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Israel’s Covid-19 boosters are preventing infections, new studies suggest

175 points by hheikinh 5y ago

rgbbtc4life 5y ago
Hahahahaha have fun vaxtards.
endisneigh 5y ago
Assuming it's only as effective as the original two-dose shot and prevents for the same duration, it seems like COVID will never go away. Assuming the current trend and a 9 month prevention, that pretty much aligns to what happened last year. So we'd need no new significant variants to develop or any outbreaks. Seems unlikely given that there are many countries with vaccination rates under 50% Probably better to focus on the minimum number of vaccinations necessary to make hospitalization/death unlikely and move on from there. Preventing infection might be too high a bar to meet now.
- base698 5y ago
  That's ok your iPhone will ensure you've had the requisite boosters before allowing you access to public spaces. Everyone can sleep easy!
- cm2187 5y ago
  [edit] this is in response to the earlier version of your post where you wonder if the virus will ever go away: That I think is a given. Even if we had a bullet proof vaccine, you have such a large reserve of unvaccinated people across the world, plus animals, that the virus is endemic at this stage. Which isn't a problem. If once vaccinated the virus is mostly harmless, then it is just one more of the many endemic diseases we live with without worrying about.
  - prox 5y ago
    We might also see the first batch of medicines appear in 2022, if we can successfully prevent ICU visits with effective medicines for starters, that would mean a lot to healthcare professionals worldwide.
    - Griffinsauce 5y ago
      Is there any actual development here? It's definitely not a given that we can do this.
      - Spellman 5y ago
        There actually is! Two studies in Brazil have shown a pretty significant reduction in hospitalizations in a RCT of fluvoxamine. More data obviously required. Plus there has been more work on other treatments, but most are pretty expensive. https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22619137/fluvoxamine-covid-ivermectin-together-study-mcmaster https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22619137/fluvoxamine-covi...
      - prox 5y ago
        While obviously complicated, Pfizer is working on a promising medication and I know of a dutch trial using antibodies that’s starting a next phase.
  - JackFr 5y ago
    I am not a virologist, but based on my reading, in 100 years COVID will still be with us. At worst it will be the flu, and at best it will be just another strain of a cold. COVID has the very helpful quality of being least impactful on the very young. As new children are born they will be exposed to COVID multiple times over their lives, to the point when they are at ages we now consider vulnerable, they likely will have developed as much resistance as one can have.
  - loceng 5y ago
    Which is why top virologists around the world have been trying to sound the alarm to warn that you don't vaccinate during a pandemic because it drives escape mutant variants; this type of response gets downvoted into oblivion by an ideological mob who are fear driven more than critical thinking, who have memorized the mainstream narrative responses to such statements by experts - or attempting character assassination of experts not toeing the line; https://twitter.com/lefarfadet8/status/1427754200398766087 https://twitter.com/lefarfadet8/status/1427754200398766087 Edit to add: Look at the critical conversation people are having instead of downvoting me into oblivion! HN's full of so many ideologues it's crazy.
    - cm2187 5y ago
      Not that I am qualified for such a debate, but it's not clear to me that the risk of creating variants is greater than the risk of letting the virus run through the population unopposed. The variants so far seem to be variations of the same virus with similar risk profiles, and the vaccines seem to be mostly efficient against these variants.
      - loceng 5y ago
        For each variant we've given an alphabet to, like Delta, there are variants occurring from those - they seem to only give them a letter once it's a large enough step in mutation; I'm not sure of the actual labeling practices used. But yes, I'm not qualified for the pinnacle of such a debate either, but those discussions aren't even happening - at least not in public which they need to be. There are mutations that are occurring however just in vaccinated, that aren't occurring in the non-vaccinated, the virus mutating to escape the immunity of the vaccinations - which then makes those variants easier to spread to other vaccinated [and potentially easier to spread to unvaccinated as well]; UCSF recently released study of 1,300+ patients with COVID,78% had specific variants associated with vaccinated vs. 48% of unvaccinated having those same variants - various conclusions of possibilities could be made from that.
        pionar 5y ago
        (Replying here since your original post is dead) It's not that nobody's talking about it, it's just that people have done the research, and they've proven people like Dr. Montagnier wrong. Why give air to people who keep saying things that are wrong? https://twitter.com/GKangInd/status/1397429770028158978 https://twitter.com/GKangInd/status/1397429770028158978
  - bsaul 5y ago
    "If once vaccinated the virus is mostly harmless" Note that even not vaccinated, the ultra large majority of people either are asymptomatic or don't get anything worst than a flu (which doesn't mean covid = flu in general) We seem to have forgotten that the original concern with the virus was the fact that it saturated intensive care units in hospitals, and thus prevented people from getting proper care.
    - 8ytecoder 5y ago
      Which, unfortunately, is still relevant - as seen in Louisiana and Florida. A frank and honest admission by one of the physicians on Reddit was that most people who stay in ventilator for weeks have no path to recovery but families don’t let them go. Essentially COVID patients hold up the beds for a long time as well.
    - graeme 5y ago
      That’s the original acute concern. Long run we still don’t know if it will have effects on brain function etc. There are some disturbing lines of evidence on this front. For example the UK biobank showing grey matter loss post infection including in mild cases: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.11.21258690v1.full.pdf https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.11.21258690v...
      - bsaul 5y ago
        i remember this study, but i'm surprised we don't have more papers on the same topic since. It seemed like a pretty big news, and yet i don't hear people recommending mass-vaccination mention it. Any idea why ?
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        mafuy 5y ago
        I recommend mass vax and this point is one of the main points I use. But I agree with you that sadly, this danger is not well known.
  - p_j_w 5y ago
    >Which isn't a problem. If once vaccinated the virus is mostly harmless, then it is just one more of the many endemic diseases we live with without worrying about. It's a problem if you're one of the many people who, for whatever reason, can't be safely vaccinated.
- dv_dt 5y ago
  Is there any reason not to increase vaccine production rates so we have the capacity to vaccinate the world population faster than every 9 months?
  - endisneigh 5y ago
    nope - as you allude to, ideally we could spit out these vaccines and just give people 6-month boosters until everyone is vaccinated and we're good. I believe the issue is that too many people fail to get vaccinated so it's challenging. Requiring boosters might also convert small numbers of people who got a vaccine one to not get it subsequent times.
    - dv_dt 5y ago
      In the first world there is an issue of take up. But around much of the rest of the world, the issues is they haven’t received nearly enough vaccine. If we don’t significantly vaccinate much of the rest of the world, my expectation is a continued high rate of variant creation as well as continued economic instability due to logistics disruption.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
  - SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
    > Is there any reason not to increase vaccine production rates Intellectual property rights. It's not a "good" reason. But it's a reality that needs to be overcome. https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/safricas-ramaphosa-accuses-big-pharma-selfish-unjust-vaccine-policy-2021-06-21/ https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/... https://www.democracynow.org/2021/6/22/headlines/south_african_president_blasts_big_pharma_for_refusing_to_share_covid_19_vaccine_technology https://www.democracynow.org/2021/6/22/headlines/south_afric... Germany doesn't want the Pfizer vaccine made freely: https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/germany-opposes-us-plan-waive-patents-covid-19-vaccines-2021-05-06/ https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/... and by some co-incidence, this is good for German money: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-economy-biontech-idUSKBN2FB15A https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-economy-biontech-...
