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Medicine

Israel Says Fourth Vaccine Dose Brings 2X Protection Against Omicron Infection, 3X Against Serious Illness - For Those Over 60 (timesofisrael.com) 311

Friday the results of several large studies showed that getting a third Covid vaccine "booster shot" dramatically decreased infections from the Omicron variant.

And now the Times of Israel reports that the country's Health Ministry "said on Sunday that the fourth vaccine dose for those aged 60 and up offers a threefold protection against serious illness and twofold protection against infection in the current wave driven by the Omicron variant." The ministry said the figures are the result of initial analysis by experts from various leading academic and health institutions, and compares the fourth vaccine with those who received three doses at least four months ago.

The figures are based on 400,000 Israelis who received the fourth vaccine and 600,000 who received three doses, with the ministry stressing that the methodology is similar to previous papers the experts have published in the peer-reviewed New England Journal of Medicine.

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Israel Says Fourth Vaccine Dose Brings 2X Protection Against Omicron Infection, 3X Against Serious Illness - For Those Over 60

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 23, 2022 @09:40PM (#62200843)

    Nothing pwns the libs like dying of a preventable illness while repeating right wing misinformation which in turn kills your friends, family and neighbors.

    Anti-Vaxxer self-genocide is the best thing Fox News has ever done.

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      Takes some effort to die of an illness with well below 1% mortality. You have to walk in front of the train while having it to be sure.

  • by Camel Pilot ( 78781 ) on Sunday January 23, 2022 @09:40PM (#62200845) Homepage Journal

    A co-worker who is anti-vax to the max finally got covid. He claimed that he is glad he caught the virus because now he is immune and he doesn't have to worry about the negative long-term effects of the vaccine. A little later in the conversation he admitted he still has Covid fog from his infection of several months ago. No kidding

    • Multiple organ damage is no joke. The SARS-CoV-2 virus ruptures cells not just in your lungs and respiratory tract, it ruptures cells in your heart, blood vessels, kidney, brain, prostate, and digestive system. Ruptured cells=damage. This damage can lead to complications as one gets older.
      • What happens to cells infected/invaded by viral carrier and mRNA vaccines? Slightly different magnitude of course compared to actual illness, but the mere fact it kills cells is a poor argument.

    • by jvanber ( 170198 )

      Man. Something like that could cost you a trip to the NFC Championship game.

    • by Applehu Akbar ( 2968043 ) on Sunday January 23, 2022 @11:24PM (#62201097)

      According to my MD, natural immunity lasts about three months while vaccine immunity lasts eight months. She has unvaccinated patients who have caught Covid three times while still believing that natural immunity alone woul protect them.

    • Sure, he's immune... for around 18 months!

      Then he'll need a "booster" infection.

    • by Ecuador ( 740021 )

      Sounds a bit like the anti-vaxxer wife of my cousin. She got covid and from accounts I heard, despite being young and healthy, did not exactly have an easy time. Now, 2 months later she says it was "like a strong cold". Then she adds the "only" issue is that she still has no sense of smell...
      Yeah, remember those bad colds that left you without one of your senses for months? It's like that. :facepalm:

  • Screw that (Score:3, Insightful)

    by WindBourne ( 631190 ) on Sunday January 23, 2022 @10:06PM (#62200903) Journal
    For this to be stopped, we REALLY NEED to get the vaccine out to EVERYBODY. THat means the undeveloped world.
    It also means the west, but when you have so many idiots that refuse to take it, well....
  • by WaffleMonster ( 969671 ) on Sunday January 23, 2022 @11:50PM (#62201143)

    Just last week...

    "We see an increase in antibodies, higher than after the third dose,â Regev-Yochay said. âoeHowever, we see many infected with Omicron who received the fourth dose. Granted, a bit less than in the control group, but still a lot of infections,â she added."

    https://www.timesofisrael.com/... [timesofisrael.com]

    Has now become:

    "The Health Ministry said on Sunday that the fourth vaccine dose for those aged 60 and up offers a threefold protection against serious illness and twofold protection against infection in the current wave driven by the Omicron variant."

    https://www.timesofisrael.com/... [timesofisrael.com]

    When there is a peer reviewed study let me know.

  • Queensland Australia had a zero covid policy until the beginning of this year.
    This means no community immunity, only vaccination for prevention. About 88% of 12+ double vaccinated reasonably recently + boosters underway.

