7 ms·

U.S. plans to begin administering Covid-19 booster shots in September

26 points by AndrewBissell 5y ago

tboyd47 5y ago
This was probably the hold-up for FDA approval. They needed to see if a third dose would be recommended. But if two doses weren't enough to stop the delta variant, how can they be sure that three are?
- chitowneats 5y ago
  They can't. No clinical trials. It's a hail mary.
  - AndrewBissell 5y ago
    I feel like "hail mary" would imply some sort of negative consequences for failure in this case. But short of the third shot just dropping dead everyone who takes it (unlikely), it will be easy enough with our media ecosystem to suppress adverse events and handwave away any problems with efficacy. I mean, we're already seeing numerous countries experience higher cases and hospitalizations with 50%+ vax rates than they ever did before the vaccine rollouts but hardly anyone is asking "hey, what's going on here?"
    - revolvingocelot 5y ago
      >I mean, we're already seeing numerous countries experience higher cases and hospitalizations with 50%+ vax rates than they ever did before the vaccine rollouts but hardly anyone is asking "hey, what's going on here?" There's no reason to ask because we actually do know what's going on here. The r0 of OG COVID is ~3, higher than the flu. The r0 of Delta COVID is between 5 and 9, and the CDC currently estimates it at 8.5. Worse, Delta generates more, and more serious, hospitalizations (among the unvaccinated). [0] Which countries are experiencing hospitalization rates higher than pre-vaccine times? More importantly, do those trends disappear if you look at areas within those countries that are highly- or poorly-vaccinated? [0] https://health-desk.org/articles/how-contagious-is-the-delta-variant-compared-to-other-infectious-diseases https://health-desk.org/articles/how-contagious-is-the-delta...
- fighterpilot 5y ago
  This binary thinking is wrong. Nobody thinks three shots will "stop" the delta variant. They think it'll lower the number of severe cases and deaths.
  - tboyd47 5y ago
    Okay, so if the binary thinking is wrong, why stop at three? Why stop at all? Does the science say we just blast our bodies with as much mRNA as we can get away with?
    - fighterpilot 5y ago
      Elementary economic thinking answers this question. Benefits asymptote, so you'll stop at the point where the marginal benefit of an additional shot is less than the marginal financial cost, marginal opportunity cost and marginal cost of side effects all combined. That's definitely not the case before two and may not be the case before three based on data we've seen. It might be the case before four. And this doesn't factor in declining immunity over time. It might make sense to keep taking shots every half a year forever, until COVID mutates into something less deadly perhaps.
      - velcii 5y ago
        >You'll asymptote, so you'll stop at the point where the marginal benefit of an additional shot is less than the marginal financial cost, marginal opportunity cost and marginal cost of side effects all combined. But this is already the case for young people and people who already had covid and recovered, but we don't see them excluded from vaccinations based on their risk profile. So I think there is no reason to think that this logic will be applied more truthfully at some arbitrary time in future.
      - iamthepieman 5y ago
        This is basically what is done with the flu shot although it's a very different mechanism in the actual vaccine.
      - tboyd47 5y ago
- silisili 5y ago
  As I understand it(which could be completely wrong, so take with a grain of salt), there is no actual 'stopping' variants. The idea is to keep tricking your body with mock spike proteins, so that your body builds defenses against it. And data shows the more shots you get, the more your body builds resistance. So when the real thing arrives, it doesn't affect the host as much, if at all.
  - lupire 5y ago
    Is the booster customized for Delta? The article doesn't say.
    - silisili 5y ago
      The boosters in question are not at this time. Same as other shot. It's confusing because Pfizer was touting they could modify boosters for variants months ago.
    - sterlind 5y ago
      No. Pfizer indicated it could develop and begin mass-producing a variant-specific booster within 100 days, if a third dose of the original vaccine is ineffective. [0] But the plan is to use the existing stock. I'd feel a lot safer if Pfizer started developing a polyvalent booster with mRNA for all significant variants. 0. http://ctmirror.org/2021/08/13/pfizer-ceo-to-public-just-trust-us-on-the-covid-booster/ http://ctmirror.org/2021/08/13/pfizer-ceo-to-public-just-tru...
kalleboo 5y ago
Meanwhile the rest of the world outside the US and EU are still starving for any vaccines at all. But America pays more so they get doubled-up, even though their real problem is all the unvaccinated.
- lupire 5y ago
