US To Recommend COVID Vaccine Boosters at 8 Months (apnews.com) 329
Associated Press: U.S. health experts are expected to recommend COVID-19 booster shots for all Americans eight months after they get their second dose of the vaccine, to ensure longer-lasting protection as the delta variant spreads across the country. Federal health officials have been looking at whether extra shots for the vaccinated would be needed as early as this fall, reviewing case numbers in the U.S. as well as the situation in other countries such as Israel, where preliminary studies suggest the vaccine's protection against serious illness dropped among those vaccinated in January.
An announcement on the U.S. booster recommendation is expected as soon as this week, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. Doses would only begin to be administered widely once the Food and Drug Administration formally approves the vaccines, which are being dispensed for now under what is known as emergency use authorization. Full approval of the Pfizer shot is expected in the coming weeks.
An announcement on the U.S. booster recommendation is expected as soon as this week, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. Doses would only begin to be administered widely once the Food and Drug Administration formally approves the vaccines, which are being dispensed for now under what is known as emergency use authorization. Full approval of the Pfizer shot is expected in the coming weeks.
Update (Score:5, Interesting)
Does the manufacturer (Moderna) have a new version tailored to the Delta variant yet?
Is the government going to pay for my time off when I am sick for 3 days afterwards?
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All I'm gonna say is that I scheduled my shots for the middle of the workweek, and that having a free day to design parts and play with my 3d printer was still enjoyable, even when feeling mildly woozy with a slight headache.
The vaccine makes you sick, what will COVID do? (Score:3, Insightful)
Is the government going to pay for my time off when I am sick for 3 days afterwards?
You were so sick you had to take off for 3 days? If that's the case, I am shocked you're young enough to still work. My elderly parents got sick for a day tops. I didn't get sick at all.
My guess is that if you were SO sick you couldn't work for 3 days, you'd probably be dead or on a ventilator if you actually caught COVID...but fuck science for trying to save your life, right?
Stop whining, you fucking child. You're ruining it for the rest of us. Your opinions do not outweigh the science and your
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
But you're not being an ass about it (Score:5, Insightful)
Still better than COVID. Rather be sick and in pain than both of those things and unable to breath.
So no need to be an ass about it.
Your first sentence is key. You realize that while the experience sucked, catching COVID would be worse. The attitude that the vaccine is some imposition is childish and stupid. Even if COVID doesn't kill you, what about long haul COVID or the shittiness of mundane COVID? I have a young, fit relative with long-haul COVID. She used to go to the gym 5x a week and now can't finish a class she could easily do before....and she's in her early 30s....slender, low-stress life, no pre-existing conditions/injuries...aged 20 years from that...I don't think anyone wants that.
Yes, some will have shitty side effects, but I will bet that if they react more severely to the vaccine than the average person, they'd react MUCH more severely to COVID than the average person, if not just die.
Those of us who are responsible adults are doing our part, getting vaccinated, wearing masks, social distancing...and instead of getting our lives back to normal, which we all thought it would be 3 months ago, it's being ruined by red state anti-vaxxer idiots. I don't want my kids attending another semester of zoom school because of these idiots. I don't like half the businesses in my community shutting down or being on the brink of shutting down because of these idiots. I don't like innocent people in their vicinity getting sick or variants spreading because of these people. It's very frustrating how prevalent anti-vax attitudes are, particularly among the red states, holding the nation back from recovery.
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I find it weird how random the effects are. My friend's wife runs cross country ultramarathons and she felt kind of ill for a day or so, and so did my friend (who is nearly as athletic).
I had zero effect from Pfizer besides a sore arm, and even that last about 3 hours and only the first shot. Running around the fucking block would be a challenge for me.
Meanwhile, last fall's flu shot? I was miserable for 2 and a half days, like I actually had the flu. First time I have ever had a reaction from the flu s
Re: The vaccine makes you sick, what will COVID do (Score:2)
some people I believe build up an allergy to the way vaccines are produced. For flu vaccines, it's a deactivated form of the vaccine grown inside avian eggs (if I recall right). People with certain allergies can't take these but also like latex, I believe exposer can lead to an allergy developing. Maybe worth considering.
