Pfizer Study Says the Updated COVID Boosters Significantly Rev Up Protection (go.com) 268
The Associated Press reports that Pfizer's updated COVID-19 booster "significantly revved up adults' virus-fighting antibodies, the company said Friday, releasing early findings from a rigorous study of the new shots."
Booster doses tweaked to target the most common omicron strain rolled out in early September, and the Food and Drug Administration said the latest data should spur more Americans to get one — especially before another expected wave of cases as people travel for Thanksgiving. Pfizer said people 55 and older who got the omicron-targeting booster had four-fold higher antibody levels than those given an extra dose of the original vaccine....
A month after receiving the new booster, antibody levels in people 55 and older had jumped 13 times higher than before the extra dose. Younger adults saw a 9.5-fold jump, Pfizer and its partner BioNTech said. It had been about 11 months since the study participants' last vaccination....
The new data "reassures us that this was a good decision to move to this bivalent vaccine," FDA vaccine chief Dr. Peter Marks told The Associated Press. "Right now is the time for people to consider going out and get the updated" booster.... The updated doses are combination shots, tailored to offer a boost of protection against both the original coronavirus strain and the dominant BA.5 strain.
A month after receiving the new booster, antibody levels in people 55 and older had jumped 13 times higher than before the extra dose. Younger adults saw a 9.5-fold jump, Pfizer and its partner BioNTech said. It had been about 11 months since the study participants' last vaccination....
The new data "reassures us that this was a good decision to move to this bivalent vaccine," FDA vaccine chief Dr. Peter Marks told The Associated Press. "Right now is the time for people to consider going out and get the updated" booster.... The updated doses are combination shots, tailored to offer a boost of protection against both the original coronavirus strain and the dominant BA.5 strain.
Anecdote time (Score:5, Insightful)
Every COVID shot I get knocks me on my ass for a day. But I recently spoke with a woman who listened to a friend who told her "it's just the flu" and five weeks out she is still recovering and sounds like she's on death's door.
I'll take the certainty of a couple of days of lethargy every year over risking that, thanks.
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Re:Anecdote time (Score:4, Insightful)
Three times vaxxinated here, and had the plague too.
But I still take issue with you calling anti-vaxxers morons. Yes, you are correct based on your life experience and the worldview you built on top of that. But if you declare that you are embarrassed to be the same species they are, your are being part of the problem, and not part of the solution.
Because they do not share your life experience. The great political divide in the U.S. stems from two totally different worlds that exist in parallel worlds that exist in the U.S. And you have to understand, the other side has been fucked over beyond repair. Their jobs have been shipped overseas, they have had their future taken from them, driven to homelessness, drug deaths and despair. The democratic party whodunnit tells them to go fuck themselves and keel over.
The process is still ongoing and that means that more and more people are going to find themselves on the wrong side of history. But you should understand this. A drowning man grasps at anything. If you have to choose between a party that tells you that you are a deplorable and you should go fuck yourself, and another one that at least acknowledges your problems, you take the other one. Even if the one you choose is 0,001% probability of success, it is the correct choice over the 0% one. Even if the 0,001% one is fucking Donald Trump.
The thing is, there is no voter out there that is actually able work themselves through all of the policy matters. There is no such thing as an informed voter. All you can do is put your trust in some party, based on whether they mouth the right words for you. In a society where everything is politicized, where being smart is politicized, where vaxxination is politicized, you end up people rejecting all of the nice things based on their party affiliation.
But there is more to it. The more one feels abandoned by the system, the more one rejects everything about the system. In the U.S., truth itself has been so politicized, focus grouped, public relationed, commercialized and sold out that it just doesn't exist anymore. Anything that is being floated as a truth is always foremost sold as the truth in cover of some entirely different agenda; any correlation between what is floated and what actually is, is for all practical purposes entirely coincidental. So if you feel enough of abandonment by the system, you will reject any narrative that the system pushes on you. If your life experience says that everything the system does is to fuck you over, from that follows that also vaxxination is to fuck you over. This is basic rational reasoning and there is no flaw to be found in it, not a flaw that you or me are not constantly guilty of too, anyway.
So where I'm getting at is that anti-vaxxers are a symptom, not the disease. Like the quintessential american act of killing the fever and going to work, fighting the symptom only worsens the disease. You need to go for the root cause. But the problem is, the greatest-country-in-the-world mindset prevents even any recognition that there is a disease, never mind actually doing something about it. D.C., of course, could not be happier about it. Let the proles fight so that they can eat the cake. But the disease, looks to me, it's in metastasis already. Bummer.
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You make some good points, but also fall prey to a common misconception. Many, if not most "anti vaxxers" are highly educated. Some are people like myself who came to our conclusions after reading a huge amount of medical history and theory.
