lessened symptoms (or even no symptoms) when they are exposed to the virus and a shorter time where they are spreading the virus. What it does NOT mean is that people who are vaccinated are bulletproof against the vaccinated virus and can walk around in an environment of lots of infected people with it just bouncing off of them with no effect. They can still be infected (and please note that there is a difference between infected and symptomatic), can still get sick, still have an outside chance of having serious complications, and, most importantly, can still spread the virus.
Once enough people are vaccinated, the transmission rates drop so low that the chances of the virus finding an unvaccinated or vaccinated but immune compromised host to live in long enough to jump to enough new viable hosts to cause an outbreak become negligible. That's the outcome we're looking for. Refusing to vaccinate because it doesn't mean you can immediately resume a pre-COVID lifestyle or complaining that being vaccinated doesn't mean you are exempt from COVID precautions as the vaccines roll out both completely miss the point and are counterproductive to the stated goal.
This simplistic idea that "you got vaccinated, so why do you care that I didn't since you're immune?" and "I'm vaccinated, so I don't have to worry about the virus" is how Measles started to break out in the US after being practically eliminated for decades.
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But the more scientific reason is that the vaccine greatly reduces the chance of infection/carrying, it does not 100% eliminate it.
It is not feasible to get to 100% on anything, so with such goal you are guaranteeing indefinite lockdowns. The latest data shows that 99.992% of fully vaccinated people have dodged COVID [arstechnica.com]. To me, that margin is adequate for full reopening.
Re:It's from a focus group (Score:5, Interesting)
Meanwhile Tucker Carlson, the most popular pundit on Fox News (which is the most popular cable news network in America) said on national TV that we're being told to wear masks because vaccines don't work [politifact.com].
I saw that episode of Tucker Carlson. That is not what he said. He didn't state the vaccines didn't work. He asked if the vaccines work then why are we still wearing masks. It is a legitimate question.
An the answer is, 'we are not." If Tucker had done a little research he would have found out that mask restrictions are being loosened. Things are slowly going back to normal.
Re:It's from a focus group (Score:5, Insightful)
" He asked if the vaccines work then why are we still wearing masks. It is a legitimate question. "
That is a rhetorical strategy that in actual journalism is call "telling a question"*. Just because it ends with a question mark doesn't mean that he's actually asking a question. He is asserting that at the individual level there is no reason to wear a mask immediately after receiving a vaccine dose therefore any requirement to continue to wear a mask means that vaccines don't work with just enough of a fig leaf that he won't face any consequences if someone acts on that assertion. The question is only legitimate if the assertion that implied is sound, which it is not. In normal communication people make statements that make sense, and that "question" only makes sense if the assertion is true.
*: The classic example is "When did you stop beating your wife?" It is only a legitimate question when directed at someone who had started beating their wife. It doesn't make sense to ask it of someone who hasn't. Let's pare it down even further, to "Did you stop beating your wife?" It only makes sense to ask that of someone who had been beating their wife and the only legitimate response is "yes" or "no". Someone who had not been beating their wife will respond with something other than "yes" or "no" at which point the the questioner will say "It's a yes or no question, Just answer it."
He literally said (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know how much clearer that can be. This isn't even "Just asking questions" territory anymore. He is saying that scientists know the vaccine doesn't work and are not telling us that it doesn't work and that as a result they are telling us to keep social distancing because they know the vaccine doesn't work.
That is the meaning of those words. It's what they mean. I don't know how to explain this any more clearly than Mr Carlson already did except to add that he's lying, and is well enough educated and has enough fact checkers to know he's lying.
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If everyone was on board with masking and cooperating from the outset we could be on the honor system but these folks have just ruined any semblance of common good for the time being.
That said I am fairly sure there have been good results with combining Pfizer/Moderna since they are very similar and I believe there is study into mixing and matching the JJ/AZ vaccines with those others as well.
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Masking works to contain spread, that much has been established. If you don't believe that or think it's some nefarious conspiracy, i don't know what to tell folks who believe that anymore. Your attitude really belies the point that you would in fact not do it if it was "up to you". This is a pandemic, the virus could give two shits about libertarian principles or tough guy posturing.
If everyone was just willing to "do it voluntarily" would we need the mandates and the "shamers"? I doubt South Korea and
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What's driving me nuts is the number of people who are saying they're not going to get the vaccine because they still have to wear masks and social distance for an undetermined period of time.
