Pfizer Data Suggest Third Dose of Covid-19 Vaccine 'Strongly' Boosts Protection Against Delta Variant (cnn.com) 176
A third dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine can "strongly" boost protection against the Delta variant -- beyond the protection afforded by the standard two doses, suggests new data released by Pfizer on Wednesday. From a report: The data posted online suggest that antibody levels against the Delta variant in people ages 18 to 55 who receive a third dose of vaccine are greater than fivefold than following a second dose. Among people ages 65 to 85, the Pfizer data suggest that antibody levels against the Delta variant after receiving a third dose of vaccine are greater than 11-fold than following a second dose.
The data, which included 23 people, have not yet been peer-reviewed or published. During a company earnings call on Wednesday morning, Dr. Mikael Dolsten, who leads worldwide research, development and medical for Pfizer, called the new data on a third dose of vaccine "encouraging." "Receiving a third dose more than six months after vaccination, when protection may be beginning to wane, was estimated to potentially boost the neutralizing antibody titers in participants in this study to up to 100 times higher post-dose three compared to pre-dose three," Dolsten said in prepared remarks. "These preliminary data are very encouraging as Delta continues to spread." The data also show that antibody levels are much higher against the original coronavirus variant and the Beta variant, first identified in South Africa, after a third dose.
The data, which included 23 people, have not yet been peer-reviewed or published. During a company earnings call on Wednesday morning, Dr. Mikael Dolsten, who leads worldwide research, development and medical for Pfizer, called the new data on a third dose of vaccine "encouraging." "Receiving a third dose more than six months after vaccination, when protection may be beginning to wane, was estimated to potentially boost the neutralizing antibody titers in participants in this study to up to 100 times higher post-dose three compared to pre-dose three," Dolsten said in prepared remarks. "These preliminary data are very encouraging as Delta continues to spread." The data also show that antibody levels are much higher against the original coronavirus variant and the Beta variant, first identified in South Africa, after a third dose.
And you go from what? (Score:3)
90% to 95% effectiveness on the vaccine?
Re:And you go from what? (Score:5, Informative)
94% or 95% was the effectiveness found for Pfizer's and Moderna's vaccines about a year ago when they were doing their testing.
It's believed that the effectiveness will go down over time even against the original strains, however, I don't know that this has really been properly quantified since. That said, I do think that we've now had enough time to actually see the reduced levels of antibodies that were originally expected.
And all that said, it's also known that these vaccines are less effective -- but still somewhat effective -- against the COVID-19 variants that have appeared in the last year or so.
Lately, the Delta variant seems to be the dominant one, and the latest studies I've seen suggest that Pfizer and Moderna are about 40% effective at preventing a Delta infection vs no vaccine, but still something like 90% effective at preventing serious cases when compared to no vaccine. The exact numbers seem to vary as new studies come out, but a general trend has definitely emerged -- they're not as effective against Delta as they was against the original strain, but still fairly effective, and when one does get infected they tend to reduce its severity enough to greatly reduce the most serious cases.
In any event, it's not surprising that a booster shot would help. What would help even more is if a booster shot was made to work specifically against the new strains too, however that would require many months of testing again, just like the original vaccines did, but ... just using the same shot again could be approved with a lot less testing and therefore a lot faster. (But of course, the first step is to test it to see how effective it really might be. 23 people is a pretty small sample size, but this sounds promising enough that maybe next we should try testing it on a larger sample.)
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At the very least, studies to confirm the validity of this supposition must be conducted, preferably by someone not named Pfizer or Moderna.
Re:And you go from what? (Score:5, Interesting)
Lately, the Delta variant seems to be the dominant one, and the latest studies I've seen suggest that Pfizer and Moderna are about 40% effective at preventing a Delta infection vs no vaccine, but still something like 90% effective at preventing serious cases when compared to no vaccine.
The latest study, [forbes.com] singular. The one published two days before [nejm.org] that showed the Pfizer vaccine (BNT162b2) to be 88% effective against the delta variant.
The study that showed 40% is an outlier at this point. It's more likely to be a poorly performed study than a real result.
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The latest study, singular. The one published two days before that showed the Pfizer vaccine (BNT162b2) to be 88% effective against the delta variant.
The study that showed 40% is an outlier at this point. It's more likely to be a poorly performed study than a real result.