    The ultimate test is death rate, so what are the results.
    Of the 73% of the total population at least double vaccinated, 2,3 times vaccinated individuals were involved in 74% of deaths.

    With 300,000 reported cases (estimates put actual infections at up to 3 times that), 11 people under 60 hav

    • Well, of course. Older and unhealthy people are more likely to get vaccinated because they recognize the virus is more dangerous for them. If there are roughly equal percentages of deaths in the vaccinated and unvaccinated populations (73% vs 74%), that goes to show that the downside of being old has been offset by the upside of getting the vaccine. Which is of course a point in favor of the vaccine.

    • I don't really see any point in vaccination

      You don't see any point in vaccination when quoting numbers of hospitalisation from a region that is 89.2% fully vaccinated? https://www.qld.gov.au/health/... [qld.gov.au] I think you don't understand how this works.

      But no the ultimate test is not death rate. The ultimate test is impact on society. That involves not cancelling elective surgeries because hospitals are overwhelmed. That involves not cancelling flights because your flight crew is at home sick. It involves no having to close your restaurants because your st

  • 100 doses (Score:4, Funny)

    by registrations_suck ( 1075251 ) on Monday January 24, 2022 @01:12AM (#62201319)

    Just imagine what 100 doses will do!!

  • That's some bs (Score:4, Insightful)

    by iamacat ( 583406 ) on Monday January 24, 2022 @02:19AM (#62201415)

    We all got Omicron in the family, identical symptoms regardless of number and timing of shots - basically like a cold, lots of congestion and fatigue but no fever. Everyone in schools also got it, same deal. This is a heavily vaccinated county. Severity reduction - quite possible, impossible to tell what each individual case would have been like without vaccination. But nothing really stops this bug. Maybe the trials completed just a few weeks after booster was administered or participants were super cautious, staying home and wearing N95s everywhere? Not going to hold up in a real world where we can't keep getting boosters every two weeks or living in bubblewrap.

    • Maybe the trials completed just a few weeks after booster was administered or participants were super cautious, staying home and wearing N95s everywhere?

      In phase-123 trials they compare infection rates between the vaccinated group and a control group. The control group typically gets a non-covid vaccine that will also produce some side effects so that it is hard for the participant to guess to which group they belong.

      In studies (not trials) there is indeed a risk of confounding variables, although they can control for that to some extent, for example by comparing in-household transmissions. I didn't read the Israel study though. But generally I'd expect peo

  • I'm looking for the data and the papers which show proof of their findings.

    From what I can tell, here's what they seem to be saying in this article.

    1) If you haven't had a shot in 4 months, the high level of anti-bodies in your body is about 1/2 to 1/3 the level of someone whose body recently produced high levels of antibodies. This means that rather than concluding that the vaccine is only effective for less than four months.

    2) The trials are being run with a VERY large sample set across many age groups du
  • OAZ jabs in January and march 2021, Pfizer booster in October 2021. It's probably not time for me to get the next one but, not being stupid, I will take whatever people who actually know about this stuff advise.

    If immunologists, doctors and other scientists advise me to have another booster in a few months, and conservatives and pretend newspapers advise me not to, I will get the booster. This will lower my chances of...

    • Getting whatever variant of Covid is around
    • If I do, being hospitalised
    • If I am, it wil
    • That's nice. None of that's particularly relevant, though.

      The real question is: what are you prepared to force someone else to do?

    • by Chas ( 5144 )

      Yet you're looking at it in a vacuum.
      You're only looking at "fixes COVID".

      You're not looking at "what can the jab do to me BESIDES help me fight COVID"?
      You're just fluffing off clotting, pericarditis, etc.

      All for an increasingly infinitesimal bump in resistance.

      If someone offered you something that made you immune to every disease on the planet, but you stood a 33% chance of developing a cerebral aneurysm at some point in the near future, would you REALLY just plonk your arm down and go "GIMME GIMME GIMME"?

  • Do they know how long this protection supposedly lasts?

    And X is 50% better than Y is utterly meaningless.
    Because they're talking about a relative calculation. Where tiny improvements are expressed as large numbers.

    You need to know what the absolute values are first.

    Because if your chances are 99.999%, and the improvement kicks you to 99.9999% AND comes with its own medical risks?
    Now is when SENSIBLE people sit back and perform a value calculation.
    Only idiots try to "better deal" themselves in such an ignor

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