Many others became anti vax after direct experience because they or a loved one (often a child) were injured by vaccine(s). For a parent, it doesn't matter if everyone else in the world says vaccines are "safe and effective" when they see their healthy happy baby get
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I don't think I brought education into this. Even more so, I don't think education has anything to do with the dynamics I described. Maybe in some specific case, maybe in this specific case, but in general, no. Society needs people with different education levels, and democracy has to value all of them and take care of all of them. So when it fails to do so and problems arise, it is a false start to start pointing fingers at people's education levels. When problem arise and are not fixed, society has failed
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I disagree with much of the premise of your argument. Frankly, it's the classic bullshit that I hear from the right, which blames the left for the viewpoint of the right. It's the complete opposite of taking responsibility for their actions and there is no room for compromise.
One party is telling them that their jobs have gone and crime has gone up (it hasn't) because of "others". Who the "others" are is neither consistent nor is it important. The fact that too many people go along with this "othering" is t
Re:Anecdote time (Score:5, Insightful)
What is this left you are talking about? There is no left in the U.S.
There is one party that uses socially liberal rhetoric to sell liberal capitalism. This boils down to "because you like pussy hats and minorities, Wall Street and Silicon Valley money should have free reign in this country".
And there is the other party that uses socially conservative rhetoric to sell conservative capitalism. This boils down to "because you like gunz and Jesus, Oil and War money should have free reign in this country."
There is nothing even vaguely left in any of that, expect in the fact that the voters have been trained to think there is. Both the U.S. parties are extreme right by any standard expect the U.S. standard.
Whether the jobs have been shipped overseas and the rest of it, go and ask about that in Detroit, go and ask the farmers, the coal miners, factory workers, ask anyone except the office workers. Go and ask the victims of the Sacklers, ask in the tent towns popping up all over the country, ask the third of the country that is one hospital visit away from going insolvent. These people have been left behind by deliberate acts of policy, and nothing is being done by deliberate lack of policy. But I guess all of this is just an attack ad, all of these people have learned to code and have found happiness in the gig economy...
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classic bullshit that I hear from the left, which blames the right for the viewpoint of the left.
Both statements equally true.
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classic bullshit that I hear from the left, which blames the right for the viewpoint of the left.
You should do something about the voices in your head.
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On what planet? Uranus?
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You're ignoring that they're also not anti-vaxxers. They support vaccines. They know the horrors of polio and measles and tuberculosis and mumps and measles and rubella.
And they also watched as every single major democrat politician and media talking head told them that they were racist fearmongers and the virus was no worse than the cold. They watched as every single major democrat politician and media talking head told them that "trump's vaccine" would be dangerous and unsafe. They watched as every single
Re:Anecdote time (Score:5, Informative)
You're ignoring that they're also not anti-vaxxers. They support vaccines. They know the horrors of polio and measles and tuberculosis and mumps and measles and rubella.
There legitimately are people who are anti-vaxx, e.g. the folks telling you that thimerosal in vaccines causes autism. And a lot of the anti-COVID-vaccine propaganda is being spread by those same people. So although some people concerned about the COVID vaccine may not be anti-vaxx, most of them were probably led astray by people who are.
And they also watched as every single major democrat politician and media talking head told them that they were racist fearmongers
You mean the people complaining about the ban on travel from China that only applied to Chinese people and not Americans returning home? I'm pretty sure that meets the criteria for racism.
and the virus was no worse than the cold.
Wait, what? Approximately no Democrats have ever said that. A lot of Republican talking heads said that, though, and they were wrong, and a surprising number of them died from it.
They watched as every single major democrat politician and media talking head told them that "trump's vaccine" would be dangerous and unsafe.
When did that happen? I mean yes, a few random people made comments like that, but it was barely above the noise threshold, not "every single major Democrat politician and media talking head". If it were, then it would be Democrats refusing the vaccine. It isn't. It is overwhelmingly Republicans who are refusing the COVID vaccine.
They watched as every single major democrat politician and media talking head insulted and berated them for buying masks and gloves...
Again, this never happened. They did, however, rapidly make it temporarily impossible to buy N95 masks, and reserve all of the N95 masks in stock on store shelves for medical personnel.
The only people who mocked people for wearing masks are trolls like DeSantis [washingtonpost.com].
and then they watched as every single major democrat politician and media talking head completely reversed their position and insisted they never head.
Also never happened, because the previous thing never happened.
They watched as families were forced to let their loved ones die alone and go bankrupt while politicians and celebrities didn't even PRETEND to follow their own demands and declarations.
Politicians are hypocrites. Did you really discover that just now?
They watched as the dangerous and untrustworthy "trump's vaccine" became the mandatory and 100% safe and effective biden vaccine... that you needed two shots of... no three... wait actually four... and EU countries are starting to ban it more and more in anyone under 30 because of how many people it's killing.
