Pfizer Vaccine Effectiveness Drops To 84 Percent After Six Months, Study Finds (thehill.com) 301
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Hill: The effectiveness of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine fell from 96 percent to 84 percent over six months, according to data released on Wednesday. The preprint study funded by the companies determined that the vaccine's effectiveness reached a high point of 96.2 percent within two months after the second dose. But the efficacy "declined gradually" to 83.7 percent within six months, with an average decrease of about 6 percent every two months. But even with the slip in efficacy, the data indicates the vaccine offers protection six months later.
The ongoing study with more than 44,000 participants across the Americas and Europe determined the vaccine was overall 91.1 percent effective, after 81 cases emerged among the vaccinated and 873 among those who received the placebo. The efficacy of the vaccine against severe disease including hospitalizations remained high, at 97 percent. Researchers will continue to observe participants of the study up to two years and combined with "real-world" data "will determine whether a booster is likely to be beneficial after a longer interval." If the efficacy continued to decrease at the current rate, it could fall below 50 percent within 18 months, suggesting that booster shots could be needed.
The ongoing study with more than 44,000 participants across the Americas and Europe determined the vaccine was overall 91.1 percent effective, after 81 cases emerged among the vaccinated and 873 among those who received the placebo. The efficacy of the vaccine against severe disease including hospitalizations remained high, at 97 percent. Researchers will continue to observe participants of the study up to two years and combined with "real-world" data "will determine whether a booster is likely to be beneficial after a longer interval." If the efficacy continued to decrease at the current rate, it could fall below 50 percent within 18 months, suggesting that booster shots could be needed.
Stupid people (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Stupid people (Score:5, Funny)
It is! Mostly it's dangerous to my beloved home office.
If the infection numbers go down too much, they force me to come back to the office.
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Just stop bathing. That will solve that problem.
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Ba...thing? What thing?
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Most of us were already part of #2 way before all of this happened, though.
Re:Stupid people (Score:5, Funny)
True. Which is why there are so many COVID cheerleaders on Slashdot. Pretty sick if you ask me. You guys might want to re-examine your priorities in life.
Nerds aren't born, they're forged through ostracization.
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Interesting. Nerds are also the reason we have such things as cell phones, organ transplants, air conditioning, refrigerators, airplanes, etc. All the really awesome technological innovations come from nerds devoting themselves to science and engineering rather than obsessing over other people. A world without nerds would still be stuck in the stone age.
So I guess that means that the social ostracization that kids must suffer is ultimately beneficial to the greater good.
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There wouldn't be any Instagram Influencers if everyone was a nerd so there's no cause for concern.
Re:Stupid people (Score:5, Funny)
Nerds aren't born, they're forged through ostracization.
"Ostracism"
- signed A Word Nerd
.
Re:Stupid people (Score:5, Insightful)
"COVID cheerleaders"? What are you even talking about? The people you're talking about aren't cheering on the virus. If we wanted to do that, we would put on fake personas where we discourage mask use, vaccination and other safety measures while just keeping ourselves safe. In fact, I'm fairly sure that at least some segment of the anti-mask/anti-vax crowd are people at the cross section of introvert and sociopath who are concerned for themselves, but are happy for the pandemic to drag on as long as possible, so they encourage other people to be unsafe.
I, personally, would be quite happy to work from home forever (although there are tons of public places I want to be able to get back to), but I very, very much want people to be responsible about this pandemic, because people are dying and being effectively maimed in massive numbers. Sane, well-adjusted people are concerned when people are presentably dying in large numbers.
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84% after 6 months is still really good for a vaccine, it is still better then the JJ and the AZ.
However, I am going to nitpick on your notes.
1. Narcissist are going to be more likely to think they are immune or will suffer lightly from COVID because they cannot comprehend that they are not perfect. A Narcissist doesn't care about other people. So they will more likely just spread it to the rest of us. I think you wanted a Hypochondriac who thinks they are going to catch COVID no matter what.
2. IT guys are
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Well, first of all, I can do very well without human interaction. But even if I had to have any, I'd like to do it on my own terms, with people that I choose to interact with. Both conditions are by no means met in a work environment.