- smorgusofborg 5y ago
  A few vaccines are 3 doses at 0,1,6-12 months and offer a decade of protection if you don't miss the last dose..
  - endisneigh 5y ago
    wow, wasn't aware of this development. which COVID vaccine is this? is it one of the nasal ones?
    - pradn 5y ago
      I think they're saying that other vaccines, not COVID vaccines, have this property. We can't assess decadal resistance yet for COVID vaccines.
      - endisneigh 5y ago
        If so, I'm not sure how that's relevant to COVID at the present. Per the article we're discussing it's unclear how long a 3rd dose will be effective for, hence my comment to begin with. If we were to pre-suppose you gain a decade of prevention then yeah, that'd be great.
        aaomidi 5y ago
        We don't know how the protections in the current vaccines are going to play out until we investigate them more.
        endisneigh 5y ago
        Agreed, but we already know how 2-dose plays out with respect to Delta. The article in question is investigating how a 3rd dose fares against delta. There are also delta-specific boosters coming out soon.
        pradn 5y ago
        I think they're saying that we can hope that three shots gives long term resistance, as it happens for other vaccines. We can only hope, and it's not a totally unrealistic hope given how other vaccines work.
- brightball 5y ago
  It's why I'm more interested in companies that can treat the symptoms effectively than only the vaccines right now. IMO the only way this ever truly gets better is if the effects can be mitigated quickly. Whoever figures that out is going to make a lot of money.
  - Covzire 5y ago
    Good luck with that in 2021, someone is already making a lot of money, and ostensibly weaponizing big tech into preventing anyone from even talking about alternatives.
  - omlett 5y ago
    "CBD and its metabolite, 7-OH-CBD, but not congeneric cannabinoids, potently block SARS-CoV-2 replication in lung epithelial cells. CBD induces interferon expression and up-regulates its antiviral signaling pathway. A cohort of human patients previously taking CBD had significantly lower SARSCoV-2 infection incidence of up to an order of magnitude relative to matched pairs or the general population. This study highlights CBD, and its active metabolite, 7-OH-CBD, as potential preventative agents and therapeutic treatments for SARS-CoV-2 at early stages of infection." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7987002/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7987002/ I am not saying anything, JUST SAYIN'
  - yonaguska 5y ago
    It's been figured out, but we're waiting on Pfizer to bring it's protease inhibitor to market before we acknowledge existing, out of patent medications that do the same thing.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > as effective as the original two-dose shot and prevents for the same duration We're giving boosters of a vaccine developed against the Beta variant. That's better than nothing. But it's inefficient against Delta. Pfizer/BioNTech are working on a Delta-specific booster [1]. If we can get approvals rolling faster without compromising safety, it might mean being able to release variant-specific boosters earlier in their transmission cycle. [1] https://investors.biontech.de/news-releases/news-release-details/pfizer-and-biontech-provide-update-booster-program-light-delta https://investors.biontech.de/news-releases/news-release-det...
  - eganist 5y ago
    > If we can get approvals rolling faster without compromising safety, it might mean being able to release variant-specific boosters earlier in their transmission cycle. This is basically it. We'd need an approval process similar to what exists for flu shots today. I'm not versed on what that process is, but if that can happen with covid, it'll be the biggest batch of red tape cut.
    - op00to 5y ago
      pfizer and moderna have essentially filed for rolling submissions. the biggest impediment to vaccines stopping the virus is morons not getting the vaccine.
      - penultimatebro 5y ago
        Yeah, dang morons not getting the not-yet-available booster shot! I mean, those dang morons not getting the available vaccine which does nothing for transmission of the current viral variant! Eesh, well that doesn’t hold water either... Ugh this is too complicated, let’s just blame the unvaccinated anyways mmkay?
  - op00to 5y ago
    As to whether the current batch of mRNA vaccines are "inefficient" against delta, the science is far from settled. There are no changes to the mRNA vaccines composition in the booster. Moderna has been testing a lower "dosage" of the booster at 50 mcg vs. 100mcg for the current vaccine, but other than that it's the same stuff it's always been.
- Natsu 5y ago
  I wonder if this is really the case. It seems like the original vaccines trained everyone's immune system on the spike protein specifically because this is exposed and highly conserved by the virus, such that it's hard to change and still leave an effective virus. Delta, however, found such a mutation that made it more virulent and it escaped. If we vaccinate against the modified spike, it's not clear how many more mutations exist like Delta. Maybe we can still get ahead of it, but I don't think anyone knows yet. I do wonder if we'll see reformulated boosters against Delta's spikes, though.
  - datameta 5y ago
    I wonder how accurately we can run mutation simulations updated based on best current data to correct the best guess optimization function(s). It would be a breakthrough if we can predict the likeliest mutation. I'm aware of the enormous number of variables making this tremendously difficult...
    - nradov 5y ago
      We don't have the technology to stimulate that accurately in software. It would have to be done using transgenic animal models and/or human tissue cultures. Essentially it would be a form of gain-of-function research, and there are concerns that a lab accident could result in an even more dangerous variant escaping into the wild.
      - datameta 5y ago
        With ML-assisted drug discovery in, say, kinase inhibitors we search the molecule variation space for test candidates. What stops us from applying this to the protein scale by folding binding sites to discover variant candidates that would be more virulent? I'd like to understand this better.
        nradov 5y ago
        Sure you can explore the solution space in software to identify candidates but at some point you have to create a live virus and see how it actually performs.
serial_dev 5y ago
It's like Linux on the desktop and fusion reactors. It seems like we are always one jab away from being safe and overcoming covid.
- pwned1 5y ago
  At this point we need to acknowledge that there will be no "overcoming" it and it will be endemic, like the flu.
  - bsksi 5y ago
    Oh, we have acknowledged it. The question is, have our politicians acknowledged it, or will they keep taking our rights?
    - JohnWhigham 5y ago
      Stop downvoting this, it's a legitimate question. When are we going to stop all the policy bullshit, accept that it is endemic, and get back to normalcy as much as we can? It's wearing on everybody.
    - kimbernator 5y ago
      The acknowledgement of it being endemic doesn't necessitate that we put up with covid's destructive nature. It's still the case that: 1. A large number of people globally don't have access to the vaccine yet. 2. A large proportion of the USA's population either doesn't feel motivated to get the vaccine or is explicitly opposed to it. There will come a day where we collectively say that enough is enough and we've done all we can, but there is still a lot of work to do before we get to that point. Managing the spread and improving vaccination numbers will overall reduce the damage done to people and the health system when we reach that point.
    - titzer 5y ago
      Try going out in public naked or running a few red lights and then come back and troll some more about your "rights". The world is full of rules to prevent you from being a jerk and endangering others.
xattt 5y ago
I am fascinated to know what the effects are of over-vaccination. Is there some spillover effects where a highly-primed immune system begins to get into weird autoimmune reactions? Do weird plaques develop or a build-up of antibodies begin to form in random parts of the body, like in a blood dyscrasia? Or does nothing happen? Chronic vaccine overdoses are so exotic, as access to vaccines had been historically so tightly controlled, and it’s unlikely that someone would routinely subject themselves to daily/weekly IM injections. Edit: After seeing a few responses, I meant to say that my curiosity is for vaccine doses way over and above what might be comparable to current practices with annual vaccinations.
- Tenoke 5y ago
  Annual flu jabs aren't exactly uncommon. Obviously the mechanism isn't quite the same but there's no real reason to expect a high chance of issues at that rate of revaccination.
  - unknownOrigin 5y ago
