[HN Gopher] What the Omicron wave is revealing about human immunity
___________________________________________________________________
What the Omicron wave is revealing about human immunity
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 184 points
Date : 2022-02-03 12:37 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| cloutchaser wrote:
| It's interesting reading about things other than antibody levels
| now in Nature as well. T-cell immunity was considered borderline
| conspiracy theory until recently.
|
| I try to avoid conspiracy theories and think this was probably
| down to the way governments think and are advised, antibody
| levels mean an instant response in humans to a virus, so keeping
| them high during a pandemic probably made sense to advisors and
| politicians. But that ignores so much about the immune system.
|
| I hope this narrative shift leads to some more nuanced decisions
| being made.
| perardi wrote:
| Ignored? By whom? I am not a virologist, but actual virologists
| sure talked about T-cells in public forums. Or moreover, that
| we have to have some degree of humility about exactly what are
| the correlates of immunity for this disease.
|
| https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/
|
| And this podcast had Fauci on, so it's not like they weren't
| some degree of notable within the immunological academic
| sphere.
|
| I think it 's time for Hanlon's Razor here. Antibodies were
| easy to measure. Antibodies probably meant people wouldn't get
| sick and wouldn't spread this. So policy makers, being in a
| tremendous rush, really glommed onto antibodies, and just got
| stuck in that mindset, because it's hard to turn a ship around.
| I don't know where there would be a conspiracy--it's just that
| this whole thing is complex, and politicians are not
| virologists.
| cloutchaser wrote:
| > it's just that this whole thing is complex, and politicians
| are not virologists
|
| What's really really really bad is that the entire narrative
| has been built on "we are science, follow us, if you don't,
| you are an idiot, you are endangering others"
|
| Except science is much more nuanced, and hey, it turns out
| t-cells do things too not just antibodies (of course this was
| known pre 2020).
|
| Maybe if communication on this issue wasn't turned so black
| and white, and us vs them, by the media and politicians, we'd
| be in a better place now. But they didn't do that, they
| turned this into politics too.
| mikeyjk wrote:
| I feel like I've missed the context leading to this
| perspective. Where was the discourse on t-cells shut down?
| kenjackson wrote:
| Exactly. I feel like there are people who see people
| being shut down, but it hasn't happened in any venue I'm
| familiar with.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| It happened. I assure you. Debate, healthy skepticism,
| questioning... It was all completely shut down. You were
| not allowed to discuss anything but The Science. I've
| been yelled at by people I know in real life for
| discussing T-Cell immunity. Some of the smartest people I
| know completely lost their minds. They'll never be the
| same and I'll never have the relationship with them I had
| pre-pandemic.
|
| The story of the last 2 years is 10% disease mitigation,
| 20% intellectual error, 30% media fear-mongering and 40%
| politics & tribalism.
| kenjackson wrote:
| The fact that I can find articles discussing T-cell
| response all the way through the pandemic with a simple
| Google search seems to indicate that people were talking
| about it. Maybe you shouldn't let the people in your
| social circle dictate what you think is happening in the
| broader world? And I don't mean that to snarky, but I
| feel like I see a lot of this type of generalizing.
| cloutchaser wrote:
| The entire debate about natural immunity was shut down.
| No, you need the vaccine, was the argument for a long
| time. It was also ignored in mandates in many countries.
|
| The entire basis of this is that T-cell immunity is
| ignored, and only sky high antibodies caused by the
| vaccine offer any protection for future infection.
| kenjackson wrote:
| Can you point me to an article in NEJM or Nature (or
| another respected publication) that said any of this?
| spookthesunset wrote:
| It wasn't in the journals. It was in the media and in
| discussions with others.
|
| PS: The fact it is hard to talk find sources is because
| it was all shut down.
| kenjackson wrote:
| You do realize the media can say whatever they want?
| MSNBC can go one way and Fox News can go the other way.
| Their audiences don't shut down the other...
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > You do realize the media can say whatever they want?
|
| Ultimately all of what these "experts" say is distilled
| by people in the media and shared through twitter, HN,
| reddit, FB and more.
|
| During this madness, all the biggest doomsday people in
| my circle of "real" humans would feed me reams of NYT and
| Atlantic articles as their "sources". If I fed them some
| academic article that goes against the media narrative
| they'd dismiss it as "not peer reviewed" or "publishers
| were doing a flawed study". Ironic considering almost all
| of their sources had all the same major flaws as whatever
| I provided.
| bigodbiel wrote:
| https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2101/rr-0
| kenjackson wrote:
| First, that was simply an editorial piece.
|
| But more importantly they "assert" natural immunity is
| being ignored by scientific journals, but provide no
| evidence. Even worse, they then go on to cite studies
| from prestigious scientific journals that discuss natural
| immunity! What is it, are they ignoring it or are they
| publishing well cited papers on it?
|
| Lastly, they conflate science with policy. As they even
| note, the scientific community has long known that there
| is some immunity with surviving infection. But policy has
| to take more than that into account.
| EricE wrote:
| Where were the amount of articles that were
| proportionally talking about it?
|
| Familiar with the term lie of omission?
| kenjackson wrote:
| It's hard to get proportionality w/o spending a lot of
| time getting data.
|
| But the simplest Google search and you can find Nature
| articles talking about T-cell response with respect to
| Covid:
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2550-z
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-24377-1
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41577-020-00436-4
|
| If you aren't aware of these discussions it's not because
| of lies of omission, gas lighting, or a vast conspiracy
| theory. It's because you buried your own head and then
| said someone is holding your head down.
| EricE wrote:
| Would you call the activity around Joe Rogan a discussion
| or being shut down?
|
| Perhaps your aren't seeing a thing because you aren't
| looking for it?
| kenjackson wrote:
| Isn't Joe Rogan one of the most popular podcasts in the
| world and when Neil Young said "him or me", Spotify said
| him. Is that your definition of "shut down"?
| Clubber wrote:
| That hasn't completely played out yet. Spotify also lost
| a lot of share value over this stunt. Organizations
| certainly are _trying_ to shut him down, which is scary
| in and of itself, regardless of the outcome. CNN is
| talking endlessly about this.
|
| If Joe Rogan was a smaller fish, it would have been
| easier.
| kenjackson wrote:
| If he was a smaller fish, no one would care.
|
| I don't watch Joe Rogan. I've seen one clip where he
| talks about myocarditis in children and he seems like he
| is just making things up. And when the data is presented
| to him, in real time on the show -- its like he doesn't
| want to believe it. He doesn't seem like a good faith
| actor. You can probably find the clip.
|
| I haven't seen CNN make any call to have him removed.
| Although they do call out that he says things that are
| factually incorrect -- that seems in-scope for a new
| organization. They did the same thing to Sotomayor when
| she made false statements about Covid and kids too. Are
| they trying to cancel her?
| Clubber wrote:
| >If he was a smaller fish, no one would care.
|
| No one would care about them being shut down, or no one
| would care what they said? Small people get de-platformed
| quite often from both political tribes, including shadow
| bans.
|
| >I don't watch Joe Rogan.
|
| Most people who are criticizing him, calling him racist
| and all that business don't watch him either I don't
| think. They just watch curated clips. I watch some of his
| episodes, some are certainly thought provoking. The
| general rule of thumb is if a clip cuts off mid-sentence
| or abruptly, it's probably intentionally misleading.
|
| >I've seen one clip where he talks about myocarditis in
| children and he seems like he is just making things up.
|
| Is it the one where he was with the Australian
| journalists where Rogan was saying there is a higher
| chance of kids getting myocarditis from the vaccine than
| from Covid? Did you watch the whole thing where the
| journalist disagreed, then they looked it up and Rogan
| corrected himself? If not, you watched a specifically
| curated clip probably designed to push a misinformation
| narrative.
|
| >They did the same thing to Sotomayor when she made false
| statements about Covid and kids too. Are they trying to
| cancel her?
|
| Did they do it for going on a week now? How many anchors
| covered it? Sotomayor isn't competition for CNN.
|
| If you are interested, I suggest you watch some counter
| arguments to this whole facade to get a better picture.
| Right now I think you are just listening to the
| prosecutor and not the defendant, so to speak. Some
| interesting things I noticed is when the news would do a
| segment on a Trump speech and how outlandish it was, then
| I watched the actual speech, it was pretty obvious the
| news was being disingenuous. Seems like this happens on
| all corporate news, not just CNN, MSNBC, etc. It seems
| like CNN is getting gutted right now, so hopefully it
| will improve.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iccd9KRhXVo
| naasking wrote:
| > Where was the discourse on t-cells shut down?
|
| What countries accept a recovered infection on par with a
| vaccine? That will tell you where the discourse was shut
| down.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| Unfortunately, policy makers communicate to the public with
| the expectation that they have a seventh grade reading
| level.
| nefitty wrote:
| Yes, thank you! Just because I only have a high school
| degree does not mean my opinion is not as valid as a
| medical professional's.
|
| Wait. No, that doesn't make sense at all actually... Hm.
| dotancohen wrote:
| I believe it was Asimov that lamented "the problem with
| democracy is that my ignorance is as valuable as your
| knowledge".
| VikingCoder wrote:
| > "they turned this into politics too."
|
| Politics is the discussion of how we should behave. How
| could this possibly have not become politics?
|
| When you're lost at sea, you're an idiot if you don't row
| with everyone else, in the direction that the navigator
| thinks is right.
| nitrogen wrote:
| This "everything is politics" line really needs to die.
| It's completely ignoring what people actually mean when
| they say "turned political" -- that people focus more on
| scoring points and amplifying divisions instead of the
| overall welfare of groups and individuals.
| cloutchaser wrote:
| Maybe I should have said "tribal" instead of "turned
| political". Because that's what manipulative politicians
| do and it's what everyone hates and loves about politics.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| I think you are right. It isn't politics, it is mostly
| tribalism. Us vs. "the others".
| bigodbiel wrote:
| Reading this article feels like science experiment on a global
| scale was run. And that too was a conspiracy theory, once.
| [deleted]
| packetlost wrote:
| I don't know what you're talking about, I recall learning about
| T-cell immunity in middle-school biology class like 15 years
| ago. Just because politics causes you to cloud your judgement
| and memory does not mean the research and knowledge wasn't
| already there.
| jpeloquin wrote:
| > T-cell immunity was considered borderline conspiracy theory
| until recently.
|
| This surprised me, so I checked my cell biology books. The role
| of memory T-cells in the adaptive immune response is clearly
| described in Garland, "Molecular Biology of the Cell", (c)
| 2002. Not sure in what sense T-cell immunity is a conspiracy
| theory, unless it's being used as code for something else.
| jamesblonde wrote:
| Next, we'll start talking about innate immunity. But, maybe
| it's too early for that for too many people.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| > T-cell immunity was considered borderline conspiracy theory
| until recently.
|
| It's funny how the pandemic caused people to toss our decades
| of understandings of viruses out the window because it was
| politically expedient.
|
| It's always been known that if your immune system allows you to
| recover from a virus, you will have _some_ level of lasting
| immunity.
| ben_w wrote:
| While true, " _some_ level of lasting immunity" is not
| necessarily all that useful. Norovirus infection and recovery
| for example, only last 6-24 months. I don't know what the
| long term immune system response is for covid, but I do know
| that planning in general needs to be for the more pessimistic
| end of what is seems possible, and that quite a lot seemed
| possible in the early days of the pandemic.
| skocznymroczny wrote:
| Why the "only" wording? Seems like the covid vaccines don't
| even last this much, and they are praised.
| darkcha0s wrote:
| I'm guessing because they give you protection without
| actually catching the potentially harmful virus in the
| first place?
| chucksta wrote:
| No they used "only" as in "not very long". The question
| is asking how can you say it's not very long when the
| covid vaccination lasts less than a year in comparison
| SigmundA wrote:
| Covid vaccines have less side effects than the virus so
| are still superior option, hence the praise.
| robrorcroptrer wrote:
| What if I had prior infection of Covid before vaccines
| were available? Why would I need to be forced to be
| vaccinated? Given that my health care system actually
| registers this prior infection. While we don't have
| vaccines for everyone in the world.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| We have way more than enough for anyone who wants it.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Given that the poster said norovirus immunity lasts from
| 6-24 months, having been infected before the vaccine
| wouldn't guarantee you're safe.
|
| And while sure they could push back your vaccine
| requirement a few months, that'd require a fair amount of
| additional overhead and add an additional risk of having
| gotten a false diagnosis.
| SigmundA wrote:
| Getting Covid should be treated as though you got a
| vaccine based on the data I have seen, which also means
| its immunity effects wanes over time and would need to be
| boosted periodically either by reinfection or vaccine,
| again the vaccine being the safer approach.
|
| Whether or not you should be "forced" to take it should
| be based on risk to others in the situation that it is
| being forced, just like you are "forced" to not speed
| while driving on a public highway.
|
| I am not sure what the current latest scientific data is
| but my understanding is that virus and vaccine both
| reduce the risk of a subsequent infection, spreading the
| virus if infected and getting severe outcomes requires
| hospitalization (which reduces hospital capacity). Since
| this protective effect fades in both circumstances a
| recent booster would need to be "forced" if not recently
| having been infected assuming there is no issue with
| vaccine supply.
| naasking wrote:
| > Whether or not you should be "forced" to take it should
| be based on risk to others in the situation that it is
| being forced, just like you are "forced" to not speed
| while driving on a public highway.
|
| I really wish people would stop using this analogy.
| Driving is a privilege not a right, and you earn that
| privilege by following the rules.
|
| Living without compulsory medical procedures is a right,
| not a privilege, so it's the complete opposite case. You
| need a better analogy.
| SigmundA wrote:
| In the US the mandates allow a choice to either vaccinate
| or get regular testing. No one is being made to take a
| vaccine against their will in the US at least, they must
| however take precautions to protect others from their
| risky behavior.
|
| You have a right to bear arms here in the US that does
| not mean you can shoot them in a public place because
| that endangers others. Typically rights have limits when
| they impose on others rights.
|
| Working is a privilege was well not a right, you have no
| right to a job at an employer (at least in the US). So
| the analogy fits as a privilege but it also works as a
| right since neither are absolute and are typically
| limited when they effect others around you negatively.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > they must however take precautions to protect others
| from their risky behavior
|
| If the vaccine was so good at protecting others, why the
| hell do vaccinated people still need to wear a mask? How
| is it even ethical to force people to vaccinate in order
| to function in society and yet still require them to wear
| a mask? Seems kind of bullshit to me.
| naasking wrote:
| I agree rights have limits when they conflict with other
| rights. However the right to work is a right under the UN
| human rights code. That doesn't mean you have a right to
| work at any particular place, but it does mean if
| vaccines are a prerequisite for any kind of work, either
| by government fiat or by broad corporate consensus, that
| would be a violation of human rights. Using tests to
| balance vaccines is one way to address that, but some
| countries don't even take those considerations and want
| to blanket mandate vaccines.
| SigmundA wrote:
| If it where a prerequisite to vaccinate with no other
| choice to find work anywhere (even remote from home jobs)
| or even say a majority of places I might agree, but that
| is not even close to the case here in the US.
|
| I think the UN humans rights could also be interpreted as
| I having the right to a safe work environment and
| conversely if I where forced to work in a common office
| space with unvaccinated / untested people that would also
| violate my rights.
| naasking wrote:
| As I said, the US is not the only place that's discussing
| or implementing mandates, and other places are less
| flexible in how they're applying them.
|
| Secondly, the very notion that you can have an
| expectation of not getting infected from someone else is
| intrinsically untenable. Just try to define what
| characteristics a pathogen must have before vaccines are
| mandatory. Why set the bar at COVID's fatality rate, why
| not the flu? Why not the common cold? Is fatality rate
| really the right metric? What about number of post
| infection complications?
|
| Furthermore, what if we say the COVID rate is the cutoff,
| what if you have comorbidities that increase your chances
| of death, does that increase the obligation of your
| workmates to get vaccinated or is that your problem? I
| think you know which way the rhetoric is going, but these
| answers are far from obvious.
| SigmundA wrote:
| So which places are you talking about so I know what I
| can agree or disagree with?
|
| This whole thing seems like continuum fallacy [1]. Just
| like everything we must all agree on a cutoff because the
| real world doesn't have neat black and white thresholds,
| covid is different from the flu that much is obvious and
| reaches my threshold for requiring vaccination / testing
| mandates at least in its current form. Do agree that a
| disease can be deadly enough to require it? If so what is
| your threshold before the mandate should be allowed?
|
| I am willing to discuss what metrics would help come to
| consensus as a society, buts its not like requiring
| vaccines or other preventative measures for certain
| activities is some foreign concept.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorites_paradox
| was8309 wrote:
| aren't vaccine mandates for participation in a shared
| environment - like work?
| naasking wrote:
| Mandates are being used in many different ways depending
| on the country. But even if it were limited to work, the
| right to work is also recognized as a human right so the
| analogy to driving still fails.
| api wrote:
| One of the worst things about Donald Trump was that if he or
| anyone adjacent to him actually said anything _good_ , it
| immediately became toxic. They did do so every once in a
| while, but it was so throughly mixed with shit that it became
| contaminated.
|
| If Trump said the sky was blue, suddenly it would have to be
| red and if you were a red sky denier you were a racist. We
| are still dealing with the echoes of this and will be for at
| least five years.
|
| This is why having a super-polarizing troll in office is
| inherently bad for society. I think that's true regardless of
| their stripes. An obnoxious troll from the "left" would be no
| better in this particular regard.
|
| There's a reason high office leaders need to carry themselves
| professionally. Class (of the behavioral sort) is not some
| old fogie cultural superstition. Leaders that carry
| themselves like Trump actually damage the cognition of the
| people in their society.