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I eat anywhere from 3-12 eggs a week without any issues.
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From what I've heard, the shot is usually only bad for people that have a strong immune reaction to it, so the first shot will be bad if you've been exposed to covid19 (or another coronavirus). There are also the people who are asymptomatic for the virus which could relate to the vaccine reaction. When I got it, the worst I had was a sore arm, same for my wife.
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If you don't have anything nice to say... (Score:5, Informative)
> You were so sick you had to take off for 3 days? If that's the case, I am shocked you're young enough to still work. My elderly parents got sick for a day tops. I didn't get sick at all.
I didn't get sick much, either, but you do know that it affects different people differently, right? I have a family member who can't take it due to having been hospitalized for a flu shot. The rest of us got vaccinated with just some sore arms. You're not in any position to tell other people what they did and did not experience.
> My guess is that if you were SO sick you couldn't work for 3 days, you'd probably be dead or on a ventilator if you actually caught COVID...but fuck science for trying to save your life, right?
Thing about their story is that it implies that they *actually got vaccinated* so you're kind of off base here.
> Stop whining, you fucking child. You're ruining it for the rest of us.
Actually posts like yous are often used by anti-vaxxers. I should know, because I'm out there working on convincing people who are hesitant about vaccines to get vaccinated, with modest success.
Responses like this, which try to shut down valid complaints with no sympathy, are much harder to deal with. Science can be explained to people, but folks won't associate with people who hate them.
Also when you deny people's experience, they don't trust you. You can think (but should not say) that the complaints are overblown, but in this case it'd be better to advise them to take some aspirin and get rest, advocate for better sick leave policies, or pretty much anything other than angrily telling them that their own eyes are lying to them.
So when you talk about making things worse here, please look in the mirror. Your post is the type of thing makes people hesitate to take vaccines because you're promoting them and yet they know from experience that they can't trust you.
It's the same with people who can't breathe well in masks. Maybe consider helping them find a more comfortable mask style instead of shouting down any dissent. If you truly want this to end, consider that maybe your approach should invite positive change instead of just letting you vent anger.
Have a nice day.
Mod parent up (Score:3)
This is one of the best ways of explaining this position I have ever seen.
Ridiculing people doesn't help. It actively hurts. I'm glad that some people understand that.
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You were so sick you had to take off for 3 days? If that's the case, I am shocked you're young enough to still work. My elderly parents got sick for a day tops. I didn't get sick at all.
It affects different people differently. I was essentially out for two days. fever at night, drowsy the rest of the day. My wife was out for three days as well. But we typically both react to vaccines. I am usually sick-ish a day after a regular flu shot.
My son? Nothing. My mother in law? Nothing. My parents? Nothing. My brother? Nothing. His wife was out for a couple of days though.
I don't think the after-effect of the vaccine are linked to age.
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In Europe it's normal to have unlimited sick days and get paid for them, at least for the first week and up to some limit. After that you get some amount of money from the government. Obviously you can't be fired just for being off with COVID vaccine symptoms for a few days.
Seems to resolve all these issues.
but this poster is complaining about the vaccine (Score:2)
He's just telling you his experience with the vaccine (which isn't uncommon) and is not ruining anything for anyone. The more information people have, the better.
The key is the poster complained about the vaccine like it was an imposition...that he/she took something that probably saved his or her life, but had side effects. I don't care if someone resents the vaccine's side effects. If they're going to publicly complain about it like an imposition, I am going to respond in kind. Yes, 3 days of feeling like shit is MUCH better than ending up on a ventilator. I am confident of that.
People who aren't doing their part are ruining it for the rest of us. The Delta
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Your "reward" is not getting a tube shoved down your throat that's hooked up to a machine that breathes for you.
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Even if they were developing one, it will probably take at least a year of testing until it's ready for "emergency authorization". They probably figure it's better to boost using the existing formula since it's time-tested. Maybe it's not quite as effective as a delta-tuned version, but its risk is much better known by now.