Given the criteria to stop masking and social distancing are high vaccination rates, these people are setting up society for an infinite while loop. Sooner or later there will have to be an interrupt...
Specifically we'll get a new variant (Score:2)
The only way you win an arms race against a virus is with total destruction. And the only way you do that is with extremely high vaccination numbers (85-95%) coupled with widespread precautions (social distancing, masks, handwashing, etc, etc). You can't win a war with half measures.
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Sorry to see you getting trolled here. I don't know you or your politics or anything else about you, but I do think it's sad that Slashdot has become home to so many stalkers and trolls. :(
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Well if that is really their reason for not getting the vax; that is childish. Not all of us refuse it for that reason though. Some of us have actual principles. Like I don't use the products of abortion - which every single available covid vaccine is. Sorry I don't want to profit even in terms of my own safety from the murder of someone else. Doubly so when that someone else was entirely innocent and without any capability to defend themselves. Its unethical. You can protect yourself, you can isolate if
We don't "know" but we have a broad hint (Score:3)
People who recovered from the original SARS have "significant" antibody levels up to 17 years later.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.go... [nih.gov]
Caveat 1: extrapolation is always hazardous and biology is super-messy.
Caveat 2: We got the original SARS under control and it's not evolving resistance now. SARS COV 2 is. We already know that antibodies against one variant are only partly effective against others.
Encouraging: "partly effective" simply means that larger numbers are needed so that when one weakly bound antibody falls off a spike protein, there will be another to take its place. The vaccines produce high antibody levels.
Encouraging: the immune system has other strings to its bow.
We'll know for sure in a year.
In other words: (Score:3)
Within a year, it can't handle the level of mutation anymore.
Fair enough, but it's not really much of a vaccine then... I expect a vaccine to last the usual 10 years.
I really don't think Biontech are deliberately doing this to make continuous profits.
But I really think that is the only purpose in life for Pfizer.
Re:As long as not everyone needs it (Score:5, Insightful)
Herd immunity needs to be maintained - whatever level of vaccination that turns out to be. If you cease maintaining herd immunity, then you increase the rate at which the virus can mutate and adapt to evade vaccines.
Eradication would of course be best (the world is certainly well motivated to fund such an attempt), but it's unclear whether that will be achievable.
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It's not as if the current vaccines were 100% ineffective against variants. Even if the efficacy drops from say, 95 to 70%, it can still be enough if say, 80% of the population received the shot.
Re: As long as not everyone needs it (Score:2)
It seems unlikely to be completely eliminated to me, it seems to be incredibly contagious and fast spreading and with symptom free cases difficult to quarantine.
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Herd immunity needs to be maintained - whatever level of vaccination that turns out to be. If you cease maintaining herd immunity, then you increase the rate at which the virus can mutate and adapt to evade vaccines.
Eradication would of course be best (the world is certainly well motivated to fund such an attempt), but it's unclear whether that will be achievable.
No, we cant eradicate Coronaviruses. Something new would come along anyhow. Even then, the coronavirus will mutate whether we have a lot of people infected or not as well.
I'm more inclined to believe that the Covid-19 virus will have mutated into something else that will end up being more benign, and something that will require a different vaccine. Or even mutate into something like SARS, a very deadly virus that more or less died out because it was hard to infect people.
The ideal situation from the vi
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Who is talking about eradicating Coronaviruses (plural)?
So I guess we shouldn't have eradicated smallpox either, because "something new would come along anyhow"? Better stop eradicating polio... "something new might come along".... And hey everyone, stop wearing your seatbelts, because even if we eradicate fatal car accidents, something new will come along which kills people...
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There's no particular reason why a virus would mutate to be more benign. They mutate to spread more rapidly. There might be a SARS-1-like mutation that makes a particular strain more deadly, but all the other strains that do not limit their own spread will still exist. Viruses don't all decide at once, okay, we're going to mutate now!
The common cold definitely wasn't an 1800s pandemic. The common cold is a blanket term for a fairly mild upper respiratory tract viral infection. It's caused by a host of diffe
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Re:As long as not everyone needs it (Score:5, Insightful)
Vaccination appears to significantly reduce the odds of both infection and transmission. It does not eliminate these odds. However, you don't need to bring the odds down to zero - just enough so as to lower R0 to below 1.