| 62951413 wrote:
| 70M people would like a word with you.
|
| Don't confuse legacy media propaganda with what regular
| people think. Especially when you hear newspeak.
| krapp wrote:
| And 230M people would like a word with _you._
|
| Trumpists seem to forget that neither their movement nor
| their President have ever had the support of the American
| majority, much less of all "regular people." Never even
| the popular vote.
| [deleted]
| Veen wrote:
| There's truth in the idea that Trump supporting an idea
| made it toxic even if it was a good idea, but it didn't
| happen in a vacuum. It happened because the anti-Trump
| media attacked everything Trump said, whether it was
| sensible or not. They could have taken a neutral
| perspective and assessed his speech on its merits, but they
| did not and they bear some repsonsibility for that.
|
| (To be clear: I'm not a Trump supporter and I think that
| when he was right it was by accident rather than design.
| However, many media organizations shamed themselves by
| embracing partisanship and abandoning even the pretence of
| neutrality).
| kenjackson wrote:
| Are there a lot of examples of this? In general when
| Trump said the right thing it seems like the media didn't
| go too far overboard. The most obvious example was about
| vaccination itself. While people were worried that he
| would push out a vaccine that wasn't ready, people were
| on board with vaccination.
|
| That said, I do think that Trump's brand was largely
| about division on social issues. So to that extent he
| often put at the forefront of his narratives positions
| that forced you to take a side. E.g., should Kaepernick
| be fired or not. Etc...
| brimble wrote:
| I think media treatment of him was really weird. Some
| things were exaggerated, but something like suggesting,
| during the '16 campaign, in a plainly favorable tone,
| that his supporters might _assassinate his opponent_ if
| she won, should have been the only thing anyone wanted to
| ask him or his proxies about until he was hounded out of
| public life. Instead it was dropped surprisingly quickly.
| brimble wrote:
| (can't edit, but not sure if the DV was over disbelief or
| for some other reason--if the latter, cool, no problem, I
| take no issue with whatever your reason was; if the
| former, it's on YouTube and it's exactly what I've said
| it is, though on review _technically_ he may _merely_
| have been suggesting that the "2nd amendment people" [as
| he put it] might shoot Supreme Court justices... so, you
| know, not exactly better. It's not clear which of those--
| or, maybe both--were what he had in mind when he said
| it.)
| kenjackson wrote:
| I think the media treatment was fair and evenhanded. I
| think what has changed with the media is that nothing
| sticks for very long. As you note, what might have been a
| big story in the past has a really short news cycle now.
| What was remarkable about Trump was the shear volume of
| stories -- each lasted for days, but was then followed up
| immediately (or concurrently) with another. Even Jan 6 is
| having trouble sticking in the news.
|
| I think this was one of the issues that the Republicans
| ran into with the election. They thought that certain
| stories about Biden would stick and last. They missed
| that none of these stories last any more. You need a huge
| volume of stories to paint a narrative over a long period
| of time.
|
| Someone else mentioned the uncharitable interpretations
| of things he said. That was earned over years of such
| statements. It wasn't a new isolated incident.
| brimble wrote:
| > Someone else mentioned the uncharitable interpretations
| of things he said. That was earned over years of such
| statements. It wasn't a new isolated incident.
|
| You're right to such a degree that I _distinctly_
| remember my first impression of him being formed by _Rush
| Limbaugh_ (my dad was a listener) making fun of what a
| dishonest, sleazy joke of a human being Trump was. Must
| have been some time in the 90s. His reputation was
| decades in the making, and _at one time_ that take on him
| was practically universal. The transformation was
| fascinating to watch.
| EricE wrote:
| EricE wrote:
| kenjackson wrote:
| This is an example of when people say, "I'll do my own
| research" I often roll my eyes. First, about the site you
| gave, here's what BMJ has to say about this site:
|
| "Different websites (such as https://ivmmeta.com/,
| https://c19ivermectin.com/,
| https://tratamientotemprano.org/estudios-ivermectina/,
| among others) have conducted meta-analyses with
| ivermectin studies, showing unpublished colourful forest
| plots which rapidly gained public acknowledgement and
| were disseminated via social media, without following any
| methodological or report guidelines. These websites do
| not include protocol registration with methods, search
| strategies, inclusion criteria, quality assessment of the
| included studies nor the certainty of the evidence of the
| pooled estimates. Prospective registration of systematic
| reviews with or without meta-analysis protocols is a key
| feature for providing transparency in the review process
| and ensuring protection against reporting biases, by
| revealing differences between the methods or outcomes
| reported in the published review and those planned in the
| registered protocol. These websites show pooled estimates
| suggesting significant benefits with ivermectin, which
| has resulted in confusion for clinicians, patients and
| even decision-makers. This is usually a problem when
| performing meta-analyses which are not based in rigorous
| systematic reviews, often leading to spread spurious or
| fallacious findings.36"
|
| Furthermore, in good faith I went and randomly looked at
| one of the studies cited that sourced a reasonable
| journal:
| https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jmv.27469
|
| The c19ivermectin site misrepresents the results from the
| study. To quote the actual study: "However, a mortality
| benefit was not seen with ivermectin treatment before and
| after PSM (p values = 0.07 and 0.11, respectively). ICU
| admission, and intubation rate were not significantly
| different between the groups (p = 0.49, and p = 1.0,
| respectively). No differences were found between groups
| regarding the length of hospital stay, ICU admission,
| intubation rate, and in-hospital mortality."
|
| Additionally the study notes: "The ivermectin group was
| more likely to have bacterial pneumonia complications
| compared to the control group (43% vs. 23%, p = 0.02).
| Eight patients had a pulmonary embolism or deep vein
| thrombosis in the ivermectin group, and the ivermectin
| group more frequently received therapeutic
| anticoagulation therapy than the control group. In
| addition, 13 patients had acute kidney injury in the
| ivermectin group."
|
| The website you provided has a very biased take on just
| the one study I looked at. It's hard for me to take it
| seriously as an unbiased meta-analysis of ivermectin.
| jamesblonde wrote:
| This is cherry picking at its worst. I found one bad
| study from 78! studies. Therefore, I will ignore all
| studies. Even worse, none of your double blind RCTs are
| multi-site western studies. So, I will ignore all of
| them. Do you know what? After 2 years. 2 years, there has
| not been even one WESTERN double blind RCT of Ivermectin
| for Covid that has reported its data. Not one. There are
| 3 ongoing - Oxford (paused now, because they cannot get
| supply - what a joke), Covid-OUT (reporting in maybe 2
| months), and NIH (reporting in 2023). The Together trial
| finished in August, but they are still sitting on the
| data - why?
|
| Besides those trials, there are 87! studies from lots of
| countries. One really good observational study with ~200k
| participants (120k in the treatment group) from Itaj
| Brazil for IVM as prophylaxis. Results for propensity
| matched data were hospitalizations down by 85%, and for
| non propensity matched 50%. But nobody has written about
| it. The same goes for Fluvoxamine, which has great data.
| As does Melatonin and Curcumin. Lots of treatment and
| prophylaxis options out there.
|
| And yes, i am vaxxed. But I despair at this notion that
| it is vax or treatment. I chose both.
|
| Reference:
|
| https://www.cureus.com/articles/82162-ivermectin-
| prophylaxis...
| kenjackson wrote:
| I randomly picked the first study of a journal id heard
| of. I'm not going to read all 78. It's not cherry picking
| when you do that.
| jamesblonde wrote:
| Irrespective of whether it's random or cherry picked, you
| can't discount a mountain of evidence from N=1. That is
| the playbook Big Pharma have succeeded with so far. Find
| one trial with evidence of fraud (El-Gazaar DBRCT) and
| then discount all other clinical trials on IVM for Covid.
| The media bought it hook, line, and sinker.
| kenjackson wrote:
| I absolutely can discount a mountain of evidence from
| N=1. If you bring me 10 candidates for a job and say they
| can all type 100 WPM and I say, "OK, give me that guy in
| the middle" and give him a typing test and he types 20
| WPM, I'm discounting the rest of the candidates because I
| no longer trust the source.
|
| Furthermore, the issue isn't the study. It's how they
| misrepresented the results of the study. Another example,
| it would be like if you give me a paper and I go to the
| middle of the paper and it says, "Nazi's saved millions
| of Jews from the rein of terror of the Hawaiians" -- I'm
| going to discount the paper because I think the
| editorializing is misleading. I don't need to read the
| rest of the paper -- unless you tell me that the section
| I read was meant to be satire.
|
| This is why credibility matters. If that site was Nature
| and I looked at one study and there was something wrong
| with it I might be inclined to look at a few more
| randomly. But given that people have a finite amount of
| time, when you present something it better be accurate.
| And when it is accurate, you'll gain credibility. But if
| the first thing I look at is misleading -- I don't have a
| lot of patience to wade through data ... especially when
| other sources also say that you're representations are
| biased.
| jamesblonde wrote:
| If you don't like ivmmeta.com, have a look at this
| published meta analysis of ivermectin for covid. It
| reaches the same conclusions. And yes, there is also a
| cochrane meta analysis that cuts out all by 9 DBRCTs
| (ha!), still is positive, but not stat-sig.
|
| https://journals.lww.com/americantherapeutics/fulltext/20
| 21/...
| jamesblonde wrote:
| The reason why many of the studies are poorly written and
| have methodological limitations is that many are done by
| clinicians in 2nd world countries. Not one large DBRCT
| from the west has reported on IVM for Covid yet. Let that
| sink in.
| jamesblonde wrote:
| Way to go mods with the censorship, hiding these
| comments. History will not be on your side.
| the_why_of_y wrote:
| Here somebody took the time to look at 30 of these
| studies. It is an interesting read.
|
| https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/ivermectin-much-
| more-t...
| jamesblonde wrote:
| That's a well-written hit piece by Scott Alexander. This
| isn't big tobacco of old who transparently lie. This
| article gives short biased summaries of all papers, and
| leaves out all the good results of many papers. Even well
| run studies, like Chaccour, that shown stat sign
| reduction in cough and ansomnia in only N=24, he spins as
| a negative result. And the Italian study that just barely
| misses stat sig reduction in viral load - well he doesn't
| tell you that, does he?
|
| Scott also believes the benefit from IVM is because of
| worm reduction. The Ijatai study with >120k subjects is
| an area of Brazil with no worms, proving that is
| transparent nonsense.
| kenjackson wrote:
| Those aren't examples of the media gaslighting people.
| Those are about the CDC and FDA saying they aren't
| effective (or not proven effective). You're conflating
| the media with scientific advisory boards -- and notably
| those under Trump's own watch at the time.
|
| Media gas lighting would be if the CDC/FDA/etc said that
| Ivermectin was effective and the media saying it wasn't
| or not reporting on it.
| steveylang wrote:
| The media gaslighting part is continuing to call
| ivermectin a horse medicine to disparage it, when it is
| also approved as anti-parasite medication for humans (if
| not for COVID.)
| notahacker wrote:
| People were ordering from livestock suppliers in
| preparations designed to treat horse conditions, to the
| extent stockists started running out and started
| demanding people provide evidence they actually owned a
| horse to buy it. I mean, dog food is just meat from the
| same animals humans eat, but it's still a news story if
| people decide they'd rather eat Pedigree Chum than take
| nutrition advice from doctors.
| naasking wrote:
| > In general when Trump said the right thing it seems
| like the media didn't go too far overboard.
|
| I'd say those aren't the problem so much as the
| borderline cases where there are true and untrue
| interpretations of a certain statement, but of course
| they ran with the most uncharitable possible
| interpretation because they're convinced Trump is a
| ruthless dictator in the making.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| This is kind of arguing in circles, though. A big part of
| the reason media is so hard on Trump is that he is
| classless and they were embarrassed he was their
| president. It's not like his public image was any better
| in 1990 well before he ever openly declared political
| ambitions and decided he was a Republican. He'd been a
| sideshow clown for decades. Arguably, the ridiculous
| level of polarization we already had is the only reason
| he got to where he is. Even most Republicans were
| embarrassed of him until he won the nomination and they
| rallied to the only option left that wasn't a Democrat.
| But thanks to having way too many candidates in the
| primary, he didn't need the support of "most"
| Republicans. He just needed more than Ted Cruz and Jeb
| Bush.
| anshorei wrote:
| As someone who considers themselves an outside onlooker, I
| disagree. Trump allowed all of the tribal people to out
| themselves. It's made it a lot easier to find people who
| stick to their principles and praised/criticized him where
| appropriate.
| kerneloftruth wrote:
| One of the worst things about Donald Trump was that if he
| or anyone adjacent to him actually said anything good, it
| immediately became toxic.
|
| That wasn't the worst thing about trump.... it's the worst
| thing about the media coverage of him. You're blaming him
| for how media covered him.
| [deleted]
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| Why not both? Trump behaved in a provocative way for a
| reason - it's not like he was a poor misunderstood thing
| and the media picked up on him for no reason.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| Preface by saying the I don't agree with Trump on a lot
| of things.
|
| Lets look at this from a parenting perspective. If i have
| a child who misbehaves often, is it appropriate for me to
| punish them when they do something good?
|
| Holding the media to the same accountability, if Trump is
| saying stupid/outrageous/provocative things, then lambast
| him when he says those things. But if the media lambasts
| him when he is saying something reasonable, then that is
| on the media.
|
| I think most of the annoyance I see in the thread is
| because there was blame being assigned to Trump or even
| someone on the same stage as him because they were on
| that stage with him.
|
| >One of the worst things about Donald Trump was that if
| he or anyone adjacent to him actually said anything good,
| it immediately became toxic.
|
| So rather than examining an idea based on the merits,
| ideas were discarded due to the messenger or the who the
| messenger associated with.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| Yes, I fully agree: criticizing Trump when when he was
| saying/doing something that makes sense just because it's
| Trump was very stupid.
| kingsloi wrote:
| What about things said by them directly, their Twitter,
| etc?
| Supermancho wrote:
| Modified for context, the german adage holds. If you have
| Trump and 3 people talking at a table, you have 4
| Trumpers talking at a table.
| mynameishere wrote:
| You just described one of the many problems with the media
| and then blamed it on Donald Trump. Why couldn't you have
| said "One of the problems with the media is..."
| wolverine876 wrote:
| I don't recall that happening. Can you give examples? That
| sounds like Trump's behavior, not others.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Calling Covid a "novel" virus was a mistake. Technically it's
| true but that didn't mean we needed to toss out everything we
| learned about viruses and start from first principles. Even
| from way back in March of 2020 even the most basic things we
| knew about viruses felt controversial. People were seriously
| thinking you could catch and transmit covid after like 3
| months or something--like you'd just constantly get re-
| infected over and over again. And people flipping out about
| outdoor transmission... like when has catching a virus
| outside ever been a real thing? Everything we knew about the
| subject had to be re-proven.
|
| It was and still is completely crazy.
| clairity wrote:
| 'novel' is a perfectly cromulent term for covid-19. what's
| not cromulent is the unreasonable and extraneous reaction
| to a 'new' cold virus. every new virus will have outsized
| effect until we settle into steady-state (which depends on
| the dynamics of the virus).
|
| what leadership needed to do was identify the _dynamic_
| threat--mainly to the elderly & immune deficient--and
| mitigate for them, not run around screaming like
| discombobulated chickens promoting throw-everything-
| against-the-wall safetyism. we could have had highly
| targeted mitigations and minimal disruption to our lives;
| instead, we got incessant debates over useless masking,
| lockdowns, and vaccine mandates.
|
| even including the elderly and immune deficient, over 99%
| of people get covid and recover just fine. this isn't the
| black plague by any stretch of the imagination.
| [deleted]
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > every new virus will have outsized effect until we
| settle into steady-state
|
| No, this one killed more people than anything in US
| history, more than wars, prior pan-/epidemics, etc. In my
| lifetime, no 'new virus' has had any sort of similar
| effect at all, by orders of magnitude.
| clairity wrote:
| the flu kills ~36K/year, so if you're ~22+ year old
| american, then the influenza virus has killed more people
| in your lifetime than covid.
|
| we don't know yet what steady-state looks like, but note
| that medical/epidemiological organizations don't
| generally keep death statistics on colds (caused by
| rhinoviruses, coronaviruses, etc.) because they're not a
| significant number. colds can be a contributing factor in
| death for folks with deficient immune systems, just as it
| is with covid, but is generally not the sole cause.
|
| again, >99% survive covid just fine. for people with
| multiple co-morbidities, it's much more serious (whole
| percentage death rates), but that's because they're
| teetering on the brink already, and covid (or any number
| of respiratory diseases, really) can push them over the
| edge. our mitigations should focus on the aged and
| unhealthy, not everyone (especially not children).
| notahacker wrote:
| We didn't have to toss out everything we learned about
| viruses and start from first principles, but certainly
| people's irritation with COVID restrictions seems to have
| provoked people to ignore decades of research to the
| contrary to make bizarre assertions like you can't catch
| viruses outside or get reinfected (ironically the early
| scientific and mainstream speculation about if COVID would
| be different was mostly taking the optimistic tack that
| COVID might be _less_ likely to cause reinfection than
| respiratory viruses endemic in the human population like
| flu...)
|
| Same goes for the T-cell immunity really: it was pretty
| much a given that the body's normal immune processes still
| applied to coronavirus, but what was _novel_ was the
| unscientific community insisting that they couldn 't
| possibly be reinfected and a course of vaccines couldn't
| possibly give them any benefit to their immune system after
| they'd been infected (someone should tell all the old
| people who get flu shots every year!)