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I prefer antisocial asshole to narcissist.
Mostly because I don't want to be associated with Trump. I'm antisocial and an asshole, but i'm not THAT kind of despicable.
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I know it's just a single data point, but my life sure was not.
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All previous adenovirus vaccines had issues, and this one could be considered as a breakthrough. Maybe not, and it will fall in the same category. The data already shows that it falls in the same category. After 6 months the efficiency decreases, and it was reported that vaccinated people had a higher virus load. This means the Antibody-dependent Enhancement (ADE) effect is visible after ~6 months. In other words, this vaccine is not safe.
Who the hell moderated this as insightful? It's a coronavirus, you douche. And now that it's obvious it's part of the Chinese Small Dong deployment (SARS-1 was Micro-Dong) we need to go ahead and launch an all out nuclear strike on those commie bastards! But we're in the age of the Greenies, so a nuclear strike may not be palatable. So we need to send Kamala Harris over there in a skirt to unleash Willie Brown's STDs on the commies with a healthy dose of trichomonas and some psychological torture from the
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Just about everything is dangerous. The question is how to balance the dangers, and some people are really bad at doing that balancing.
Others, of course, have the conclusion ahead of time, and engage in "motivated reasoning".
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If you are vaccinated and like most vaccinated you've been out in the world, maskless and back mostly to regular life....surely we all have been having micro-exposures to the covid virus out in the real world.
If so, wouldn't that basically keep your immune system at alert and keep your immune system ready with anti-bodies, etc?
I was just wondering that with the vaccine, you have been protected with that, but also since it made you comfortable with going out in the world wh
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my thoughts: it all depends on numbers: exposure vs resistance. your immune system may recognize the threat, but it still has to actually fight back strongly enough to overcome the spread, which pits the viral load against the efficiency of your particular immune system. some (the asymptomatics) can do that naturally. for the rest the vaccine is a huge head start, but every infection is still a fight that has to be resolved.
Re:Stupid people (Score:4, Insightful)
I find it amazing how people refuse to take the vaccine due to conspiracy theories that the government has tainted it somehow, yet they have zero hesitation to consume anything offered up by McDonalds, Starbucks, Subway, Coke, M&Ms, or their local grocery store. If the government were so sneaky and all powerful, wouldn't you think they could put those "nanochips" in our coffee, hamburgers, sodas, or ramen noodles years ago?
Now you may say those are private companies, but couldn't the government have created a shell corporation and bought a major food supplier? Or had NSA/FBI/SHIELD infiltrate one or more company to "get us"?
I know all that sounds crazy, but if you believe there is a conspiracy to fake a pandemic to "trick" the world to take a shot; then all the above should be reasonably logical.
Re:Stupid people (Score:5, Informative)
* Did you know that the PCR tests were just recalled because it can't tell the difference between the flu and covod?
A new PCR test that had not been in active use and was specifically designed to detect both flu and COVID failed to distinguish between the two. So you are technically correct — the best kind of correct — but still full of it.
* Did you know that there is no test for the delta variant apart from some dna sequencing done in labs, yet people are being diagnosed with it?
People are not diagnosed with a variant per se. They're diagnosed with COVID. DNA sequencing is done on a random subset of people in various regions to determine the relative proportion of the various strains in a region. Those individuals may or may not learn those results. (I'm not sure.)
* Did you know that a whistle-blower has a lawsuit against the CDC for hiding 45k vaccine deaths in the VAERS db?
No, a troll with an agenda applied a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy to assume that every VAERS death within three days after vaccination was caused by the vaccine, then applied a 5x multiplier based on historical analysis of previous vaccines (that almost certainly aren't realistic when you're dealing with a new vaccine that lots of folks are concerned about). Anybody can take a bunch of numbers, pretend that correlation implies causation, apply a bunch of statistically invalid math, and come up with ridiculous numbers, but those numbers have exactly zero basis in reality.
Its at 10k now and some Harvard number crunchers say only 10% usually get reported to VAERS.