    I wouldn't exactly call a comparison between gene therapy "isn't quite the same". Flu shots contain inactivated/weakened flu virus (depending on the version), to the presence of which/antigens the body reacts by creating antibodies. RNA vaccines are a different technology, which transfect (reprogram in IT speak) your own cells to produce spike proteins similar to the ones sars-cov-2 does (the consensus seems to be that this spike variant is, unlike the real one, harmless and is not free floating) which are then detected by the the body and antibodies are created. The result is esentially the same, but the way you get there contains an extra step and it is this extra step that is the source of the vast majority of (rare) adverse reactions. Blood clots etc. The ironic thing is that most people who are very strongly opinionated on this (both sides) have no idea what the actual difference is and blindly trust whatever either the government or a local anti-vax facebook group tells them.
    - rssoconnor 5y ago
      > The result is esentially the same, but the way you get there contains an extra step and it is this extra step that is the source of the vast majority of (rare) adverse reactions. Blood clots etc. The blood clotting issue was found in the Adenovirus vector vaccines, not the mRNA vaccines.
vkou 5y ago
> Probably better to focus on the minimum number of vaccinations necessary to make hospitalization/death unlikely and move on from there. It would be nice if we could meet even that bar, but the US is currently at 53% of the population vaccinated, and much of its medical system is collapsing. Which is fine for that 53%, until they have a heart attack, get in a car accident, cancer, are immuno-compromised, etc, etc. Given how virulent COVID is, the minimum number from keeping outbreaks from overwhelming ICUs, seems to be close to "80% of the population, and a booster shot every 6 months."
- pwned1 5y ago
  "Collapsing" is a serious overstatement.
  - vkou 5y ago
    How else would you describe a situation if ICU beds in your area are full? [1] Do you think a bed will appear for you, if you get into a serious car accident? Will you even want to be going to the hospital for chemotherapy, right now (And that's assuming the oncologists are actually doing their jobs, instead of treating COVID patients)? To the doctor's office for some routine care, if you have a vulnerable person in your household? Hospital beds and doctors aren't Kubernetes containers. You can't simply spin more up based on a demand surge. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/covid-hospitals-near-you.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/covid-hospitals-...
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - runako 5y ago
    The trauma center emergency room in my state is diverting patients to less-capable facilities. Elective surgeries (such as for cancer and other life-threatening conditions) are being cancelled. All of this is happening in states representing perhaps a third of the US population. Not being able to get lifesaving cancer removal surgery is the state of affairs that people colloquially mean when say a medical system is "collapsing."
swader999 5y ago
Great, let's degrade our immune systems in an over reaction to this by vaccinating every five months in a never ending saga.
- Tostino 5y ago
  Do you have any source for the claim that any of the vaccines degrade your immune system?
  - lamontcg 5y ago
    I'm sure they can point you at some educational youtube videos.
    - bsksi 5y ago
      As opposed to us educated people who point at studies that months later mysteriously fail to replicate.
      - jquery 5y ago
        epistomological nihilism is not the way forward
  - swader999 5y ago
    This suggests it might not be a sure thing: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33959318/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33959318/
mfer 5y ago
A question to consider is, how to we move from pandemic to endemic? COVID-19 isn't going away and will join the other endemic viruses like chicken pox, the other widely out there coronaviruses, etc.
- meheleventyone 5y ago
  It's got to be something like how much of the population are getting sick. I presume when a disease is endemic you have a fairly steady rate of illness and death taking into account seasonal variation. Whereas right now covid still seems to be spreading quickly through the population and causing large numbers to get sick at once.
  - mfer 5y ago
    When I think about this I think of two parts of it. First, there are other endemics. Influenza is one of them. In the US along millions get sick from it and tens of thousands die each year. We live within that realm. There will be people with different degrees of risk and levels for being ok with going back to "normal" as COVID-19 is just out there. How do we decided (as groups in the world population) what we are ok with? Second, what do we do to proactively push the population towards endemic? Different groups will go toward different things with different levels of risk. There is no quantitative right answer. What things can we do and how does that affect things.
    - meheleventyone 5y ago
      For me before we can even talk about covid being endemic it needs to reach a steady state and we're nowhere near that right now. In terms of risk management flu is a good example because most humans encounter various versions in childhood but we still offer vaccination every year against the most likely variants. And we can still have flu pandemics. It's largely in a steady state though but the reality of that means we actually need to do a lot of management as risk profiles change locally. And largely this is a medical issue not a political one.
    - marcosdumay 5y ago
tristor 5y ago
My understanding is that if you've had a two-shot series you should get a third shot within 12 months of your second in order to extend immunity for a significant period of time. I'm hoping boosters are offered for Pfizer & Moderna soon, because most people I know are fully vaccinated but also aware that COVID is basically endemic at this point.
whatshisface 5y ago
As far as I can tell is bad news for rare vaccine side effects. If the side effects are rare but you take a booster twice a year for 50 years, rare outcomes become much more likely. (Referring here to the high count but not that high stuff that shows up in VAERS like tinnitus.) Hopefully more vaccines are developed that become safer over time so that the danger falls faster than the repeated risk accumulates. Or perhaps the rare side effects are due to personal susceptibility and aren't cumulative so people who didn't get bad side effects the first time won't get them the 90th.
- jdavis703 5y ago
  People take the flu shot annually and are generally fine. Unless it’s showing that COVID-19 vaccines are much more dangerous than flu vaccines, this isn’t a big concern.
  - whatshisface 5y ago
    With regards to the side effects that don't matter (feeling really tired for one or two days) they're stronger than the average flu shot, so maybe they're stronger in other ways, or maybe not. Nobody can quantify the reporting bias on VAERS, and the side effects of midrange severity showing up there aren't scary enough to justify the kind of regulatory investigation that the blood clotting thing received, so we are unlikely to see a study on this in the near term.
  - SuoDuanDao 5y ago
    Given that it's a very different technology from flu vaccines, we shouldn't really assume that they're not. Too early to be sure of course but there are some concerning studies and anecdata already [1]. [1] https://www.scivisionpub.com/abstract-display.php?id=1811&fbclid=IwAR35HRVBhLO5bjHyF_AtUr2H19YfAy2_uch94kwCD9DHcTGyRbslozNd8WE https://www.scivisionpub.com/abstract-display.php?id=1811&fb...
- lamontcg 5y ago
  > rare outcomes become much more likely. Citations needed. Alternatively if vaccine reactions depend on something like immunotype of the individual that isn't going to change, and if you tolerate the vaccine today you're likely to tolerate it for the next 50 years. Also if we apply the concept of Original Antigenic Sin, then once you've formed a healthy humoral reaction to a given antigen you're likely to continue to have healthy reactions to similar antigens in the future (and vice versa, if you form a poor immune reaction you my have poor reactions in the future).
tumblewit 5y ago
I have little understanding of this but someone who actually works on vaccines told me this theory: Your body upon coming in contact with the vaccine starts to product antibodies (the first shot). This is generally enough for a normal immune system to fight the disease if in the future the body was to come in contact with the virus. The second shot is for hyper immunity after 4 weeks. What it does is that it basically tells your body make a lot more antibodies now and the second shot is actually a booster shot. So every time you take a shot afterwards (like in the middle of a pandemic) your body produces an abundance of antibodies and will likely fend off the virus much more easily than if there was no booster dose of any kind and just a vaccine shot. This is important because simply protecting your body from the virus is not enough since you could be carrying the virus and spreading it with mild infection which will not be a problem for you but will not protect others and so the hyperimmunity is important for preventing spread during a wave. I won’t be surprised if this one is a yearly dose as you need to be hyperimmune to not show symptoms and spread.
