7 ms·

Pfizer chairman: We're not sure if someone can transmit Covid after vaccination

49 points by AndrewBissell 6y ago

mrtweetyhack 6y ago
once vaccinated, you will still get covid. due to vacciation, symptoms should be less severe and easier to fight off. Yes, you can still transmit if you have it. Should be a fairly obvious question to answer.
twblalock 6y ago
Many people will try to use being vaccinated as an excuse to stop wearing masks. That isn't going to go well, if they can still be spreaders.
0goel0 6y ago
The analogy I like to use is shoes. We wear shoes and walk in muddy patches. Your feet are fine. But wherever you go, you shed the mud. Now imagine the mud is the virus. Shoes are antibodies (vaccine). Not an exact comparison, but helps explain.
- voisin 6y ago
  Does the time during which you are contagious change if you are vaccinated?
  - jcranmer 6y ago
    The short answer: we don't know. The longer answer: contagion is caused by the emission of viral particles, which have been mass-produced by infected cells in your body. The question is if your immune system will suppress the viral infection before there is enough viral matter produced to cause further infection. Whether or not this happen is heavily influenced by specific details of how your immune system has kicked into gear, and immune systems are unfortunately one of the biological systems that varies most from individual to individual.
  - usrusr 6y ago
    Shortening is a likely outcome. But in theory it's even possible that the immune response prepared by the vaccine only prevents virus spread to organs where we notice symptoms but does not clear out those places that the virus colonizes during the pre-symptomatic infectivity phase that seems to be the super-power of this particular virus. And that this success prevents another immune response that would otherwise clear out those spreading springboards. Of course this perfect storm of what could be called "vaccine enhanced infectivity" is an extremely unlikely scenario, but at least weak forms of it that cause longer infectivity, but not much longer or even permanent infectivity could remain undetected for years. The reason for all this uncertainty is simple: testing for infectivity doesn't scale, definitely not enough to continuously observe test groups large enough to experience cases. But Ithink there is hope: chances are someone is designing a study that recruits a number vaccinated that live together with someone unvaccinated. Then in case their unvaccinated peer falls ill you can observe the vaccinated one, that should be well in the test scaling envelope. We know the attack rate in unvaccinated households and can compare.
- AndrewBissell 6y ago
  If the vaccine is only useful for reducing COVID severity and doesn't help prevent spread, then I see no reason why it should be required for anyone for whom an infection is unlikely to result in hospitalization, i.e. anyone outside the well known high risk groups.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - chub500 6y ago
    Not sure why this is being downvoted. I think your logic is sound. Typically vaccinations don't work this way though. AFAIK contagion is proportional to viral load which is inversely proportional to immune response (via some complex function over time from initial infection).
    - AndrewBissell 6y ago
      I certainly agree that vaccinations typically don't work this way, which is why I find it very odd that there seems to be an effort to quickly handwave away these uncertainties with "well all vaccines are like this."
unnouinceput 6y ago
I would expect once you get your vaccination this to be a non-issue. Like any other viruses that I'm vaccinated against, if I catch it my immune system would destroy it before I become a source myself. I mean isn't that the whole purpose of a vaccine? Also I do understand that is only 90% efficacy, which means if I am among the unlucky 10% then I'll become infected and become both a spreader and most likely develop the disease.
- purplecats 6y ago
  I'd be very interested in getting vaccinated against the virus once it's been released. I'd prefer, however, to just get the vaccine so that if I catch it my immune system would destroy it before I become a source myself. I wish they'd make an option (perhaps at a significantly higher cost) so that you can get the vaccine injection without miscellaneous non-vaccine compounds injected in the solution as well.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - jimmyswimmy 6y ago
    I'm the opposite of a biology expert, but from what I've read, the "miscellaneous non-vaccine compounds" in the solution are adjuvants which make the vaccine more effective by provoking the immune system into a response. Without those "non-vaccine compounds" the vaccine itself could be no more effective than a shot of sterile saline - which itself is probably another "non-vaccine compound." Perhaps if you're referring to something else you could spell it out.