  Whether the real problem is the unvaccinated or need for boosters, the solution for non-antivax people at risk is the same: vaccines get administered to Americans.
criticaltinker 5y ago
> Global health leaders including Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, have pleaded with developed countries not to administer boosters given that most of the world’s population hasn’t received even a single dose. [1] > U.S regulators authorized a third dose of COVID-19 vaccines by Pfizer Inc (PFE.N)-BioNTech and Moderna Inc (MRNA.O) on Friday for people with compromised immune systems who are likely to have weaker protection from the two-dose regimens. [2] > "It will be a patient's attestation, and there will be no requirement for proof or prescription or a recommendation from an individual's healthcare provider," CDC official Dr. Amanda Cohn said [2] Clearly we are facing a supply shortage and distribution problem with the vaccines - and citizens of wealthier & more developed countries will fare better given the dynamics playing out. Perhaps that's just the status quo, not sure why I'm even surprised at this point. For the poor and rural populations in less developing countries, we really need to be pursuing early treatment using combinations of existing and widely available medicines, which have been shown to be very effective at preventing hospitalization and death [3][4] - it's what many front line doctors are already doing anyway, just without the same level of press coverage that vaccines are getting. [1] https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/08/grim-warning-israel-vaccination-blunts-does-not-defeat-delta https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/08/grim-warning-israel-... [2] https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-fda-authorizes-covid-19-vaccine-boosters-immunocompromised-2021-08-13/ https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-fda-authorizes-... [3] Pathophysiological Basis and Rationale for Early Outpatient Treatment of SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) Infection https://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(20)30673-2/fulltext https://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(20)30673-2/fulltex... [4] Multifaceted highly targeted sequential multidrug treatment of early ambulatory high-risk SARS-CoV-2 infection (COVID-19) https://scholarlycommons.henryford.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1139&context=infectiousdiseases_articles https://scholarlycommons.henryford.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?a...
- arpyzo 5y ago
  Early on in the pandemic it looked like things might unfold differently. You can read about why that didn't happen here: https://newrepublic.com/article/162000/bill-gates-impeded-global-access-covid-vaccines https://newrepublic.com/article/162000/bill-gates-impeded-gl...
- 5y ago
halfjoking 5y ago
Will the two shot people lose their jobs next year if they refuse the third shot? I’d rather have robust variety of antibodies provided by prior infection than get a leaky vaccine every 8 months. Sucks that I’m going to lose my job for that decision but having a IaaS (Immunity as a Service) subscription from Pharma sounds worse than getting longcovid again.
- revolvingocelot 5y ago
  >I’d rather have robust variety of antibodies provided by prior infection than get a leaky vaccine every 8 months. Sucks that I’m going to lose my job for that decision but having a IaaS (Immunity as a Service) subscription from Pharma sounds worse than getting longcovid again. Er, what? It sounds like you're saying that you'd rather get COVID-resistance from a bout with COVID rather than from a vaccine, but then you suggest that you've already had COVID and that you'd prefer to experience COVID complications again. The suspicious doubletalk aside, aren't the double-vaxxed currently doomed to risk a (mild, potentially infectious) Delta experience anyway? How's the resistance gained thereby stack up? Why's this an issue, anyway? Are you having to pay for your shots, or something? Or is this a "principled" stance? edit: probable answers to the personal questions I have of the parent can be found in this thread of theirs a few days ago. If the events of the past year and a half weren't enough to make any readers worried about trust in social institutions, reading this will: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27986681 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27986681
  - evilpotatoes 5y ago
    That's a really good question I'd like the answer to. I was reading that natural infection tends to create a stronger response against the nucleocapsid for t-cells. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.19.21255739v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.19.21255739v... Is this an either or thing? Will your immune system develop proper full immunity after getting vaccine + delta ?
  - silent_cal 5y ago
    He's saying he'd rather depend on his natural immunity than be mandatorily jabbed over and over again.