What is really screwy about some of the Israeli data they are claiming the symptomatic infection rate for a population that is completely naive to the virus is lower than the symptomatic reinfection rate for people who received vaccinations early on.
Something like a quarter to a half of the population gets no symptoms and never knows they have been infected yet the Israeli data showed something like 16% symptomatic infection rate amongst the previously vaccinated.
The Israeli data seems screwy.
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What is really screwy about some of the Israeli data they are claiming the symptomatic infection rate for a population that is completely naive to the virus is lower than the symptomatic reinfection rate for people who received vaccinations early on.
Huh?
Something like a quarter to a half of the population gets no symptoms and never knows they have been infected...
Ok so, to flip that on its head, something like 50-75% of an unvaccinated population becomes symptomatic when infected.
...yet the Israeli data showed something like 16% symptomatic infection rate amongst the previously vaccinated.
The Israeli data seems screwy.
Wait a second, in my maths 50% (I'll take the lower end) is not lower than 16%.
Of course I might be misunderstanding what you're saying, or it could be that you need to rethink your point.
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Wait a second, in my maths 50% (I'll take the lower end) is not lower than 16%.
Of course I might be misunderstanding what you're saying, or it could be that you need to rethink your point.
I'm sorry. I completely fucked up.
The percentage of naive populations (no vaccine, no prior exposure) that get infected and as a result have only asymptomatic infection is something like 25% to 50% depending on study. The remaining 50% to 75% have symptoms.
The percentage of Israelis previously vaccinated in Jan then subsequently become infected and as a result have only asymptomatic infection is 16%. The remaining 84% have symptoms.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/... [timesofisrael.com]
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I will point out that you are not comparing like for like populations here.
In January, the month Israel started vaccinations, the elderly and most vulnerable were vaccinated first. Average age maybe 80 years old ... well actually I don't know, as it's extremely variable across countries, but maybe ~50 years old in the west, 40 in Israel. (tbh this is a guesstimate, and I can't be bothered to look it up)
In the general population the average age is
Given that the health outcomes for this virus are highly age d
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What is really screwy about some of the Israeli data they are claiming the symptomatic infection rate for a population that is completely naive to the virus is lower than the symptomatic reinfection rate for people who received vaccinations early on.
Something like a quarter to a half of the population gets no symptoms and never knows they have been infected yet the Israeli data showed something like 16% symptomatic infection rate amongst the previously vaccinated.
The Israeli data seems screwy.
I suspect most vaccinated people fight off asymptomatic infections before the virus replicates enough to generate a positive test. The infection only lasts long enough to be detected if it's more severe.
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I don't know what data you are looking at, but according to this study [nejm.org]:
"Only modest differences in vaccine effectiveness were noted with the delta variant as compared with the alpha variant after the receipt of two vaccine doses. Absolute differences in vaccine effectiveness were more marked after the receipt of the first dose."
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Quite the boost when you're surrounded by anti-vax morons breathing on you. Maybe less important in countries with higher vaccination rates which actually stand a chance of developing lasting herd immunity.
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90% to 95% effectiveness on the vaccine?
Or, after six months, from 84% back up to higher levels of protection. Pfizer's CEO says Covid vaccine effectiveness drops to 84% after six months [cnbc.com]
The effectiveness of Pfizer's Covid-19 vaccine steadily declines over time, dropping to about 84% for vaccinated people about four to six months after getting their second dose, according to CEO Albert Bourla.
The study found the vaccine's effectiveness was strongest, at 96.2%, between one week and two months after receiving the second dose. It declined an average of 6% every two months, according to the study, which signed up more than 44,000 people across the U.S. and other countries. The efficacy after "four to six months was approximately 84%," Bourla said.
"We have seen also data from Israel that there is a waning of immunity and that starts impacting what used to be what was 100% against hospitalization. Now, after the six month period, is becoming low 90s and mid-to-high 80s," Bourla said.
The good news is that we are very, very confident that a third dose, a booster, will take up the immune response to levels that will be enough to protect against the delta variant," the executive added, ...
I think it's about maintaining a sufficient level of protection to effectively mitigate the Delta (and newer) variants until a sufficient number of people are vaccinated to slow spread and possible mutation rates.