    - purplecats 6y ago
      I am, obviously, referring to something else.
      - redisman 6y ago
        How mysterious
solinent 6y ago
I hate to be that person, but I'm personally more worried about the virus mutating under the increased selection pressure. We only defeated polio with a >99% effective vaccine, and the research for this vaccine isn't even available.
- Turing_Machine 6y ago
  Unlike older vaccines (such as polio vaccine) which generally used weakened or killed whole virus particles (and which occasionally produced infectious cases, due to the virus not being as weak or dead as intended), this vaccine contains no whole virus particles and thus cannot result in an infectious case. It contains RNA that cause the patient's cells to emit proteins normally produced by the viral infection (which can then be recognized by the immune system), but contains none of the genetic material required to produce standalone infectious virus particles. This is a new thing; these will the first vaccines using this technology to be approved. The chairman likely isn't worried about the vaccine itself producing infections, but rather does not know whether a vaccinated patient might also develop an active infection before the vaccine takes effect.
  - whimsicalism 6y ago
    Not that I agree with GPs concern, but this comment doesn't address it whatsoever.
    - Turing_Machine 6y ago
      It absolutely does address it. The Pfizer chairman is saying he doesn't know whether you can get a spreadable COVID-19 infection after the vaccine has been administered, but before it takes full effect. That's an entirely different thing from the vaccination CAUSING an infectious case of COVID-19.
      - whimsicalism 6y ago
        > That's an entirely different thing from the vaccination CAUSING an infectious case of COVID-19. If you read carefully, you'd see that's not the concern.
timbit42 6y ago
Are they talking about spreading it through breathing, or through touching?
- garmaine 6y ago
  They don’t know.
- Exmoor 6y ago
  Turns out that catching COVID by touching surfaces is pretty low in the first place: > The estimated risk of infection from touching a contaminated surface was low (less than 5 in 10,000) https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.27.20220905v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.27.20220905v...
hprotagonist 6y ago
I certainly intend to stay masked up post-jab(s). I think a month or so after the final dose it will be at the point where any viral load i might be spreading would be pretty much trustable to be at trivial levels, so that's my minimum duration. After that, I'll continue to follow public guidance from local health folks. I don't mind masking up for flights/travel for a bit, or whatever, either, if it shakes out that way. If i could trade "wear a mask because it works and lots of people died" for "take off your shoes to fly because it's theater, one guy tried it 15 years ago and it didn't work", I'd do it in a heartbeat.
- soupfordummies 6y ago
  That’s an excellent point about the shoes that I hadn’t put together. I think the vast majority of us think the shoe thing is stupid but we do it cause it’s that or not fly. If only we could get mandated masks, I think we’d already be out of the woods. Although I regularly see <2 unmasked folks total in the grocery stores around me, it’s a fairly liberal area so I’m just rambling now so have a good safe holiday time.
  - mulmen 6y ago
    The mask mandate personal choice indignation really cracks me up. Try buying a gallon of milk without pants.
    - rualca 6y ago
      Then there's also the fact that the cliche "no shoes no shirt no service" never gathered much indignation from the same segment of society.
  - TaylorAlexander 6y ago
    Oh wow. I don’t see any unmasked people at grocery stores near San Francisco. I saw one woman who had her mask down and the store called police because she didn’t put it back on when asked.
  - throwaway122378 6y ago
avs733 6y ago
This is a perfectly reasonable statement that is being blown out of proportion. He is speaking in a scientifically accurate and narrow way - they don't know that yet, those studies have not been completed. That doesn't mean you can, or that it is even likely or probable that you can, just that they don't have results saying you can't yet. That is because those results inherently take longer than studying the effecicacy of the vaccine...because people have to get the vaccine, get exposed, and then the difficult task of tracking any potential infections that they transmit. That science is even harder than what has happened through the vaccine trials. They are studying and will know the answer to it. The headline is click bait and I'm disappointed in HN here...'we don't know' is a statement that we should laud and appreciate scientists for making, not use as a form of propaganda.