See above. Neither of your assumptions — that the vaccine caused all of those deaths or that the VAERS reporting is consistent from one vaccine to another — are safe assumptions. To find out the true number of deaths, you have to compare the number of deaths from each specific cause individually in people who have just been vaccinated against the number of deaths from that same cause in people who haven't. And the've done this, and there is no statistically significant increase in deaths caused by the vaccine.
People die every day. Some of them have recently gotten vaccinated. Vaccines didn't cause that car crash. They didn't cause that accidental electrocution. Why do you assume that they caused that stroke?
* Did you know there are large law firms dedicated to the long term effects of vaccines? Some not noticeable for years later when they have more data on it.
As far as I'm aware, ever single vaccine side effect in the history of vaccines has been caught within weeks after the vaccine was broadly deployed. There have never been any that remained completely undetected for years. Long-term effects are not the same thing as long-delayed effects. The former have occurred occasionally. The latter have not and are extremely unlikely to ever occur.
* Did you know that the CDC just came out and said that those vaccinated can catch and transmit the virus just as much if not more as the unvaccinated? Why do you think they are pushing both the vaccine and mask mandates now?
No, that's not what they said. They said that vaccinated people who get symptomatically sick can spread the virus approximately as much as unvaccinated people. Bear in mind that most vaccinated people don't get symptomatically sick, and that vaccinated people who get sick arguably weren't really vaccinated in the first place; their bodies likely either failed to mount a proper immune response to the vaccine or failed to properly learn from that response.
With a 99.98% survival rate, why the hell would any healthy person take the chance on an emergency vaccine with no long term testing provided all of the information above?
Let's talk about that. In the world, that number might
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Considering that it has more adverse events and deaths than all other historical vaccines combined, they are not incorrect in saying that these vaccines pose a risk.
That's not really saying much. VAERS was only established in 1990. Before that, reporting of adverse reactions and post-vaccination deaths was ad hoc. There haven't been very many historical vaccines since then other than seasonal flu vaccines, which are pretty much the same every year.
And we knew that the viral-vector vaccines were going to have more side effects. We've been saying that since before they were approved. Some of us even expressed surprise that they approved the J&J vaccine, given th
The goal was never to eradicate Covid (Score:5, Insightful)
The goal was never to eradicate Covid. That would be awesome, and I would be all for that if it was possible, but it's simply not possible. Even if we could get every human on earth fully vaccinated this week, the virus is spread between species. We can't vaccinate all the bats. (And, again, that is predicated on the impossible task of vaccinating every human.)
Covid is a fact of life now, and will be for a very long time. Probably the rest of our lives. Regular boosters will probably be necessary every year. That's just the way it's going to be.
Re:The goal was never to eradicate Covid (Score:5, Insightful)
The goal now is to convince everyone possible to get vaccinated and get their boosters so that we stop overwhelming our healthcare infrastructure systems with Covid infection waves.
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I scrolled through pages of comments, and not a single mention of natural immunity.
By that I mean people who were immune to covid pre-pandemic because of previous non-covid exposure (but related enough to cause effective antibodies)
I've heard basically nothing of this. I'm sure people had some useful anti-bodies, but certainly not enough to bestow "natural immunity".
, and people who have antibodies from catching it (everything from asymptotic through survival of a bad case).
Many studies are showing that natural immunity is superior in every measurable way. (Effectiveness, longevity, etc) If we're aiming for herd immunity, this is a vital factor.
And yet this never enters the discussion.
What studies? I was able to find one that remotely agrees with you, and it was for the Chinese vaccine that no one wants [news-medical.net].
Otherwise, I couldn't find much but researchers seem to think the vaccine gives better protection than a previous infection [jhsph.edu].
As for asymptomatic infections, the immunity is worse [news-medical.net], so I'm really not sure where you're getting your info from.
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Bullshit [go.com]
July 29, 2021, 12:37 PM
***
With the Branson hospital maxed out with COVID-19 patients, doctors contacted a dozen hospitals in all corners of the state. All were at capacity. Lake Regional was nearly full, too, but Dr. Joe Sohal, a pulmonologist and critical care specialist, found a bed for Barker.
***
Statewide, hospitalizations for COVID-19 have more than doubled since the start of June, and the number of ICU pa
Re:The goal was never to eradicate Covid (Score:4, Informative)
That's "in the U.S.," contrary to the op's claims. Then there's Arkansas and Florida [cnn.com] as well. Just how many "exceptions" do I have to identify before the statement is falsified?