On a more cynical note, is it really any surprise that pharma companies are going to want to recommend people keep getting more booster shots -- eve
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https://www.advisory.com/daily... [advisory.com]
"Specifically, researchers have estimated the vaccine was just 39% effective at preventing infection in Israel in late June and early July, compared to 95% from January to early April. However, the vaccine was more than 90% effective at preventing severe Covid-19 in both time periods."
Interesting article, lots of caveats.
All you can do is evaluate your personal risk factors and go from there. John Hopkins has a COVID risk calculator you can use to gauge that. Openvaers has t
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https://www.advisory.com/daily... [advisory.com]
"Specifically, researchers have estimated the vaccine was just 39% effective at preventing infection in Israel in late June and early July, compared to 95% from January to early April. However, the vaccine was more than 90% effective at preventing severe Covid-19 in both time periods."
Interesting article, lots of caveats.
Huge caveats. Severe COVID-19 cases are hard to hide. Mild cases are easy to hide. As lots of other folks have pointed out, the people who aren't vaccinated are far more likely to not believe COVID is real, and won't bother to get checked out unless they're seriously sick. So when your definition of effectiveness involves comparing the number of people who test positive in vaccinated people versus unvaccinated people, rather than the positivity rate, you're going to have lots of problems with your data.
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Against Delta, the Pfizer shot's efficacy rate for symptomatic infection is being reported as anywhere from 60% - 88% depending on who is doing the reporting.
As mentioned before, the lowest efficacy numbers are coming from Israel, and also as mentioned before there are reasons to believe these numbers are off. Even without any deliberate malice, although I wouldn't discount that entirely. (That place seems to have an oddly oversized pharmaceutical industry, among weapons manufacturing, other things.)
Israel
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According to the recent Nature paper assessing the correlation between antibody levels and protection, two doses of an mRNA vaccine is already past the point of diminishing returns.
But ...
If the Israeli data is right and everyone else is wrong, then they're still ~90% at keeping people out of the hospital and morgue but only 39% at preventing infection. If so, that means continued spread.
A third dose, restoring sterilizing immunity to people in whom it's faded. could conceivably slow spread.
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A study released by Pfizer today says that their vaccine falls to 83.7% efficacy after 6 months of getting 2nd dose, and continues to decline by 6% every two months.
Pfizer Vaccine Protection Declines After Six Months, Boosters Protect Against Delta Variant [usnews.com]
A preprint study [medrxiv.org] published Wednesday found that the vaccine at its peak was 96.2% effective at preventing COVID-19 two months after the second dose. However, that protection "declined gradually" to 83.7% within six months.
The study found the efficacy decre
Excuse me sample size matters. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
It's almost like you want to examine possibilities in a small sample size before you go out and do a full study. Nah let's just experimentally inject everyone just to please Slashdotters who have no idea how medical research is done!
Re:Excuse me sample size matters. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Excuse me sample size matters. (Score:5, Insightful)
Initial data shows booster dose of current vaccine (>6 mo. after 2nd dose of BNT162b2) has an overall consistent tolerability profile while eliciting SARS-CoV-2 neutralization titers >5-8X for wild type and 15-21X for Beta variant the range achieved after two primary doses
This is a Phase 1 study. Making sure that there isn't a relatively severe reaction from Dose 3 to Dose 2 as there was from Dose 2 was to Dose 1.
If Dose 1 had no reaction and Dose 2 put a lot of people on the couch for a day... will Dose 3 make you take multiple days off work or worse?
The take-away is less that it generated 5x the antibodies and more that it's tolerable and therefore safe to begin larger trials.
Re:Excuse me sample size matters. (Score:5, Informative)
too small of a sample size to determine ANYTHING
Not true. The sample size is usually not a limiting factor. If the effect is as strong as they claim, a sample size of 23 is enough to see a statistically significant result.
Flip a coin 23 times. The chance they will all be heads is one in 8 million.
Likewise, if 23 people saw increased antibodies compared to the control group, that is very unlikely to be by chance.
Sample size determination [wikipedia.org]
Of course, whether the increased antibodies lead to fewer or less severe infections is still an open question, but that isn't what this study was designed to measure.
Re: Excuse me sample size matters. (Score:2)
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23 is enough people to publish results if it's a really strong signal, like noticing that cyanide kills people or that penicillin cures syphilis.