Several countries temporarily paused distribution of one specific vaccine (Moderna) in people under 30. Some still require the use of Pfizer in people under 30 if it is available, but allow Moderna if Pfizer is unavailable. If any country still has an actual moratorium, it is Belgium, but I can't actually confirm if that is the case. That's a long way from "starting to ban it more and more". In fact, the opposite is true.
And other than on Slashdot, I don't think I've ever heard it called "Trump's vaccine" or "Biden's vaccine" by... well, anyone.
All the while they watch as >90% deployment rates lead to skyrocketing new variants and infection rates, rather than the virus being wiped out like with literally every other vaccine in history.
Huh? It has taken decades for literally every other vaccine in history to wipe out any di
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I don't think many people appreciate the scale of the disaster we have brought upon ourselves. Anti-vaxxers are partly to blame, but so are politicians who lost people's trust and then settled for just living with COVID ripping through the population.
The deaths from COVID are one thing, but the even bigger problem is the number of people who are disabled by it. The instances of Long COVID seem to be about 10x the number of deaths, i.e. in the UK we have 210,000 deaths and at least 2,000,000 with Long COVID.
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Re:Anecdote time (Score:5, Informative)
The great political divide in the U.S. stems from two totally different worlds that exist in parallel worlds that exist in the U.S. And you have to understand, the other side has been fucked over beyond repair. Their jobs have been shipped overseas, they have had their future taken from them, driven to homelessness, drug deaths and despair. The democratic party whodunnit tells them to go fuck themselves and keel over.
It has nothing to do with different life experiences. You don't think there are a lot of poor Democrats who have been screwed over by the system?
The most ironic part of all this is that the Republican Party has always done what is best for the wealthiest Americans, who are the ones actually shipping the jobs overseas. And a lot of Republican leaders have actually shipped jobs overseas themselves while at the helm of major corporations.
When it comes to globalization, the only real difference, on average, between the two parties is that the Democrats put in social nets to try to limit the damage, while Republicans quite literally said, "Let them die". And both parties blame the other party for things that they also have done. NAFTA? Republican Congress. Democrat President. Opening trade with China? Nixon (Republican).
But the Republicans want their voters to keep telling themselves that somehow the Democrats are the problem. As long as people are distracted by D vs. R, they'll be too distracted to realize that their best option is to get more non-wealthy people running for office and take back power from the wealthy aristocracy.
The process is still ongoing and that means that more and more people are going to find themselves on the wrong side of history. But you should understand this. A drowning man grasps at anything. If you have to choose between a party that tells you that you are a deplorable and you should go fuck yourself, and another one that at least acknowledges your problems, you take the other one.
Except that's a Republican lie. Democrats didn't call Republicans deplorable in general. One candidate pointed out that some of the most hate-mongering racist people in the country were voting en masse for Donald Trump, and correctly called those folks deplorable. The right wing's political spin machine is what convinced all the non-deplorable Trump voters that she was talking about them. Her attempt to distance the decent Trump voters from the deplorable ones failed, and ended up causing decent people to dig in their heels, which made it one of the biggest mistakes a candidate has made in recent memory, but that doesn't mean she was wrong to point out how white supremacists were aligning themselves politically with the Republican Party or how the Trump campaign seemed eager to attract their votes.
Both candidates that year stank on ice. You had Clinton, who was basically about as Republican as I've seen from the Democrats and Trump who was so far out there that he can't be readily placed in any reasonable chart of political views. And somehow, the Republican party convinced people to vote for Trump because he had an "R" next to his name, ignoring his views, and vote against Clinton, who used to be a Republican, because she had a "D" next to hers.
The right time to fix these problems is during the primary election. Instead of voting for the person you think will win, vote for the person you think *should* win. If everyone did that, politics in America would be very different.
See also my previous comment about keeping the people to busy to notice that they can always run for office and wrest control from the powerful elite.
All you can do is put your trust in some party, based on whether they mouth the right words for you.
No, if you put your trust in a party, you truly are a moron. You should look at the candidates and see whether they are actually representing you or talking out both sides of their mouths. If you're voting for so
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Well let's just say we had a different level of analysis here. Where I was going was more about looking to explain voter behavior based on how they perceive what is going on. Where you are going is a more detailed look into how the system functions. I was painting with a wider brush, you brought in more detail.
I mean, in the big picture, everyone in the U.S. is getting screwed over by the system. Not everyone knows it yet, not everyone is screwed enough to change their politics, and not everyone is willing
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This is odd:
The most ironic part of all this is that the Republican Party has always done what is best for the wealthiest Americans
Um, Democrats have always done what is best for the wealthiest Americans too, it is merely a different subset of wealthiest Americans than the Republicans service.
Democrats at least give some sort of lip service to subsets of non-wealthy people which Republicans do not... but lip service is just that. Lip service. All words, no actions.