- rualca 6y ago
  I would say that vaccines work to prepare the immune system to fight a specific threat, but that doesn't mean the virus or the disease disappears. It just mean that the infection's impact is mitigated on the individual and, with time, on the population.
chadash 6y ago
This needs to stop being sensationalized. Vaccine studies target something simple and easy to measure... whether it prevents Covid symptoms. That’s the hypothesis being tested. It is very likely that it also builds up your immune system to fight the virus such that you don’t spread it. But testing that hypothesis is very hard and not practical. He’s not saying you will spread it, just that strictly speaking, the trials didn’t test for that. We’ll have a better sense of it once the vaccine is widely used though.
elicash 6y ago
I've seen this point made repeatedly, but haven't seen what scientists think is LIKELY -- based on similar vaccines, based on initial data, whatever. I don't know if scientists GENUINELY have no clue, or if maybe we think it'll likely be good news but can't say it yet because we're worried that people will get a vaccine and then behave irresponsibly. It sounds like we're going to start giving this vaccine out without certainty on this point, so maybe give a sense of likelihoods for the possibilities. Maybe Pfizer can't because of lawsuits or something, but experts could certainly weigh in for articles like this. It seems like we're afraid of trusting people with the best info we have because we're worried they'll stop wearing masks and throw parties and such. I don't think withholding info is a great way to build trust. Health experts should feel empowered to say "We think X but only with (let's say) 10% certainty" because there's no study specifically on this topic for COVID. They can always add "without 100% certainty we need to all continue to wear masks because that the stakes are so severe on hospitalizations and death." Instead, it seems like they hold back info out of concern the public cannot be trusted.
- XorNot 6y ago
  Scientists will never go on record saying what they think is likely without having data which says "60% occurrence rate". Because without data, it's just conjecture and guesswork - and they're very likely to be catastrophically wrong, but have their word taken as gospel (then later used as "see scientists are wrong so <totally unfounded claim with no experience backing it> could be just as right!")
  - elicash 6y ago
    Nobody is asking scientists to say anything without data. What scientists COULD do, for example, is explain what happens with other vaccines, with other viruses.
- twblalock 6y ago
  The less questionable information that circulates, the better. There are already many conspiracy theories about this vaccine. Scientists shouldn't be out there causing more confusion or giving people a kernel of doubt that they can blow up into another conspiracy theory.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Exmoor 6y ago
I'm really sick of seeing the media either pretend to be willfully ignorant of the way science works for the sake of clicks or just be stupid in the first place. Until they have something akin to study data they're going to tell you they don't know. Also, "can transmit" is a pretty tough bar to clear. If the worst off 1% of vaccine recipients can transmit COVID to someone while giving them mouth-to-mouth resuscitation it would technically count as "can transmit". It doesn't really get reported widely, but scientific studies have indicated that, logically, people who have worse cases of the virus are more contagious. [0] [1] It is highly likely that the vast majority of people given the mRNA vaccines, which are 90+% effective in eliminating symptoms, will be very minimally contagious. Studies are pending, but there's no reason to believe that teaching your immune system to destroy the virus wouldn't also make less virus to be shed to infect other people. [0] https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-2671 https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-2671 [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-19057-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-19057-5
xlm1717 6y ago
So we're right back to "it's not for you it's for the people around you, you selfish asshole"?
- rualca 6y ago
  I don't understand your confusion. From day 1 it was always very clear that although protective measures such as facemasks do protect the individual from contracting the disease, their primary value is to prevent the mask wearer from spreading it. We're talking about a disease which is known for having week-long periods where asymptomatic/presymptomatic carriers can unknowingly spread the disease. Think about it: why do you believe surgeons wear face masks, latex gloves, wash their hands, wear lab coats, protective shoes, and do their surgeon things in sterilized rooms?