The Moderna vaccine may already be effective -- or more effective than the Pfizer vaccine -- against the Delta variant. This article [independent.co.uk], describes and references the preliminary study [medrxiv.org] as well as Dr. Fauci's commentary/doubts: [TL;DR; -- Too soon to tell about study and/or effectiveness.]
When asked about booster shots for vulnerable people, CBS’ Nancy Cordes cited a preliminary study that said the Pfizer vaccine was 42 per cent likely to reduce transmission of the Delta variant compared to 76 per cent for Moderna.
Dr Fauci said the study, conducted by the Mayo Clinic, was “preprint” and needed to be “fully peer-reviewed” before its findings could be more widely accepted.
He continued, “I don’t doubt what they’re seeing, but there are a lot of confounding variables in there, about when one was started, the relative amount of people in that cohort who were Delta vs Alpha.”
The study, which used data from 25,000 Minnesotans, was conducted by looking at samples of people who were infected with the Delta variant of the coronavirus and the type of vaccine they received.
Screw this (Score:5, Funny)
The whole vaccine shit really fucked up my hopes for eternal home office. Power to the unvaccinated, as long as you keep the infection rates up and running, I can stay at home and work in my undies instead of having to go to cubicle hell.
If I felt anything but contempt for you, it would probably be gratitude for risking and often losing your life just for my comfort.
Re:Screw this (Score:5, Funny)
Just go to cubicle hell in your undies. They'll send you right home. :-)
Does it make sense to get a different vaccine? (Score:2)
Since its so easy to get vaccinated lately, I've been seriously considering also getting the Moderna vaccine (I've been fully vaxed with Pfizer since April).
Near as I can tell, the multiple vaccine route seems to be a promising technique and I think some countries have been doing it because it increases their vaccination rates (ie, fewer supply constraints).
I kind of wonder why the "booster" wouldn't be another one of the existing vaccines vs. just more of the same vaccine a person already had (provided tha
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Waste of money/shots (Score:2, Troll)
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I agree, it sounds like acting out of despair. The solution is to have at least 90%+ of the population vaccinated with 2 doses. Not to have 50% with 3 doses.
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I just want enough to get a free sub.
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Re:Enjoy (Score:4, Insightful)
You can choose not to get vaccinated and protected, if early death is what you wish.
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You can choose not to get vaccinated and protected, if early death is what you wish.
Really, no you can't. There is this principle called "public health" that trumps your individual freedoms. Whether or not the right of the state to enforce public health regulations is enforced is another question, but what is not in question is that the state can make and enforce public health laws.
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Re:Enjoy (Score:5, Insightful)
"Trust the drug companies."
I bet if you or 99% of the vax haters get cancer or appendicitis, they will trust the drug companies and doctors to do whatever they want to make it go away. I bet if you crack a tooth or have severe mouth pain, you wouldn't hesitate to trust the nearest dentist to make the pain go away.
Re:Enjoy (Score:5, Insightful)
"Covid is not dangerous to me or you."
Covid has killed 150% of Americans in 18 months time it took the Nazis and Japanese 5 years to kill in WWII. And covid did that with an available vaccine 8 months of that time. I guess they weren't dangerous either.
Re:Enjoy (Score:5, Informative)
between 2013 and 2018, the high-end CDC estimate of US flu deaths is 305,000.
No, that is not an estimate the CDC has ever provided. You fabricated that number by cherrypicking the highest single-year value from the last decade—61,000 deaths from the 2017-2018 flu seasons, which was by far the worst in recent history—then multiplying it by five to invent your own five-year "estimate". Your number didn't come from the CDC, nor is what you did—multiplying a local maxima by a duration—a sound way to produce an estimate (e.g. your methodology would peg the death toll at 2.7 billion in Hiroshima, Japan over the last century, based on taking the highest single-day death rate and multiplying it by the number of days in the last 100 years).
What you said is untrue.