| Thiez wrote:
| > someone should tell all the old people who get flu
| shots every year
|
| What we call the flu is not a single virus that comes
| once a year. It's different types of virusses each time,
| and the flu vaccine targets the most likely candidates of
| that year. So no, you don't generally get REinfected with
| the flu, because it's a different virus. Some of the
| virusses that we consider 'the flu' are actually corona
| virusses, and perhaps covid19 will join that list as it
| becomes endemic.
| notahacker wrote:
| What we call the flu also includes a wide variety of
| viral illnesses better known as the common cold, which
| includes some coronaviruses - the flu shots offer no
| protection against most of these different viruses
|
| What medical practitioners call the flu is a small subset
| of influenza viruses common in humans, each with a high
| potential for reinfection, including reinfections within
| a year (as well as constantly evolving variant strains,
| just like COVID)
| rhino369 wrote:
| Some of the problems with our response is actually based on
| the opposite issue, our first response impulses were to
| treat it like a novel flu strain. So we re-ran the H1N1
| playbook. The flu was believed to be mostly spread by
| droplets/surface contact and not airborne, so they assumed
| covid was too.
|
| The issues you are describing is more the problem that
| health officials shift the burden of proof depending which
| assumptions or policies they want to make. Any facts that
| counter their policies have to be proven by significant
| evidence. And they often wouldn't look too hard. A fact
| that supports their conclusion can be assumed until proven
| otherwise.
| beebmam wrote:
| Many people got Delta and then Omicron even 1 month later.
| Kai Ryssdal from NPR for example, and one of my friends did
| too.
|
| So this isn't crazy; it literally happens to many
| respiratory viruses. Viruses mutate
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Yup. But like you said many respiratory viruses do that.
| Does that make the flu virus many of us catch every year
| novel? How about the common cold? Is each specific virus
| also novel?
|
| Why did we decide to throw out everything we knew about
| viruses for SARS-CoV-2? It's like society discovered "OMG
| I could catch a virus and die!". Not realizing that
| virtually nothing was new about SARS-CoV-2. It's just a
| respiratory virus like any other we've had passed through
| millions of generations of living beings. Oddly enough
| the "broader human species" managed to survive and thrive
| through all of them.
| enchiridion wrote:
| I always wondered how people claim that. Did they have
| two pcr tests or something else telling them what variant
| they had?
| rsynnott wrote:
| Most PCR tests will discriminate between (B.1) Omicron
| and things which are not B.1 Omicron, so it's feasible to
| know this. I mean, strictly speaking all you'd know is
| that you had B.1 Omicron plus something else, but if you
| had the non-B.1 Omicron one in October, then in most
| parts of the world you'd be pretty safe in assuming that
| was Delta.
| ddek wrote:
| I had delta in late October and omicron in early
| December. I was PCR positive for delta, although I had a
| mild case. I wasn't allowed to take a PCR test for the
| December infection, because it was too soon after my
| delta test and my symptoms were very mild. I did test
| positive multiple times on LFT, my symptoms matched the
| 'ultramild' omicron (scratchy throat, slight cough, lower
| back pain). The day I tested positive for omicron was 4
| days after my friends had gathered in a pub, of the 30 of
| us in attendance 27 tested positive on the same day. The
| group chat was wild. Some of those that got PCR's were
| informed they had omicron.
| tremon wrote:
| _Calling Covid a "novel" virus was a mistake_
|
| It was called a novel virus to indicate that no person
| already had (acquired) immunity against it. What inference
| you make from the word "novel" is on you, not on the rest
| of the world.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > Calling Covid a "novel" virus was a mistake.
|
| I don't remember anyone ever doing that. I remember them
| calling it a _novel coronavirus_ , because it is a new
| coronavirus, at least to us.
| neuronic wrote:
| I don't get this take but that's because I am not from the US I
| suppose. Here, politicians and virologists have publically
| explained immunity in multiple layers.
|
| Antibodies as first line of defense to intercept viruses and
| keep them from initially docking to cells. Then, at the bottom,
| there is long-term T-cell immunity which is essential in
| preventing severe disease. The vaccines train the immune system
| to recognize and respond quicker to the virus so that it cannot
| dock to cells and replicate as fast as it could if the immune
| system had never seen it before. The immune system does not
| need to catch up first so it gets a running start instead of a
| cold start if not vaccinated.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| So kind of on topic...
|
| I have two boys, one under 5, the other under 10. I am trying to
| get good data to determine if vaccination is risky or not.
|
| Recently a relative sent me a story about MIS-C, which seems to
| be new. But trying to get good data on other things like
| myocarditis risk/rates is like sorting for a needle in a
| scrapyard.
|
| Does anyone have any good data, preferably raw statistics on
| this?
|
| Thank you in advance!
| naasking wrote:
| Myocarditis risk stratified by gender, age group, vaccine and
| infection:
|
| https://vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/p/uk-now-reports-myoca...
|
| Males under 40 roughly have the highest risk from multiple
| Moderna doses, followed by infection, followed by two Astra
| doses, followed by two Pfizer doses. I expect two COVID
| infections would increase the risk like it seems to do with the
| vaccines.
| eitland wrote:
| This is very interesting to me if true, both because
|
| - I thought the risk from getting an infection would be much
| higher than any vaccine combination (but here multiple
| Moderna doses seems to increase the risk even more)
|
| - again, if this is true it still validates the rest of my
| reasoning: except for multiple doses of Moderna any other
| combination of mainstream vaccines seems to be safer than
| actually getting the infection
|
| (I note that there is a lot of uncertainty which is why I use
| "seems to be" instead of "is".)
| chris_va wrote:
| The "risk from getting an infection" includes many other
| side effects besides myocarditis, I would not evaluate the
| risks from an unvaccinated viral infection (which can cause
| 100 other things besides myocarditis) vs the risk from
| vaccination (or vaccination + viral infection, which the
| most likely long term outcome) on the myocarditis axis
| alone.
| naasking wrote:
| Yes that's fair, but the risk profile from the vaccine is
| also not just relegated to myocarditis, that's just
| what's been getting attention. It will probably be years
| before we have an accurate risk assessment of both
| infection and vaccines. Given the availability of
| vaccines, it still makes sense to be choosier if you're
| in a potentially vulnerable population, which is what the
| paper suggests.
| synquid wrote:
| Myocarditis isn't that dangerous, it's acute and can be
| managed. Infection is much more risky.
| tomp wrote:
| > I expect two COVID infections would increase the risk like
| it seems to do with the vaccines.
|
| Then the relevant metric should be _infection_ vs
| _vaccine+infection_ , given that natural immunity is better
| than vaccine-conferred immunity (which seems very bad with
| Omicron)
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| Ask your pediatrician. If you don't trust that they know
| better, get a new pediatrician. I'm not being glib, this person
| has made it through a grueling education of their undergrad,
| med school, and residency. They are well acquainted with hard
| sciences and research. If you don't trust them on their area of
| expertise, then that is the problem.
|
| Anecdotally, every doctor I know has gotten their own children
| vaccinated as soon as it was available (or enrolled them in
| clinical trials, to get it earlier).
| jpeloquin wrote:
| > I am trying to get good data to determine if vaccination is
| risky or not.
|
| Rather than giving you a list of work that you may suspect of
| being curated, I will show you how to quickly find what you're
| looking for.
|
| One of the great things about the National Library of Medicine
| is that a human looks at each and every paper and assigns
| standardized semantic tags to it. These are called "MeSH terms"
| and you can filter the entire library by them.
|
| You mentioned interest in myocarditis, and the following would
| be an appropriate search query in pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov for
| this topic:
|
| myocarditis[mh] AND vaccines[majr] AND COVID
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=myocarditis%5Bmh%5D+AN...
|
| The "mh" selects articles that were tagged with that MeSH term.
| The "majr" selects articles that were tagged with that MeSH
| term and were mainly about that term. In this case, the
| structured query drills down from thousands of potential
| results to 61 results, which is manageable to triage manually.
|
| Edit: Here's how you can figure out wish MeSH terms exist:
| https://meshb.nlm.nih.gov/search
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > In this case, the structured query drills down from
| thousands of potential results to 61 results, which is
| manageable to triage manually.
|
| If, of course, you have the domain knowledge required to do
| so.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| You would probably need some basic domain knowledge to
| interpret medical publications in peer reviewed journals.
| I'm not saying they are the same expertise, just that
| "requiring expertise" as a prerequisite is pretty
| reasonable.
| logic_beats_pro wrote:
| Really tough to tell because there's a lack of data. Parents
| aren't vaccinating their young children because they have the
| strongest immune systems and it's unnecessary.
|
| Here are CDC submitted reports of myo/pericarditis seen so far
| broken out by age:
|
| https://openvaers.com/covid-data/myo-pericarditis
|
| So take from that what you will. And if this is your first time
| encountering VAERS, the reports actually submitted are
| estimated to be between 1 and 10% of total adverse effects
| experienced.
|
| If you're into reading studies, here are some that are largely
| unknown:
|
| https://www.rwmalonemd.com/heart-blood-clotting
|
| Good luck!
| veilrap wrote:
| This is somewhat misleading information.
|
| VAERS is an open database, it can be easily submitted to by
| anyone, it's not a good source of truth and may contain
| statistical bias.
|
| Parent's ARE vaccinating their children, millions of kids age
| 5-11 have had the vaccine:
| https://www.mayoclinic.org/coronavirus-covid-19/vaccine-
| trac... Depending on the state, the total % vaccinated in
| that age group varies between ~20-50%.
| TrevorJ wrote:
| >VAERS is an open database, it can be easily submitted to
| by anyone, it's not a good source of truth and may contain
| statistical bias.
|
| This is 100% true, but it leaves out some context.
|
| Prior to covid, it was thought that vaccine side effects
| were statistically underreported by a significant amount in
| VAERS. For the signal we are seeing in VAERS to be totally
| spurious seems highly unlikely, given this fact. It's also
| worth noting that effects which have a significant time-
| delay are unlikely to be captured.
|
| All this is to say: yes the data are noisy, but we'd need
| to erase/explain away the numbers by at least an order of
| magnitude to erase the spike we are seeing, and that seems
| like a tall order.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK232983/
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > All this is to say: yes the data are noisy, but we'd
| need to erase/explain away the numbers by at least an
| order of magnitude to erase the spike we are seeing, and
| that seems like a tall order.
|
| That's fairly easy:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Other vaccines e.g. the common "childhood" ones are
| uncontroverisal and given on a rather steady basis as
| people reach the appropriate ages. The COVID vaccines
| were pushed to _everybody_ in a time window of months,
| and with a huge amount of controversy and media
| attention. Given that, I would expect a spike not only in
| the raw number of adverse reactions, but also a higher
| proportion of them actually being reported.
| logic_beats_pro wrote:
| Interesting comment. It's so funny, whenever anyone posts a
| VAERS link (literally the only visibility the US public has
| into adverse events) people come out of the woodwork to
| mention that anyone can submit a report. Other than VAERS,
| we have public health authorities which routinely lie to
| the public simply to get vaccines in arms, regardless of
| the truth or consequences. Too many examples to list here
| but Fauci continuously upping the percentage of people that
| would need to get vaccinated to achieve herd immunity comes
| to mind. I guess he left out the part that herd immunity
| isn't even possible with the vaccines.
|
| We're relying on proven liars to get our health
| information? These are our CHILDREN for God's sake.
|
| I'll go ahead and list the whoppers from the mayo clinic
| site:
|
| - A COVID-19 vaccine can prevent kids from getting and
| spreading the COVID-19 virus.
|
| The vaccines in no way, shape or form prevent someone from
| getting or spreading COVID-19
|
| - COVID-19 vaccines have not been linked to infertility or
| miscarriage.
|
| Miscarriage data: https://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/foia-
| docs-reveal-pfizer-sh...
|
| - These vaccines were approved quickly because the red tape
| was cut -- not corners.
|
| Please see the story of Pfizer whistle-blower Brook Jackson
|
| - In the U.S., the delta (B.1.617.2) variant is now the
| most common COVID-19 variant.
|
| Omicron is over 95% of cases. Why would they conceal that?
| Ahh, because the FAQ question was "Do COVID-19 vaccines
| protect against the variants?" You'd have to admit the
| vaccines do next to nothing versus Omicron unless you have
| had a booster in the last 10 weeks.
| rossnordby wrote:
| I'm not aware of any great data on myopericarditis for very
| young people, and not as many have been vaccinated, so I
| extrapolate from older age groups:
|
| _Of 3 482 295 individuals vaccinated with BNT162b2 (Pfizer-
| BioNTech), 48 developed myocarditis or myopericarditis within
| 28 days from the vaccination date compared with unvaccinated
| individuals (adjusted hazard ratio 1.34 (95% confidence
| interval 0.90 to 2.00); absolute rate 1.4 per 100 000
| vaccinated individuals within 28 days of vaccination (95%
| confidence interval 1.0 to 1.8))._
| -https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj-2021-068665
|
| _Among more than 2.5 million vaccinated HCO members who were
| 16 years of age or older, 54 cases met the criteria for
| myocarditis. The estimated incidence per 100,000 persons who
| had received at least one dose of vaccine was 2.13 cases (95%
| confidence interval [CI], 1.56 to 2.70). The highest incidence
| of myocarditis (10.69 cases per 100,000 persons; 95% CI, 6.93
| to 14.46) was reported in male patients between the ages of 16
| and 29 years. A total of 76% of cases of myocarditis were
| described as mild and 22% as intermediate; 1 case was
| associated with cardiogenic shock. After a median follow-up of
| 83 days after the onset of myocarditis, 1 patient had been
| readmitted to the hospital, and 1 had died of an unknown cause
| after discharge._
| -https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2110737
|
| So vaccine-related myopericarditis looks rare and mild.
| Effectively, and possibly literally, no one dies as a result. I
| actually ended up with a probable case after my second dose,
| but it was extremely mild (no functional impairment, just
| periodic discomfort for some months). I suspect most cases are
| something similar- not fun, but not spooky. I'm not a doctor
| nor do I have any relevant specialty, but I'm reasonably sure
| that reducing incidence of MIS-C or other rare severe outcomes
| of covid is a net win in younger people.
| andai wrote:
| I saw a comment here recently with data that showed the rates
| for myocarditis for both covid and vaccinations respectively,
| I recall the chance of developing myocarditis after
| vaccination being 4x lower than after getting covid.
|
| Assuming that's right (perhaps someone more knowledgeable can
| provide a source), this seems to imply that vaccination
| _reduces_ the risk of developing myocarditis by 4x, assuming
| everyone will eventually be infected.
|
| I'm also curious what effect age has on the risk in both
| cases, ie. if the same ratio holds for young people.
| rossnordby wrote:
| I believe that is correct. I don't have a great source
| handy, but here's a preprint which agrees:
|
| _Conclusions: Myocarditis (or pericarditis or
| myopericarditis) from primary COVID19 infection occurred at
| a rate as high as 450 per million in young males. Young
| males infected with the virus are up 6 times more likely to
| develop myocarditis as those who have received the
| vaccine._
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34341797/
|
| Not sure about ratio age dependency. My prior would be that
| it is similar, since I don't have any reason to suspect
| otherwise. Still not a doctor or biologist though :P
| rhino369 wrote:
| I was going to wait until all of the first world health
| bureaucracies cleared it. But now my kids had covid (before
| they were approved even in the US) and it wasn't a big deal. So
| I'm not going to get them shots until the natural immunity is
| proven to fade, which may be never.
| salemh wrote:
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| The little risk you take by getting the vaccine is more than
| offset by the far lower risk of getting the disease, which has
| all kinds of implications.
|
| Since it was approved for children by the FDA I assume they did
| rigourous testing
| umvi wrote:
| > Since it was approved for children by the FDA I assume they
| did rigorous testing
|
| I wouldn't make this assumption, especially in light of the
| the conditions under which it was approved (extreme political
| pressure, rushed/bleeding edge data, etc.) It's probably
| fine, but my kids aren't going to be first in line because
| they are in the control group (https://xkcd.com/2576/).
| mizzack wrote:
| > Since it was approved for children by the FDA I assume they
| did rigourous testing
|
| Reminder that the two most senior FDA vaccine oversight
| officials resigned in protest before the age 5-11 EUA was
| approved.
|
| Reminder that the previous FDA commissioner currently sits on
| Pfizer's board.
|
| Reminder that regulatory capture of the FCC, SEC, and other
| govt. agencies is popularly accepted as fact, but somehow the
| FDA is immune to that criticism.
| standardUser wrote:
| OK, now do that for the 50 or so other national health
| agencies that have independently approved these vaccines.
| Or did you forget that these vaccines have been reviewed
| and approved by thousands of qualified staff all over the
| world?
| mizzack wrote:
| Every western country except the UK (who were criticized)
| approved it after the US. Many of those deferred to the
| FDA's judgment and rubber stamped as a formality.
|
| > "I am pleased that Pfizer's vaccine has undergone a
| critical phase with FDA approval," said Health Minister
| Yuli Edelstein on Friday, just after the FDA's Vaccines
| and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee voted
| in support of the agency granting Emergency Use
| Authorization (EUA), which paved the way for the
| vaccine's approval. "This is a huge message for Israeli
| citizens as well." He said that he instructed his
| ministry's staff to review the approval and submit their
| recommendations in the coming days so that vaccinations
| could start before the end of the month.
|
| This was all fast-tracked with countries wanting to get
| in line for doses, remember?
|
| Thinking-in-reverse, if the FDA flagged/rejected the
| approval, how many western countries do you think would
| have approved it within the same timeframe?
| [deleted]
| collias wrote:
| Reminder that many European countries do not suggest the
| vaccine for children, and some have even banned it in the
| case of Moderna.
| standardUser wrote:
| The EU has approved Pfizer for children 5 and over.
| Moderna is still being reviewed for younger children.
| Exact guidelines may vary by country.
|
| Overall, Pfizer has been approved in 137 countries and
| Modern in 85.
| [deleted]
| phillc73 wrote:
| One EU country where the guidelines vary is Sweden, who
| are specifically not recommending COVID vaccines for 5-12
| year old children.[1]
|
| [1] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/sweden-decides-
| against-...
| kikokikokiko wrote:
| Children with no commorbidities have NO reason to get exposed
| to the risk of taking the vacine. Yes, it's a small risk, but
| ANY vaccine must be a cost benefit weighted decision. Rabies
| is a 100% lethal disease, but that is not a valid reason for
| everyone to get vaccinated for it, the risks of vaccinating
| everyone in this case outweigh the risk that a randomly
| selected person would eventually die from rabies. This whole
| discussion is so stupid, from the beggining everyone could
| see the stats and see who was at real risk or not from this
| disease.
| phlipski wrote:
| Rabies doesn't spread like covid...
| EricE wrote:
| COVID isn't deadly like rabies either. Indeed COVID is
| turning out to be less deadly than the flu for the vast
| majority of people, especially the more recent variants.
| While being far more virulent they are also far less
| likely to make one seriously ill, let alone kill.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Over 800,000 people have died in the US alone, more than
| any other event in US history.
| Nemrod67 wrote:
| 2M people die every year in the USA, is that more than
| any other event in History?
|
| such lunacy
| robflynn wrote:
| They clearly mean from one specific event. What one event
| in the USA has lead to 2 million deaths? You're combining
| all deaths and treating it as if it were the same thing.