- nradov 5y ago
  There's more to immunity than the antibodies generated as a short term response to infection or vaccination. Memory cell activity is more important to long term immunity.
- 3l3c7r1c 5y ago
  Another benefit is cell memory. If you see the vaccines kids get, almost all are multiple shots. Including 3-4 shots for Hep-B. It's nothing new. The reason is body takes repeat threat more seriously and builds the cell memory. So even when the antibody is gone the cell memory tells body to act quickly and what to do.
taxicabjesus 5y ago
The best way to prevent your own deterioration and death from COVID-19 is to demand your medical providers implement a science-based approach to your care. This means that you should not consent to your over-oxygenation with medical oxygen. Science figured out 200 years ago that oxygen is toxic. Doctors knew this, then the antidote got forgotten. Some modern doctors are still aware of the toxicity of oxygen, but use oxygen as supportive therapy when people have low oxygen saturation levels without the antidote for toxicity: https://twitter.com/robertpdickson/status/1265254839484854272 https://twitter.com/robertpdickson/status/126525483948485427... To quote the Tuberculosis doctor's tweets: > We've known that oxygen causes lung injury for 250 years. Lavoisier stuck guinea pigs in "l'air vital" and watched them die from "une fièvre ardente" and a "maladie inflammatoire." Their lungs were flacid, red, and engorged with blood. Their right ventricles were dilated. 2/n > He was describing ARDS (w/ cor pulmonale), 200 years before we named it. If he'd had microscopy, he'd have seen epithelial necrosis, hyaline membranes: diffuse alveolar damage. Same injury pattern that COVID causes. (Image from my lab: healthy mouse, 95% FiO2 for 4 days.) 3/n Published science has found that over-oxygenation drives deterioration and death: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22993262 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22993262 NASA originally specified a mixed-gas atmosphere for the Apollo spacecraft: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25883728 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25883728 I've taken to calling medicalists' insane use of oxygen #MedicalHyperventilation: "The Folly of Medical Hyperventilation" - https://www.taxiwars.org/2021/06/folly-medical-hyperventilation.html https://www.taxiwars.org/2021/06/folly-medical-hyperventilat... Gotten a little positive feedback from the twitter, but the people with large followings haven't amplified my message. To survive your own inevitable infection, don't let them hyperventilate you to death. Questions for HN: 1. Were you previously aware that oxygen is toxic at high pressure or in excess, and that this is as settled as science can possibly get? 2. Can doctors be convinced that they are worsening their patients' conditions with their cavalier use of medical oxygen?
- hackingforfun 5y ago
  Yes, I was aware that oxygen is toxic at high pressure. One thing you don't mention, is that lack of oxygen, as with a serious COVID case, also causes death.
amluto 5y ago
I would love to see more research on whether a different/better vaccine could provide stronger or longer lasting immunity. There are a whole lot of mechanisms by which a vaccine might produce immunity (antibodies, memory B cells that can produce antibodies if needed, various forms of T cells, and probably mechanisms that haven't been discovered or understood yet.) It seems that most research on immunity focuses on antibodies in blood, and I think this is just because they are relatively easy to measure. I haven't seen anything suggesting that mRNA vaccines are especially good as compared to other vaccines. mRNA vaccines were quick to develop given all the past work that had been done, but that isn't the same thing as being good once developed and mass-produced. Novavax's subunit vaccine did extremely well in trials, and it's mostly old technology. Are there useful studies of the efficacy of the J&J and AZ vaccines over time? Those are newish technology, too.
jrochkind1 5y ago
The headline doesn't quite do the article justice. Boosters in this one study reduced measured infection (they didn't measure actual hospitalization/disease!) by some amount in the very short term. But experts say this tells us very little about what effect they will have over even months, instead of weeks/days. Last paragraph: > If the booster’s additional immunity fades quickly, or if the booster campaign distracts from surveillance efforts or from reaching people who have not been vaccinated at all, Dowdy says, the effort will have little long-term impact: “We need longer term data before we can say that giving people boosters at any given interval is the right strategy.”
- op00to 5y ago
  It's almost as if we can't science our way out of this. Instead we need selfish, ignorant people to take the smallest steps to make a real impact.
hackingforfun 5y ago
I'm pretty surprised to still see some misinformation in some of the posts here. I have a friend who has a PhD in molecular biology and she described the mRNA vaccines to me. The mRNA is only a piece of the spike protein, and does not enter the cell's nucleus. It only interacts with the cytoplasm. Normally, if a cell had to deal with an actual SARS-CoV-2 virus, it would be dealing with the spike proteins and the entire virus, basically, a much higher dose, and it would also invade the actual cell. She also described the ingredients of an mRNA vaccine, which were basically: -mRNA (which is gone from the body in a few days) -lipids -salt and sugars It's also worth noting that the mRNA does not interact with a person's actual DNA. I just don't see why there is so much concern out there. This is a potentially deadly virus. Look at the states with the highest amount of unvaccinated individuals in the US. They are running out of hospital beds [1]. This is not about taking our freedoms, this is about getting this under control. I do agree with the other posters here that say that COVID will likely just become endemic. My understanding is that eventually it will probably be a common cold, once humans have enough antibodies for it. [1] https://fortune.com/2021/08/25/states-icu-beds-covid-cases-delta-variant/ https://fortune.com/2021/08/25/states-icu-beds-covid-cases-d...
- graeme 5y ago
  > My understanding is that eventually it will probably be a common cold, once humans have enough antibodies for it. This can’t be right. Antibodies fade: for other coronaviruses within 6-12 months. They aren’t a thing the body keeps around forever. Lasting immunity would be from memory T cells or memory T cells, if their long run response worked well and the virus didn’t change enough between infections.
  - hackingforfun 5y ago
    Actually we didn't get into antibodies and memory T cells when talking with my friend. I don't have a PhD in this, so I can't say either way. I mostly just wanted to pass on the information from her regarding the ingredients and how the mRNA only interacts with the cytoplasm of the cell, and not the actual DNA. That's the important part.
- 5y ago
kjaftaedi 5y ago
I was unaware Isreal repaired their relationship with Pfizer. Last I saw Israel was trying to stiff Pfizer for 2.5 million doses and Pfizer execs were calling Israel a 'banana republic' and were going to cut them off entirely.
- dvirsky 5y ago
  Perhaps the new government fixed things?
- yibers 5y ago
  Citation needed
  - kjaftaedi 5y ago
    https://www.insider.com/pfizer-halts-shipment-of-covid-vaccines-after-israel-doesnt-pay-2021-4 https://www.insider.com/pfizer-halts-shipment-of-covid-vacci...
DSingularity 5y ago
I’m curious if we have data wrt to safety and approval process length. How fast (in terms of trial - size and duration) - can we go on approvals without compromising safety? Maybe a progressive approval is best. Approve for x% of population for next n months then study the data and lift limits. What if it was dangerous that we went from 0-100 with the current round of vaccines?
imwillofficial 5y ago
> I'm pretty surprised to still see some misinformation in some of the posts here. “Anything I don’t agree with is misinformation” The data on COVID related subjects has been murky, inconsistent, and poorly collected. The label of misinformation should be used with care. > It's also worth noting that the mRNA does not interact with a person's actual DNA. Like this gem. This is false. RNA can burn back into DNA via reverse transcriptase(sp) Making assumptions on something so important, like your DNA is foolish. Anyone remember Viox? https://www.jefferson.edu/about/news-and-events/2021/6/discovery-shows-human-cells-can-write-rna-sequences-to-dna.html https://www.jefferson.edu/about/news-and-events/2021/6/disco...
- sfink 5y ago
  >> It's also worth noting that the mRNA does not interact with a person's actual DNA. > Like this gem. This is false. RNA can burn back into DNA via reverse transcriptase(sp) Irrelevant. The vaccine mRNA cannot interact with your DNA, because it doesn't enter the nucleus at all. It is used to produce spike proteins within the cell, outside of the nucleus. The mRNA vaccine is not as exotic or unnatural as people seem to think. Cells have ribosomes. Ribosomes process mRNA instructions to build proteins. All the time.