Re: Excuse me sample size matters. (Score:2)
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Re: Excuse me sample size matters. (Score:2)
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This wouldn't even make the peer review stage. Sample size of 23 people wtf!
Well... Sample size doesn't necessarily matter. If you put 23 people into a room and filled it with helium and they all asphyxiated, how much larger of a sample size would you want before you decided if you wanted to be in the next batch of test subjects? You know, all 23 dying could have been a fluke... :-)
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Re: Excuse me sample size matters. (Score:2)
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Re: Excuse me sample size matters. (Score:2)
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Mm, depends. I couldn't find a link to the actual data in a quick search, but imagine hypothetically that 20 of 23 people all had antibody levels go up 5-10 fold. That would be eye-catching at the very least.
Re: Excuse me sample size matters. (Score:2)
Delta Vaccine (Score:2)
My understanding, which is probably simplistic, is that the mRNA vaccines work by telling the body to proteins found on the virus that the immune system can then train against. So it would seem to be a pretty straightforward process to take the corresponding proteins from the Delta variation and use those versions of the proteins instead of the ones from the original virus. Then the vaccine would be targeting the Delta variation directly. Or perhaps use that only for the second booster shot (and possibly
Re:Delta Vaccine [update the formula] (Score:2)
The trial phase is probably the bottleneck. The existing vaccine has been well tested in the population. It would be considered too much of a gamble to change the formula on short notice. (I'm sure they will start testing such soon, but the results are roughly a year away.)
And because so many have a political agenda to see this all fail so they can rant "I toldja so!", caution is warranted. Unfortunately, they have to use "nut math" when making such decisions.
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This is turning into an episode of "Get Smart" (Score:3)
"Okay, Chief - how about this? We give ninety-NINE booster shots to each Control agent..."
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"Okay, Chief - how about this? We give ninety-NINE booster shots to each Control agent..."
Agent 99 can give me a booster shot any time.
Chum for stockholders (Score:2)
LOL slightly impressed CNN's Pfizer booster article links to a document titled "Second Quarter 2021 Earnings Teleconference".
Strongly boosts profits too... (Score:2)
I was wrong about what "Fold" means (Score:2)
I always thought a "fold" change was the exponent change of the number. Thus, a 3 fold change would be 8 times the original number. This, I deducted, was derived from the number of layers in a folded sheet of paper after the stated number of "folds". Fold a sheet of paper three times and you end up with 8 layers of paper.
But looks like I was wrong. It just means "times". 3-fold means 3 times the original number.
Honestly - I liked my explanation better...
What about Moderna? (Score:2)
I had the 2 Moderna shots at the beginning of the year
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Ask Moderna? Oh, right, they are the new corporation on the block that can do it with their own rules to maximize their profits. (Except that strategy slows them down by a month or two.)
Nevertheless, Moderna is 2-6 weeks behind Pfizer on everything, so look for the same going forward.
Yeah But ... (Score:2)
Why stop at three? What I want to know is:
How much protection does a billion shots offer?
Cause that's the level of protection I'm going for. I want to be protected from Covid, the common cold, and of course, creditors.
What a fucking coincidence (Score:3)
Talking up a third dose checks all the boxes:
The press is happy because more scary clickbait.
The control freaks in government are happy because scared people are compliant people.
Pfizer's shareholders are happy because they get to charge $20/dose.
Name me one parasitic entity that doesn't profit from hyping up the scary. Oh wait, I thought of one: the skeeter that just bit me. I'm pretty sure it doesn't stand to profit. But only cuz I squashed it.
They should stay low-key (Score:2)
I'm not making a judgement call on the claims, but this is likely to fuel paranoia that "big pharma" is playing games to sell more jabs. STFU!
I Bet The Conversatio Went Something Like This (Score:4)
Drug Exec 1: Well, the pandemic isn't as bad as it once was, time to prepare the shareholders.
Drug Exec 2: Wait a minute, you know the 150 million people that got two shots? I'll bet you can get half of them to get a third one!
Drug Exec 1: No, no, people aren't that ...
Drug Exec 2: Listen, tell people that "the science says so", and label all who balk as "anti-science", then just stand back. So many people have been vaccinated that they'll trip over themselves to gain access to a whole new group to feel self-righteous over.
Drug Exec 1: Hmmm, maybe you're right ... okay, I'm sold, now let's get going, the baby seal hunt begins at five.