As the CDC's actual numbers make clear [cdc.gov], most flu seasons (aside: the CDC buckets their data by seasons, not years) result in far fewer deaths than the season you cherrypicked. Using the CDC's estimated numbers for the last decade, it works out to an annualized rate of just 36,000 deaths per year in the US, which is a good starting place for if you're trying to wrap your head around a number of deaths that Americans might consider "perfectly normal" in any given year. Nearly all of us are old enough to remember the 2017-2018 flu season and many of us recall that it was not "perfectly normal": vaccine doses saw a significant uptick because it was so bad, which is a trend that has continued ever since [cdc.gov] (the same uptick happened in 2014-2015, which was also a bad season).
In contrast, COVID-19 has resulted in a little over 615,000 confirmed deaths to date in the US. Those deaths span roughly 18 months, which works out to an annualized death rate of 410,000 deaths per year. For those keeping score at home, that would mean:
Influenza: 36,000 (annualized death rate)
COVID: 410,000 (annualized death rate)
So, at a glance based on what we've calculated so far, we can say that COVID's death rate (in the US) is roughly 11x that of the flu's. So, perhaps not so "perfectly normal". But wait! It gets worse.
The CDC provides estimates for influenza deaths, but the COVID numbers I provided were based on confirmed deaths, which is a higher standard, so this isn't an apples-to-apples comparison if what we're trying to do is get a sense of how bad COVID is compared to the flu. Since you're apparently comfortable with the CDC's estimates, you'll be happy to know that the CDC estimates that only 1 in every 1.3 COVID deaths is actually reported as COVID [cdc.gov], so you need to add an additional 30% to the confirmed COVID numbers if you want something that's an apples-to-apples comparison. So, adjusting for the degree to which the CDC estimates that COVID is being underreported...
Influenza: 36,000 (annualized death rate)
COVID: 533,000 (annualized death rate)
So now, at a glance, we can say that COVID's annualized death rate (in the US) is roughly 15x worse than the flu's. That's an actual, apples-to-apples comparison using actual CDC numbers, and it would certainly suggest that the numbers we're seeing for COVID are not "perfectly normal" in the way that the flu's are.
Moreover, if you don't like my methodology, the CDC actually provides their own COVID total deaths estimate at that last link I provided. The CDC estimated that there were 757,000 COVID deaths in the US from February 2020 through May 2021, which would put the annualized death rate at 567,750 deaths per year, which is even worse than my number. So, take your pick. Neither is "perfectly normal".
If you want to know what "perfectly normal" looks like, it's the tiny little orange regions that barely show up as bumps at the bottom of this chart [cdc.gov]. The blue region is COVID.
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No, that is not an estimate the CDC has ever provided. You fabricated that number by cherrypicking the highest single-year value from the last decade—61,000 deaths from the 2017-2018 flu seasons, which was by far the worst in recent history—then multiplying it by five to invent your own five-year "estimate". Your number didn't come from the CDC, nor is what you did—multiplying a local maxima by a duration—a sound way to produce an estimate (e.g. your methodology would peg the death toll at 2.7 billion in Hiroshima, Japan over the last century, based on taking the highest single-day death rate and multiplying it by the number of days in the last 100 years).
Too late now - the Slashdot mob has moved on so this won't get seen or moderated up, nor will your false statements get modded down. The CDC does provide those numbers, and I took the high-end estimate for each individual year, exactly as I said.
2013-2014 50,000
2014-2015 64,000
2015-2016 35,000
2016-2017 61,000
2017-2018 95,000
TOTAL: 305,000 deaths
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/... [cdc.gov]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
I did not multiple or extrapolate. I took a 5 year span of data and simply added up the high-end
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Is it really apples-to-apples to compare a virus everyone has some form of acquired immunity to one no human had ever been infected with before?
We don’t have an acquired immunity to the flu. That’s why we have a new and different vaccine for it every year. That’s why they track avian and swine flus so carefully to see what new and dangerous strains exist that could rip through us because we have no natural defense. That’s why the flu occasionally turns into an outbreak like the 1918 pandemic. At best you can expect to have immunity to the strains you’ve previously been exposed to, but the strains are different nearly e
Re:Enjoy (Score:5, Informative)
Said so many [thehill.com] others [bozemandai...onicle.com]. It's as if covid doesn't care [businessinsider.com] what you think [bbc.co.uk].
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it is you who puts it under evolutionary pressure, not me.