  - imwillofficial 5y ago
    This is false. We don’t know this for a fact currently. Best assumption at best.
logicalmonster 5y ago
Just 15 days to slow the spread. Don't wear masks, only doctors can wear masks. Don't shop at your local store you might get Covid, just go to Wal-mart (TM) and shop at Amazon (TM). No just kidding, wear 2 masks. Don't try any generic, low-cost alternative treatments, we can't get vaccines authorized if there's a treatment. Let's just stick you on a ventilator. Try not to look at the financial incentives and risks on that. Ok finally, if you just take this vaccine we'll let you have your life back. You need a vaccine passport to eat at restaurants. Just kidding. Take this booster shot too. (you are here) Actually no wait, take the boosters every 6 months. Who knows what dehumanization will come next? They're going to blame the unvaxxed for any problems with the vaxx, despite this never before being a thing in human history. Big Pharma is laughing all the way to the bank at our mass psychosis.
imwillofficial 5y ago
47 boosters later…
dukeofdoom 5y ago
Since the daily cases are now up to where they were before the vaccine. Its pretty clear the original promise of the vaccine has been a giant failure. And serious erosion of trust with major medical and political implications. A more sensible approach would be have the at risk group vaccinate. And let the young and strong opt for natural immunity, which it turns out is superior and much more longer lasting anyway. In any case, since, viruses prey on the weak with compromised immune systems. This should be compared to a nation wide weight loss program. Eating healthy, proper sleep and dental health, and managing stress levels. Instead we got lockdowns with gyms shutdown, and people forced to sit inside away from the sun, scared and stressed.
- jimmyjazz14 5y ago
  I don't think the vaccines have been a failure at all, they still prevent hospitalization and deaths from COVID quite well, and breakthroughs were predicted to be fairly common from the start. I think what has been a failure is the public messaging about the vaccines and COVID in general. That said, I do agree that we need to move on from the fear based approach to life many have held on to even after getting vaccinated.
- ac2u 5y ago
  >natural immunity, which it turns out is superior and much more longer lasting anyway where are you getting this from?
  - disgruntledphd2 5y ago
    I don't know, but lots of people seem to claim this (without citations).
    - dukeofdoom 5y ago
      "This study demonstrated that natural immunity confers longer lasting and stronger protection against infection" https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v1.full.pdf https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v...
andred14 5y ago
Dr. Robert Malone, the inventor of mRNA, said that we should not be taking it. These sh0ts are injuring and killing thousands however statistics show there is no increase of deaths after 2020 globally. This is medical fraud plain and simple
cuspy 5y ago
I am absolutely pro-vaccine, but can someone help me work through the relative risk calculations here? Vaccine: -?% reduction in likelihood of infection (there is currently no monitored control group and no transparent dataset that accurately accounts for baseline infection rates, geographical and demographic variation, etc.) -?% chance of ?% reduction in severity of disease (there is no empirical evidence that has been consistent across time and location, especially as the virus mutates. All the data I've seen is aggregated across the entire vaccination campaign, never accounting for changing rate of vaccinated vs changes in baseline infection rate in each location) -?% chance of acute vaccine side effects (VAERS unreliable, no transparent alternative dataset accessible to the public) -?% risk of future unknown long-term effects of vaccination (including unpredictable outcomes like ADE) -100% chance of assuming above risk of unknown long-term vaccine side effects (simply no data available by definition) -?% chance of getting breakthrough infected with COVID-19 if exposed (I haven't seen any challenge studies, probably not possible for ethical reasons) -?% risk of future long-term effects for recovered breakthrough infections (again, no data available. only time will tell whether breakthrough infections are less likely to lead to potential long-term effects than unvaccinated recovered infections) -each additional vaccine booster dose adds ?% cumulative risk of both acute and long-term side effects, with no indication that boosters will ever end. No Vaccine: -0% chance of reduction in severity of disease -0% chance of acute vaccine side effects -0% chance of long-term vaccine side effects -?% chance of getting infected and assuming a ?% risk of future long-term effects of recovered infection (my risk of getting infected is low and partially under my own control since I don't travel, work from home, self-isolate, etc) Am I missing anything? Even if I am relatively confident that the vaccine reduces the likelihood of infection and the severity of infection significantly and will continue to do so for variants (the data suggests this, though it less transparent than I would like, since there is no publicly accessible unaggregated dataset (e.g. infection rates for vaxxed vs unvaxxed starting AFTER 50% vaccination rate in a given region, there is no longer a control group and all "natural" control groups suffer from inherent geographical and demographic biases) It seems to me that the number of unknowns makes the risk calculation much harder than people are making it out to be, but I would be very happy to to hear considered, thoughtful counterpoints to the above.
ostenning 5y ago
Poll: I just would like to get a “hands up” if anyone else got significant chest and heart pain from the mRNA vaccines, please comment. Thanks
YeBanKo 5y ago
When will we stop seeing this vague click-baity titles? "new studies suggest" - not conclusive. "Protection increases in the weeks following a third dose, but it’s unclear how long the effect will last" "by more than 10-fold 2 weeks later." After the first paragraph, it was only established that it provides short term immunity against Delta variant. How long will it last? How well will it do against other variants? Also, the demographic receiving booster shot in Israel are mostly elderly. So this impressive infection rate drop was observed only in older demographic. The effect probably won't be as good among younger generations. Repeated vaccination adds more risk, even if it is small per dose, it is being accumulated. Can we keep up with booster shots every six months? Even flu shot is only once a year and choosing next year flu shot strain is a year long challenge.
jojo2000 5y ago
How much time before this flawed study is retracted ? Who pays for it ? Who gets the money when booster after booster is inefective ? Most grave cases in Israel are vaccinated people. Number of cases exploded since population is mostly vaccinated. Wake up people. You're being lied to in a major way. Don't let your intelligence be insulted any more.
gerbilly 5y ago
I'm starting to feel that when people protest things they disagree with that it has less to do with the actual issue than with a desire to voice a contrary opinion in general. I suspect that the opposition—even anger sometimes—is a lot less about vaccines, or abortion than some other unmet need that finds expression though this kind of opposition. And I also think that even discussing these issues with the intent to persuade is futile and giving the protesters exactly what they are seeking. I think it's deeply ironic that an army of well intentioned people fan out on the internet to 'educate' people who are against X actually end up giving the protesters what they actually want, free therapy for some sort of frustrated need to be heard.¹ Even funnier is that both sides are playing out this psychodrama while being completely ignorant of the actual motivations behind their behaviour. 1. Or maybe the need to exercise the power expressed by holding an entire state or country hostage via a virus...?
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  It is reactionary for the most part and certainly the animosity towards those advertising vaccines is more important than the vaccine itself. The people more actively trying to educate others are in it for their own form of therapy. Their fear lets them ride the soothing assurance of authoritarianism. They are safe if everyone is one the right level. I wouldn't call that well intentioned for the most part. I fear irrationality isn't vaccine-able. It is a serious disease and people should take care. It is actually quite a privilege if you could get a free vaccine, other people might be glad about that. On the other hand, people that got the disease just plainly shouldn't take it and business requiring me to be vaccinate and identify myself can search for other customers. People have to accept that others are less fearful than themselves.
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  Congratulations, you have discovered reactionary politics. When people feel like society is not going right and that they're missing something that abstractly they had at some point in the past, you get mindsets like these.