26 points by AndrewBissell 5y ago

This was probably the hold-up for FDA approval. They needed to see if a third dose would be recommended. But if two doses weren't enough to stop the delta variant, how can they be sure that three are?

chitowneats 5y ago
They can't. No clinical trials. It's a hail mary.
- AndrewBissell 5y ago
  I feel like "hail mary" would imply some sort of negative consequences for failure in this case. But short of the third shot just dropping dead everyone who takes it (unlikely), it will be easy enough with our media ecosystem to suppress adverse events and handwave away any problems with efficacy. I mean, we're already seeing numerous countries experience higher cases and hospitalizations with 50%+ vax rates than they ever did before the vaccine rollouts but hardly anyone is asking "hey, what's going on here?"
  - revolvingocelot 5y ago
    >I mean, we're already seeing numerous countries experience higher cases and hospitalizations with 50%+ vax rates than they ever did before the vaccine rollouts but hardly anyone is asking "hey, what's going on here?" There's no reason to ask because we actually do know what's going on here. The r0 of OG COVID is ~3, higher than the flu. The r0 of Delta COVID is between 5 and 9, and the CDC currently estimates it at 8.5. Worse, Delta generates more, and more serious, hospitalizations (among the unvaccinated). [0] Which countries are experiencing hospitalization rates higher than pre-vaccine times? More importantly, do those trends disappear if you look at areas within those countries that are highly- or poorly-vaccinated? [0] https://health-desk.org/articles/how-contagious-is-the-delta-variant-compared-to-other-infectious-diseases https://health-desk.org/articles/how-contagious-is-the-delta...
fighterpilot 5y ago
This binary thinking is wrong. Nobody thinks three shots will "stop" the delta variant. They think it'll lower the number of severe cases and deaths.
- tboyd47 5y ago
  Okay, so if the binary thinking is wrong, why stop at three? Why stop at all? Does the science say we just blast our bodies with as much mRNA as we can get away with?
  - fighterpilot 5y ago
    Elementary economic thinking answers this question. Benefits asymptote, so you'll stop at the point where the marginal benefit of an additional shot is less than the marginal financial cost, marginal opportunity cost and marginal cost of side effects all combined. That's definitely not the case before two and may not be the case before three based on data we've seen. It might be the case before four. And this doesn't factor in declining immunity over time. It might make sense to keep taking shots every half a year forever, until COVID mutates into something less deadly perhaps.
    - velcii 5y ago
      >You'll asymptote, so you'll stop at the point where the marginal benefit of an additional shot is less than the marginal financial cost, marginal opportunity cost and marginal cost of side effects all combined. But this is already the case for young people and people who already had covid and recovered, but we don't see them excluded from vaccinations based on their risk profile. So I think there is no reason to think that this logic will be applied more truthfully at some arbitrary time in future.
    - iamthepieman 5y ago
      This is basically what is done with the flu shot although it's a very different mechanism in the actual vaccine.
    - tboyd47 5y ago
silisili 5y ago
As I understand it(which could be completely wrong, so take with a grain of salt), there is no actual 'stopping' variants. The idea is to keep tricking your body with mock spike proteins, so that your body builds defenses against it. And data shows the more shots you get, the more your body builds resistance. So when the real thing arrives, it doesn't affect the host as much, if at all.
- lupire 5y ago
  Is the booster customized for Delta? The article doesn't say.
  - silisili 5y ago
    The boosters in question are not at this time. Same as other shot. It's confusing because Pfizer was touting they could modify boosters for variants months ago.
  - sterlind 5y ago
    No. Pfizer indicated it could develop and begin mass-producing a variant-specific booster within 100 days, if a third dose of the original vaccine is ineffective. [0] But the plan is to use the existing stock. I'd feel a lot safer if Pfizer started developing a polyvalent booster with mRNA for all significant variants. 0. http://ctmirror.org/2021/08/13/pfizer-ceo-to-public-just-trust-us-on-the-covid-booster/ http://ctmirror.org/2021/08/13/pfizer-ceo-to-public-just-tru...