BTW, highest reported number of new cases in the world last week [yahoo.com]. 'Murica!
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Maybe not possible due to humanity's increasing susceptibility to misinformation. Certainly not due to limited effectiveness of the vaccines.
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Even if the misinformation wasn't an issue, it's a very difficult race to win. It will be very hard to vaccinate the whole world faster than the virus can naturally mutate and decrease a vaccine's effectiveness.
And even if we could do that -which would be an unparalleled feat of logistics all in human history- the virus will still continue to exist and evolve in animals and find its way back into the human population.
two advantages (Score:5, Informative)
It will be very hard to vaccinate the whole world faster than the virus can naturally mutate and decrease a vaccine's effectiveness.
We have two mechanism playing at an advantage for us:
- Coronaviruses have a slower mutation rate (they have an exonuclease function on nsp14 - giving them "proof-reading" capability) compared to your average RNA virus.
- Vaccine specifically target the Spike, the protein that the virus needs to enter the host cell. The vaccine can't mutate than one too much or it loses its ability to infect humans. The virus is in a "key-and-lock" matching dead-end.
- Unlike Influenza virus which has a segmented genome and thus can very easily shuffle around segements if two different virus infect the same host (E.g.: a swine infected by both an avian and human strain), coronavirus lack some similar mechanism to drastically increase recombinations, and thus cannot as easily bring a sudden entirely new Spike in the game.
This might helps us outpace virus mutations with our vaccine campaign.
And even if we could do that -which would be an unparalleled feat of logistics all in human history-
Not true, there are even slower mutating viruses (mostly DNA-based ones) that we have nearly eradicated using even older (and slower) vaccine production technologies.
We have outpaced viruses with vaccines in the past.
the virus will still continue to exist and evolve in animals and find its way back into the human population.
Well, that I agree:
given the first SARS and then MERS one and two decades ago, chances are, by 2028, there will could be some SARS-CoV-3 emerging causing yet another new disease.
(Those will simply be considered a different virus).
Re:The goal was never to eradicate Covid (Score:5, Insightful)
Eradication is a super-high bar. Earlier this month a 10 year-old girl in Colorado died of the plague! First fatal case in the US since 2015. So, we can't say the plague is eradicated, even though the risk is nearly eliminated.
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https://www.theguardian.com/wo... [theguardian.com]
Re:The goal was never to eradicate Covid (Score:5, Informative)
But he has a point, it would still be floating around in bats and other animals.
Not true. Covid-19 occasionally infects other mammals such as pets, but is not "floating around in bats".
Bat populations carry countless coronaviruses, but Covid-19 is not one of them. Its ancestor probably came from bats. This is a specific virus that is spreading only in humans.
So unlike plague bacteria, eradication of covid-19 is theoretically possible.
But then, the same applies to measles. We could, but haven't. So far we have only eradicated smallpox.
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Cats however do have the virus. Including tigers in the Central Park Zoo that tested positive. So we can't really eliminate the virus. We can reduce it to the point its not a major concern, like we have with other past plagues (the Black Death still kills people every year, but its contained).
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Including tigers in the Central Park Zoo that tested positive. So we can't really eliminate the virus.
A huge assumption there, based on a tiny amount of understanding.
The tigers are not infecting people, and not other tigers. It is a dead-end for the virus.
I suppose it is conceivable that a strain of covid-19 might become endemic in another species, but that has not happened.
Zoonotic viruses infect people all the time. But very rarely does the virus spread and stay in the human population long enough to be noticed.
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Bat populations carry countless coronaviruses, but Covid-19 is not one of them.
Covid-19 is a disease caused by a virus. The virus SARS-COV-2 absolutely could be in bats. Have you looked? We've found the virus in a myriad of animals when we've gone looking for them. Hell Denmark was at one point talking about culling 17million mink just to stop an animal based spread. It definitely is not only spreading in humans.
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The virus SARS-COV-2 absolutely could be in bats. Have you looked?