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Antivaxxers have nothing to do with economic conditions. Some of the strongest antivaxxers are among the wealthiest. https://www.npr.org/2018/11/20... [npr.org]
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You know which one you choose, they know which one they choose. Nothing new about that.
What is going on here is that the Democratic party has been running economically liberal policy, which has fucked over the Republican voters. The Democratic party has been selling this with socially liberal policy, which has been discredited in the eyes of Republican voters by association with the outcomes of said economically liberal policy. Now the Republican party is capitalizing on this discrediting. It's not like I'm
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What is going on here is that the Democratic party has been running economically liberal policy, which has fucked over the Republican voters. The Democratic party has been selling this with socially liberal policy, which has been discredited in the eyes of Republican voters by association with the outcomes of said economically liberal policy.
Republican economic policy has been thoroughly and completely discredited. Trickle down doesn't work. It never did. But no economic policy can work when millions of workers get disabled by COVID and countless more are out sick in any given week. And all those folks working from home suddenly went back to work, and aren't buying as much stuff, which hurts the economy. And they're driving more, driving gas prices up at a time when Russia is also causing massive disruption in the oil market by engaging in
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Well, I'm not in any way pushing the idea that Republican policy is ant better than Democrat policy. Both of these are based on lies, incompetence and corruption. Where I'm getting at is that in general, if you wonder why people don't like Democrats, look at the effects that democrat policy has on peoples lives, and vice versa. "Take a look at this one crazy idea that everyone hates."
Why these lies, incompetence and corruption exist goes something like this. The number one issue for both parties is to get s
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Republican economic policy has been thoroughly and completely discredited. Trickle down doesn't work. It never did.
None of the parties offer a rational economic policy.
Agreed.
Preventing some of the ill-conceived (Republican-led) banking deregulation that led to the economic crash a few years ago, so that the economy would have been in better shape going into the pandemic.
Glass-Steagall was repealed by a democrat (Clinton)
A president can't repeal a law. It was a Republican Congress that repealed it. Clinton signed it, and thought it was a good idea.
Look at the vote breakdown. In the Senate, where the idea originated, only a single Democrat voted for it, with 44 against. 53 Republicans voted for it, none against, one voted "present", and one was not present. Even in the House, 93% of Republicans voted for it, compared with just 67% of Democrats (and the one independent voted against it; I'll let you guess which pe
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I know that I'd have something to worry about if I didn't have any sort of reaction to it; that would mean it's not actually doing anything.
Do you have a citation for this? As far as I understand it from the initial phase 3 trials of Pfizer vaccines this hypothesis was explicitly rejected. People who felt nothing at all (~50% of participants) were equally protected.
I already had coronavirus in late February of 2020, just before the pandemic was officially declared, and it not only kicked my ass for 2 solid weeks, but I spent an entire year dealing with the damage it left behind. No fucking way I'd just ignore the whole thing and risk getting it again, who knows how much damage it would do to me again and if I would have any permanent damage from it. Not taking the risk.
There are no risk free options. Vaccination itself has caused injuries including heart inflammation and long covid symtoms. There is no rational basis to ignore protection offered from infection acquired immunity.
Vaccinations in sars2 naive individuals have yielded massive order
Re:Anecdote time (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh my; you missed the memo I guess where Pfizer admitted that they hadn't tested transmissibility. The shot does not prevent infection, it doesn't prevent transmission, your belief and faith notwithstanding.
They were *extremely* open about the fact that transmissible wasn't part of the clinical trials from the start. The evidence suggested that it stopped it, but verifying it would have required far larger and longer trials.
The evidence we have is that if you were vaccinated, your body could wipe out the original strain before it became transmissible. Delta reproduced faster than the original, but we still mostly stopped transmission. The Omicron derived strains are the fastest replicating viruses we've ever seen, and your immune system usually can't ramp up fast enough to wipe it out unless you've just recently been boosted and have peak antibody levels.
As for what you're getting at with the case numbers, you're missing a huge piece of the puzzle. We started relaxing protections at the same time we started vaccinating. Mask mandates and other precautions went away before vaccinations ramped up. You're seeing the consequences of "I won't be careful if I'm not required to" coming into play at the same time as the vaccinations, and as far as case counts went, they largely countered each other out.
Re: Anecdote time (Score:2)
You wouldn't know from all the propaganda that the unvaxxed were killing grandma.
Re: Anecdote time (Score:2)
My recommendation from consideration of the facts is to get vaccinated but do not expect it will prevent infection or transmission of the virus.
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Okay that's enough Fox and Friends for you for one day. Off to bed now. Even if you were right about anything at all related to COVID, your democrats comment alone shows advanced signs of dementia.
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I prefer feeling a bit woozy for a day to being out of order for 2 weeks, with a nontrivial chance of it taking more than 2 weeks.