From this, I can only conclude that you don't understand how either the human immune system or evolution work. And looking at some of your previous comments, I get the impression that you also don't understand how vaccines work.
In both vaccinated and unvaccinated people who get infected, evolutionary pressure applied on the virus by your immune system. The vaccine doesn't fight the virus directly; instead it trains your immune system to recognize and fight the virus more effectively. As a result, in vacc
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Well you see there is this concept called R-value...
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the vaccines don't work to prevent spread and mutations.
Buildings with smoke detectors sometimes burn down. People wearing seat belts sometimes die in car accidents. And vaccinated people sometimes contract the disease against which they're vaccinated. Prevention is not the same as elimination, and the vaccines do prevent spread and mutations.
Vaccinated people are injected with an experimental gene therapy
The vaccine does contain genetic material, but it doesn't change your genome, so it's not gene therapy. If you think it is, you should read some more about how these vaccines work.
These vaccines are not FDA approved.
The vaccines were approved for emergenc
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In molecular biology, messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) is a single-stranded molecule of RNA that corresponds to the genetic sequence of a gene, and is read by a ribosome in the process of synthesizing a protein. These are mRNA vaccines - manmade genetic code made to infiltrate your cells, hijack their machinery, and produce proteins.
This is all true, and yet mRNA vaccines still aren't gene therapy. The mRNA from the vaccine is not transcribed into your cell's RNA. There are no permanent changes to your genetic code. It's not gene therapy.
"Emergency use authorization" == NOT approved.
Please, enlighten me on the difference. Specifically, what criteria need to be met by approval that don't need to be met by emergency authorization? Have the vaccines actually failed to meet these criteria? If they did meet these criteria, would you change your mind about them?
I notice you posted news articles and blogs. How about actual studies not propaganda pieces?
Here you go. https [nih.gov]
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"The death risk of cancer is 100% ..."
No it isn't.
"...and the death risk of Covid is 1%"
No it isn't. And even if it was, if I told you that I was going to roll a D100 and if it came up 100 I would shoot you in the head, you'd be fine trying your luck on those odds?
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Correct.
The death risk of cancer is 100% and the death risk of Covid is 1%.
Umm... no. Many types of prostate cancer grow so slowly that in elderly people, doctors sometimes advise not doing anything, because something else is more likely to kill you first.
And I'm pretty sure that the most common carcinoma varieties, unless left untreated for many, many years, are a lot less likely to kill you than COVID — several orders of magnitude less likely, in fact.
Also, I think the general consensus is that people spontaneously have malignant cells appear in their bodies throughout th
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If a lifetime of health problems is a benefit of a 99.8% survival rate, then you're making death look better and better.
Re:Enjoy (Score:5, Insightful)
"Some guy doesn't want a "vaccine" for a virus with a 99.8% survival rate. -- Loser!"
Would you fly on an airplane with a 99.8% survival rate? Would you put your kids on that flight? Or you mom?
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One way of thinking about this, I guess: It'll take 347 independent occurrences before an event with a 99.8% chance of survival has more than a 50% chance of killing you. (0.998 ^ 347 = 0.49922673)
So... by that metric, that 0.2% chance of fatality is clearly a far, far greater risk than ones we take on a typical day — humans normally live some 30,000 days.
The vaccine looks to be safe on the 1 in a million chance of serious illness (let's just pretend those are all deaths), or a 99.9999% survival rate.
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You can always spot innumerate morons by seeing who talks up the "99.8% survival rate". Ebola has a much higher "survival rate" if you calculate it the same way, but I suspect the people talking about it would rather catch COVID-19 than ebola.
Re:Enjoy (Score:4, Informative)
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After your 10th shot, Joe Biden will call your house tp laugh at you: "You're still alive? HA HA! American can't even make death shot that works, am I right"
I think it's a bit hypocritical that under Bush (R) the REAL ID act is good and keeps "illegals" out. But under Biden (D) proof of vaccination is a tyrannical overreach designed to make us used to having our every move monitored by the government.
I find Conservatives sympathetic because they complain about everything, because I also hate everything. But
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For those interested, I am not putting down voter ID laws. I support many of them. REAL ID is/was overreach
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Or it could simply be ": 1".