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| >You're combining all deaths and treating it as if it
| were the same thing.
|
| Couldn't that be applied to deaths from other diseases?
| Why wouldn't all influenza deaths be considered one event
| by this standard?
| robflynn wrote:
| No? Are we in an influenza pandemic or epidemic right
| now? Again, we're talking about events here.
|
| There have been six of them in the last 140 years with
| respect to influenza. The Spanish Flu pandemic killed
| 675k (in the USA, like 50 mil worldwide or something wild
| like that.)
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Any other event in _US_ history.
|
| If you're so sure, name one.
|
| Civil war was less than a million, by the way.
| hnuser847 wrote:
| It wasn't. Heart disease and cancer kill far more people
| on an annual basis and nobody bats an eye. According to
| the CDC, these were the top 10 causes of death in
| 2020[1]:
|
| * Heart disease: 696,962
|
| * Cancer: 602,350
|
| * COVID-19: 350,831
|
| * Accidents (unintentional injuries): 200,955
|
| * Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 160,264
|
| * Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 152,657
|
| * Alzheimer's disease: 134,242
|
| * Diabetes: 102,188
|
| * Influenza and Pneumonia: 53,544
|
| * Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 52,547
|
| [1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm
| kingsloi wrote:
| all are lower than 800,000
| hnuser847 wrote:
| The 800,000 figure spans two years. The above figures are
| for one year (2020).
| triceratops wrote:
| > Heart disease and cancer kill far more people on an
| annual basis and nobody bats an eye
|
| I mean there are massive institutes, companies, and
| laboratories engaged in research on both these topics,
| tons of fund-raising, campaigns to improve diet and
| exercise, shockingly expensive treatments and so on.
| Other than all of that, yes, nobody bats an eye.
| Sparkle-san wrote:
| Children are still susceptible to long-term complications
| from getting covid. Like you said, it's a cost benefit
| decision, but there's real risks associated with children
| getting covid that seem to be going unacknowledged given
| that, unlike rabies, millions are going to be infected with
| covid.
| EricE wrote:
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > Tell this mom that the infinitesimal chance that her
| child would have from COID side affects was worth it for
| the problems she is now facing
|
| That's an _awful_ way to analyze risk.
|
| If you have a one in a million risk of something, and you
| trade it for a different but nearly-identical one in a
| million risk for the same thing, and then get the bad
| outcome, you did not make the wrong choice. Let alone if
| you traded for a lower risk.
|
| Every step you take, you trade out trillions of potential
| futures. You are always, always creating new risks and
| destroying old risks. A decision like getting vaccinated
| is easy to point at and say "oh I shouldn't have done it"
| but you could just as realistically say "if I hadn't
| eaten tuna seven weeks ago these problems wouldn't have
| happened".
|
| You do _not_ get to compare the outcome of a specific
| case, only knowable in hindsight, with the
| "infinitesimal risk" of the alternative.
| twofornone wrote:
| The point is that people need to stop presuming that
| these vaccines are without risks of their own. This is
| proven false and the true risk is still uncertain.
| Officials are only recently acknowledging for example
| that vaccines can influence monthly cycles - that was
| just a cooky conspiracy a few months ago.
|
| Data collection regarding adverse events was laughably
| inadequate based on testimony over Pfizer's clinical
| trial protocol, and their data is still not available for
| review by anyone other than the FDA, which is known to
| suffer from regulatory capture. Rosy claims about the
| vaccines have been repeatedly walked back...the safety of
| these vaccines is likely overstated.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > The point is that people need to stop presuming that
| these vaccines are without risks of their own.
|
| That's _a_ good point, but it 's not the point being made
| when someone links to a side effect report and implies it
| was wrong to get vaccinated, as if vaccines need to meet
| an impossible 0-side-effect standard.
| kingsloi wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Health_Defense
| Sparkle-san wrote:
| Yes, that's one end of the cost benefit analysis and on
| the other end the 6,400 cases of MIS-C in children who
| got covid in the US.
|
| https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#mis-national-
| surve...
| EricE wrote:
| Also at this point EVERYONE is going to be infected by
| COVID. It's a highly contagious respiratory virus that's
| not only carried by humans, but animals too. This fantasy
| that all we have to do is vaccinate everyone and we will
| be alright really needs to die.
| Sparkle-san wrote:
| Vaccines are still shown to reduce risk of
| hospitalization and death even with omicron. So, if
| everyone is going to get it, wouldn't you rather be more
| protected when you get it?
| twofornone wrote:
| The risk of hospitalization for children is virtually
| zero. The risk of hospitalization for healthy people
| under 50 is miniscule.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| I hear people say that, but is there research backing it
| up? I'm a bit dubious because inevitability is a common
| fall-back position in public affairs, similar to climate
| change deniers saying that climate change is inevitable
| so we just have to learn to adjust. They still get what
| they want, and try to create despair in their opponents.
| pengaru wrote:
| It's gone endemic, the inevitability is on par with the
| common cold; you're almost certainly going to get exposed
| to some variant of it.
|
| Plus AIUI Omicron has demonstrated recombinant
| replication, which means we're playing a flu-like cat and
| mouse game with the vaccines. Nobody in their right mind
| would argue we have any hope of effectively vaccinating
| everyone against influenza.
| benmmurphy wrote:
| it's worth the OP trying to find data on how much risk covid
| presents to their children and what the risks of the vaccine
| are. the UK has this risk calculator for COVID in adults:
| https://qcovid.org/ . I'm not sure if there is anything
| similar for children. probably, the risk of the vaccine or
| covid is so low for children it doesn't really matter what
| you do.
| sfteus wrote:
| I can't find much besides models for < 16 unfortunately.
|
| However, for 16-40, Patone, et al[1] estimates that myocarditis
| incidence is around 2/mil for AstraZeneca, 1/mil for Pfizer per
| does, and 6/mil for Moderna first dose, 10/mil for the second,
| compared to 40/mil for an active infection.
|
| Singer, el al[2] (pre-print) states that males < 20 are roughly
| 6x less likely to develop myocarditis from vaccination compared
| to an infection.
|
| The AMA[3] also has some info on both myocarditis and MIS-C.
| 95% of those who developed MIS-C were unvaccinated, and up to
| 40% required some sort of respiratory or cardiovascular life
| support (compare to 0% of those vaccinated). Also states ages
| 12-15 appear less likely to develop myocarditis than the 16 -
| ~40 range.
|
| Everything I've read so far is that myocarditis from
| vaccination usually resolves fairly quickly.
|
| -----
|
| [1]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01630-0.pdf
|
| [2]:
| https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.23.21260998v...
|
| [3]: https://www.ama-assn.org/delivering-care/population-
| care/unv...
| jamesblonde wrote:
| Myocarditis is extremely serious and potentially life-long.
| Please don't downplay it. I have a cardiomyopathy.
| sfteus wrote:
| I'm saying this as someone who lost a family member to a
| combination of myocarditis and endocarditis resulting from
| a flu infection: I'm not attempting to downplay it.
| Myocarditis has the potential to be extremely serious,
| especially for those with pre-existing heart problems.
|
| However, _in my opinion_ with how infectious omicron is, it
| is likely inevitable that everyone will eventually be
| exposed. The literature (linked in my GP) currently seems
| to indicate that vaccines have a lower risk of myocarditis
| than an active SARS-CoV-2 infection. Most literature that
| I've seen (so far) indicates that occurrences of post-
| vaccination myocarditis tends to be rare, and not life-
| threatening, and the patients tend to recover quickly.[1]
|
| -----
|
| [1]: https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA
| .121.0...
| jamesblonde wrote:
| We read different literature:
|
| https://vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/p/uk-now-reports-
| myoca...
|
| based on this Nature paper
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01630-0.pdf
|
| "Yes, sorry to break it to you, vaccines can have risks
| of myocarditis EXCEEDING risks of myocarditis from
| infection. Pls stop saying otherwise."
| ALittleLight wrote:
| Do these papers differentiate infection with and without
| vaccination? Meaning, if an unvaxxed person has X myocarditis
| risk from the vaccine, and Y from infection, what is the
| myocarditis risk of infection after vaccination?
| sfteus wrote:
| I haven't seen anything comparing the two yet, but I would
| be interested in seeing that.
|
| I'll note that in general, I have seen studies indicating
| that the risk of both MIS-C (linked in GP) and long-
| covid[1][2] are decreased when comparing
| vaccinated/unvaccinated post active infection. I've also
| seen reports that those unvaccinated who experience long-
| covid sometimes see reduced / cleared symptoms after
| subsequent vaccination.[3] We also know that antibody titer
| levels seem to be correlated with a reduction in infection,
| which is why when those begin to fall off we see more
| breakthrough infections. And finally we know that building
| long term T and B cells tends to see a quicker, more
| effective immune response, both of which should be created
| post-vaccination.
|
| Given that, I would speculate that vaccination is likely to
| reduce overall proliferation of cell infection (including
| directly infecting cardiac tissue via the ACE2 receptors)
| via having more free-floating antibodies in your system,
| and is likely to reduce the overall immune-mediated
| inflammatory response to the virus as it can respond more
| quickly before the virus has had a chance to proliferate as
| much. Both of these (reduced inflammation, reduced cell
| infection) should reduce the risk of myocarditis as a
| result of infection. And I would speculate that that tracks
| with other observed reduction of symptoms of infection
| (MIS-C, long-covid).
|
| Again, speculation on my part; I would definitely want to
| see studies to confirm or refute that.
|
| -----
|
| [1]: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS
| 1473-3...
|
| [2]: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.05.222
| 68800v...
|
| [3]: https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/vaccines-long-covid
| neuronic wrote:
| Just one more point as food for thought:
|
| One more thing to consider is that the virus is _also_ able to
| cause myocarditis, especially if you don 't rest long enough
| _even if feeling fine_. In fact, the virus can potentially
| cause additional complications even with mild symptoms. There
| are also things we don 't really understand yet with post-viral
| syndromes which affects many people (disclaimer: Epstein-Barr /
| Mono messed me up, personally).
|
| This isn't unique to SARS-CoV-2 either, it's a more general
| viral infection thing and can happen just as well with
| influenza. With Omicron, it's also very likely that people will
| get it sooner or later - vaccinated or not.
|
| Granted, most myocarditis goes unnoticed and recovers very well
| with a bit of rest.
| thurn wrote:
| The overwhelming conclusion I've drawn from this pandemic is
| that it's ultimately about people's level of trust in their own
| ability to analyze data vs trust in authority figures. There
| have been so many examples of 'vaccines cause harm!' articles
| that fundamentally misunderstand basic statistical concepts
| like selection bias or simpson's paradox (see the covid-
| datascience.com blog for lots more of these).
|
| Is your prior on 'I will not make a significant analytic error'
| higher than 'the FDA analyzed the available data correctly'?
| rimliu wrote:
| Look where big bosses from FDA ended up.
| kenjackson wrote:
| And your trust in the government. If your prior on the
| government is that they aren't to be trusted then it doesn't
| matter how good of a job the FDB did in analyzing the data --
| you aren't going to believe what they release to the public.
|
| I think this is the bigger issue. Most people I know who say,
| "I'll do my own research" are the same people who asked me
| what kind of computer to buy. And they know a lot more about
| technology than medicine. But its they don't trust the
| government.
| steveylang wrote:
| In reality, few people have the time or want to make the
| effort to comb through and analyze original sources. So most
| of us rely to varying extent on who we trust and consider to
| have accurate opinions or assessments.
|
| One huge problem with COVID has been the emergence of
| essentially propaganda pieces masquerading as detailed,
| rigorous analysis. These give people a false sense of
| confidence- "Hey I've done my research!" when in reality you
| can google for 20 minutes and come up with impressive looking
| links for whatever view you are already predisposed to
| believe.
|
| I'm sure these existed before, but COVID has taken things to
| another level.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > few people have the time or want to make the effort to
| comb through and analyze original sources
|
| And they lack the expertise regardless, and they can't gain
| the expertise without schooling and professional
| experience. We are dependant on others, whether we like it
| or not.
|
| > the emergence of essentially propaganda pieces
| masquerading as detailed, rigorous analysis
|
| > I'm sure these existed before, but COVID has taken things
| to another level.
|
| I don't know that it's another level. The long, incredibly
| detailed dives into one issue or another have been around
| for decades.
|
| This is essentially what I expected when the pandemic
| started. We created a monster of misinformation and
| disinformation, the 'post-truth' society; the consequences
| are obviously and completely predictable.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > , few people have the time or want to make the effort to
| comb through and analyze original sources.
|
| I mean, unless it's your profession, you're not. At best,
| you're reading an article (with summarized data that you
| hope was aggregated correctly) in a journal. To the best of
| my knowledge, the raw datasets that those are based on are
| rarely shared.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Impressive looking indeed...
|
| https://hcqmeta.com/
|
| (I really wonder at the effort spent on this...)
| bradlys wrote:
| > I'm sure these existed before, but COVID has taken things
| to another level.
|
| Similar as to the other posted said - this type of fiction
| writing has existed before COVID. It's just that _now_ you
| 're all reading the same statistical fiction.
|
| Essentially - one genre of statistical fiction got popular.
| Whereas before everyone was reading different genres.
| EricE wrote:
| sfteus wrote:
| Important to note that Children's Health Defense is a highly
| suspect organization. Rated "conspiracy-pseudoscience"[1],
| described as "one of the main sources of misinformation on
| vaccines"[2], with numerous articles describing their fake
| health posts on social media[3][4] and shady
| leadership[5][6].
|
| Not saying everything from that site should be discarded, but
| should definitely be taken with a grain of salt.
|
| -----
|
| [1]: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/childrens-health-defense/
|
| [2]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Health_Defense
|
| [3]: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/social-media-
| hosted-lot...
|
| [4]:
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2019/11/15/majority-
| an...
|
| [5]: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-robert-f-
| kenn...
|
| [6]: https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/covid-19-health-
| pseudoscie...
| angryasian wrote:
| your kids will be fine either way, but they are far more likely
| to catch and spread without being vaccinated.
| wth4h wrote:
| woeirua wrote:
| There's a nice doctoral dissertation sitting out there for
| someone to demonstrate that cross-reactive T-cells mostly explain
| why some people get sick with Covid and others don't. Even better
| if they can point to a specific virus (most likely spread among
| children) that elicits that response.
| wth4h wrote:
| dopylitty wrote:
| This is a really good article on the immune system.
|
| One thing I can't help but notice though is that it only barely
| skirts the fact that essentially no viral vaccine prevents
| infection, with the possible exception of the HPV vaccine.
|
| The vast majority of the vaccines we currently use allow
| infection but give the body the ability to quickly respond to and
| end the infection before it leads to severe disease (eg paralysis
| in Polio or B-cell destruction in Measles). For slowly developing
| viruses you may see no symptoms at all because the body is able
| to clear the infection but for viruses like flu and Sars-CoV-2
| that attack the respiratory system it's much more difficult to
| prevent symptomatic disease.
|
| Somehow there's this idea that the Sars-CoV-2 vaccines need to
| prevent infection or symptomatic disease but that is an
| incredibly high bar that no respiratory viral vaccine has ever
| met.
|
| The benefit of the vaccines is that they greatly reduce severe
| disease, almost eliminate death, and shorten the amount of time
| the virus has to reproduce so transmission and variant generation
| are also reduced.
| dbroockman wrote:
| This is a rewriting of history. Before we ever had results from
| the COVID vaccine trials, the FDA declared that the primary
| goal of the trials was to prevent any symptomatic infection in
| the first place. From June 2020:
| https://www.fda.gov/media/139638/download.
| standardUser wrote:
| Sure, and Viagra was developed to treat hypertension. The
| fact that efficacy data changes with the completion of new
| studies or advent of new strains should be viewed as normal,
| not as a surprise or some kind of bait and switch.
| notahacker wrote:
| I'm not sure linking to a document with phrases like "As it
| is possible that a COVID-19 vaccine might be much more
| effective in preventing severe versus mild COVID-19" _really_
| proves that it 's "rewriting history" to suggest that
| preventing all infections or symptomats of a respiratory
| diseases is an very high bar to set, or that the medical
| profession hasn't been cognizant of that from the start...