Drug Exec 2: Oh we can't miss this one, I brought Louseville Slugger, imma go Barry Bonds style on those bastards while they look up at me like "pwease don't kill me I'm just a bay bee!"
Drug Exec 1: Beats the hell out of last year's company vacation, I thought stealing Christmas presents form orphans would be more fun.
Drug Exec 2: Yeah, but the nun-raping trip back 2016 was the bomb yo!
Drug Exec 1 & Drug Exec 2 in unison: Bwahahahahahahaha Bwahahahahahahahahahaha!
Antibody titers are the wrong metric ... (Score:2)
Antibodies are not the only important thing in natural or vaccine induced immunity.
What matters more than antibodies is a T-cell response (specifically CD4+ and CD8+ cells).
Basically, these cells are produced through a complex process of somatic hypermutation, weeding out the mutations that match "self" antigens, then selection via antigen presenting cells (dendritic cells mostly). Once you have those two type of cells, they can activate B-cells on demand to make them produce antibodies and do clonal expans
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Since you seem to 'know stuff'
What do you think about the effectiveness of Ivermectin.
https://ivmmeta.com/ [ivmmeta.com]
Only small studies so far (no big money in Ivermectin) but the small study evidence looks encouraging.
Pfizer data suggests (Score:2)
Pfizer Data Suggest Third Dose of Covid-19 Vaccine 'Strongly' Boosts Protection Against Delta Variant
Pfizer data also suggests third dose of Covid-19 vaccine will 'strongly' boost sales and profit too.
3rd is great (Score:3)
... but the 18th will be wonderful.
Question about other vaccines ... (Score:2)
Why is it always Pfizer, Pfizer, Pfizer, Pfizer, Pfizer? Did momma like Pfizer better?
Why is there no news for Moderna, J&J, Astrasomething, and others?
Thanks.
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Big pharma got good when we added it to our stock portfolio, just like TSLA.
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Re:Enough (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Enough (Score:3)
Re: Enough (Score:5, Insightful)
Thanks. That's a nice article, but it's still an article, and you know we don't like to read those around here, so lets sum it up:
1) Study enrolls 3,598 pregnant women who had just received the covid vaccine
2) 2-3 months later, 827 women had either a live birth, miscarriage, or still birth. The rest were either still pregnant or hadn't been followed up with. We'll ignore all of them and just focus on the 827
3) Miscarriages only happen in the 1st half of pregnancy. Since it was only a 2-3 months study, obviously those that had a live birth got their vaccine in the 3rd trimester, so we'll exclude those 700 from our analysis.
4) We have now selected the 127 people who had either a miscarriage or a still birth. We've purposely excluded those with live births, those still pregnant, and those who haven't been followed up on.
5) Of the 127, 104 had a miscarriage (and 23 had a still birth), so 104/127 = 81.9%
6) We conclude that 81.9% of women that were pregnant and got the vaccine had a miscarriage.
I'm frankly a bit shocked that they didn't just try to include the still births and just flat out claim that 100% of vaccinated pregnant women lost their baby. However, I think even the stupidest among them could figure out something was wrong if the number were 100%, so that was a little too obvious of a lie. Better to stick with 81.9%
Re: Enough (Score:4, Insightful)
Try rereading my post and then look in the mirror. Your point 7 was exactly what I was pointing out. I mean, I explicitly mentioned that they were attempt to calculate miscarriage rates by looking ONLY at women who lost their baby. It's like saying 100% of people who are dead have died. That was the entire point. And you call ME a fucking idiot???
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Enough (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's a Number: 23 people (Score:5, Insightful)
Here in reality we trust science and numbers.
Agreed and it sounded most impressive until the point where it said "The data, which included 23 people". You cannot base decisions with massive health implications on a tiny data sample of 23 people. In fact, with a ~95% effectiveness in preventing symptomatic illness 23 people is not even enough to be confident that you have one of the 5% who can still get symptoms from Covid after vaccination which is probably the exact group of people you really want to study.
If and when to give a third dose is a complicated decision that needs serious data - and not just on anti-body counts but what the impact is on the rate of serious illness. Get the decision right and that's some more nails in the coffin of this pandemic, get it wrong and it's potentially just more nails in more coffins especially if we use our supply of shots up giving early third shots only to find protection wanes after e.g. 6 months. Given that we still have lots of completely unvaccinated people let's concentrate on getting them protected while using that time to collect more compelling data on if and when a booster would be most helpful.