And yes, I feel terrible for a day after getting the shot. Then again; I never had Covid.
Re:Anecdote time (Score:5, Informative)
Every COVID shot I get knocks me on my ass for a day.
Same. I spend about 20 hours in bed with chills and a slight fever, then *poof* done. Noting that I've also gotten a Flu shot these past two Octobers at the same time, but same down time as w/just a COVID shot -- all Moderna (larger shots than Pfizer).
But I recently spoke with a woman who listened to a friend who told her "it's just the flu" and five weeks out she is still recovering and sounds like she's on death's door.
Very commonly, people confuse (or equate) the flu and common cold and they're not the same thing. People die from the Flu. From: Disease Burden of Flu [cdc.gov] and How many people die from the flu? [ourworldindata.org] (inb4: yes, the estimated ranges are wide):
CDC estimates that, between 2010 and 2020 in the US, flu has resulted in:
- 9 million – 41 million illnesses,
- 140,000 – 710,000 hospitalizations and
- 12,000 – 52,000 deaths annually
The Global Pandemic Mortality Project II using data between 2002 and 2011.
They estimated that, during this period, seasonal influenza caused
- between 294,000 and 518,000 deaths each year globally.
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Same. I spend about 20 hours in bed with chills and a slight fever, then *poof* done.
For me it's been all over the place. First shot? Nothing. Second shot, afternoon of headaches. Third shot (which incidentally I got along side a Typhoid, Yellow Fever, Hep A, and Hep B vaccine for a work trip, nothing. ... well my arms hurt after all those needles but otherwise nothing.
Mother, super sick for a day, Father, nothing.
Very commonly, people confuse (or equate) the flu and common cold and they're not the same thing. People die from the Flu.
I've had the flu, Influenza B to be precise. COVID for me was *MUCH* worse. The flu left me properly bed ridden for a week and fully recovery within about 10 days. COVID left me b
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COVID is not like the flu, even when people are talking about influenza. But like always with medical issue. YMMV, but the raw data shows its much worse than the actual flu was well.
The issue of covid relative to flu in sars2 naive people varies with age and to lesser degree with viral drift.
For younger people into their teens flu is worse than covid. For the oldest groups covid is far worse.
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Took flu and bivalent booster same day. Actually felt fine afterwards, which surprised me.
At this point, to each his own in my book. The vaccine isn't going to do anything to eliminate COVID. I've tested positive once, my wife three times (pretty sure we both were positive four times, but the tests didn't show it). First two times were lethargy, third time it hit me like a rock and I was out for five days with a rough cough. Last time was just a little crampy and upset stomach.
The vaccine might not do
Re: Anecdote time (Score:2)
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Same thing happens to me with almost any vaccine. Shingles, COVID, and sometimes the flu.
However, the Moderna bivalent booster (Wuhan + BA.1) that I got a month ago didn't do much to me, and neither this year's quadrivalent flu shot a couple of weeks ago.
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>Vaccination and booster are still our best bet against this virus which will be around for a years to come ...
Then it's not a vaccine. Name for me any other "vaccine" in history that's reached >90% deployment rates and had literally no reduction in infection rate, transmission rate, or even viral load. That's done nothing but produce new variants and kill healthy young men by the truck load.
By your logic there should be 30 new variants of smallpox, 20 of tuberculosis, 50 of polio, and so on for every
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Unfortunately, the initial media overhype of the vaccines caused unrealistic expectations, and confused transmission with reduction of disease. I will give you that much ...
But in reality, vaccines do reduc [youtube.com]
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Each of the four shots left me miserable with a mid-grade fever the next day, along with terrible soreness and sweats.
I'm told that is worth mentioning to my doctor as it is unusual to have that reaction every time. If it's the price I pay, it's better than the alternative (especially since as unpleasant as it is, at least there's no respiratory involvement and it's over quickly and can be planned around.
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Every COVID shot I get knocks me on my ass for a day. But I recently spoke with a woman who listened to a friend who told her "it's just the flu" and five weeks out she is still recovering and sounds like she's on death's door.
I'll take the certainty of a couple of days of lethargy every year over risking that, thanks.
Could have been worse. You could have been so against taking insignificant actions to prevent contracting covid that you end up contracting covid, almost dying from it, and all but losing your voice because of permanent damage to your esophagus [imgur.com].
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I have had 5 shots and have never had any reaction. My wife had mild chills for a day after the most recent shots. This was 3 months after we both got Covid.