| lamontcg wrote:
| > This is a really good article on the immune system.
|
| I still don't particularly like it that much.
|
| None of this should be all that new.
|
| There were plenty of knowledgeable people saying all along that
| sterilizing nutralizing immunity in the mucosa was unlikely to
| be achievable for a vaccine against a respiratory virus that
| most commonly had no viremic phase, particularly as a shot
| given in the arm.
|
| They were also saying that T-cells were the important thing to
| prevent disease and death and we shouldn't be focusing on
| preventing infection.
|
| Some other people who debated or disagreed with that
| perspective are now suddenly learning novel new things about
| the immune system. There's a good chunk of experts out there
| that were saying this all along though (if you were listening
| to them and not the headlines and blogs and twitter).
| mrjangles wrote:
| It was just common sense. Flu vaccines have never been much
| more than 50% effective. The idea that you can just vaccinate
| against such a hugely virulent virus like COVID, and expect
| it to stop spreading with such ineffectual vaccines just made
| no mathematical sense what so ever.
|
| If people didn't understand that it is because they didn't
| want to.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > If people didn't understand that it is because they
| didn't want to.
|
| "Listen to the experts". The experts never said any of
| that. Nor did the media. Critical thinking has been shunned
| the last two years. I mean you can think critically but
| lord help you if you say what you think online or in
| person. It's the in person bullying that is the worst, by
| the way.
| [deleted]
| xupybd wrote:
| It's new to me. Sometimes it's nice to have an article rehash
| old knowledge and bring it into the current context. If for
| nothing other than to educate the ignorant like me.
| lamontcg wrote:
| But the way it is written sounds like nobody on Planet
| Earth could have possibly predicted this and that the way
| B-cells and T-cells work is completely novel discoveries in
| 2022.
|
| There were people saying this is roughly would happen in
| mid-2020.
|
| Tony Fauci was saying he'd be happy if the VE against
| disease was only 50% in Fall 2020. He was trying to set
| expectations to about where we are right now.
|
| It gives the wrong impression to people who don't know
| anything about it and it undermines the vaccine messaging
| strategy. There's a stronger message that virologists and
| epidemiologists who were specialists in this kind of thing
| were grounded mostly in reality all along and THIS WAS THE
| PLAN AND THE PLAN IS WORKING. By claiming that we're
| radically learning new things it sounds like the whole
| thing was a clusterfuck. Getting a vaccine with around 50%
| efficacy against disease and 90% efficacy against
| hospitalization was always the winning strategy. We were
| just supposed to hit 80%-90% vaccination rates at least and
| the low vaccination rates are meaning that the Omicron wave
| was more of a burden on hospitals than it ever needed to
| be.
|
| What went wrong is that the vaccine trials were cut short.
| People who complain about that usually try to argue we cut
| short the "long term safety" outcome, which is nonsense
| because vaccine side effects are autoimmune conditions that
| either start turning up in a population 3 months after
| dosing or they don't. What we actually cut short was the
| _durability_ outcomes of the trials since that was the
| thing that would have taken 2 years and we didn't have the
| time. Turns out the headline 90% VE against infection
| numbers weren't durable but the damage was done once they
| made the initial headline splash and everyone entirely
| forgot that Fauci was setting expectations down around 50%
| beforehand. Then they felt they were lied to. Now they feel
| like the vaccine program was a failure.
|
| We're now back on track to the original plan, and its
| viewed as being a failure because the phase III results
| jacked the expectations up to the mRNA vaccines being
| magicsauce that would instantly end the whole pandemic.
| This article is still selling it like this is sort of Plan
| B in response to information that we could never have
| anticipated. Instead we're back on what was Plan A all
| along after the hypecycle got blown away by waning immunity
| and Delta and Omicron.
| raphlinus wrote:
| Really well said, thank you.
|
| I think the lesson here is that one shouldn't listen
| either to antivax grifters _or_ to greedy pharma execs
| who oversell their products because of the enormous
| incentive to do so, whether it be vaccines or Alzheimers
| treatments. The best approach is to listen to what real
| scientists who actually understand the subject say, but
| that does take patience and a willingness to invest time.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > By claiming that we're radically learning new things it
| sounds like the whole thing was a clusterfuck
|
| Dr. Fauci and all the other anointed "experts" were
| constantly saying "there is so much to still learn about
| this virus". They still do when asked questions they
| don't want to really answer.
|
| They've been acting like COVID was some mysterious brand
| new virus that required us to abandon every single thing
| we knew about epidemiology. They are somewhat responsible
| for this insanity.
| jerry1979 wrote:
| > we shouldn't be focusing on preventing infection.
|
| I'm confused by what you mean. I have read headlines that say
| mRNA vaccines reduce the risk of infection by 91%, but it
| seems like you have more nuanced information from
| knowledgeable people. So, who should I look to to get the
| "real" information about what to expect from vaccines and
| public health?
|
| [0] https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/p0607-mrna-
| reduce-ri...
| Vrondi wrote:
| You are quite right, but the media, the government, and many
| public health agencies have been ignoring this, focusing
| solely on antibody levels, and trying to keep them constantly
| high through ever more panicky calls for more and more
| boosters. For everyone, regardless of prior infection.
| YZF wrote:
| Israel was one of the first place to boost (the first?) and
| I think the rationale there was _not_ just about antibody
| levels. There were multiple factors. The emergence of Delta
| which to some extent bypassed the previous two vaccine
| doses. The decline in protection against severe disease
| over time (and specifically against delta). And yes, even
| temporary control of the community spread (which is maybe
| the more questionable aspect) to allow the country to
| remain more or less open while keeping hospital load and
| deaths under control.
|
| In Israel I also believe there is different policy for
| people that have been infected. This varies from place to
| place. Determining whether someone was or wasn't previous
| infected isn't that simple. You can do it if you have good
| contract tracing, testing, and more centralized health
| services like Israel does. Also many places didn't have a
| large enough portion of the population get infected in the
| first place so maybe not worth worrying too much about.
| kurthr wrote:
| This is for two reasons:
|
| One, measuring antibodies is MUCH easier than measuring T
| or B cell response. This is especially true early on in the
| pandemic, if you want to measure representative numbers of
| people, and you don't know when/whether they will be
| exposed or catch COVID (due to masking/lockdowns etc).
|
| Two, when your problem is that the hospitals are filling up
| and you're facing a labor shortage for some essential
| workers for a a few months... then boosting antibodies for
| 4-6 months to reduce retransmission rates and minimizing
| symptomatic cases makes a lot of sense.
| nradov wrote:
| That was never a valid reason. They were just making
| things up without following evidence-based medicine
| practices.
|
| https://peterattiamd.com/covid-19-current-state-omicron/
| kurthr wrote:
| I don't understand who your "they" is. In my opinion
| there were valid reasons for both decisions on antibodies
| and boosters. Since I know one of the people in your
| linked podcast, I will not comment on it.
| nradov wrote:
| No that's simply wrong. Antibodies are relatively
| unimportant and levels decline quickly. What actually
| matters far more is cellular immunity. Fortunately the
| vaccines and recovery from infection have both been shown
| to produce a significant level of durable cellular
| immunity in the vast majority of patients.
|
| Who do you personally know in the linked podcast? What
| are your medical qualifications?
|
| https://peterattiamd.com/covid-part2/
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| Feel like that's a bit of a rude question to ask.
| headsoup wrote:
| Not really, when you look at where things ended up
| anyway, aside the issues with pumping up antibodies
| continuously.
|
| Another case of going for short term efficiency wins over
| doing things properly, but not so easily.
| eecc wrote:
| So it's another case of KPI overfitting? Goodhart's law?
| lamontcg wrote:
| A booster has a solid immunological basis.
|
| The process of hypermutation and affinity maturation
| takes months to finish. The initial immune response to a
| pathogen is poor and takes ng/ml of antibodies to
| neutralize the threat. The immune system essentially has
| a "budget" for antibodies and the early antibodies are
| poor and take up too much of that. Affinity maturation
| produces higher affinity antibodies that are effective at
| pg/ml but it takes months. But you can now "fit" many
| more kinds of antibodies into the bloodstream.
|
| Hitting the mature immune response with a booster
| releases those high potency antibodies from germinal
| centers.
|
| This is why nearly every single vaccine we give kids
| comes in a series of 2 or 3 shots spaced out over 6+
| months.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/schedules/hcp/imz/child-
| adolesc...
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/schedules/hcp/imz/adult.html
|
| Very few of those are one-and-done shots.
|
| The initial mRNA shots were way too close together and
| were done that way out of expediency since the second
| shot gave a lot better protection very quickly. It also
| allowed the trials to complete faster and probably saved
| 100,000s of lives. It was basically a "wartime" decision
| to slam shots into arms way too fast.
|
| The increased affinity against Omicron after a booster is
| also something that shouldn't have been a surprise.
|
| The utility of 4th shot boosters in non-elderly non-
| immunocompromised and chasing after the idea of reducing
| spread through infection is on a lot less firm footing.
| Even the booster-obsessed Israelis are finding in studies
| that it doesn't do much good. This coronavirus also is
| currently mutating too rapidly and infection too many
| people in each wave to be able to logistically update the
| vaccines for new variants, so it doesn't look very useful
| to be thinking of it analogously to the yearly influenza
| shots.
| kurthr wrote:
| I agree with most all of that, and that it was largely
| unsurprising. When the mRNA shots were developed there
| was a tradeoff to be made (and BNT/Mod chose slightly
| different paths) on both amount of RNA and dosing
| schedule to minimize side effects while rapidly providing
| strong immunity (we're also lucky JJ and they all chose a
| stabilized prefusion Spike unlike ChAdOx etc). Boosters
| for T and B response in particular are common, but orders
| of magnitude higher antibodies are quite likely to help
| minimize Omicron effects (especially for first responders
| who received early Pfizer doses) and do appear to cause
| significant reductions in infection/symptomatic cases.[1]
| I would not have slowed down the testing or EUA, although
| manufacture was an issue early on. We didn't know when/if
| a significantly immune evading variant would arrive, and
| I feel fairly lucky with when Omicron arrived (after many
| of the most susceptible could be vaccinated). If it had
| arrived 8 months earlier, it would have been
| catastrophic.
|
| I also feel that the WHO choices have not been very good.
| From down playing human transmission early in the
| pandemic to demanding that there not be boosters in order
| to speed up the multi-year process of vaccinating
| 4billion people by 40million doses, when Omicron was
| already spreading quickly. Honestly, prioritization in
| the developing world is more important. They seem more
| political than other sources.
|
| [1]
| https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2788105
| f6v wrote:
| Because some times you have to make a call. Some studies
| are now revealing that booster shots might be less
| effective in those who recovered (watched a guy present his
| unpublished data the other day). But it's not that obvious.
| ssl232 wrote:
| > There were plenty of knowledgeable people saying all along
| that sterilizing nutralizing immunity in the mucosa was
| unlikely to be achievable for a vaccine against a respiratory
| virus that most commonly had no viremic phase, particularly
| as a shot given in the arm.
|
| You are absolutely right, this has been my experience too.
| Pointing out what you did about (lack of) sterilising and
| (importance of) mucosal immunity usually got you downvoted
| here up until recently. It doesn't matter what your political
| persuasion is (I am, or at least I was, going into the
| pandemic, a left liberal), the idea that the vaccines would
| end the pandemic if only enough people got 1, 2, 3 or more
| doses was gaslighting from the beginning, probably arising
| from flippant remarks from politicians when asked for target
| dates to lift lockdown restrictions - "when X% are
| vaccinated!". And the idea that this was _never_ what was
| being said about them this time last year is also gaslighting
| that 's happening right now.
|
| The problem is that this is a very nuanced subject. Everyone
| thinks they know what's going on, because they've been told
| it's simple: get vaccinated/boosted, work from home and do as
| we say and this will all be over. Much of the data being used
| to justify this was one or more of badly collected, badly
| analysed or badly interpreted by dishonest politicians,
| journalists, scientists and members of the public pushing
| their own (or their bosses') agendas. Instead of opponents'
| arguments being heard and countered in public ("sunlight is
| the best disinfectant"), they have been deplatformed under
| the auspices of "public safety". Scientists have lost their
| jobs for saying something to counter the narrative - it has
| become illegal to disagree with the scientists the
| politicians listen to, under punishment of losing your
| livelihood. It has been a total shitshow that has exposed how
| corrupt the whole system is. It has made me quite depressed
| at how little we've apparently learned since the last
| century. I thought we were living in the age of science, but
| what we have right now is far, far from it; maybe we should
| call it the age of misinformation - driven by humans'
| psychological maladaptation to their own incredible
| invention, the internet.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Couldn't have said it better. When I had multiple smart
| people I knew in real life yelling what amounts to word
| salad at me about how I'm so misguided and horrible for
| asking basic questions about the data... ...that is when I
| knew this whole thing was gonna last a long time and
| devolve into a complete shitshow. If people were allowed to
| express critical opinions and the general public was made
| aware of the _actual_ numbers regarding covid risk we would
| have never done any of the things we did over the last two
| years.
|
| These anointed "experts" _still_ have not told people to
| chill the fuck out about covid and children. We have two
| years of publicly available data saying they are at
| virtually no risk. Yet the CDC and Fauci both act like
| covid is some kind of grave danger to children.
|
| Dig deep enough into most of the pro-"what we've done"'s
| arguments and they are nothing more than thinly disguised
| appeals to authority.
| jacquesm wrote:
| The comment you think you are agreeing with is one that
| you are not agreeing with or one that you don't seem to
| understand.
| ssl232 wrote:
| I find peoples' reactions to this to not be a new
| phenomenon, but I do have the pandemic to thank for
| making me far better at identifying such personalities
| and not letting myself judge the person having them. In
| my experience it's pretty rare to find someone capable of
| removing emotion from an argument. Perhaps 5% of people I
| know are capable of this. The other 95%, given enough
| debate, put you in their idiot or "basically Hitler" box
| and cease to listen to or respect anything you say. This
| makes me very sad, because we've got other huge
| challenges needing faced as a species and I can see the
| same crazy nonsense we've seen with COVID happening for
| all of those too. Before we can begin to fix real issues
| facing civilisation, we're going to have to fix our
| ability to tolerate and debate arguments we disagree
| with.
|
| One thought I had recently is how up and downvotes on
| sites like HN must contribute to tunnel vision in
| debates. I know I have self-censored in the past knowing
| that something I would say would get downvoted into
| oblivion, and I've posted stuff that hasn't been very
| constructive but that I've known would be a crowd
| pleaser. This surely creates echo chambres resembling the
| opinions of the loudest in the community. Old vBulletin-
| style forums before likes and up/downvotes were a thing,
| where all you could do was quote-reply (and one-word "+1"
| and "disagree" replies were brutally deleted by zealous
| moderators), were perhaps in hindsight the closest to
| optimal we ever reached in the realm of textual online
| debates. What a sorry state of affairs.
| altcognito wrote:
| I've never taken the argument to be that children are at
| grave risk. I think Fauci even said that the risk is
| minimal in particular with vaccines. "The with vaccines"
| will rub some folks the wrong way but the point remains:
| it's about potential transmissions, asymptomatic
| transmissions at that. They so rarely even show symptoms
| that some are convinced that kids aren't infectious but
| that's the same nonsense we have today where people think
| they aren't infectious because they got the vaccine. Add
| in tight conditions at schools and parents willing to
| send their kids to school sick, and it's not ideal.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| So what if kids transmit? Everybody age five and up can
| walk in and get a vaccine. Who are we protecting?
| Transmission doesn't matter in a post vaccine world.
|
| Besides, asking kids to sacrifice their one and only
| childhood to protect fully vaccinated adults who are
| still afraid is a horrific public policy. Kids should
| never be asked to sacrifice for adults. That just isn't
| how things work.
| qsdf38100 wrote:
| I don't get it, there was some hope that vaccines could
| end the pandemic. They didn't. But they still help, at
| least by making people much less likely to die. Is there
| something to be mad at? Hell, even if they ended up not
| helping much, I wouldn't be mad at governments for
| trying. I must be missing something.
| peteradio wrote:
| Nobodies pissed at the government for making vaccines
| available, they are pissed that they are having their
| livelihoods threatened based on false premises.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Doesn't matter if the pandemic ended or not. Society (or
| at least the politicians) _chose_ to regress. The virus
| is a virus. It doesn 't tell us how to react to it. We
| do.
|
| Many states didn't regress during delta. They kept calm
| and carried on with normal. Only some states decided to
| regress. And the outcomes are almost identical--in the
| same ballpark at least.
| altcognito wrote:
| I'm always amused by mask mandates as regressing and
| "doing nothing for public health" as keeping calm.
| asveikau wrote:
| What's more, before omicron it was a pretty reasonable
| position to conclude vaccinations were ending the
| pandemic. By that I mean... That is a very reasonable
| position to hold only 3 months ago.
|
| And I still think the vaccines are substantially
| accelerating the end. So I'm not even sure what the
| complaint is. That it isn't the only factor? Sure, but
| it's a huge one, and one of few that we can control.
| ssl232 wrote:
| > What's more, before omicron it was a pretty reasonable
| position to conclude vaccinations were ending the
| pandemic.
|
| I've not seen a convincing argument against simply
| looking at excess deaths. This avoids all of the problems
| around classifcations of deaths with/from COVID,
| vaccination statuses, etc. It's much harder to disguise
| deaths or lack of deaths. EuroMOMO [1; scroll 60% down to
| the z-scores] shows excess deaths in Europe basically
| went back to normal in most countries after the European
| wave in spring 2020, long before vaccines were available.