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Slashdot's ascii art filter makes any response involving formatted text impossible.
I was trying to say the record could be as simple as a uid and the value of "true".
Re:Enjoy (Score:5, Insightful)
If that is the extent of american conservative hypocrisy that you see when it comes to covid, you just aren't looking hard enough.
"We're for local government control! Unless the local government decides that it's in children's best interests to wear masks at school, then let's ban it at a higher level of government! But don't you dare try and reverse the ban at an even higher level of government, or we'll call you a communist!"
"We're for the sanctity of life, except for after you're already born, then you must go to a school that is rampant with a virus that has hundreds of thousands of children in hospital beds across the nation! And don't you dare wear masks!"
"We're for voter ID laws, until someone actually tries to enact one nationwide with other voting reforms that would make sure people we don't want voting still get to!"
"We're for free and fair elections, as long as we get to continue gerrymandering the living shit out of districts so that we can achieve a majority of representation with a minority of support, fueled by a Census that we tried our living best to fuck up in our favor!"
"We're all for vaccines when our guy is in charge and getting them out the door on an accelerated basis, but when that guy loses an election we need to slow everything the fuck down and take months to fully approve it while thousands of people die each day. And then when it's fully approved by the FDA, we'll find some other excuse because we don't like the current guy!"
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If that is the extent of american conservative hypocrisy that you see when it comes to covid, you just aren't looking hard enough.
I didn't have the energy to make an exhaustive list. I picked ones that were relative to the topic at hand.
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"We're for the sanctity of life, except for after you're already born, then you must go to a school that is rampant with a virus that has hundreds of thousands of children in hospital beds across the nation! And don't you dare wear masks!"
Hey I get what you're saying about apparent hypocrisy, but where do you get this hundreds of thousands of children in hospital beds nonsense? The numbers aren't even remotely close to that. [cdc.gov] Look at the chart. There were 74 hospitalizations among 17 and under crowd last week. You're off by three to four orders of magnitude.
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Re:Enjoy (Score:5, Insightful)
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Your question is basically the difference between murder and gay marriage. Murder is infringing upon others rights, there's no 'right not to be offended' from which to outlaw gay marriage. Or blacks/gays in your store. Or trans people in your bathrooms. Republicans claim they're being harmed simply by other people existing as they are, w
Re:Enjoy (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, yeah, whatever. Do whatever you want, die or live, we don't really care, but get out of the way, will ya?
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Re: And with that the goalpost moves again (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: And with that the goalpost moves again (Score:5, Insightful)
Kindly explain how all possible mutations could have been accounted for and tested for in the initial vaccines.
This is like saying once you get your flu shot you're done worrying about the flu because that one shot accounts for next year's variety of flu.
Of course had people gone out and gotten vaccinated like they should have done instead of coming up with excuses and lies about why they weren't going to be vaccinated, had certain right-wing tabloids not gone out of their way to demonize vaccines, had a Russian agent not mocked both masks and vaccines, this would hardly be an issue. Instead, here we are. We allowed these mutations to arise because we gave the virus ample subjects to evolve in and the time to be passed on. So now we have to listen to whiners like you complain everything isn't back to normal.
If you choose to be an idiot and not do your part, you can't complain about the results.
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Of course had people gone out and gotten vaccinated like they should have done instead of coming up with excuses and lies about why they weren't going to be vaccinated, had certain right-wing tabloids not gone out of their way to demonize vaccines, had a Russian agent not mocked both masks and vaccines, this would hardly be an issue. Instead, here we are. We allowed these mutations to arise because we gave the virus ample subjects to evolve in and the time to be passed on. So now we have to listen to whiners like you complain everything isn't back to normal.
The facts you state are all true but they aren't sufficient to completely support your conclusion. Everybody who had access to vaccines should have gotten one and not doing so is irresponsible and inappropriate. But the Delta variant appeared in India before India had sufficient vaccine access. So I don't think we can blame behavior for Delta but what you are saying will be true for future variants.