A lot of virologists have been looking. Sars-cov-2 is believed to have come from a bat virus, but no, has not been found in bats.
Hell Denmark was at one point talking about culling 17million mink
They did. I'f forgotten. But I don't believe it ever spread to a wild population.
It definitely is not only spreading in humans.
Definitely? Then tell me where? The mink are dead. Without humans, sars-cov2 would very soon be extinct.
Viruses can cross between species - thats where new human viruses mostly come from.
But that does not mean the other species is a reservoir, like rats for plague bacteria.
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But we're working on eradicating the wildlife population on another front, it just takes time.
Re:The goal was never to eradicate Covid (Score:5, Informative)
That's not true. Early on many people's goal was to eliminate COVID. That's been known to be improbable for a long time.
FWIW, just because there's an animal reservoir doesn't mean you can't eliminate the human disease. Often the human variant depends on having acquired mutations that allows it to spread between humans, and those mutations aren't successful in the animal reservoir. Also, relatively few people are exposed to bats or pangolins, or whatever the reservoir is, so if just those few are protected, then the disease won't exist among humans.
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"Early on many people's goal was to eliminate COVID."
It wasn't ever the goal of anyone who had any understanding of the issue. It is patently impossible to eliminate a virus that can infect wild animal populations. (Smallpox only infects humans--that's why we were able to wipe it out).
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One of my favorite xkcd cartoons was the daydream about eradication. Especially the mouseover text.
There is a controversial idea for addressing animal reservoirs. Injecting vaccine into every bat is laughable, but what about taking a viral vector vaccine and skipping the step of putting it through the genetic engineering spay/neuter clinic, and leave it able to spread? Then almost every exposed bat gets COVID-19 immunity.
As one of my colleagues said at a seminar once where someone presented something shiny,
Smallpox (Score:5, Informative)
Smallpox was the deadliest (in terms of deaths) virus of all time. It was more virulent than COVID, and did more permanent damage and was more lethal (1-30% depending on the strain) It's been completely eradicated. The last outbreak was in 1978, probably caused by someone being exposed in a lab.
So what makes you think we can't do the same thing for COVID?
Re:Smallpox (Score:5, Informative)
Smallpox had no animal reservoir. SARS-CoV-2 does.
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A lot depends on the interactions of human populations with animal reservoirs. For example West Nile Virus is vectored between the enzootic reservoir (birds) and humans by mosquitoes. Influenza infects farm animals, and therefore any humans that handle them.
The natural focus of SARS-COV-2 is the horseshoe bat, which doesn't have a close relationship to human populations. There is evidence that viruses from bat roosts spill over into neighboring wildlife and livestock, but that should be mitigateable with
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SARS-COV-2 *can* infect other mammalian species, so it is conceivable that it may find some kind of enzootic reservoir
Did you miss the story about Denmark proposing to cull 17million mink because of wide and rapid spread of this very virus throughout the country's population? Or the WHO announcements that you absolutely should limit interaction with animals if you're diagnosed as we've already identified SARS-COV-2 spreading among cats, dogs, and even zoo animals?
Re:Smallpox (Score:4, Insightful)
No I did not. As I said SARS-COV-2 can infect other mammalian species, but the ecology of a persistent zoonosis is not nearly as simple as you imagine. For example the reason China is often implicated in flu outbreaks is that it's common to raise both poultry and pigs on the same farm -- something that was true in the US when 1918 flu emerged. This makes it possible to link human populations with migratory birds, e.g., migratory birds to domestic ducks to pigs to people, or migratory birds to chickens to people.
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Spanish Flue [youtu.be] took about three years and that's with much more advanced an understanding of illness and medicine. Smallpox predates [wikipedia.org] (BC) all of that. So our "doing the same thing" could have only happened much much latter with that understanding.
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Smallpox is the one time humanity has ever managed that, and it took twenty-five years. The barriers to accomplishing that faster weren't technological; they were political and still exist today.
The smallpox vaccine confers lifelong immunity, but not every vaccine does this. We just don't know how long the immunity conferred by COVID-19 vaccines last. It's not out of the question that annual boosters will be required. Given that, and COVID-19's trick of spreading via presymptomatic carriers, it could be
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Smallpox is the one time humanity has ever managed that, and it took twenty-five years.