49 points by AndrewBissell 6y ago

once vaccinated, you will still get covid. due to vacciation, symptoms should be less severe and easier to fight off. Yes, you can still transmit if you have it. Should be a fairly obvious question to answer.

twblalock 6y ago

Many people will try to use being vaccinated as an excuse to stop wearing masks. That isn't going to go well, if they can still be spreaders.

0goel0 6y ago

The analogy I like to use is shoes. We wear shoes and walk in muddy patches. Your feet are fine. But wherever you go, you shed the mud. Now imagine the mud is the virus. Shoes are antibodies (vaccine). Not an exact comparison, but helps explain.

voisin 6y ago
Does the time during which you are contagious change if you are vaccinated?
- jcranmer 6y ago
  The short answer: we don't know. The longer answer: contagion is caused by the emission of viral particles, which have been mass-produced by infected cells in your body. The question is if your immune system will suppress the viral infection before there is enough viral matter produced to cause further infection. Whether or not this happen is heavily influenced by specific details of how your immune system has kicked into gear, and immune systems are unfortunately one of the biological systems that varies most from individual to individual.
- usrusr 6y ago
  Shortening is a likely outcome. But in theory it's even possible that the immune response prepared by the vaccine only prevents virus spread to organs where we notice symptoms but does not clear out those places that the virus colonizes during the pre-symptomatic infectivity phase that seems to be the super-power of this particular virus. And that this success prevents another immune response that would otherwise clear out those spreading springboards. Of course this perfect storm of what could be called "vaccine enhanced infectivity" is an extremely unlikely scenario, but at least weak forms of it that cause longer infectivity, but not much longer or even permanent infectivity could remain undetected for years. The reason for all this uncertainty is simple: testing for infectivity doesn't scale, definitely not enough to continuously observe test groups large enough to experience cases. But Ithink there is hope: chances are someone is designing a study that recruits a number vaccinated that live together with someone unvaccinated. Then in case their unvaccinated peer falls ill you can observe the vaccinated one, that should be well in the test scaling envelope. We know the attack rate in unvaccinated households and can compare.
AndrewBissell 6y ago
If the vaccine is only useful for reducing COVID severity and doesn't help prevent spread, then I see no reason why it should be required for anyone for whom an infection is unlikely to result in hospitalization, i.e. anyone outside the well known high risk groups.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- chub500 6y ago
  Not sure why this is being downvoted. I think your logic is sound. Typically vaccinations don't work this way though. AFAIK contagion is proportional to viral load which is inversely proportional to immune response (via some complex function over time from initial infection).
  - AndrewBissell 6y ago
    I certainly agree that vaccinations typically don't work this way, which is why I find it very odd that there seems to be an effort to quickly handwave away these uncertainties with "well all vaccines are like this."

unnouinceput 6y ago

I would expect once you get your vaccination this to be a non-issue. Like any other viruses that I'm vaccinated against, if I catch it my immune system would destroy it before I become a source myself. I mean isn't that the whole purpose of a vaccine? Also I do understand that is only 90% efficacy, which means if I am among the unlucky 10% then I'll become infected and become both a spreader and most likely develop the disease.

purplecats 6y ago
I'd be very interested in getting vaccinated against the virus once it's been released. I'd prefer, however, to just get the vaccine so that if I catch it my immune system would destroy it before I become a source myself. I wish they'd make an option (perhaps at a significantly higher cost) so that you can get the vaccine injection without miscellaneous non-vaccine compounds injected in the solution as well.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- jimmyswimmy 6y ago
  I'm the opposite of a biology expert, but from what I've read, the "miscellaneous non-vaccine compounds" in the solution are adjuvants which make the vaccine more effective by provoking the immune system into a response. Without those "non-vaccine compounds" the vaccine itself could be no more effective than a shot of sterile saline - which itself is probably another "non-vaccine compound." Perhaps if you're referring to something else you could spell it out.
  - purplecats 6y ago
    I am, obviously, referring to something else.
    - redisman 6y ago
      How mysterious

solinent 6y ago

I hate to be that person, but I'm personally more worried about the virus mutating under the increased selection pressure. We only defeated polio with a >99% effective vaccine, and the research for this vaccine isn't even available.