175 points by hheikinh 5y ago

Hahahahaha have fun vaxtards.

Assuming it's only as effective as the original two-dose shot and prevents for the same duration, it seems like COVID will never go away. Assuming the current trend and a 9 month prevention, that pretty much aligns to what happened last year. So we'd need no new significant variants to develop or any outbreaks. Seems unlikely given that there are many countries with vaccination rates under 50% Probably better to focus on the minimum number of vaccinations necessary to make hospitalization/death unlikely and move on from there. Preventing infection might be too high a bar to meet now.

base698 5y ago
That's ok your iPhone will ensure you've had the requisite boosters before allowing you access to public spaces. Everyone can sleep easy!
cm2187 5y ago
[edit] this is in response to the earlier version of your post where you wonder if the virus will ever go away: That I think is a given. Even if we had a bullet proof vaccine, you have such a large reserve of unvaccinated people across the world, plus animals, that the virus is endemic at this stage. Which isn't a problem. If once vaccinated the virus is mostly harmless, then it is just one more of the many endemic diseases we live with without worrying about.
- prox 5y ago
  We might also see the first batch of medicines appear in 2022, if we can successfully prevent ICU visits with effective medicines for starters, that would mean a lot to healthcare professionals worldwide.
  - Griffinsauce 5y ago
    Is there any actual development here? It's definitely not a given that we can do this.
    - Spellman 5y ago
      There actually is! Two studies in Brazil have shown a pretty significant reduction in hospitalizations in a RCT of fluvoxamine. More data obviously required. Plus there has been more work on other treatments, but most are pretty expensive. https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22619137/fluvoxamine-covid-ivermectin-together-study-mcmaster https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22619137/fluvoxamine-covi...
    - prox 5y ago
      While obviously complicated, Pfizer is working on a promising medication and I know of a dutch trial using antibodies that’s starting a next phase.
- JackFr 5y ago
  I am not a virologist, but based on my reading, in 100 years COVID will still be with us. At worst it will be the flu, and at best it will be just another strain of a cold. COVID has the very helpful quality of being least impactful on the very young. As new children are born they will be exposed to COVID multiple times over their lives, to the point when they are at ages we now consider vulnerable, they likely will have developed as much resistance as one can have.
- loceng 5y ago
  Which is why top virologists around the world have been trying to sound the alarm to warn that you don't vaccinate during a pandemic because it drives escape mutant variants; this type of response gets downvoted into oblivion by an ideological mob who are fear driven more than critical thinking, who have memorized the mainstream narrative responses to such statements by experts - or attempting character assassination of experts not toeing the line; https://twitter.com/lefarfadet8/status/1427754200398766087 https://twitter.com/lefarfadet8/status/1427754200398766087 Edit to add: Look at the critical conversation people are having instead of downvoting me into oblivion! HN's full of so many ideologues it's crazy.
  - cm2187 5y ago
    Not that I am qualified for such a debate, but it's not clear to me that the risk of creating variants is greater than the risk of letting the virus run through the population unopposed. The variants so far seem to be variations of the same virus with similar risk profiles, and the vaccines seem to be mostly efficient against these variants.
    - loceng 5y ago
      For each variant we've given an alphabet to, like Delta, there are variants occurring from those - they seem to only give them a letter once it's a large enough step in mutation; I'm not sure of the actual labeling practices used. But yes, I'm not qualified for the pinnacle of such a debate either, but those discussions aren't even happening - at least not in public which they need to be. There are mutations that are occurring however just in vaccinated, that aren't occurring in the non-vaccinated, the virus mutating to escape the immunity of the vaccinations - which then makes those variants easier to spread to other vaccinated [and potentially easier to spread to unvaccinated as well]; UCSF recently released study of 1,300+ patients with COVID,78% had specific variants associated with vaccinated vs. 48% of unvaccinated having those same variants - various conclusions of possibilities could be made from that.
      - pionar 5y ago
        (Replying here since your original post is dead) It's not that nobody's talking about it, it's just that people have done the research, and they've proven people like Dr. Montagnier wrong. Why give air to people who keep saying things that are wrong? https://twitter.com/GKangInd/status/1397429770028158978 https://twitter.com/GKangInd/status/1397429770028158978
- bsaul 5y ago
  "If once vaccinated the virus is mostly harmless" Note that even not vaccinated, the ultra large majority of people either are asymptomatic or don't get anything worst than a flu (which doesn't mean covid = flu in general) We seem to have forgotten that the original concern with the virus was the fact that it saturated intensive care units in hospitals, and thus prevented people from getting proper care.
  - 8ytecoder 5y ago
    Which, unfortunately, is still relevant - as seen in Louisiana and Florida. A frank and honest admission by one of the physicians on Reddit was that most people who stay in ventilator for weeks have no path to recovery but families don’t let them go. Essentially COVID patients hold up the beds for a long time as well.
  - graeme 5y ago
    That’s the original acute concern. Long run we still don’t know if it will have effects on brain function etc. There are some disturbing lines of evidence on this front. For example the UK biobank showing grey matter loss post infection including in mild cases: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.11.21258690v1.full.pdf https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.11.21258690v...
    - bsaul 5y ago
      i remember this study, but i'm surprised we don't have more papers on the same topic since. It seemed like a pretty big news, and yet i don't hear people recommending mass-vaccination mention it. Any idea why ?
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - mafuy 5y ago
        I recommend mass vax and this point is one of the main points I use. But I agree with you that sadly, this danger is not well known.
- p_j_w 5y ago
  >Which isn't a problem. If once vaccinated the virus is mostly harmless, then it is just one more of the many endemic diseases we live with without worrying about. It's a problem if you're one of the many people who, for whatever reason, can't be safely vaccinated.
dv_dt 5y ago
Is there any reason not to increase vaccine production rates so we have the capacity to vaccinate the world population faster than every 9 months?
- endisneigh 5y ago
  nope - as you allude to, ideally we could spit out these vaccines and just give people 6-month boosters until everyone is vaccinated and we're good. I believe the issue is that too many people fail to get vaccinated so it's challenging. Requiring boosters might also convert small numbers of people who got a vaccine one to not get it subsequent times.
  - dv_dt 5y ago
    In the first world there is an issue of take up. But around much of the rest of the world, the issues is they haven’t received nearly enough vaccine. If we don’t significantly vaccinate much of the rest of the world, my expectation is a continued high rate of variant creation as well as continued economic instability due to logistics disruption.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
  > Is there any reason not to increase vaccine production rates Intellectual property rights. It's not a "good" reason. But it's a reality that needs to be overcome. https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/safricas-ramaphosa-accuses-big-pharma-selfish-unjust-vaccine-policy-2021-06-21/ https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/... https://www.democracynow.org/2021/6/22/headlines/south_african_president_blasts_big_pharma_for_refusing_to_share_covid_19_vaccine_technology https://www.democracynow.org/2021/6/22/headlines/south_afric... Germany doesn't want the Pfizer vaccine made freely: https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/germany-opposes-us-plan-waive-patents-covid-19-vaccines-2021-05-06/ https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/... and by some co-incidence, this is good for German money: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-economy-biontech-idUSKBN2FB15A https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-economy-biontech-...