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(reads replies, riddled with dumbassery and antivax false-equivalency, generally in anecdotal form)
Holy fuck, what just happened. Even a sane anecdotal admission like yours, aligned to science, triggers a maelstrom of denialism and antivax insanity. What a mess. My favorite is the dumbass thinking that we're injecting ourselves with poison and disarming, so surely they're going to win in the end. NBC reported on https://www.healthaffairs.org/... [healthaffairs.org], saying "Average excess death rates in Florida and Ohio wer
My Anecdote (Score:2)
Independent study wouuld be ncie (Score:3)
so says the CDC director (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm not a comspiracy person, but this just doesn't pass the sniff test. Over 40 people became billionairs off covid vaccines. https://www.forbes.com/si [forbes.com]
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Moderna has a study with small sample size but better than a single anecdote, the infection rates didn't seem to improve much with their bivalent vaccine.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/... [nejm.org]
Perhaps the inhaled vaccines will be better at preventing illness rather than just reducing the extent of the infection.
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In which case this simply isn't a vaccine then is it?
Re:so says the CDC director (Score:5, Informative)
I know it is difficult for you to understand vaccines, or statistics. A vaccine doesn't prevent you from becoming infected, it should prevent you from having serious case. The results conform to a statistical profile, so some might become infected and die even after the vaccine. However, your chances of that happening are greatly reduced with the vaccine.
On the other hand, if you'd like to join the over 1 million dead from Covid, don't let the door hit you in ass on your way out. Send us a note when you reach the other side, we'd love to hear how it is.
Re:so says the CDC director (Score:5, Interesting)
I know it is difficult for you to understand vaccines, or statistics. A vaccine doesn't prevent you from becoming infected, it should prevent you from having serious case. The results conform to a statistical profile, so some might become infected and die even after the vaccine. However, your chances of that happening are greatly reduced with the vaccine.
I don't think the hate on the people saying vaccines don't keep you from getting it is fair. Yes you are right the point of the covid vaccines is keeping people away from hospitals and morgues not preventing infections.
However...
The original gating criteria for measuring Covid vaccine effectiveness was in fact at least 50% efficacy.
More importantly for nearly a year public health officials pushed hard the narrative vaccines keep you from becoming a plague rat and infecting grandma. You could even stop wearing masks and not have to get continuously tested if you got vaccinated.
When it turned out this was no (longer?) true and in fact efficacy drops to basically nil after a few months this resulted in a massive public trust problem that persists to this day.
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I'm not a comspiracy person
and yet you are pretty explicitly saying there is a conspiracy.
Is the CDC director dead? Experiencing serious symptoms? Did Joe Biden end up going to hospital when he got an infection? You are making an allegation based on the fact that the vaccine didn't meet your personal standards and "sniff test". Is that how we go about public health now? Whatever "this guy" thinks?
I do encourage you to vote for people who would like to trim the billionaire class though, at least we can build some alliances off that i
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Got a link to back that up please? Be interested to read. Which vaccine, what timeframe, what the medical examiner report said, etc. "Directly caused" is a pretty strong claim.
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Pravda? Really?
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Even that article is hardly conclusive, from the translation:
The case was closed on Friday, October 22, with the result that it cannot be ruled out that the vaccination contributed to the development of the patient's complications and his subsequent death. Therefore, ÚKL concluded that the connection between the death and the vaccination was possible.
There are holes the size of a crater in that statement. Again, is there any direct evidence or even a theory of action as to how Pfizer would have cause
Non mRNA Omicron boosters coming or what? (Score:2)
I'm going to guess the Adeno-virus vaccines are dead in the water because of VITT and inactivated virus seems to be mostly a Russia/China thing, but there's still subunit. Does Novavax simply not make enough money to bother with updating their vaccines?
Shot versions??? (Score:2)
Question (Score:2)
A gene mutation may prevent the effects of COVID (Score:4, Interesting)
Just throwing this out there... From: If You Haven’t Gotten COVID Yet, This Might Be Why [yahoo.com]:
According to the new research, it is possible to get COVID but never test positive or show symptoms due to a gene mutation.
Dr. Roger Seheult, MD, an assistant clinical professor of internal medicine at the University of California, Riverside, ... explains that when the body becomes infected with COVID, the cells chop up the virus internally and present its protein fragments on the cell surface along with a type of protein called MHC1.
He explains that certain people with specific MCH1 patterns seem to present the COVID virus protein fragments better than other versions to the T-cells, which enables the T-cells to destroy the virus faster. This means that the COVID virus gets destroyed in the body faster than it has time to reproduce and affect other cells in the body. [nih.gov] “It really doesn't affect the virus itself other than it takes away its ability to spread in the body,” Dr. Seheult says.
“The gene mutation helps people dodge symptoms,” says Dr. Purvi Parikh, MD, an infectious disease doctor at NYU Langone. “It basically makes the T cells super immune or have a pre-existing immunity from exposure to other similar viruses so when COVID enters your body it can be neutralized quickly. It's not foolproof but it gives you a 10 times higher shot of no symptoms.”
Read the small print (Score:2)
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Antibody level is not as important as they make it (Score:2)
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You don't see a single shot from another country outside the US getting approved in the US and it's because Pfizer and Moderna have lobbied well enough to be given a monopoly on covid vaccines.