Turing_Machine 6y ago
Unlike older vaccines (such as polio vaccine) which generally used weakened or killed whole virus particles (and which occasionally produced infectious cases, due to the virus not being as weak or dead as intended), this vaccine contains no whole virus particles and thus cannot result in an infectious case. It contains RNA that cause the patient's cells to emit proteins normally produced by the viral infection (which can then be recognized by the immune system), but contains none of the genetic material required to produce standalone infectious virus particles. This is a new thing; these will the first vaccines using this technology to be approved. The chairman likely isn't worried about the vaccine itself producing infections, but rather does not know whether a vaccinated patient might also develop an active infection before the vaccine takes effect.
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  Not that I agree with GPs concern, but this comment doesn't address it whatsoever.
  - Turing_Machine 6y ago
    It absolutely does address it. The Pfizer chairman is saying he doesn't know whether you can get a spreadable COVID-19 infection after the vaccine has been administered, but before it takes full effect. That's an entirely different thing from the vaccination CAUSING an infectious case of COVID-19.
    - whimsicalism 6y ago
      > That's an entirely different thing from the vaccination CAUSING an infectious case of COVID-19. If you read carefully, you'd see that's not the concern.

timbit42 6y ago

Are they talking about spreading it through breathing, or through touching?

garmaine 6y ago
They don’t know.
Exmoor 6y ago
Turns out that catching COVID by touching surfaces is pretty low in the first place: > The estimated risk of infection from touching a contaminated surface was low (less than 5 in 10,000) https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.27.20220905v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.27.20220905v...

hprotagonist 6y ago

I certainly intend to stay masked up post-jab(s). I think a month or so after the final dose it will be at the point where any viral load i might be spreading would be pretty much trustable to be at trivial levels, so that's my minimum duration. After that, I'll continue to follow public guidance from local health folks. I don't mind masking up for flights/travel for a bit, or whatever, either, if it shakes out that way. If i could trade "wear a mask because it works and lots of people died" for "take off your shoes to fly because it's theater, one guy tried it 15 years ago and it didn't work", I'd do it in a heartbeat.

soupfordummies 6y ago
That’s an excellent point about the shoes that I hadn’t put together. I think the vast majority of us think the shoe thing is stupid but we do it cause it’s that or not fly. If only we could get mandated masks, I think we’d already be out of the woods. Although I regularly see <2 unmasked folks total in the grocery stores around me, it’s a fairly liberal area so I’m just rambling now so have a good safe holiday time.
- mulmen 6y ago
  The mask mandate personal choice indignation really cracks me up. Try buying a gallon of milk without pants.
  - rualca 6y ago
    Then there's also the fact that the cliche "no shoes no shirt no service" never gathered much indignation from the same segment of society.
- TaylorAlexander 6y ago
  Oh wow. I don’t see any unmasked people at grocery stores near San Francisco. I saw one woman who had her mask down and the store called police because she didn’t put it back on when asked.
- throwaway122378 6y ago

avs733 6y ago

This is a perfectly reasonable statement that is being blown out of proportion. He is speaking in a scientifically accurate and narrow way - they don't know that yet, those studies have not been completed. That doesn't mean you can, or that it is even likely or probable that you can, just that they don't have results saying you can't yet. That is because those results inherently take longer than studying the effecicacy of the vaccine...because people have to get the vaccine, get exposed, and then the difficult task of tracking any potential infections that they transmit. That science is even harder than what has happened through the vaccine trials. They are studying and will know the answer to it. The headline is click bait and I'm disappointed in HN here...'we don't know' is a statement that we should laud and appreciate scientists for making, not use as a form of propaganda.