smorgusofborg 5y ago
A few vaccines are 3 doses at 0,1,6-12 months and offer a decade of protection if you don't miss the last dose..
- endisneigh 5y ago
  wow, wasn't aware of this development. which COVID vaccine is this? is it one of the nasal ones?
  - pradn 5y ago
    I think they're saying that other vaccines, not COVID vaccines, have this property. We can't assess decadal resistance yet for COVID vaccines.
    - endisneigh 5y ago
      If so, I'm not sure how that's relevant to COVID at the present. Per the article we're discussing it's unclear how long a 3rd dose will be effective for, hence my comment to begin with. If we were to pre-suppose you gain a decade of prevention then yeah, that'd be great.
      - aaomidi 5y ago
        We don't know how the protections in the current vaccines are going to play out until we investigate them more.
        endisneigh 5y ago
        Agreed, but we already know how 2-dose plays out with respect to Delta. The article in question is investigating how a 3rd dose fares against delta. There are also delta-specific boosters coming out soon.
      - pradn 5y ago
        I think they're saying that we can hope that three shots gives long term resistance, as it happens for other vaccines. We can only hope, and it's not a totally unrealistic hope given how other vaccines work.
brightball 5y ago
It's why I'm more interested in companies that can treat the symptoms effectively than only the vaccines right now. IMO the only way this ever truly gets better is if the effects can be mitigated quickly. Whoever figures that out is going to make a lot of money.
- Covzire 5y ago
  Good luck with that in 2021, someone is already making a lot of money, and ostensibly weaponizing big tech into preventing anyone from even talking about alternatives.
- omlett 5y ago
  "CBD and its metabolite, 7-OH-CBD, but not congeneric cannabinoids, potently block SARS-CoV-2 replication in lung epithelial cells. CBD induces interferon expression and up-regulates its antiviral signaling pathway. A cohort of human patients previously taking CBD had significantly lower SARSCoV-2 infection incidence of up to an order of magnitude relative to matched pairs or the general population. This study highlights CBD, and its active metabolite, 7-OH-CBD, as potential preventative agents and therapeutic treatments for SARS-CoV-2 at early stages of infection." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7987002/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7987002/ I am not saying anything, JUST SAYIN'
- yonaguska 5y ago
  It's been figured out, but we're waiting on Pfizer to bring it's protease inhibitor to market before we acknowledge existing, out of patent medications that do the same thing.
JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> as effective as the original two-dose shot and prevents for the same duration We're giving boosters of a vaccine developed against the Beta variant. That's better than nothing. But it's inefficient against Delta. Pfizer/BioNTech are working on a Delta-specific booster [1]. If we can get approvals rolling faster without compromising safety, it might mean being able to release variant-specific boosters earlier in their transmission cycle. [1] https://investors.biontech.de/news-releases/news-release-details/pfizer-and-biontech-provide-update-booster-program-light-delta https://investors.biontech.de/news-releases/news-release-det...
- eganist 5y ago
  > If we can get approvals rolling faster without compromising safety, it might mean being able to release variant-specific boosters earlier in their transmission cycle. This is basically it. We'd need an approval process similar to what exists for flu shots today. I'm not versed on what that process is, but if that can happen with covid, it'll be the biggest batch of red tape cut.
  - op00to 5y ago
    pfizer and moderna have essentially filed for rolling submissions. the biggest impediment to vaccines stopping the virus is morons not getting the vaccine.
    - penultimatebro 5y ago
      Yeah, dang morons not getting the not-yet-available booster shot! I mean, those dang morons not getting the available vaccine which does nothing for transmission of the current viral variant! Eesh, well that doesn’t hold water either... Ugh this is too complicated, let’s just blame the unvaccinated anyways mmkay?
- op00to 5y ago
  As to whether the current batch of mRNA vaccines are "inefficient" against delta, the science is far from settled. There are no changes to the mRNA vaccines composition in the booster. Moderna has been testing a lower "dosage" of the booster at 50 mcg vs. 100mcg for the current vaccine, but other than that it's the same stuff it's always been.
Natsu 5y ago
I wonder if this is really the case. It seems like the original vaccines trained everyone's immune system on the spike protein specifically because this is exposed and highly conserved by the virus, such that it's hard to change and still leave an effective virus. Delta, however, found such a mutation that made it more virulent and it escaped. If we vaccinate against the modified spike, it's not clear how many more mutations exist like Delta. Maybe we can still get ahead of it, but I don't think anyone knows yet. I do wonder if we'll see reformulated boosters against Delta's spikes, though.
- datameta 5y ago
  I wonder how accurately we can run mutation simulations updated based on best current data to correct the best guess optimization function(s). It would be a breakthrough if we can predict the likeliest mutation. I'm aware of the enormous number of variables making this tremendously difficult...
  - nradov 5y ago
    We don't have the technology to stimulate that accurately in software. It would have to be done using transgenic animal models and/or human tissue cultures. Essentially it would be a form of gain-of-function research, and there are concerns that a lab accident could result in an even more dangerous variant escaping into the wild.
    - datameta 5y ago
      With ML-assisted drug discovery in, say, kinase inhibitors we search the molecule variation space for test candidates. What stops us from applying this to the protein scale by folding binding sites to discover variant candidates that would be more virulent? I'd like to understand this better.
      - nradov 5y ago
        Sure you can explore the solution space in software to identify candidates but at some point you have to create a live virus and see how it actually performs.

serial_dev 5y ago

It's like Linux on the desktop and fusion reactors. It seems like we are always one jab away from being safe and overcoming covid.

pwned1 5y ago
At this point we need to acknowledge that there will be no "overcoming" it and it will be endemic, like the flu.
- bsksi 5y ago
  Oh, we have acknowledged it. The question is, have our politicians acknowledged it, or will they keep taking our rights?
  - JohnWhigham 5y ago
    Stop downvoting this, it's a legitimate question. When are we going to stop all the policy bullshit, accept that it is endemic, and get back to normalcy as much as we can? It's wearing on everybody.
  - kimbernator 5y ago
    The acknowledgement of it being endemic doesn't necessitate that we put up with covid's destructive nature. It's still the case that: 1. A large number of people globally don't have access to the vaccine yet. 2. A large proportion of the USA's population either doesn't feel motivated to get the vaccine or is explicitly opposed to it. There will come a day where we collectively say that enough is enough and we've done all we can, but there is still a lot of work to do before we get to that point. Managing the spread and improving vaccination numbers will overall reduce the damage done to people and the health system when we reach that point.
  - titzer 5y ago
    Try going out in public naked or running a few red lights and then come back and troll some more about your "rights". The world is full of rules to prevent you from being a jerk and endangering others.

xattt 5y ago

I am fascinated to know what the effects are of over-vaccination. Is there some spillover effects where a highly-primed immune system begins to get into weird autoimmune reactions? Do weird plaques develop or a build-up of antibodies begin to form in random parts of the body, like in a blood dyscrasia? Or does nothing happen? Chronic vaccine overdoses are so exotic, as access to vaccines had been historically so tightly controlled, and it’s unlikely that someone would routinely subject themselves to daily/weekly IM injections. Edit: After seeing a few responses, I meant to say that my curiosity is for vaccine doses way over and above what might be comparable to current practices with annual vaccinations.