Technically true, but Polio is on the ropes, and Measles has been all but eliminated in many industrialized nations (thanks to the anti-vaxx crowd it's been doing an encore performance in several countries, including the United States). So I don't think it's unreasonable to work towards eradication, but yes, it is tough and requires a concerted effort.
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We don't appreciate that enough. Dr. Henderson and his team should have statues.
It's worth noticing that smallpox is the only human virus we've eradicated, though we're getting close with polio. Eradication is one of those possible-but-very-hard problems.
One key difference is that smallpox didn't have a mass movement actively taking its side.
Re:The goal was never to eradicate Covid (Score:4, Insightful)
We got rid of smallpox and rinderpest. Yes, I realize they are different from covid, but it is possible to rid the planet of diseases if we try hard enough. Polio is effectively eliminated across the planet with only a few cases popping up in third world backwaters, but that's because of lack of vaccinations.
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That is why on your immunization record it says "IPV" - for _Inactivated_ Polio Vaccine. If you would have Googled just a little bit harder, you would have seen that:
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/polio/public/index.html
Since 2000, only IPV has been used in the United States to eliminate the risk of vaccine-derived poliovirus that can occur with OPV.
Why shouldn't it be? (Score:2)
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The goal was never to eradicate Covid. That would be awesome, and I would be all for that if it was possible, but it's simply not possible.
We did eradicate it in Australia and NZ, but it keep arriving on planes and boats.
My state (W.Aus.) has had only one outbreak this year, with two people catching Covid from a lady who returned from Sydney infected. That's it. The rest have been in quarantine.
Even if we could get every human on earth fully vaccinated this week, the virus is spread between species.
That is very rare. Are there any known cases of animal to human transfer since the original jump?
Regular boosters will probably be necessary every year. That's just the way it's going to be.
Probably. They can just add it to our annual flu shots. By the way Pfizer's 84% after 6 months is good news! It is much better than the current flu vaccin
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Well eradicating COVID is hard, but to get the numbers way down to below the Flu rate (as it is more deadly, also brings up more complications than the flu) is doable. But they are too many areas Like Mississippi, Arkansas, Alabama, Louisiana are surging up to rates much higher than larger more dense states, because they are not getting vaccinated, mostly due to electing morons for their local government who much rather spread misinformation, than to actually try to fix the problem.
If they need to put a Rep
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Even now in LA, we're seeing spikes sure...but nothing nearly as bad as last year, likely due to the numbers of vaccinated we do have combined with those with naturally attained immunity.
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Let me cut off your arm now, so you wont have to worry about breaking that arm later.
The longer we let this go out of control the more mutations will occur, and spread. Possibly leading to a mutation that the Vaccines will not be able to protect us.
Two separate issue. (Score:2)
The goal was never to eradicate Covid.
Indeed, the primary goal was to keep the healthcare system from collapsing,
and then as a secondary goal bring the risks of death and complication low enough that it becomes acceptable to restore normal work,
bringing case number to zero was seen as a bonus point.
That would be awesome, and I would be all for that if it was possible, but it's simply not possible.
Not quite agree...
Even if we could get every human on earth fully vaccinated this week, the virus is spread between species.
If you could insta-vaccinate the whole population, you would be severely hampering the virus' ability to circulate.
- on the "target host" side: vaccinate people have a much lower chance of getting infected when exposed.
- on the "em
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Vaccinating animal populations is not actually impossible. It's easier if you have an oral version of the vaccine to put in their food supply. The critical thing is that most animals are not anywhere near as mobile as human beings (true even for the migratory ones, since they tend to travel fairly fixed routes only at certain times of the year and many of them also form natural bubbles), so you can usually concentrate your efforts on populations where infection has been detected. It may be hard to completel
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It's thought that the seasonal influenza that we became used to for most of our lives was a descendent of the virus responsible for the 1918 pandemic. COVID-related lockdowns pretty much shut down influenza entirely for last year's flu season, and the southern hemisphere flu season of 2021 doesn't seem to be happening either.