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I went to look at the source.
interestingly enough it's narrow focus might be a start.
Phizer has another study ( further down ) that the sample group was 44000 which is a better study group overall.
Now as a reference point. the polio vaccine at the start was a 2 dose and later became a 3 dose. it was discovered that the second dose was 92-96% effective and the 3rd dose brought it to 99%+
So the thoughts of going to 3 don't seem to be outside of the realm of known applications.
Problem is, people are never taug
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All they are doing is citing "antibody titers" and wishing people would draw conclusions in their mind between antibody levels and real world outcomes. There is no meaningful real world data being offered by Pfizer to support their booster push.
I'm not sure why this constitutes flamebait. It certainly was not intended as such. The CNN article is citing a Pfizer Q2 earnings presentation which exclusively focused on antibody levels as the factual basis for third shot. Heck even the CNN article itself points the problems with doing that out.
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I'd much rather live in the real world.
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Ok, that's a fucked up statement.
How do you double blind study this.
What the heck is the question asked that is valid for any faith person and those that have no views on faith or even the faithless.
I find your statement repulsive. Because, a true Christian would have to admit to the murders of the Inca empire and the Aztec's and then provide compensation. they would have to grant the right of free will to women. Slavery would have to be acceptable to them and they would have to get the government to approv
Re: Thoughts and prayes make me feel good (Score:2)
"I'd rather be happy than correct any day. Wouldn't you like to be happy?"
Uhhh it's hard to be happy if you're dead. At least that's what we know so far. No one has come back from the dead to tell us otherwise.
I would rather be alive and maybe miserable for short time and then be happy when it's all over.
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True Christians are generally much happier than the general population.
Citation needed.
Re:Enough (Score:5, Insightful)
Did anyone ever accuse pharma companies of not doing good research or not developing good products? I think that's a strawman argument.
What people criticize bug pharma about is the high cost oh pharmaceuticals in the US market, particularly for common important treatments like insulin , the continued practice of firms buying other firms or patents for common drugs and jacking the prices, the insidious relationship they seem to often have with doctors and the exorbitant amounts of marketing and advertising money they spend.
All those criticisms are still relevant today even as we can appreciate the work they have done on the vaccines. There's no hypocrisy in praising them for good things and denigrating them for bad things. Most also understand these are issues of regulation (or lack thereof) as these issues are lessor in other nations with stronger regulations.
This bad attempt at calling out supposed hypocrisy is just the "we should improve society somewhat" meme and it's just that, a meme.
Re:Enough (Score:4, Interesting)
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I'll agree with some of that, I do believe if the U.S. started doing that, you would see your prices sky rocket. I'd still rather see us follow suit as you're right, its a much better way to bargain when you are the only buyer in the country. Much of American healthcare is based on the rich or well insured paying for uninsured or underinsured care. For every ER admission with a full paid for visit either with cash or insurance there are often 5 people that end up paying nothing because they have nothing to
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Yeah, it wouldn't have anything to do with hospitals and chains being owned by private equity. https://www.nbcnews.com/health... [nbcnews.com]
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The U.S. has actually done it with the COVID vaccine. That's why it's $19.50 per dose and not $1950.00. The EU is paying closer to $15.50 because they're more practiced at negotiating drug prices affordable to mere mortals over there.
If the U.S. decides to quit making it's citizens the world's medical buttmonkeys, prices may go up in Europe somewhat, way down in the U.S., and perhaps the executives will have to scrape by with only 2 yachts each.
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And it is a problem that some people who distruct "big pharma" because they're overpriced and seek out additional profits, then take that attitude towards distrusting big pharma on literally everything. Ie, don't listen to the doctor about the cancer treatments when they can just head down to Mexico and get laetrile and other alternative treatments.
Re:Enough (Score:5, Insightful)
Distrust in any corporation is natural. You are fooling yourself about the 3rd vaccine however. You view a coming VaaS model because 100 million people in the U.S. alone refuse to vaccinate at all. The more people that get infected the more chances that virus has to mutate into something that a vaccine can't protect against but also the longer the virus sticks around.