kalleboo 5y ago

Meanwhile the rest of the world outside the US and EU are still starving for any vaccines at all. But America pays more so they get doubled-up, even though their real problem is all the unvaccinated.

lupire 5y ago
Whether the real problem is the unvaccinated or need for boosters, the solution for non-antivax people at risk is the same: vaccines get administered to Americans.

criticaltinker 5y ago

> Global health leaders including Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, have pleaded with developed countries not to administer boosters given that most of the world’s population hasn’t received even a single dose. [1] > U.S regulators authorized a third dose of COVID-19 vaccines by Pfizer Inc (PFE.N)-BioNTech and Moderna Inc (MRNA.O) on Friday for people with compromised immune systems who are likely to have weaker protection from the two-dose regimens. [2] > "It will be a patient's attestation, and there will be no requirement for proof or prescription or a recommendation from an individual's healthcare provider," CDC official Dr. Amanda Cohn said [2] Clearly we are facing a supply shortage and distribution problem with the vaccines - and citizens of wealthier & more developed countries will fare better given the dynamics playing out. Perhaps that's just the status quo, not sure why I'm even surprised at this point. For the poor and rural populations in less developing countries, we really need to be pursuing early treatment using combinations of existing and widely available medicines, which have been shown to be very effective at preventing hospitalization and death [3][4] - it's what many front line doctors are already doing anyway, just without the same level of press coverage that vaccines are getting. [1] https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/08/grim-warning-israel-vaccination-blunts-does-not-defeat-delta https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/08/grim-warning-israel-... [2] https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-fda-authorizes-covid-19-vaccine-boosters-immunocompromised-2021-08-13/ https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-fda-authorizes-... [3] Pathophysiological Basis and Rationale for Early Outpatient Treatment of SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) Infection https://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(20)30673-2/fulltext https://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(20)30673-2/fulltex... [4] Multifaceted highly targeted sequential multidrug treatment of early ambulatory high-risk SARS-CoV-2 infection (COVID-19) https://scholarlycommons.henryford.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1139&context=infectiousdiseases_articles https://scholarlycommons.henryford.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?a...

arpyzo 5y ago
Early on in the pandemic it looked like things might unfold differently. You can read about why that didn't happen here: https://newrepublic.com/article/162000/bill-gates-impeded-global-access-covid-vaccines https://newrepublic.com/article/162000/bill-gates-impeded-gl...
5y ago

halfjoking 5y ago

Will the two shot people lose their jobs next year if they refuse the third shot? I’d rather have robust variety of antibodies provided by prior infection than get a leaky vaccine every 8 months. Sucks that I’m going to lose my job for that decision but having a IaaS (Immunity as a Service) subscription from Pharma sounds worse than getting longcovid again.

revolvingocelot 5y ago
>I’d rather have robust variety of antibodies provided by prior infection than get a leaky vaccine every 8 months. Sucks that I’m going to lose my job for that decision but having a IaaS (Immunity as a Service) subscription from Pharma sounds worse than getting longcovid again. Er, what? It sounds like you're saying that you'd rather get COVID-resistance from a bout with COVID rather than from a vaccine, but then you suggest that you've already had COVID and that you'd prefer to experience COVID complications again. The suspicious doubletalk aside, aren't the double-vaxxed currently doomed to risk a (mild, potentially infectious) Delta experience anyway? How's the resistance gained thereby stack up? Why's this an issue, anyway? Are you having to pay for your shots, or something? Or is this a "principled" stance? edit: probable answers to the personal questions I have of the parent can be found in this thread of theirs a few days ago. If the events of the past year and a half weren't enough to make any readers worried about trust in social institutions, reading this will: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27986681 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27986681
- evilpotatoes 5y ago
  That's a really good question I'd like the answer to. I was reading that natural infection tends to create a stronger response against the nucleocapsid for t-cells. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.19.21255739v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.19.21255739v... Is this an either or thing? Will your immune system develop proper full immunity after getting vaccine + delta ?
- silent_cal 5y ago
  He's saying he'd rather depend on his natural immunity than be mandatorily jabbed over and over again.