While nobody knows for certain, it seems possible that COVID becomes the new flu (essentially replacing it as the dominate illness-causing communicable virus other than various cold-cau
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I keep hearing this... "The goal was never to eradicate COVID". Where was that ever said?
I'll tell you what happened:
1. "Flatten the curve" - Wear CLOTH masks and physically distance to reduce the burden on the healthcare system so it doesn't collapse while we...
2. "Find a vaccine." - We're looking for a vaccine. Chill out. Stay away from people. Once it's available...
3. "Get the vaccine" - Everyone who can get the vaccine without harming their health, should get it so we can reach...
4. "Herd Immunity" - Wi
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You are never going to normal people to do regular boosters every year. What bubble do you guys live in?
I get my flu shot annually, and so do many (most?) people I know. I did not know it was a bubble :(
Flu sucks. Costs me $15 and 15 minutes. If it only saves one bout of flu every 10 years, it is a bargain. Why wouldn't you?
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Well, I've never had a flu shot, ever.
I would say the folks that I know immediately, my parents get the flu shot, but most of my friends I don't think they do, or if so, tops it is 50/50.
I have very rarely caught the flu.
[knocks wood]
I think it has been at least a couple of decades or more since I last had it.
When I have caught it, I got it bad...at least twice I was seeking over 105F temperature and had
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But just to answer you on the flu thing....no, you may be in a bit of a bubble....not everyone gets flu shots, I'd guess it to be a maximum of the low 30% of US population gets them?
Yeah, I was just reacting to toyid54789 saying "You are never going to normal people to do regular boosters every year."
"Never?" Given that millions of ordinary people get annual flu vaccines, that was a silly statement.
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middle class white guy. Only 36% of African Americans are vaccinated .
What do dumb people on the other side of the world have to do with me?
But I wish our numbers were so good. the majority of people are still waiting to be able to get a vaccine here.
And yeah, I don't get a flu shot because I don't get the flu regularly. And no, I am not anti-Vax.
I don't wear a seatbelt because I don't crash regularly.
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Wow. Kinda racist don't you think?
Dumb is dumb, independent of melanin levels. If it makes you feel better, I see a lot of dumb white folk too. It wasn't the blacks that voted for Trump.
Less intelligent people, whatever their colour, are more likely to believe conspiracy theories on social media. And it is *really* hard to change their minds.
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Actually Trump gained substantial inroads into the black and hispanic voting blocks, especially this last time around.
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The ones with long term complications can just learn to live with them, 100%? So just like thousands of other viruses you've learned to live with?
Reason for all the breakthrough infections? (Score:3)
Might be a reason why the breakthrough infections are happening; that being said, if you're vaccinated and getting routine, casual exposure to people shedding at least nominal amounts of Covid-19, wouldn't your immune system continue to develop more antibodies in response to repeated exposure as your body repeatedly fights off the disease?
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wouldn't your immune system continue to develop more antibodies in response to repeated exposure as your body repeatedly fights off the disease?
I would assume so, but at the same time I’d assume the general population (at least in areas where shots are available) wouldn’t be exposed to covid variants to the same degree they have been to the vaccine.
It’s just a pre-print and I can’t find the actual paper but it seems like it’s not ruled out the vaccine keeps nearly constant effectiveness and it’s the variants that are causing the decline in overall efficacy. Immune response is more than just measuring antibodi
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Vaccines don't actually prevent you from getting infected; they help your body shut down before you notice. That's why vaccinated people can still spread COVID, although it's less likely.
Just being in the room with someone who has COVID won't provoke an immune response. You need to get an infection large enough to trigger an immune reaction. That's a complex, multi-stage process that starts with the innate immune system generating an inflammatory response. This triggers the adaptive immune system to...
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"Don't actually prevent" -- if you mean "Don't 100% prevent", completely true. The evidence is piling up that vaccines often prevent asymptomatic infection. That includes some big studies of health care workers.
Even before the cytokine alarms go off, any SARS COV 2 that tries to form a beachhead in my body is going to be mobbed by already circulating antibodies, at the high levels created by an mRNA vaccine. It can't get into a cell with its spike protein glued to an antibody, and then the pair gets eaten b
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I have no idea what casual exposure does to the immune system of a vaccinated person.