| This was the case despite widely varying levels of
| lockdown stringency - with at least one country, Sweden,
| not doing any significant locking down at all. And many
| countries' peaks at this time were, if you scroll back in
| time, comparable in magnitude to excess deaths during
| previous winters. If you draw a line in your mind down
| the various countries' graphs at early 2021 when
| significant fractions of the populations of these
| countries were starting to get vaccinated, you will
| probably struggle to determine that they've had any real
| positive effect at all. Once you do that, consider an
| alternative hypothesis could better describe the data,
| for example that the virus is highly seasonal and we have
| very little control over it. Now, a bonus: change the age
| group from "all ages" to younger cohorts and observe that
| in many countries excess deaths did not shift from
| resembling noise during the entirely of the past 2 years.
| There are even some countries, not known for being
| paragons of good health such as Scotland, that barely saw
| any out of the ordinary excess deaths in the young during
| the whole period. I think people seem to think things are
| far worse than they actually are in most countries
| because of the panic created by media and politicians.
| This is why I am very unconvinced by the argument that
| vaccines have been helping to end the pandemic, at very
| least amongst most of those who have been locked down. It
| seems much more reasonable to me that other factors are
| at play here.
|
| [1] https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps
| lamontcg wrote:
| > they've been told it's simple: get vaccinated/boosted
|
| It is that simple.
|
| 90% of the people in the hospitals are unvaccinated still.
|
| Cut the unvaccinated fraction of the population down by 1/3
| and you cut the hospitalization rate for the next wave by
| roughly 1/3.
|
| Instead people are doing T-cells/B-cells and affinity
| maturation the hard slow way.
|
| If we had a 100% vaccination rate we'd be done.
|
| Don't know why everyone so desperately needs to look for
| counterintuitive ways to approach the very simple problem
| that when there's a global pandemic you mitigate it with
| vaccination. Any other result is intellectuals thinking too
| hard to try to impress themselves and probably missing
| basic facts in the process.
| oreilles wrote:
| In France, between January 1st and 16th, vaccinated
| people accounted for 60% of the new hospitalizations. We,
| like most of Europe, have 90+% of adult population fully
| vaccinated, and are nowhere near "being done".
| xienze wrote:
| > If we had a 100% vaccination rate we'd be done.
|
| For a vaccine that doesn't confer sterilizing immunity
| and whose effectiveness wanes rather quickly? To say
| nothing of variants or the fact that this virus has
| animal reservoirs. Or the impossibility of vaccinating
| 100% of a population in the first place, nevermind in
| perpetuity.
|
| "Ending it" was always a pipe dream.
| peteradio wrote:
| > 90% of the people in the hospitals are unvaccinated
| still.
|
| Where is this true?
| jacquesm wrote:
| > I am, or at least I was, going into the pandemic, a left
| liberal
|
| What's that got to do with it?
| superkuh wrote:
| >an incredibly high bar that no respiratory viral vaccine has
| ever met.
|
| An incredibly high bar that no _intramuscular_ (humoral)
| respiratory viral vaccine has met. Mostly because injecting
| into the muscle does not lead to tissue resident immune cells
| in the upper respiratory mucosa because it 's a separate immune
| compartment from the body serum. But there are options like
| intranasal boosters after intramuscular vaccination that can
| prevent infection and _do_ significantly reduce shedding and
| spread.
|
| And it's been driving me crazy the entire pandemic that
| intranasal spray vaccine boosters are not being heavily funded
| and persued. It would save the world so many lives, time, and
| incalculable money.
| qzw wrote:
| Any idea (or sources) why they are not being pursued? And why
| are flu vaccines not commonly given as intranasal spray?
| ak217 wrote:
| They are being pursued, just not given the same resources
| as the emergency effort to get the original vaccines
| approved:
|
| -
| https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.24.477597v1
|
| - https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abg9857
| inglor_cz wrote:
| I think there is some concern of intranasally applied
| substances getting into the brain.
|
| Even plain water infested with certain amoebas can give you
| a fatal brain disease if you use it for nasal irrigation.
| It is perfectly safe for drinking, though.
|
| https://www.healthywa.wa.gov.au/Articles/N_R/Nasal-
| irrigatio...
|
| We do not have that amoeba here, but I still boil the water
| and cool it down before using it to flush my nose. (Works
| great against mild common colds.) One of the worst
| outbreaks in the world actually happened in Czechoslovakia
| 60 years ago - 16 people died after being infected in a
| public swimming pool.
| maxerickson wrote:
| There's an approved nasal vaccine in the United States
| (FluMist). It's use was not encouraged for a while
| because it didn't vaccinate against H1N1 (recent years
| have included H1N1). It doesn't look to be particularly
| more effective than the shot (marketing focuses on no
| shot, not on it working better; the CDC says the
| effectiveness is similar).
|
| There's multiple candidate intranasal SARS-CoV-2
| vaccines, just none that have concluded trials.
| Jtype wrote:
| So then no other vaccines have led to or provided herd
| immunity?
| gameswithgo wrote:
| It is just a nuanced semantic distinction. You are immune in
| the sense that you never notice the virus (in some cases) or
| have no severe impacts (in others). But you are (never?)
| immune in the sense that you literally never have the virus
| replicate in you at all.
|
| I am reminded of the recent twitter thread posted here by Dan
| Luu about how communicating nuance at scale is impossible.
| rhino369 wrote:
| I would say this distinction is often just a semantics
| argument designed to calm the public. In common usage, it
| means you won't have a significant infection that becomes
| contagious. The vast majority of vaccines are successful at
| preventing that type of infection for a long time. Though
| there are exceptions.
|
| By defining "infection" so broadly it loses all meaning,
| some officials are trying lump to the covid vaccines (which
| are no longer very good at preventing contagious
| infections) with vaccines that prevent contagious infection
| for decades. Obviously, the effectiveness of vaccines is
| nuanced and their effectiveness at preventing contagious
| spread is a spectrum--not a binary.
|
| Public health officials should just be straight with us.
| The vaccines aren't as good as some of the vaccines we all
| get--like measles--but they do provide a great deal of
| protection. It's still basically a miracle that we got the
| protection we did in about a year after the virus appeared.
| It's a huge success.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| I thought a big part of the tragedy of the measles vaccine
| rates dropping is precisely that we're losing herd
| immunity.
|
| At 95%+ immunised outbreaks ought not occur because herd
| immunity, even for the remaining unvaccinated, whereas at
| the lower levels, outbreaks will likely happen.
|
| Is that not right?
| Retric wrote:
| Herd immunity is a function of transmission not
| individual infection. Faster and stronger immune
| responses reduce the number of viruses produced inside
| someone over an infection. That directly means they are
| less likely to infect other people.
|
| Herd immunity is effectively a function of how infections
| something is. 1 case leading to 2 cases on average means
| you need to cut transmission in 50%. 1 case leading to 10
| cases and you need to block 90% of new cases.
|
| Critically this means vaccinated people can still be
| infectious as long as they infect less than 1 person on
| average you can reach herd immunity.
| stonemetal12 wrote:
| That is right. It is just immunity as a term in the
| medical community vs average joe use of the word. Medical
| community immunity means your immune system fights off
| the invaders before anything medically interesting
| happens, not that you have a magical force field that
| prevents entry. Not sure why people are trying to twist
| that into some sort of insidious plot.
|
| If you have the measles vaccine and you get exposed to
| measles, measles will be in your body for a short time in
| low quantities, but your immune system will quickly
| destroy it. That means you are unlikely to pass it on or
| develop symptoms.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| Ok makes sense.
|
| But is that different then to vaccines against bacterial
| diseases? If some bacteria enter my body, surely they
| don't magically disappear either, maybe split a few times
| but eventually die off.
| kaitai wrote:
| Evaluate the statements above with respect to measles or
| polio, as the parent poster points out. It is clear that
| measles and polio vaccines can lead to "herd immunity", while
| preventing severe side effects of these diseases in the
| majority of cases.
|
| The point is there is a range of infection mechanisms for
| viruses (respiratory vs other, for starters) and vaccines
| thus provide benefit at different points in the infection
| process. This leads to heterogeneity in "infection level" and
| symptomaticity in the vaccinated population.
| monocasa wrote:
| If it can't replicate as well in you, you significantly
| reduce the ability for it to spread via you typically. Herd
| immunity fro that perspective is about reducing spread to the
| point that outbreaks don't spread from local groups because
| the R value is low enough, even taking into account the few
| people who can't be immunized.
| pibechorro wrote:
| All true, but this was not what was sold to the general public.
| Had people been informed that the latest vaccines against
| COVID-19 behaved similarly to rhe seasonal shots people get for
| regular flue season, a vast majority of the public would have
| opted out, as they do with the seasonal versions. This was
| further compounded by the aggressive dismissal and censorship
| of natural immunity and preventive care (good diet, exercise,
| vitamins, etc). We are here today because the obvious was
| politicized.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > Had people been informed that the latest vaccines against
| COVID-19 behaved similarly to rhe seasonal shots people get
| for regular flue season, a vast majority of the public would
| have opted out, as they do with the seasonal versions.
|
| We're people informed differently? I don't remember ever
| being under the impression that the COVID vaccine would
| provide immunity forever, or even longer than a year.
|
| Also, incidentally, like 40-50% of American adults get the
| flu vaccine. For people aged 65+ it's like 60-70%. That's
| lower than the rates of COVID vaccinations, but not massively
| lower (especially considering that the choice to get the flu
| vaccine is not utilized as a signal of political group
| membership).
| dpedu wrote:
| https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2021-07-21/ap
| -...
|
| > BIDEN: "You're not going to get COVID if you have these
| vaccinations." -- town hall.
| macd wrote:
| > aggressive dismissal and censorship of natural immunity
|
| The 'natural immunity' argument never makes sense if you
| think about it. You're comparing the chances of a SECOND
| covid infection of an unvaccinated person to a vaccinated
| person's first infection. If you compare vaccinated vs
| unvaccinated people and their chances of their first and
| second covid infections, the vaccinated person wins in both
| cases.
|
| Also, the first infection is the riskiest one. So going
| through the riskiest infection to get immunity for a second,
| less risky infection doesn't really make sense.
|
| If it's about whether someone who had covid already should
| count as being vaccinated, maybe. But that also risks
| incentivizing people catching covid on purpose instead of
| taking the vaccine.
| nradov wrote:
| I would encourage everyone eligible to protect themselves
| by getting vaccinated, but there were millions of people
| who got infected before there were any vaccines available.
| The vast majority of those recovered patients now have
| durable cellular immunity which will usually protect them
| against severe symptoms in subsequent reinfections.
|
| https://peterattiamd.com/covid-part2/
| [deleted]
| lamontcg wrote:
| > All true, but this was not what was sold to the general
| public.
|
| Fauci was prepping everyone for vaccines with a 50% VE
| against infection back in late 2020 before the results of the
| phase 3 trials were produced.
|
| https://nypost.com/2020/08/07/fauci-says-covid-19-vaccine-
| ma...
|
| > "The chances of it being 98 percent effective is not
| great," Fauci, a member of the White House Coronavirus Task
| Force, said at a Q&A with the Brown University School of
| Public Health in Rhode Island, according to CNBC.
|
| > Instead, Fauci said, scientists are hoping for a vaccine
| that is 75 percent effective -- but even a 50 or 60 percent
| success rate would be considered a win.
|
| At the same time though we're still at >90% VE against severe
| disease and hospitalization through the persistence of T-cell
| immunity, but that just doesn't protect against initial
| infection since T-cells take a few days to get going in
| response to an infection. The vaccines can be largely
| credited with most of the "milder" Omicron wave keeping the
| infection-hospitalization-rate much lower.
|
| So who exactly "sold" these ideas about the vaccines to the
| general public? Because it wasn't the leading public health
| expert not the pandemic.
|
| How much did the public hear what it wanted to hear from
| media sources and self-appointed twitter experts?
| brandonmenc wrote:
| Here is Fauci claiming the vaccines would result in herd
| immunity:
|
| > "When polls said only about half of all Americans would
| take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to
| 75 percent," Fauci told the Times. "Then, when newer
| surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought,
| 'I can nudge this up a bit,' so I went to 80, 85."
|
| It sure sounds like he was intentionally feeding us false
| hope.
|
| https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/531611-fauci-herd-
| immu...
| standardUser wrote:
| That was over a year ago, just before the Delta variant
| was discovered. Since Delta became prevalent, there has
| been little talk of herd immunity.
| brandonmenc wrote:
| The quote I posted was contemporaneous with the quote
| from the parent comment, which claims Fauci prepped us
| for 50% VE but he later claimed herd immunity was
| possible which afaik implies far greater than 50% VE.
|
| The parent comment asked "who sold these ideas [that
| vaccines prevent transmission] to the general public?"
| From the quote I posted, it certainly seems like Fauci
| did.
|
| Is there something I'm missing here?
| standardUser wrote:
| From above: "Instead, Fauci said, scientists are hoping
| for a vaccine that is 75 percent effective -- but even a
| 50 or 60 percent success rate would be considered a win."
|
| The number 50 was mentioned in passing, but it doesn't
| sound like he was predicting any specific efficacy
| number, only that it would not be as high as the rosy
| 90%+ that was shown by some data. To me, parsing these
| words is a little nit-picky, since we are talking about a
| 2 year period during which multiple new and unexpected
| strains have become dominant, and vast amounts of new
| clinical data have been published.
| brandonmenc wrote:
| The claim that herd immunity is possible seems to imply
| some base efficacy rate, the actual value of which I
| agree is not important here. (Although maybe it doesn't.
| I really don't know.)
|
| And it's true that the quotes come from early on in the
| pandemic.
|
| However, the claim that it was randos on Twitter and not
| the experts - at any time - who were purveying the idea
| that the Covid vaccines would significantly prevent
| transmission - unlike flu vaccines - is contradicted by
| the quote from Fauci that I posted in response to the
| question: "who sold these ideas to the public?"
| lamontcg wrote:
| Yeah the Delta variant is the only one that has really
| mattered at all.
|
| That was something that literally nobody expected, not
| even epidemiologists or virologists. Goodbye herd
| immunity argument entirely. Everyone catches SARS-CoV-2
| sooner or later.
| jahnu wrote:
| > the aggressive dismissal and censorship of natural immunity
|
| who agressively dismissed this?
| twofornone wrote:
| Your friendly neighborhood fact checkers who suppress
| virtually anything which could justify opposition to
| vaccine mandates. Including news media.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| I angrily dismiss it. It's a nonverifiable bullshit excuse
| to avoid a needle prick. Tests have some error, it's
| unclear if you got a sufficient dose, spaced exposures are
| better, the vaccine has shown better variant resilience,
| choose your reasons. If you haven't gotten a vaccine, I
| don't care if you've had COVID or not. Either way you
| should get a shot.
|
| It might be different if there were any cost to it. But
| there isn't. So invariably the people bitching about
| natural immunity are just doing it to make a point, usually
| political.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > So invariably the people bitching about natural
| immunity are just doing it to make a point, usually
| political.
|
| Bodily autonomy is kind of an important topic, is it not?
| Why should some asshole force me to get an unnecessary
| medical procedure for a common respiratory virus I
| already had in order to work or enter many places of
| business? Why does the government get to force this
| medical procedure on me?
|
| You can't argue for bodily autonomy and simultaneously
| support vaccination passports and things like that. I
| mean you can, but it makes your argument a whole lot
| weaker.
| jahnu wrote:
| I agree people should get the shot. It's so amazingly
| clear that it's effective at helping your immune system
| to fight the virus quicker.
|
| But the CDC did announce that since delta people who
| recovered from an infection have better immune response
| than those who are only vaccinated. I asked the OP to
| clarify because there is false information out there that
| this fact is being suppressed "aggressively" when in fact
| the CDC announced it!
| Vrondi wrote:
| So, not only did you not RTFA (which mentions lasting
| natural immunity up through 450 days so far), you refuse
| to believe any science that isn't suiting your political
| agenda. You should not have the power to require anyone
| to get an unnecessary medical treatment, and neither
| should the government.
|
| https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-
| matters/lasting...
| Vrondi wrote:
| Every single company and policy maker who is requiring
| vaccination without considering prior infection.
| jahnu wrote:
| Rubbish. The CDC advises all policy on this matter in the
| US and they publicly published that infection and
| recovery from Delta and subsequent variants gives a
| stronger immune response than vaccination _alone_.
|
| It's trivial to find this information.
|
| https://duckduckgo.com/?q=cdc+natural+immunity&t=brave&ia
| r=n...
| lamontcg wrote:
| Also many people fail to seroconvert after natural infection:
|
| https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/27/9/21-1042-f2
|
| And the virus contains immune evasion genes like ORF8 which
| evade humoral immunity responses by downregulating MHC-I:
|
| https://www.pnas.org/content/118/23/e2024202118
|
| Nobody in their right mind would produce a vaccine with ORF8
| in it since it defeats the whole purpose of stimulating
| T-cell and B-cell recognition.
|
| There's good reasons why natural immunity has been
| downplayed.
| cloutchaser wrote:
| I think we should thank whatever god that so far it seems we
| didn't end up with a Marek's disease type situation. I don't
| know how much of a guarantee there was about this with covid,
| but if the vaccine would have promoted a much more aggressive
| virus we could have ended up in a situation where any
| unvaccinated human will basically die (this happens in
| chickens, see:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marek%27s_disease).
|
| I sincerely hope the people who devised this vaccine know what
| they are doing. As far as I know (according to a Katalin Kariko
| inteview), the Sars-Cov-2 spike protein can't mutate too much
| without limiting it's effectiveness, so therefore this vaccine
| should theoretically work in the future.
|
| But that Marek's disease issue is very very scary to me.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| > I sincerely hope the people who devised this vaccine know
| what they are doing.