If the vaccine hesitant folks would get their heads out of their asses we wouldn't need to entertain these cynical concepts when Pfiser is reacting to changing market conditions.
You can argue in good faith that they are pushing for it before we have all the evidence, and the CDC would agree with you as that is why they aren't currently recommending it. That is why we have agencies like the FDA and the CDC in the first place.
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the more chances that virus has to mutate into something that a vaccine can't protect against
But the virus wouldn't need to mutate into something that a vaccine can't protect against if nobody were vaccinated. It's circular logic. Natural selection is not driven by mutations, it's driven by the need to adapt to changes in environment. In other words, all the mutations in the world would not give giraffes long necks unless their environment created competition for high-ass leaves. I shouldn't have to explain this to people, I really shouldn't.
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But the virus wouldn't need to mutate into something that a vaccine can't protect against if nobody were vaccinated. It's circular logic. Natural selection is not driven by mutations, it's driven by the need to adapt to changes in environment. In other words, all the mutations in the world would not give giraffes long necks unless their environment created competition for high-ass leaves. I shouldn't have to explain this to people, I really shouldn't.
So close, but not quite there. The virus isn't competing against other viruses, it's just replicating itself as much as possible, and natural selection will favor anything that lets it replicate more.
Mutations are random. Mutations that make the virus spread more effectively will become dominant. A "need to adapt" has nothing to do with it.
If a random mutation makes the virus replicate faster, that mutation will thrive.
If a random mutation makes the virus infect cells easier, that mutation will thrive.
If a
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Re: Enough (Score:2)
There are less than 100 polio cases per year in the US. We still vaccinate just about every child for it.
Now you might say the vaccine is the cause of those low numbers, thus we are in a circular argument.
The mortality rate for those age groups with covid are low to be sure but it's a nonzero risk. As we see so far the vaccine risk is even closer to zero, especially when surviving covid carries its own sets of risks and problems.
Re:Enough (Score:4, Insightful)
Where do people keep getting this, " This is especially true of the Delta variant (B.1.617.2) which has been significantly less deadly than its predecessor."? The inclusive evidence is that it is about as deadly, with more study needed. What is known is that it puts out way more virus, starting at 4 days instead 6 which makes it way more infectious.
There's also the fact that it is mostly unvaccinated younger people getting it and they generally have a lower mortality rate then the older population who are mostly fully vaccinated. The fact that it is mostly young people ending up in hospital and not dying which makes the numbers, at a quick glance, look lower.
They do still suffer from the long term affects including the IQ drop with perhaps 25% taking a year or more to recover.
In some ways, Covid is similar to Polio, most people don't get sick and a small proportion have long lasting effects from it. The difference is the affects of Polio are more visible compared to low energy or cognitive decline.
Re: (Score:2)
Where do people keep getting this, " This is especially true of the Delta variant (B.1.617.2) which has been significantly less deadly than its predecessor."?
The general idea is the more deadly the virus, the less likely someone is going to be at work or traveling or otherwise spreading the virus to others. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
For those tracking the delta outbreak in US states and in other countries, you will notice that the recent case spike doesn't have the same associated spike in mortality as it did last year. The figures I saw
UK: https://coronavirus.data.gov.u... [data.gov.uk]
Israel: https://graphics.reuters.com/w... [reuters.com]
UK 2:
“People infected with the delta variant are more likely to be hospitalised. Though, hospitalisations and deaths remain low considering case numbers. The case fatality rate is currently down to 0.1% thanks the high vaccine coverage among the most vulnerable. Risk of infection by those vaccinated with one dose looks increased for the delta variant, but protection provided by two doses of vaccine seems largely unaffected. Despite this, there are some breakthrough cases and there have been some deaths in doubly vaccinated people."
https://www.sciencem [sciencemediacentre.org]
Re: (Score:3)
As I said, the infected start spewing lots of virus earlier, before becoming sick, leading to a high R number. And in countries with good vaccination rates, it is mostly young people getting infected and they don't die in the numbers of the old people. In countries with really low vaccination rates like Indonesia, it is just as deadly as the earlier variants, and even worse, it seems some of the vaccines such as the Chinese one don't help so even the vaccinated health workers are getting pretty sick,adding
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Re: Enough (Score:2)
Sounds like you support more stringent pharma regulations via law and regulation. Welcome to the club.