It's important to note that breakthrough infections are pretty unusual. We don't know how unusual. In a widely criticized move the CDC decided not to track mild breakthrough cases. But we do know that out of 161 million vaccinated Americans, as of July 19 there had been only 4,072 hospitalizations. I wish I could always get odds like that.
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So it's like several other vaccines where you should get a booster every so often? I know when I went away to college I was required to get a booster shot (can't remember for what).
It's almost as if these folks understand how vaccines work and are giving their informed opinion rather than ulterior motives.
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All vaccines work on the same principle
Except for manufacturing problems: they are all good.
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This is the recommended vaccine schedule [cdc.gov] for all ages according to the CDC. You will note it is recommended to get an annual flu shot and tetanus every 10 years. Other vaccines also have recommended booster shots.
Since we've been told by his orange highness that covid is no worse than the flu, getting a yearly shot shouldn't be that big a deal.
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Pfizer's incomes over the last 5 years (in millions) were:
2020 = 41,908
2019 = 41,172
2018 = 53,647
2017 = 52,546
2016 = 52,824
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If that's the case, then we should be pushing for the ban of face masks and especially the mandatory so-called "hand cleansing" at the entrance of shops and stores.
What you just said right there is fucking stupid for three primary reasons. One is that even if you want to expose people, you don't want to do it all at once. Two is that some people cannot be vaccinated and have compromised immune systems, others wearing masks is all the protection they have. Three is that it's difficult to get Covid from touching surfaces unless you then touch your face, so the hand sanitizer stations have little overall effect on Covid and banning them would achieve nothing. However, th
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Two is that some people cannot be vaccinated and have compromised immune systems, others wearing masks is all the protection they have.
The idea that immunocompromised can't get a Covid shot is completely without merit. Here is a direct quote pulled from the CDC website:
"The currently FDA-authorized COVID-19 vaccines are not live vaccines and therefore can beâsafely administered to immunocompromised people, including people with HIV infection or other immunocompromising conditions or people who take immunosuppressive medications or therapies. "
The people who can't be vaccinated are the ones with history of *severe* allergic reactions
We may be stuck in an infinite booster loop (Score:3)
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That would make Covid vaccination resemble the annual flu shots, which is not such a terrible outcome!
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Stop putting words in my mouth.
I compared annual Covid vaccinations to annual flu vaccinations. That is not the same as equating Covid and the flu.
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It's more like a subscription shot, done in six-month payments.
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In your case, that might well be appropriate...
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No, it isn't. There are plenty of people with no underlying conditions that get nailed hard by that virus simply because it really likes their biochemistry.
I wonder what the % is for the other vaccines (Score:2)
Do the J&J and Moderna vaccines also lose effectiveness as quickly over time? If not, can we use one of those other vaccines as a "booster" instead?
Of course, Pfizer will not recommend doing that. They'll say that it's a safety issue, but for them it's also the loss of a recurring revenue stream. So, yeah... I'd want an independent study on that one that Pfizer isn't paying for.
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How much has herd immunity risen? (Score:2)
Context is everything, boys and girls. Without corresponding herd immunity data, this only fuels the FUD.
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Study Design... (Score:5, Interesting)
Or... (Score:2)
Or, if you believe Israeli data based on the actual real world, against the delta variant, it drops to about 38%.
Pfizer paid study (Score:2)
Just an important note as to where this study came from.
And still beats J&J (Score:2)
That still beats the J&J vaccine by a lot.
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Damn Copernicus! Either the earth is the center of the universe or it's not. Make up your damn mind!
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It's in the news more because more infections are happening, so it's relevant to more people.
It was already relevant to those people's lives, but they didn't realize it.
A majority of people who wind up hospitalized due to Covid wish they had been vaccinated. But they listened to people who know jack about shit and by the time they're in the hospital, it's too late. Bummer.
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I know, we'll have the government set up production facilities for things the pharma already does. There's a lot of production capability and capacity. I imagine you should be able to whack that all together in about, what do you figure, two weeks?
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So essentially, well, ... "vaccines" that *actually* modify (upgrade) your genes!
This is the start of many zombie movies. That or opening a meteor.