"The old flu" is a vast range of diverse viruses, any ones of which may be predominant in any given year, and has been adapting in humans since time immemorial.
Re:As long as not everyone needs it (Score:5, Interesting)
Spanish Flu killed 1% of the world's population before we "got over it", is that your plan? And FYI, COVID itself caries a vastly (~2 orders of magnitude) higher risk of life-threatening blood clots than the AstraZeneca and J&J vaccines (there is no detected clotting risk assocated with Pfizer or Moderna).
The Sputnik vaccine was not "ready to use" before others. They pumped it for PR pretending that its Phase 2 results were "approval", when it had only just started on Phase 3. Russia remains way behind the curve in terms of vaccinating its population compared to other major nations, at 6,5% having gotten at least one dose. Even India is ahead of Russia as a percentage of the population vaccinated, at 7,4%. Brazil, which is a COVID mess, is way ahead, at 11,7%. The EU, with its bungled rollout, is at 17,4%. The US is at 37,6%, the UK is at 47,8%, and Israel is at 61,7%.
(There's also some countries like Chile (37,8%), Bahrain (34,2%), and Hungary (32%) that also have high vaccination percentages, but they've been relying on Sinovac, which appears to be really ineffective... all of them have bad COVID waves right now despite their high vaccination rates. COVID appears to be rapidly vanishing from Israel and slowly from the UK. The US looked like it was about to go into another wave but seems to have halted at a low level. Europe is still dealing with waves)
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Sinovac has a 50% chance of protecting against infection, 80% chance of avoiding hospital, and a near 100% protection against death.
However before the second dose, it provides less than 5% protection.
The problem with the general vaccination numbers is that they usually include people who haven't completed their full course of treatment. This has led to most countries focusing on inflating their first-dose counts before starting their second rounds, which can have unexpected results due to the extended dosin
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Re: As long as not everyone needs it (Score:5, Insightful)
You're looking at it as if it's a binary thing.
It all goes to the likelihood, the percentages. People who are vaccinated are much less likely to get it and spread it. That helps considerably given that the illness spreads exponentially in the generally unvaccinated population.
No vaccine for any illness has 100% effectiveness. But if you can get to a point where the virus had very few places to spread to, you can make it much less of a threat.
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But having to vaccine everyone every year is a big organizational challenge.
Because nobody has any experience with distributing annual vaccines?
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Of course they do. But a lot of people don't get the flu shot annually. Especially young people.
Anyways if we now needs two shots (flu + COVID) annually, it requires twice the resources, isn't it? I don't think they can just merge both and inject them at the same time.
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That's an amazing strawman you've concocted in your mind. The "socialists" are the ones pushing Biden to waive IP rules on the vaccines and release the formula worldwide for anyone to make.
"The letter was led by independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, along with Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin and Sherrod Brown of Ohio. Democratic Sens. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Chris Murphy of Connecticut, Edward Markey of Massachusetts, Jeff Merkley of Oregon, C
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Again, fantastic strawman's there. At least all us "socialists" have free public housing inside your own brain.
Always remember the creed: Socialism = everything I don't like.
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Sounds like you are either a fashy or a tankie. Either way 2 sides of the same coin.
lol die mad.
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You don't know what fascism is or what tankies are but i'm the "fake socialist"? Hilarious. Also maybe stick to one alt at a time buddy.
Tankie is a pejorative label originally used by dissident or sectarian Marxist-Leninists to designate members of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) who followed the party line of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU).
Tankies are basically the real fake socialists, people who simp for China and the USSR today.
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Re:Shocker (Score:5, Insightful)
is this like those food companies who convinced you that you had to eat? the existence of a profit motive isn't evidence in and of itself that the necessity of something isn't valid
Re:Shocker (Score:5, Insightful)
I, for one, never could have predicted that this would turn into an eternal cash cow for big pharma.
You think something like $30/dose is too expensive? I hope you like lockdowns and stopping the economy for over a year.
The AstraZeneca is even reported to be $3/dose. The price of a bus ticket.
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J&J is nonprofit, and there are several other manufacturers that are working on cheaper vaccine variants. In a year or two, this "cash cow" will be bled dry regardless.
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I'm glad that people on the internet are so good at detecting sarcasm.