Re: And with that the goalpost moves again (Score:5, Interesting)
Everybody who had access to vaccines should have gotten one and not doing so is irresponsible and inappropriate.
While I am fully vaccinated myself, I totally disagree with this. Getting vaccinated with, what is arguably the biggest scientific experiment in the history of mankind, is a personal decision. We have no idea what effect the mRNA sequences injected in our bodies will have on the long term.
Personally, I prefer to accept a small risk of long term side effects over a high risk of death upon contracting COVID-19. However, it is a very personal decision that is on everybody to make. You cannot force somebody to subject themselves to preventative medicine that has not passed all the scientific rigor that we ordinarily require for vaccinations. Do I disagree with their decision? Hell yeah, I think it's worth getting vaccinated. But in the end, it is a personal decision.
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It was done, and in fact early on scientists working on the Pfizer and Moderna shot said that it was LIKELY that booster shots would be required.
--Jeremy
Re: And with that the goalpost moves again (Score:5, Informative)
They did say that. It hasn't been a secret, there have been articles since the beginning of the year about this issue.
https://science.slashdot.org/s... [slashdot.org]
"Moderna says it's investigating whether a redesigned vaccine would be more effective against the new variants. It's also testing whether giving a third booster shot might be beneficial."
https://science.slashdot.org/s... [slashdot.org]
"Moderna has already begun developing a new version of its vaccine that could be used as a booster shot against a virus variant that originated in South Africa, known as B.1.351, which seems to dampen the effectiveness of the existing vaccines."
https://science.slashdot.org/s... [slashdot.org]
"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,"
Re:And with that the goalpost moves again (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't football. This isn't a black and white problem with a known solution. There aren't definitive set rules in dealing with a pandemic.
Viruses are known to mutate, and that means how we deal with it has to change as well. If you get cancer and the docs start a line of treatment and it doesn't prove effective, they try something else. That doesn't mean they are "moving the goalposts" to screw with you or oppress your rights to be healthy.
Re: drug-resistant mutation (Score:4, Insightful)
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Because we all know that honest people take a position and never change it, no matter what. And if they have to change their position, they deny it.
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I think that it's pretty safe to assume that requiring a booster shot was part of the original plan all along.
Take a look at your CDC Covid-19 vaccination card, and notice that it was 4 lines for tracking shots... not two. Now THINK about why they were printed that way starting almost a year ago.
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I liked this comment from the article:
"The second graph says that for the unvaccinated below 60 the risk of becoming a serious case is less than dying in a car accident."
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And with both shots you'll survive that car accident much better.
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Well kinda yeah. Catching covid from a hospital while your immune system is in shock after a physical trauma is pretty solid pathway to going home in a box.
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Comparison mean little without knowing the base levels. The chance of dying from cholera was higher than dying from smallpox when unvaccinated in the late 1800s in London.
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Yeah, I am always a bit dubious of these statistics.
Is that the probability of dying of a car accident in a particular calendar year? In your entire life? Is it the likelihood of die in a car accident assuming you are in a car accident?
In any case, lots of people DO die in car accidents. And those who don't die in car accident often have long term injuries.
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Re:Once again using low quality evidence (Score:4, Insightful)
On Monday, Pfizer and its partner BioNTech announced they submitted data to the FDA to support authorizing a booster shot for the general public. Pfizer said a small study showed people who received a third dose had higher levels of antibodies against several strains of the coronavirus, including the delta variant.
That's what this is about.
More money (Score:2)
On Monday, Pfizer and its partner BioNTech announced they submitted data to the FDA to support authorizing a booster shot for the general public. Pfizer said a small study showed people who received a third dose had higher levels of antibodies against several strains of the coronavirus, including the delta variant.
That's what this is about.
Is that what it's about? Or is it that the drug companies stand to make a gazillion more dollars if they can convince governments to order hundreds of millions more doses?
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The downside being that people in other countries who are waiting for vaccines will have to wait longer so we can have a 3rd dose.
The WHO is against it but we already know which way this one will go, just like it always does. That old thought experiment where you are presented with a button that gives you a million bucks but someone you don't know on the other side of the world dies is really a no-brainer.