Novavax and Janssen are both approved in the US, though they are both US companies as well, and I'm not sure why you would want them when mRNA vaccines are the current state-of-the-art.
No causal link between antibody levels and outcome (Score:4, Insightful)
This issue of relationship between measured antibody levels vs. clinical outcomes post infection has been studied extensively however to date supporting correlations have not been found.
TFA reflects this "Itâ(TM)s too soon to know how much real-world protection the antibody boost translates into -- and how long it will last. The results are preliminary, the study is still underway and infection-fighting antibodies naturally wane over time."
If there is an affirmative reason for a group of people to receive these boosters then associated evidence should be stated directly rather than continuing to promulgate widespread false assumptions that antibody levels determine health outcomes and more is better.
Comment removed (Score:3)
Got Mine, Like Stanford's Own Doctors (Score:2)
What about Moderna and others? (Score:2)
Do they rev up protections too?
8 shots or bust! (Score:3)
Impossible to disagree with the great success of booster shots.
They are brand new and they are great.
If you don't get 8 shots, you're an anti-vaxxer moron. Enough said. Every friend of mine got at least 6 shots.
In other news . . . . (Score:3)
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Yes, they would say something else. They can play games like doing multiple small studies and choosing the results of the best one, but outright falsification risks getting caught and damaging their ability to sell the next new thing.
If it didn't work well enough, they'd bury it. Some meds can be relabeled and sold for other purposes, but vaccinations are too specific for that. The profit motive limits the ability to misrepresent results.
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They can play games like doing multiple small studies and choosing the results of the best one
Tamiflu: Hey! I resemble that remark!
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Nah, I'm just happy that there's one less person in the line, thank you.
There's no reasoning with the likes of you, and I fail to see any good reason to try anymore. Whenever I feel like doing it again, I just flip over to the Herman Cain Awards [wikipedia.org] and enjoy a beer.
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Well, it would be nice to have a Winter again.
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Would have up-voted you if Slashdot let me....
Re:Am I still a murderer over NOT taking it? (Score:4, Insightful)
well thank you for admitting your anti-vaccine stance at this point is just pure grievance and not about the actual results or whats best for the most people
you feel slighted and a bunch of people admittedly were more dismissive and mean than they should have been but just fuck everyone else and the data right? your feelings are whats really important here
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ok... and what happens when everyone is "individually protected"?
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Apparently the disease still spreads and people still get sick:
https://www.thelancet.com/jour... [thelancet.com]
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People get infected nothing that study suggests people are getting sick in any serious manner.
Also notice how that isn't actually a study but is in the "correspondance" and you can also read the reply to that letter here:
https://www.thelancet.com/jour... [thelancet.com]
First, despite vaccination, the delta variant readily transmits in households, and unvaccinated people cannot therefore rely on the immunity of the vaccinated population for protection as they remain susceptible to infection, severe illness, and death. Seco
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The size of that sidestep off the question was truly extrordinary sir.
Who gives a shit about "misconceptions", whats the actual outcomes?
Re:Am I still a murderer over NOT taking it? (Score:5, Informative)
The vaccine absolutely does reduce your chance of contracting the disease. Reference: https://stats.web.health.state... [state.mn.us]
Furthermore, since if you do get COVID the chance of severe illness is much lower, you will not spread it to as many people.
Also, the fewer copies of a virus that get into a person, the less severe their disease will be (usually), because the virus takes about 8 hours to make a copy of itself (replication time). If you start out infected with just one lone virus, that virus needs about 8 hours to replicate. So that means to get to a substantial number of copies (billions) will take days, by which time the immune system can react and deploy enough cells making the antibodies. If you took the vaccine, that process occurs much faster because your body has fighter cells ready to deploy.
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Then why did countries reaching >90% deployment rates still see record breaking spikes in infection rates? Why aren't we swimming in newer deadlier variants of smallpox, polio, measles, mumps, rubella, and tetanus? Why is this the only "vaccine" in the history of medicine to not do the thing that we literally define a vaccine as doing?
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The vaccine absolutely does reduce your chance of contracting the disease. Reference: https://stats.web.health.state... [web.health.state]
The best reference for this I know of is the UKs rolling surveillance study. It doesn't just provide one number it measures effectiveness as a function of time, it is large scale and constantly being updated.
https://assets.publishing.serv... [service.gov.uk]
After a few months efficacy ends up between nothing useful to nothing.
Furthermore, since if you do get COVID the chance of severe illness is much lower, you will not spread it to as many people.