rualca 6y ago
I would say that vaccines work to prepare the immune system to fight a specific threat, but that doesn't mean the virus or the disease disappears. It just mean that the infection's impact is mitigated on the individual and, with time, on the population.

chadash 6y ago

This needs to stop being sensationalized. Vaccine studies target something simple and easy to measure... whether it prevents Covid symptoms. That’s the hypothesis being tested. It is very likely that it also builds up your immune system to fight the virus such that you don’t spread it. But testing that hypothesis is very hard and not practical. He’s not saying you will spread it, just that strictly speaking, the trials didn’t test for that. We’ll have a better sense of it once the vaccine is widely used though.

elicash 6y ago

I've seen this point made repeatedly, but haven't seen what scientists think is LIKELY -- based on similar vaccines, based on initial data, whatever. I don't know if scientists GENUINELY have no clue, or if maybe we think it'll likely be good news but can't say it yet because we're worried that people will get a vaccine and then behave irresponsibly. It sounds like we're going to start giving this vaccine out without certainty on this point, so maybe give a sense of likelihoods for the possibilities. Maybe Pfizer can't because of lawsuits or something, but experts could certainly weigh in for articles like this. It seems like we're afraid of trusting people with the best info we have because we're worried they'll stop wearing masks and throw parties and such. I don't think withholding info is a great way to build trust. Health experts should feel empowered to say "We think X but only with (let's say) 10% certainty" because there's no study specifically on this topic for COVID. They can always add "without 100% certainty we need to all continue to wear masks because that the stakes are so severe on hospitalizations and death." Instead, it seems like they hold back info out of concern the public cannot be trusted.

XorNot 6y ago
Scientists will never go on record saying what they think is likely without having data which says "60% occurrence rate". Because without data, it's just conjecture and guesswork - and they're very likely to be catastrophically wrong, but have their word taken as gospel (then later used as "see scientists are wrong so <totally unfounded claim with no experience backing it> could be just as right!")
- elicash 6y ago
  Nobody is asking scientists to say anything without data. What scientists COULD do, for example, is explain what happens with other vaccines, with other viruses.
twblalock 6y ago
The less questionable information that circulates, the better. There are already many conspiracy theories about this vaccine. Scientists shouldn't be out there causing more confusion or giving people a kernel of doubt that they can blow up into another conspiracy theory.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Exmoor 6y ago

I'm really sick of seeing the media either pretend to be willfully ignorant of the way science works for the sake of clicks or just be stupid in the first place. Until they have something akin to study data they're going to tell you they don't know. Also, "can transmit" is a pretty tough bar to clear. If the worst off 1% of vaccine recipients can transmit COVID to someone while giving them mouth-to-mouth resuscitation it would technically count as "can transmit". It doesn't really get reported widely, but scientific studies have indicated that, logically, people who have worse cases of the virus are more contagious. [0] [1] It is highly likely that the vast majority of people given the mRNA vaccines, which are 90+% effective in eliminating symptoms, will be very minimally contagious. Studies are pending, but there's no reason to believe that teaching your immune system to destroy the virus wouldn't also make less virus to be shed to infect other people. [0] https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-2671 https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-2671 [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-19057-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-19057-5

xlm1717 6y ago

So we're right back to "it's not for you it's for the people around you, you selfish asshole"?

rualca 6y ago
I don't understand your confusion. From day 1 it was always very clear that although protective measures such as facemasks do protect the individual from contracting the disease, their primary value is to prevent the mask wearer from spreading it. We're talking about a disease which is known for having week-long periods where asymptomatic/presymptomatic carriers can unknowingly spread the disease. Think about it: why do you believe surgeons wear face masks, latex gloves, wash their hands, wear lab coats, protective shoes, and do their surgeon things in sterilized rooms?