Re: Enough (Score:2)
Glad we agree on the need for more stringent regulation and enforcement and maybe on some removal of the profit motive out of the industry process.
Re:Enough (Score:5, Funny)
You're right. Don't get vaccinated. And keep telling everyone that they shouldn't either.
I do not leave my comfy home office, and if the infection numbers drop too much, I have to go back to office.
I also want to express my gratitude to you for risking, and potentially losing, your life for my comfort. Well, I would, if I felt anything but contempt.
Re: (Score:3)
Umm... I just very bluntly told you that I'm happy over every idiot that refuses to get vaccinated? How much more honest do you want me to be?
And yes, I'm #2. I'm also a bit of an antisocial asshole, maybe that's why I'm a consultant. Or as I prefer to call it, a high tech domina. I tell managers they're dorks, and they bend over and beg for more.
Re: (Score:2)
When did Big Pharma become good?
Big Pharma didn't "become good". What was evil about big pharma, however, is the fact that they charge exorbitant prices for drugs that they produce, despite the fact that the research that developed the drug was primarily done with public funding.
Re: Enough (Score:2)
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Never?
This is a "News for nerds" site, not a "News for folks that never finished highschool but sure do have big opinions on why science is bad" site.
Look, we all know that the pharmacutical companies get up to some dumb nonsense. But to suggest theres a vast conspiracy of scientists hiding the truth about vaccines *for some reason* is just pants on head nonsense thinking.
Vaccines have saved millions, possibly billions, of lives in the century and a bit that we've ben doing them. Vaccine denialism literally
Re:Do Vaccines Work or Not? (Score:5, Informative)
Either the vaccines work or they don’t.
And that's the fallacy. It's not that simple.
What a vaccine does is to give your immune system a blueprint of the enemy, so it can react properly. The thing is now that you can actually get infected by diseases that your immune system knows. Yes, really.This is how you can actually get a cold twice in the same year, even with the same strain of virus. The problem here is that if your immune system is weakened for some reason, it may get overwhelmed, even by a threat it does actually know.
Re:Do Vaccines Work or Not? (Score:5, Insightful)
Either the vaccines work or they don’t.
If I punch you in the face you either die or you don't. There's no middle ground where you may have broken nose or bruise, or may be in a coma. That's how you think medicine works?
Re: (Score:3)
Either the vaccines work or they don't. If they work, why do vaccinated people need to wear masks?
Or... they do work at preventing you from getting (seriously) ill, but don't necessarily prevent you from carrying and transmitting the virus to someone else -- though they probably help with this as your body may be able to fight/suppress the virus faster, before you can spread it to others. Wearing a mask may help you from being exposed/infected. Also, vaccines are *not* 100% effective and the ones already distributed are based on the initial/older variants from before newer variants had arisen.
Re: (Score:2)
They work wonderfully, as we all know. You need more than one bit to represent biological knowledge.
The vaccines have a percentage efficacy against death (damn near 100%), a percentage efficacy against severe disease (very high), and a percentage efficacy against catching it at all (different studies have different numbers, some really low). They also have different percentage efficacies in really old people and people on immunosuppressant drugs.
My two doses of an mRNA vaccine make it unlikely but still pos
Re: (Score:2)
Pfizer hasn't reported in a loss in 20 years (and I didn't look up data any further so it could be more). I'm sure they'll be just fine even without the conspiracy fueling pandemic.
Fuck everything, we’re going to 5 shots (Score:4, Funny)
A third shot will do wonders for Pfizer's immunity to poverty. Doesn't mean I don't want mine.
Would someone tell me how this happened? We were the fucking vanguard of vaxxing in this country. The Pfizer shot was the shot to get. Then the other guy came out with a two-mRNA shot. Were we scared? Hell, no. Because we hit back with a little thing called the Third Shot. That's three shots and wider coverage. For morale. But you know what happened next? Shut up, I'm telling you what happened—the bastards went to four shots. Now we're standing around with our cocks in our hands, selling three shots with some extra coverage. Morale or no, suddenly we're the chumps. Well, fuck it. We're going to five shots.
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Re: Fuck everything, we’re going to 5 shots (Score:2)
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Underrated post :)
Re:And this time (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a feeling most of the people making this argument are the type that already refuse to wear masks, even when they're showing covid symptoms.