This theory was explicitly rejected at the time of Delta when it was shown the vaccinated and unvaccinated were equally contagious. To be fair there was evidence for this theory /w prior variants.
htt [medrxiv.org]
Re:Am I still a murderer over NOT taking it? (Score:5, Informative)
First, an asymptomatic case is still a COVID case, it would show up in a test. That link compares covid cases. The vaccine reduces cases of Covid. Second, multiple studies have shown that asymptomatic cases are less likely to spread Covid. References: https://www.sciencedaily.com/r... [sciencedaily.com]
https://www.thelancet.com/jour... [thelancet.com]
It should be obvious that asymptomatic cases spread covid less. Less virus copies in your blood, less coughing, obviously you're spewing out less viruses into the air which means less people will get it and also the people that do get it will start their infection with less copies, thereby giving their immune system extra time to make the antibodies
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I didn’t rely on the obvious, I showed you the proof. You skipped over that.kind of ironic for you to tell me I am asserting stuff when you are 100% doubled down on taking false speculations as fact. You clueless fool believes a symptomatic coughing person has an equal probability of spreading it as an asymptomatic person. Wow you are a dumbass. It is cool to speculate on that, and not even bother to fact check it? Wow.
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So you find outlier cases and assume that is the norm? Sounds legit to you? You have zero evidence that in general symptomatic and asymptomatic people have to same transmission ability. Yet I showed evidence two studies that showed asymptotic carriers transmit less. Where is your peer reviewed study showing that a typical asymptomatic carrier spreads to the same amount or more than a symptomatic carrier? I cited two studies showing the opppsite.
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So the vaccines kill people according to you. Who benefits from that?
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So first it was killing people and now it's making them sick. Make up your mind. As for the government controlling you, they already control you hundreds of times daily. They make you carry insurance on your car, they have zoning laws where you can build a home, they impose limits to how fast you can travel on public roads, they make you get a license to marry someone, etc etc. Ah yes the financial argument. You could at least made the half hearted argument that drug companies come up with drugs to manage d
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1) If you get the clot shot you won't infect anyone,
Your use of the term "clot shot" shows that you are low-information poster.
The simple fact is that you are at much higher risk of getting clots from a Covid infection than from the vaccine.
You are the clot!
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1) If you get the clot shot you won't infect anyone,
Your use of the term "clot shot" shows that you are low-information poster.
The simple fact is that you are at much higher risk of getting clots from a Covid infection than from the vaccine.
More than that, clotting disorders (VITT) are only statistically significantly correlated with viral-vector vaccines (e.g. AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, and Sputnik V), not mRNA vaccines (Pfizer, Moderna). Thus, calling the Pfizer vaccine a "clot shot" makes the GP poster completely and utterly misinformed.
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Judging by the GP posting history, I would not be surprised if he or she received the Sputnik vaccine.
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This "study" wouldn't happen to be from the same people who told everyone:
1) If you get the clot shot you won't infect anyone, so you are being socially irrepsonsible if you don't get one.
Clots were associated with the AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, and Sputnik vaccines, not the Pfizer vaccine, so no, those are not the same people.
2) Irresponsible people don't deserve their careers, their medical licenses or their bank accounts if you don't "trust the science". (Many people lost thier careers, medical licenses and bank accounts from evidence gathered on twitter about thier opinions about the clot shot)
People lost medical licenses from actively creating and spreading disinformation about vaccines. The first rule of medicine is "do no harm". They were doing harm, and people were dying because they listened to those misinformed voices who were speaking falsehoods under color of medical authority.
3) The only people we have to fear are the unvaccinated.
Nobody said that, so again, no, these were not the same people.
EUA'd to prevent hospitalization (Score:2)
You are correct. Comirnaty (tozinameran) by Pfizer and BioNTech was tested and shown to keep people out of the hospital. The FDA granted EUA on this basis. Later on, Comirnaty was also found to have the side effect of slowing transmission, at least of the original Wuhan strain.
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... its vaccine had never been tested before its release to the general public on its ability to prevent the transmission of COVID ...
That's pedantically true, but only if by transmission, you mean the odds of a sick person transmitting it to someone else. It absolutely *was* tested to see how many infections it prevented (using symptomatic infections as a rough proxy for infections). In fact, that was a primary endpoint of the original study. And by definition, you cannot transmit a virus unless you are infected.
And that, right there, is the very definition of misinformation.
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Can someone ELI5 why the 'vaccine' can't be the virus itself, but very tiny quantities, perhaps inhaled or taken orally. So instead of a droplet (say for argument's sake 1 trillion molecules) which WOULD cause covid19 symptoms, instead take more like a micro or nano-droplet (say 1 million or billion molecules worth of virii) to help the immune system get a 'taste' so it can prepare better for when/if it accidentally receives a greater dose later.
The first vaccines actually were that, back in 16th-century China. (See also variolation.) However, although your chances of getting sick and dying from that approach were lessened, they were not eliminated, which is why this approach hasn't been used since the late 1700s or early 1800s, give or take.
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