|
| I think we all hope this. I can say that I sincerely believe
| the people who devised the vaccine know a hell of a lot more
| than just about anyone else on the planet.
|
| I don't trust experts in economics or socio-politics, but I
| do trust experts in virology. Not to say their information is
| perfect, but they know so much more than other people in a
| field where expertise is connected to outcomes.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| Well... that was an unsettling read.
|
| > The evolution of Marek's disease due to vaccination has had
| a profound effect on the poultry industry. All chickens
| across the globe are now vaccinated against Marek's disease
| (birds hatched in private flocks for laying or exhibition are
| rarely vaccinated). Highly virulent strains have been
| selected to the point that any chicken that is unvaccinated
| will die if infected.[14] Other leaky vaccines are commonly
| used in agriculture. One vaccine in particular is the vaccine
| for avian influenza. Leaky vaccine use for avian influenza
| can select for virulent strains.[15]
|
| Wonderful. Like H5N1, which has a 60% mortality in humans.
| collegeburner wrote:
| I remember it was discussed months ago on HN when early on
| in vaccines roll out, somebody raised this concern but the
| consensus was the vaccines mostly prevented infection so
| not a big worry -\\_(tsu)_/-
| toolz wrote:
| > Somehow there's this idea that the Sars-CoV-2 vaccines need
| to prevent infection or symptomatic disease
|
| There's a laundry list of public health officials (including
| the CDC director, to give a sense of the authority on this
| list) that said it would prevent infection and transmission. So
| it really shouldn't surprise anyone that there were
| expectations that the vaccine would do what public health
| authorities said it would do.
| jmckib wrote:
| I'm confused. Weren't covid mRNA vaccines very effective at
| preventing infection, even asymptomatic infection, against
| delta and earlier variants? Only with omicron has the
| effectiveness been significantly reduce, but not to zero. And
| once we come up with a variant-specific vaccine, I would expect
| the effectiveness to go up again.
| draw_down wrote:
| nsxwolf wrote:
| Chicken pox vaccine works so well that no one gets a single
| sore.
| rbancroft wrote:
| The bar is being set high for these vaccines because they are
| being pushed and mandated with very exaggerated justification,
| that they will end the pandemic. Rational people will agree
| that there are significant benefits to the vaccine, but I don't
| believe there is any evidence to suggest that these vaccines
| will get us to an end state where the virus is no longer
| circulating.
|
| If you want people to go along with a medical intervention,
| state clearly the expected outcome and don't move the goalposts
| when the data changes. If the data is strong, you most likely
| wouldn't need mandates to convince people.
| wildpeaks wrote:
| Vaccines are like seat belts: they don't prevent car crashes,
| but they help you survive them.
| yetanotherath wrote:
| Good one!
|
| Here's my version for pre-Covid vaccines:
|
| Vaccines are like seat belts: they prevent car crashes.
| cma wrote:
| Flu vaccines were always described as a pretty stochastic
| thing and not a guarantee, though that may have been more
| for uncertainty of which strain ended up dominant.
| dTal wrote:
| yetanotherath wrote:
| headsoup wrote:
| No they're more like airbags. The don't stop the accident
| but they do make it immensely more survivable.
|
| It's amazing how much we've forgotten about how vaccines
| and immunity work over the last couple of years.
| yetanotherath wrote:
| vkou wrote:
| > The bar is being set high for these vaccines because they
| are being pushed and mandated with very exaggerated
| justification, that they will end the pandemic.
|
| At what point does the justification become 'exaggerated'?
|
| Is "This vaccine would have saved the lives of at least half
| a million Americans in the past two years" not a good enough
| justification?
|
| Is "End the pandemic" the _only_ set of goal posts for
| vaccination that you will accept?
|
| Is not, is there a number of corpses that will be an
| acceptable justification? How much higher does it have to
| get? A million? Five? Fifty?
| ineedasername wrote:
| Vaccines have mostly eradicated other viruses. It's at least
| possible we could do the same here if we didn't have such a
| high level of resistance to getting vaccinated.
|
| It was only after (in the US) vaccination rates levelled off
| and Delta came along that I began hearing people talk about
| COVID as endemic.
|
| As for evidence, the continued efficacy of some vaccines
| against variants suggests that, with high levels of adoption,
| it's at least possible that after a few years of periodic
| boosters and targeting emerging strains that we could have
| reached an extremely low level of circulation.
|
| Also why wouldn't you move the goal posts when the data
| changes? You get new data, you reevaluate prior assumptions
| and models, and adjust accordingly. Is there a particular
| instance you're referring to here?
| mzvkxlcvd wrote:
| >It's at least possible we could do the same here if we
| didn't have such a high level of resistance to getting
| vaccinated.
|
| why hasn't the flu been eradicated then?
|
| >It was only after (in the US) vaccination rates levelled
| off and Delta came along that I began hearing people talk
| about COVID as endemic.
|
| that's because most people have no idea what's going on.
| experts were saying this was the likely outcome from the
| begining
| lkbm wrote:
| There are likely numerous reasons, but the flu vaccine
| update was generally around 40% for adults in the US[0].
| COVID is something like 70% and the OP is saying _if we
| got even higher_ it might 've worked. (I suspect the
| bigger issue was getting it distributed _globally_.)
|
| [0] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/fluvaxview/coverage-1920estim
| ates.ht...
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > experts were saying this was the likely outcome from
| the begining
|
| Well only _those other_ experts... the "kooks" and
| "right wing" ones who "care more about the economy than
| lives". The ones that got their reputations destroyed.
|
| The mainstream "experts" who are the ones we are only
| supposed to ever listen to have never really made any of
| this clear. If they did, we wouldn't even be having this
| discussion.
| headsoup wrote:
| Seems we've forgotten all about how viruses work over the
| last couple of years.
|
| Without a vaccine, viruses will still evolve to be less
| virulent and more transmissible, leading to endemic status.
| Within this a large number of the population gain natural
| immunity also reducing spread.
|
| Vaccines, done poorly and too frequently, cause vaccine
| escape where the immune system actually does a worse job
| fighting infection and you get more virus (aside other
| immune system issues). Which is exactly what we're seeing
| now where a lot of places have more hospitalisation and
| death _per capita_ in the vaccinated...two years into the
| pandemic
|
| The most ignorant thing to think at the moment is 'just
| need more jabbing.'
| vkou wrote:
| Incorrect.
|
| Smallpox has been around for thousands of years, and it
| has not evolved to be less virulent.
| somewhereoutth wrote:
| More transmissible (specifically _fitter_ ) but not
| necessarily, or even usually, less virulent. That is just
| an urban myth sadly.
|
| Endemic just means 'regularly found', it does _not_ mean
| mostly harmless!
|
| Vaccine escape refers to a virus evolving to avoid
| vaccine induced immunity - and can happen with infection
| induced immunity too. As it happens T cell immunity
| against severe disease has been holding up just fine -
| and has saved countless lives. If vaccine uptake was
| universal, and we took a few sensible precautions, a
| virus can be completely suppressed, like measles, so
| wouldn't have a chance for escape mutations.
|
| Your per capita statement is plain wrong.
|
| Now you've been taught a few things about viruses, you
| can stop spreading misinformation!
| toolz wrote:
| > Vaccines have mostly eradicated other viruses
|
| No, vaccines have eliminated exactly one human virus,
| smallpox.
| vanattab wrote:
| We have never even come close to eradicating a respiratory
| virus. There is a huge difference between a disease like
| smallpox and covid19
| standardUser wrote:
| A nice summary of human attempts to fully eradicate
| pathogens - a feat we have accomplished precisely two
| (2!) times.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eradication_of_infectious_d
| ise...
| weaksauce wrote:
| we have for all intents and purposes eradicated polio in
| the areas that trust vaccines. it's in basically 2 places
| now because of a few factors but a large one is that the
| taliban doesn't trust them and think it's a sterilizing
| campaign... pakistan, and afganistan.
| omegaworks wrote:
| Don't get it twisted: the CIA disguised its spies as
| polio vaccine administrators[1]. We could have eradicated
| the virus had the medical staff not been weaponized.
|
| 1. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-
| way/2014/05/20/314231260...
| Vrondi wrote:
| When the primary message to the populace is that the
| vaccine will stop the spread, then the vaccines do not stop
| infection, large swathes of the public begin to feel lied
| to.
| f6v wrote:
| Where can I read that message? I don't follow many news
| channels. But I visited CDC website and their primary
| message is that vaccines protect from getting seriously
| ill.
| recursive wrote:
| Part of "serious illness" is being ill for longer. The
| longer you're infected, the more people you're likely to
| infect. How could vaccination _not_ reduce the spread?
| tinus_hn wrote:
| > that they will end the pandemic.
|
| And that they will prevent the appearance of mutated strains.
|
| Or the corollary that the appearance of mutated strains is to
| be blamed on people being unvaccinated, either because they
| don't have vaccines or don't want them.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Where I live, the goalposts are exactly the same as they were
| two years ago: don't let the health care system get
| overwhelmed. I have no idea what your politicians have been
| telling you.
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| >the goalposts are exactly the same as they were two years
| ago
|
| Shouldn't the politicians have made progress on this issue
| over the course of two years? At what point is it
| incompetence or corruption, if the billions being spent to
| fight the pandemic make zero discernable impact on the most
| critical issue?
| standardUser wrote:
| In most of the US life has been back to normal (give or
| take) for a year or more. A lot of people are still
| dying, but they are primarily higher risk individuals who
| have chosen not to get the vaccines that have been free
| and readily available for about a year.
|
| So in terms of goalposts, what exactly is your goal? I'd
| like to see international travel normalize - it's maybe
| one of the few restrictions I still feel is constraining
| me - but there is little my government can do about that.
| thfuran wrote:
| >Shouldn't the politicians have made progress on this
| issue over the course of two years?
|
| What do you mean? Should they should magically cause the
| number of doctors and hospitals to double inside two
| years?
|
| >if the billions being spent to fight the pandemic make
| zero discernable impact on the most critical issue?
|
| What leads you to believe that measures such as pushing
| vaccination haven't been having tremendous impact on that
| issue?
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| >What leads you to believe that measures such as pushing
| vaccination haven't been having tremendous impact on that
| issue?
|
| Do you believe that health care systems are currently
| overwhelmed by COVID?
| sanderjd wrote:
| If the definition of "overwhelmed" is "past the point of
| functioning at all" then no. But if the definition is "at
| the point of functioning with an appreciably lower
| quality of care", then definitely yes in many areas (less
| so now, but more so a month ago).
| edmundsauto wrote:
| In the United States, they are currently paying traveling
| nurses up to $10k per week. That is a 500% increase over
| normal pay. It's so bad that the Texas legislature and
| Congress are trying to limit interstate commerce and
| impose wage caps. These gigs are not hard to come by -
| anyone qualified can easily get them.
|
| If that doesn't say "understaffed and overwhelmed", I'm
| not sure what evidence would.
| eecc wrote:
| You don't seem to have an "elective surgery" planned and
| then cancelled and postponed indefinitely, haven't you.
| Or a biopsy you cannot have for that worrisome mass down
| there... all because your local facilities are at
| capacity trying to keep no-vaxxers alive.
|
| Good for you
| ineedasername wrote:
| Mainly in areas where many people haven't been
| vaccinated. Where I'm at, hospitals are fine.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > Should they should magically cause the number of
| doctors and hospitals to double inside two years?
|
| It's not even magic. It just needs to be done. Find a
| way. There is an emergency. You don't just get to whine
| and complain that it is too hard. Your solution doesn't
| need to be perfect. Far from it, in fact. It just needs
| to patch the issue so we don't need to do restrictions of
| any kind.
|
| Anybody that claims it is impossible to double or even
| quadruple healthcare capacity specifically for covid just
| isn't being creative about it enough. It's not magic. You
| just make it happen. You have almost infinite resources
| to do it even up to and including relaxing licensing laws
| or removing any other political or bureaucratic hurdle.
| ineedasername wrote:
| There's been plenty of progress on the issue of not
| overwhelming the healthcare system. In the areas with
| high vaccination rates. Most hospitalizations are by the
| unvaccinated. In those cases where unvaccinated overwhelm
| the system, that's not the politicians' fault except for
| the ones also spreading anti-vaxer misinformation.
| sanderjd wrote:
| They did make a lot of progress on it: they supported the
| extremely fast invention and roll out of vaccines that
| accomplish these goals. People have refused to take those
| vaccines and have refused to support politicians
| mandating that people take them. It is thus outside the
| hands of the politicians at this point, and in the hands
| of society at large.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > don't let the health care system get overwhelmed
|
| So add more capacity. It's an emergency. Find a way to add
| it. Why are we into this two years and still have this
| problem? It's inexcusable at this point.
| umvi wrote:
| > So add more capacity. It's an emergency. Find a way to
| add it.
|
| We did. The government deployed a floating hospital
| called the USNS Comfort to NYC to massively increase
| hospital capacity and... it basically just sat there
| unused for a month and then left after Governor Cuomo
| said it wasn't needed.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| Where I live health systems are not overwhelmed. They were
| never overwhelmed even before the vaccines. They are
| occasionally under some pressure here and there like in a
| bad flu season. But I have to show a vax card to eat in a
| restaurant.
| deeg wrote:
| Is it possible your area is not overwhelmed because
| vaccinations are required? Here's a medical system
| overwhelmed in part because vaccination rate is (was) so
| low: https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/coronavirus/arti
| cle25438...
| nsxwolf wrote:
| I believe the vaccines are a big part of why they're not
| overwhelmed now during the Omicron wave. But we achieved
| the bulk of our vaccination rate before mandates.
| basisword wrote:
| So...let everyone else get vaccinated and fix it, not me?
| tinus_hn wrote:
| What is the burden that would make this a problem? If the
| typical narrative is to be believed the unvaccinated are
| in a much worse position, facing the dangers of terrible
| disease and death!
| basisword wrote:
| If there was no burden then the person would get
| vaccinated. I personally don't believe there is a burden
| but they must.
| aqme28 wrote:
| I'm struggling to understand your point, since we agree
| that vaccines are working to prevent hospital overflow.
| Is the issue the method of enforcement (show a card to
| eat at a restaurant)? Because I can also agree that it's
| a little roundabout.
| jahnu wrote:
| > I don't believe there is any evidence to suggest that these
| vaccines will get us to an end state where the virus is no
| longer circulating.
|
| Who is saying there is?
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| President Biden said you can't get COVID if you get the
| vaccine, implying it would stop the virus from circulating.
|
| >One last thing that's really important is: We're not in a
| position where we think that any virus -- including the
| Delta virus, which is much more transmissible and more
| deadly in terms of non -- unvaccinated people -- the vi- --
| the various shots that people are getting now cover that.
| They're -- you're okay. You're not going to -- you're not
| going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations.
|
| https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-
| remarks/20...
| clort wrote:
| So anyway as I understand it we have a pretty technical
| readership here on HN.
|
| Technically, the virus is called SARS-CoV-2 and the
| disease is called COVID-19[1].
|
| That does mean, technically, that due to vaccination the
| virus can indeed circulate but that people are not
| affected by the disease. Is that what Biden has said?
| Certainly from the excerpt you posted, that seems to be
| the case.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respirator
| y_syndr...
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| >That does mean, technically, that due to vaccination the
| virus can indeed circulate but that people are not
| affected by the disease.
|
| Are you suggesting that breakthrough cases of COVID don't
| exist?
| ineedasername wrote:
| That's cherry picking a slip of the tongue: he was very
| clear earlier in that post that you can still get
| infected:
|
| > _If you're vaccinated, even if you do catch the
| "virus," quote, unquote -- like people talk about it in
| normal terms -- you're in overwhelm- -- not many people
| do. If you do, you're not likely to get sick. You're
| probably going to be symptomless. You're not going to be
| in a position where you -- where your life is in danger._
|
| So you can cherry pick and attribute an absurd
| interpretation while ignoring everything else he said, or
| go for the reasonable view that he knows infection is
| still possible based on multiple other points in the
| conversation. The man isn't a great speaker, but
| nonetheless it's inappropriate to choose the worst
| possible interpretation of something when context
| contradicts that interpretation.
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| It's one example of many that could have been chosen, and
| needs no interpretation, his words stand on their own.
| The fact that there are incoherencies in his various
| statements is not relevant.
| ineedasername wrote:
| >one example of many
|
| Then show me the many examples where he's said that
| vaccines are perfect proof against infection. Because now
| you're moving the goal posts as your point is refuted by
| context, so you expand to more vague ad hominem attack
| against him. The burden of evidence is on you to support
| that, and to do so with more than brief out of context
| soundbites.
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| >out of context soundbites
|
| A link to the entire transcript of an event is an "out of
| context sondbite"? You're clearly not discussing in good
| faith.
| ineedasername wrote:
| Review your comment. You link to the entire transcript
| yet use only a single out of context quote. You chose,
| from a long transcript a single out of context sound
| bite. My accusation stands. _I was the one_ who pointed
| out that you ignored the rest of the context that
| contradicted you.
|
| So there you are-- posting an article, maybe failing to
| read it or more likely deciding to ignore most of it, and
| then accuse _me_ of discussing in bad faith? That is
| quite brazen, accusing me of the exact thing you are
| doing, A poor, failed attempt at a diversionary tactic to
| distract from your avoidance of the question.
| zmmmmm wrote:
| technically, COVID is the disease and SARS-COV-2 is the
| virus. So the virus can circulate with only a very small
| fraction of people getting COVID if the vaccines are
| highly effective.