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Re:Once again using low quality evidence (Score:4, Informative)
To inform consequential decisions. There is no evidence of suitable scientific quality that this will help meaningfully.
Booster shots are a common thing in vaccination. They were always saying that a booster 6 month to a year later may be necessary.
And the cherry in top: If almost all hospitalizations are aming the unvaxxed, making the vaxxed evrn more vaxxed is like looking under the streetlight for the watch you dropped down the storm drain.
Immunization goes down over time. So who knows by late fall what the numbers will be.
Also, the vaccine is not just there to prevent hospitalization of the patient, but also to curb infections in general. I think they focus in hospitalization when gathering statistics because it is a fairy reliable statistics. But that's not the only problem.
I don't take the flu vaccine not to get hospitalized, the likelihood that I will be hospitalized because of the flu is fairly low. But if I get infected and become a spreader of the flu, then it is likely my family will be infected and my colleagues will be infected. I don't want to be home with me, my wife, and my son all sick at the same time. Here the virus is different, but these are still valid reason for immunization.
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By "no substantive evidence", I can only assume you ignored the summary where health officials are reviewing data including early studies that suggest immunity is waning for the vaccinated?
I'm not ignoring anything I'm asking for information. I've looked for it. I've asked numerous times for references to such evidence. So far all I've gotten was crickets, snark and irreconcilable contradictions.
As far as I know there are two basic claims in support of this action and neither mean jack.
1. "Antibody levels". Typically wane with time other immune mechanisms provide for long term protection. Antibody level measurements in a lab does not address real world level of protection against hospita
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I'm not ignoring anything I'm asking for information. I've looked for it. I've asked numerous times for references to such evidence. So far all I've gotten was crickets, snark and irreconcilable contradictions.
Did you ask the CDC, WHO . . . or random people from the Internet on a tech website? That is like me asking Twitter or Facebook on a repair to my car then declaring it does not exist when no one answers my posts.
As far as I know there are two basic claims in support of this action and neither mean jack.
Translation: I do not understand what something technical means therefore it is meaningless. Your lack of understanding does not mean it lacks value.
1. "Antibody levels". Typically wane with time other immune mechanisms provide for long term protection. Antibody level measurements in a lab does not address real world level of protection against hospitalization and death.
Please cite your evidence that antibody levels were only measured "in a lab". Studies submitted to the FDA [apnews.com] says otherwise: "Pfizer said a small study s
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Did you ask the CDC, WHO . . . or random people from the Internet on a tech website? That is like me asking Twitter or Facebook on a repair to my car then declaring it does not exist when no one answers my posts.
I used Google, Bing and the search facilities of a few journals.
Translation: I do not understand what something technical means therefore it is meaningless. Your lack of understanding does not mean it lacks value.
Understanding isn't the relevant issue here. The production of relevant data is.
Please cite your evidence that antibody levels were only measured "in a lab". Studies submitted to the FDA says otherwise: "Pfizer said a small study showed people who received a third dose had higher levels of antibodies against several strains of the coronavirus, including the delta variant."
Where the measurements are done I don't think anyone cares. When I said "in a lab" what I meant was someone gets a blood sample and sends it to lab to get analyzed and from the analysis they collect the data and write a paper saying levels were x. While this is useful data it does not speak to real world implications of the lab measurement. You need to collect r
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He means "No evidence that supports my worldview, anything that does not validate my stance is not worth reading." And then he probably calls people sheeple and bitches about virtue signaling.
Let me be very specific. What would convince me that boosters of the same vaccine are needed is evidence of substantial (Anything outside error margins will do) drop off of protection with time from serious disease, hospitalization and death.
If you think this is unreasonable that's fine you are entitled to your opinion. If you think it is reasonable and have relevant evidence I would sure love to see it.
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Since this will only roll out once the FDA has given the shots "full approval" and we have been hearing for months from the "concerned holdouts" that the FDA state of Emergency Use wasn't good enough for them to take it.
Last I read, Pfizer was expected to get full approval in the US in early September. Not sure about Moderna or J&J. But in any case, the EUA period is about to come to an end, very soon.
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