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| I'm not sure what you're technically proving, but the
| quote said nothing about "small fraction of people", it
| was categorical.
| zmmmmm wrote:
| refuting your statement:
|
| > you can't get COVID if you get the vaccine, implying it
| would stop the virus from circulating.
|
| It is entirely possibly that vaccination can leave a
| virus circulating while still preventing disease. Whether
| it does in this specific case is something you could
| debate, but you can't draw that implication stand alone.
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| >It is entirely possibly that vaccination can leave a
| virus circulating while still preventing disease. Whether
| it does in this specific case is something you could
| debate
|
| But breakthrough cases of the COVID disease do occur in
| this specific case.
|
| What is the relevance of a hypothetical alternative
| scenario where breakthrough cases don't exist?
| closeparen wrote:
| Hopes are high because if they don't prevent spread, and
| breakthrough cases or effects on the unvaccinated/ineligible
| are bad enough, then there's no off-ramp for NPIs.
| triceratops wrote:
| > If the data is strong, you most likely wouldn't need
| mandates to convince people.
|
| That's an awfully naive and rosy view of "people".
| raz32dust wrote:
| What would it take for you to accept that people should get
| vaccinated by law? Or do you think it should just not be
| mandated ever?
| nameisname wrote:
| You do not have to get your child vaccinated. If they're
| going to mandate vaccines, why haven't they done it
| already? What would have had to change before the pandemic
| for you to want them to be mandated?
| mjevans wrote:
| We already have these requirements for other infectious
| diseases as well as health codes that cover clothing and
| sometimes protective equipment and procedure requirements
| for workers and customers in public settings.
|
| I liken masks to the requirement to have at least minimal
| clothing on. Sanitation is the same (wash your hands,
| here's how to scrub for 30 seconds).
| arrrg wrote:
| That's not the end state anyone who knows anything about this
| virus is expecting or aiming at at the moment. And it hasn't
| been for months and months.
|
| Universal vaccination can make the transition of this virus
| from pandemic to endemic much more pleasant. In terms of
| deaths, serious cases (with potential long term effects), but
| also in terms of smoothing out hospital and infrastructure
| load.
|
| In that respect the vaccines are an awesomely effective tool
| that can greatly reduce suffering with minimal or no real
| downsides.
|
| Side note: an omicron infection is no replacement for the
| vaccination. Omicron doesn't confer great immunity against
| delta and other, "older" virus variants which are still out
| there, potentially ready to come back next winter.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "Omicron doesn't confer great immunity against delta"
|
| It is my impression that it actually does, and that is why
| Delta was outcompeted so fast. If it didn't, both strains
| would likely co-circulate together.
| LASR wrote:
| Outcompeting is an immediate association between the two
| variants. Conferring x-variant immunity means that once
| you've recovered from one, you will have _lasting_
| immunity to other variants.
|
| There is a possibility that the large majority of the
| population has been infected with omicron, and recovered.
| But then delta could come in at that point and produce
| another wave. At this time, the body would be much more
| successful at holding off omicron, but maybe not so much
| with delta.
|
| So purely from the fractions of current infections, you
| cannot draw conclusions about x-variant immunity.
| andai wrote:
| Does anyone know where I can find graphs that show the %
| of infections that each variant represents over time?
| nradov wrote:
| The CDC publishes weekly data on variant percentages.
|
| https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#variant-
| proportion...
| inglor_cz wrote:
| I used to see them all the time on Reddit in the
| r/Coronavirus subreddit.
|
| Searching very quickly, I found this from Dec 21, 2021:
|
| https://www.statnews.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2021/12/c7efM-om...
| YZF wrote:
| BC, Canada: http://www.bccdc.ca/Health-Info-
| Site/Documents/VoC/VoC_Weekl...
| roenxi wrote:
| Why should I care what "anyone who knows anything about
| this virus" is expecting? The people writing the policies
| around vaccination are the ones who matter.
|
| There have been mass firings on the basis that this
| vaccination will end the pandemic and people who don't get
| vaccinated are actively harming everyone else. The truth of
| that claim is far too murky to justify the agressive
| policies that are being used to force people to get
| vacinated. Policies which, I note, appear to be deploy what
| are effectively human rights violations. These are not
| policieis that should be used. The policy response is what
| is important here.
| aqme28 wrote:
| > people who don't get vaccinated are actively harming
| everyone else.
|
| Aren't they? Hospitals are overflowing and elective
| procedures cancelled due entirely to people refusing to
| get vaccinated.
| thrown939181 wrote:
| headsoup wrote:
| No they're not.
|
| A) there's more vaccinated in hospital _per capita_ of
| late. Why aren 't we demanding lockdowns again instead of
| just blaming the "unvaxxed" still
|
| B) the unvaxxed still aren't allowed into many places,
| yet the virus spreads readily
|
| C) Why, rather than just "argh unvaxxed lepers!" are we
| not guiding better health and wellbeing instead?
|
| D) a covid case is counted when people are in hospital
| for any other reason and catch it
|
| E) you are counted as unvaxxed during the two week window
| after getting vaccinated, which is exactly when your
| immune system is weaker and succeptible to catching a bad
| case of covid. Interesting how hard it is to find this
| data, you'd think it would be strongly monitored
| lkbm wrote:
| > A) there's more vaccinated in hospital per capita of
| late. Why aren't we demanding lockdowns again instead of
| just blaming the "unvaxxed" still
|
| Do you have a source for this. This directly conflicts
| the data I've been seeing. e.g.: https://www1.nyc.gov/sit
| e/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page#daily -- weekly
| hospitalizations peaking at 92/100k for vaccinated vs.
| 772/100k for unvaccinated.
| arrrg wrote:
| People who are not vaccinate are definitely behaving in a
| deeply antisocial way and enforcing vaccines is very much
| a justified policy in my eyes, even if "only" to smooth
| over the transition from pandemic to endemic.
|
| To my eyes vaccine mandates are not, in general, human
| rights violations. They just are not.
| yetanotherath wrote:
| thrown939181 wrote:
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > To my eyes vaccine mandates are not, in general, human
| rights violations. They just are not.
|
| Are they really though? If vaccines work so damn great
| why do I still need to wear a mask in a place where
| everybody is vaccinated? And why did Ontario shut down
| most of the places that required proof of vaccine during
| this omicron wave? Shouldn't those places be exempt from
| shutdowns?
|
| If proof of vaccine still requires masking and
| shutdowns... maybe it isn't a really an effective policy?
| MagnumOpus wrote:
| If stop signs and traffic lights work so dann well why am
| I being forced to wear a seat belt? If I require a
| seatbelt even after taking a drivers licence exam, maybe
| following traffic rules isn't really an effective policy?
|
| One would think that on this forum of all places, people
| would understand the concept of defence-in-depth.
| Furrfu...
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Vaccines are both the seat belt and the airbags. Masks?
| Those aren't even close. They are more like rain dances
| or amulets.
|
| Besides why does the government get to decide if a
| vaccinated person has to wear a mask? Makes no sense.
|
| You can add as many layers of defense as you want. Don't
| force me to. I'm boosted. I could care less about Covid.
| If I still have to wear a mask post shot, why the hell
| did I even bother?
| nsxwolf wrote:
| Tie them down and forcibly inject them then. Have some
| courage. Quit pussy footing around with economic threats
| and shaming.
| spankalee wrote:
| Why?
| nsxwolf wrote:
| Because morally it's the same thing, and it would get
| done faster and more effectively.
| jahnu wrote:
| Please define what you mean by ending the pandemic.
|
| > human rights violations.
|
| Which ones?
| alexandre_m wrote:
| While we can argue about what are the boundaries for
| human rights in 1st world countries, it's important to
| know there have been some very strict and harsh policies
| regarding Covid in different parts of the world.
|
| In Quebec where I live, the unvaccinated are now barred
| from entry in large retail stores like Walmart and
| Costco. If you don't have your vaccine passport with you
| that shows you're vaccinated in these places, then you
| can't enter, even for groceries.
|
| There was curfew in place that prevented everyone from
| being outside during the evenings and nights for the most
| part of January.
|
| On top of that, the prime minister said publicly in the
| media that the unvaccinated would start paying an
| additional tax, even though health care is supposed to be
| free and accessible for everyone here. The government
| just backtracked about this the last couple of days.
|
| A lot of these policies are extreme and have shown to be
| completely incoherent and not backed by science, given
| what we know about the virus since the last couple of
| months.
| roenxi wrote:
| I have no idea what ending the pandemic means. It is a
| stupid wooly phrase with multiple meanings, often
| conflicting. That is why I'm unhappy about the policies
| used to achieve it - whatever it is.
|
| > Which ones?
|
| Well, looking at a relevant wiki article [0] I'd say the
| policies I know best (Australia) are bumping up against
| the articles dealing with freedom of movement, big chunks
| of articles 18-21 (underlining peaceful association a few
| time), I'd argue 22-27 - I forget where 'right to earn a
| living' is but I'm pretty confident it is in thge UDHR
| somewhere and that is probably in 22-27.
|
| At some point (and 2 years is past that point) these
| philosophical issues like human rights start to matter.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_o
| f_Human...
| jahnu wrote:
| Why would you set up a straw man that you don't even know
| the definition of yourself?
|
| For me ending the pandemic is a return to regular life
| and a health care system that is no longer stretched
| beyond typical capacity. This can be achieved by many
| outcomes but the most likely one given the state of the
| world today is getting everyone to take the safe and
| effective vaccine for as long as necessary.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| As with every document of this nature, some of the rights
| outlined may conflict with each other. You wind up having
| to reconcile those conflicts.
|
| For example, Article 29:
|
| > Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the
| free and full development of his personality is possible.
|
| > In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone
| shall be subject only to such limitations as are
| determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due
| recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of
| others and of meeting the just requirements of morality,
| public order and the general welfare in a democratic
| society.
|
| It's pretty easy to see vaccination and other public
| health measures as one of these scenarios.
|
| "Articles 28-30 establish... the areas in which the
| rights of the individual cannot be applied, the duty of
| the individual to society..."
| headsoup wrote:
| > Minimal to no real downsides
|
| Yet... Guess we have up caring about full research and
| monitoring a couple of years ago.
|
| We're even at the point where we want to vaccinate our
| small children because 'it's marginally better than
| nothing' ignoring that side effects are also marginally
| more than nothing and we have very little good long term
| data.
| yetanotherath wrote:
| tshaddox wrote:
| Haven't the older vaccines been mandated for much longer?
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| There's never been a vaccine that was mandated in order to
| conduct basic commerce.
| ineedasername wrote:
| Many jobs require vaccinations. In my state (and many
| others) college students are required to have an MMR
| vaccine to attend school. Students living in residence
| halls also need a hepatitis vaccine.
|
| Vaccines have long been required in a variety of
| environments.
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| Conducting basic commerce is not the same thing as some
| jobs having specific job requirements.
|
| Many things have been done in the past. Just because
| something was done in the past, that doesn't
| automatically make it the right thing to do.
| ineedasername wrote:
| I'm not talking about the past, I'm talking about now.
| Schools require vaccines, and required them pre-covid,
| and that has been upheld as constitutional. (In the US)
| From the perspective of law, it is not wrong. YMMV in
| other countries.
|
| What are your goalposts here on "basic commerce"? School
| and many jobs seem like they should be included in that,
| which refutes your original comment on the topic of
| vaccine mandates for basic commerce not having precedent.
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| There's never been mandates that bar you from entering
| stores to conduct commerce, until now.
| danielsju6 wrote:
| Smallpox no? I mean it was criminal to not be vaccinated
| in many places and upheld by courts. Seems a stronger
| mandate to me.
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| If you're referring to Jacobson v. Massachusetts, that
| case was about whether the state has a right to impose a
| fine on someone who refused to be vaccinated. A fine is
| very different than being barred from conducting
| commerce.
| danielsju6 wrote:
| In several states it was a criminal charge that could see
| you fined and/or imprisoned. Having a criminal record
| bars you from employment and commerce opportunities no?
|
| I know wearing a mask and taking the bare minimum to try
| to control a pandemic that has killed millions infringes
| on YOUR PRECIOUS FREEDOM but it seems a reasonable trade
| off for the state.
|
| Also what restrictions to basic commerce are you facing?
| That you can't go get wasted in a bar? Give us a break.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Prior to this pandemic, I've never needed to reveal private
| medical history to go to a kindergartener's birthday party
| at a venue. Have you?
|
| (and the kicker was we all still needed masks anyway...
| "science"!)
| [deleted]
| tomp wrote:
| _> Somehow there 's this idea that the Sars-CoV-2 vaccines need
| to prevent infection or symptomatic disease but that is an
| incredibly high bar that no respiratory viral vaccine has ever
| met._
|
| So what you're saying that Fauci, Pfizer etc. weren't just
| wrong about the vaccine ("if you get it you won't get sick"
| a.k.a. "science has changed as we've learned more facts") but
| actively lied about it (after all, they of all people should
| know that no other vaccine succeeded in that for respiratory
| viruses).
| kodah wrote:
| I don't think we can use terms like "lie" with respect to the
| pandemic yet, because full post-facto analysis is not done
| yet. That analysis isn't just on people's words, it's on
| their relationships to other people, entities, etc... You
| also have to determine what they "know" during a given time.
| I'm fully supportive of holding government officials
| accountable, especially if they've enacted their own agenda,
| but there's a time and place for such things as well as a
| path to proving them.
| nradov wrote:
| If you look back at the actual press releases and research
| studies that Pfizer and BioNTech published about their
| Comirnaty vaccine, they never specifically claimed that it
| would reliably prevent infection. It was the politicians like
| Fauci who made false claims not backed by reliable science.
|
| (And to be clear, I still recommend that everyone eligible
| get vaccinated as it's fairly effective at preventing severe
| symptoms.)
| Im_your_dada wrote:
| pessimizer wrote:
| Back before we discovered viruses, nobody died from them (that
| we knew of.)
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| Homo sapiens lived alongside an estimated eight now-extinct
| species of humans. There were an unknown number of previous
| species before that.
|
| They are all extinct.
|
| To answer your question, the majority did not.
| JJMcJ wrote:
| Some didn't make it.
|
| Half died before the age of 5, just as an example of what
| "some" means.
| Supermancho wrote:
| > Interesting fact that since cancer research started the
| deaths from cancer went up by 1000%.
|
| Same could be said of any deadly and widespread disease.
| Tuberculosis, COVID, etc. This is the result of
| expediency+improved testing, not some reverse causation.
| steveylang wrote:
| I'll take my chances with modern science and medicine, thank
| you (even with some significant ambiguities and occasional
| missteps (especially WRT our environment.)
|
| How pre historic humans survived is like how many species
| survive today- have a brood or litter of 10, if 3 or 4 make it
| to breeding age to continue your line you've done well!
| andrewclunn wrote:
| > The immune response after vaccination more or less mimics what
| happens after infection, with one major difference. In a SARS-
| CoV-2 infection, the immune system sees the whole virus. The most
| effective vaccines, however, are using just one viral protein to
| elicit a response: spike. And whether antibody levels will also
| plateau after vaccination isn't yet clear. Wherry and his
| colleagues analysed immune responses in 61 people for 6 months
| after their first shot, finding that antibody levels peaked about
| a week after the second shot and then fell quickly for a couple
| of months. After that, they declined more slowly.
|
| Clearly this article's author is a conspiracy theorist and should
| be censored for spreading misinformation.
| kenjackson wrote:
| What? This has been well established in the scientific
| community for a while. No conspiracy at all here.
| Izkata wrote:
| It's called sarcasm. Any acknowledgement of natural immunity
| has been deemed unscientific conspiracy theory in the
| mainstream in the US for the past year, only accepting
| vaccination as a solution.
| kenjackson wrote:
| That doesn't make sense. A major discussion in the public
| since Covid caught on was about herd immunity -- and that
| infection would drive some of this. Maybe the concern is
| that we aren't inclusive of natural immunity in our
| policies. But that is purely an issue of bureaucratic
| process (for example, there should be no false positives in
| administering a vaccine) and incentives (we don't want
| people to try to get infected since infected people can
| transmit the virus), not any statement about the science
| related to natural immunity.
| freebuju wrote:
| To be fair, the herd immunity idea was floated around
| quite early in beginning of the pandemic. But it was
| quickly thrown out when governments saw the infection
| rates and deaths spike up. Ever since, vaccination has
| been the dominant (hammer) solution for the virus.
| (Vaccination) Has been the background track for this
| pandemic and still is to date. Natural immunity is only
| coming back because Omicron is not as deadly as the
| previous strains. It was never an option before.
| kenjackson wrote:
| Exactly. The incentives didn't line up for natural
| immunity as a course for herd immunity. It wasn't about
| the science, but policy. And it was never an argument
| about the science (besides science trying to understand
| the delta between different types of immunity, including
| different types of vaccines and natural immunity). That's
| why I'm perplexed about the "conspiracy" talk. No more
| than there's a conspiracy about wine consumption in the
| US.
| Izkata wrote:
| It doesn't make sense if you are actually following the
| science and not The Science like politicians are. Over
| 2021, natural immunity was dropped so hard in the US that
| the vaccine passports/requirements popping up here make
| no allowances for recovery from covid - it's vaccination
| or nothing.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| I remember I read Randall Munroe's What If to my daughter a
| few years ago and there was a chapter about the common
| cold. The conclusion was was that eliminating it was
| impractical for economic reasons - we couldn't have
| survived a global lockdown, and the virus mutates too fast
| to create an efficient vaccine. It felt a bit surreal
| seeing testing the scenarios described by Munroe in
| practice.
| gnerkus wrote:
| I think OP was being sarcastic.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't post this sort of flamewar comment to HN,
| regardless of what your views are or how right you feel they
| are.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| alexk307 wrote:
| how so?
| [deleted]
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