Tenoke 5y ago
Annual flu jabs aren't exactly uncommon. Obviously the mechanism isn't quite the same but there's no real reason to expect a high chance of issues at that rate of revaccination.
- unknownOrigin 5y ago
  I wouldn't exactly call a comparison between gene therapy "isn't quite the same". Flu shots contain inactivated/weakened flu virus (depending on the version), to the presence of which/antigens the body reacts by creating antibodies. RNA vaccines are a different technology, which transfect (reprogram in IT speak) your own cells to produce spike proteins similar to the ones sars-cov-2 does (the consensus seems to be that this spike variant is, unlike the real one, harmless and is not free floating) which are then detected by the the body and antibodies are created. The result is esentially the same, but the way you get there contains an extra step and it is this extra step that is the source of the vast majority of (rare) adverse reactions. Blood clots etc. The ironic thing is that most people who are very strongly opinionated on this (both sides) have no idea what the actual difference is and blindly trust whatever either the government or a local anti-vax facebook group tells them.
  - rssoconnor 5y ago
    > The result is esentially the same, but the way you get there contains an extra step and it is this extra step that is the source of the vast majority of (rare) adverse reactions. Blood clots etc. The blood clotting issue was found in the Adenovirus vector vaccines, not the mRNA vaccines.

vkou 5y ago

> Probably better to focus on the minimum number of vaccinations necessary to make hospitalization/death unlikely and move on from there. It would be nice if we could meet even that bar, but the US is currently at 53% of the population vaccinated, and much of its medical system is collapsing. Which is fine for that 53%, until they have a heart attack, get in a car accident, cancer, are immuno-compromised, etc, etc. Given how virulent COVID is, the minimum number from keeping outbreaks from overwhelming ICUs, seems to be close to "80% of the population, and a booster shot every 6 months."

pwned1 5y ago
"Collapsing" is a serious overstatement.
- vkou 5y ago
  How else would you describe a situation if ICU beds in your area are full? [1] Do you think a bed will appear for you, if you get into a serious car accident? Will you even want to be going to the hospital for chemotherapy, right now (And that's assuming the oncologists are actually doing their jobs, instead of treating COVID patients)? To the doctor's office for some routine care, if you have a vulnerable person in your household? Hospital beds and doctors aren't Kubernetes containers. You can't simply spin more up based on a demand surge. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/covid-hospitals-near-you.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/covid-hospitals-...
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- runako 5y ago
  The trauma center emergency room in my state is diverting patients to less-capable facilities. Elective surgeries (such as for cancer and other life-threatening conditions) are being cancelled. All of this is happening in states representing perhaps a third of the US population. Not being able to get lifesaving cancer removal surgery is the state of affairs that people colloquially mean when say a medical system is "collapsing."

swader999 5y ago

Great, let's degrade our immune systems in an over reaction to this by vaccinating every five months in a never ending saga.

Tostino 5y ago
Do you have any source for the claim that any of the vaccines degrade your immune system?
- lamontcg 5y ago
  I'm sure they can point you at some educational youtube videos.
  - bsksi 5y ago
    As opposed to us educated people who point at studies that months later mysteriously fail to replicate.
    - jquery 5y ago
      epistomological nihilism is not the way forward
- swader999 5y ago
  This suggests it might not be a sure thing: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33959318/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33959318/

mfer 5y ago

A question to consider is, how to we move from pandemic to endemic? COVID-19 isn't going away and will join the other endemic viruses like chicken pox, the other widely out there coronaviruses, etc.

meheleventyone 5y ago
It's got to be something like how much of the population are getting sick. I presume when a disease is endemic you have a fairly steady rate of illness and death taking into account seasonal variation. Whereas right now covid still seems to be spreading quickly through the population and causing large numbers to get sick at once.
- mfer 5y ago
  When I think about this I think of two parts of it. First, there are other endemics. Influenza is one of them. In the US along millions get sick from it and tens of thousands die each year. We live within that realm. There will be people with different degrees of risk and levels for being ok with going back to "normal" as COVID-19 is just out there. How do we decided (as groups in the world population) what we are ok with? Second, what do we do to proactively push the population towards endemic? Different groups will go toward different things with different levels of risk. There is no quantitative right answer. What things can we do and how does that affect things.
  - meheleventyone 5y ago
    For me before we can even talk about covid being endemic it needs to reach a steady state and we're nowhere near that right now. In terms of risk management flu is a good example because most humans encounter various versions in childhood but we still offer vaccination every year against the most likely variants. And we can still have flu pandemics. It's largely in a steady state though but the reality of that means we actually need to do a lot of management as risk profiles change locally. And largely this is a medical issue not a political one.
  - marcosdumay 5y ago

tristor 5y ago

My understanding is that if you've had a two-shot series you should get a third shot within 12 months of your second in order to extend immunity for a significant period of time. I'm hoping boosters are offered for Pfizer & Moderna soon, because most people I know are fully vaccinated but also aware that COVID is basically endemic at this point.

whatshisface 5y ago

As far as I can tell is bad news for rare vaccine side effects. If the side effects are rare but you take a booster twice a year for 50 years, rare outcomes become much more likely. (Referring here to the high count but not that high stuff that shows up in VAERS like tinnitus.) Hopefully more vaccines are developed that become safer over time so that the danger falls faster than the repeated risk accumulates. Or perhaps the rare side effects are due to personal susceptibility and aren't cumulative so people who didn't get bad side effects the first time won't get them the 90th.

jdavis703 5y ago
People take the flu shot annually and are generally fine. Unless it’s showing that COVID-19 vaccines are much more dangerous than flu vaccines, this isn’t a big concern.
- whatshisface 5y ago
  With regards to the side effects that don't matter (feeling really tired for one or two days) they're stronger than the average flu shot, so maybe they're stronger in other ways, or maybe not. Nobody can quantify the reporting bias on VAERS, and the side effects of midrange severity showing up there aren't scary enough to justify the kind of regulatory investigation that the blood clotting thing received, so we are unlikely to see a study on this in the near term.
- SuoDuanDao 5y ago
  Given that it's a very different technology from flu vaccines, we shouldn't really assume that they're not. Too early to be sure of course but there are some concerning studies and anecdata already [1]. [1] https://www.scivisionpub.com/abstract-display.php?id=1811&fbclid=IwAR35HRVBhLO5bjHyF_AtUr2H19YfAy2_uch94kwCD9DHcTGyRbslozNd8WE https://www.scivisionpub.com/abstract-display.php?id=1811&fb...
lamontcg 5y ago
> rare outcomes become much more likely. Citations needed. Alternatively if vaccine reactions depend on something like immunotype of the individual that isn't going to change, and if you tolerate the vaccine today you're likely to tolerate it for the next 50 years. Also if we apply the concept of Original Antigenic Sin, then once you've formed a healthy humoral reaction to a given antigen you're likely to continue to have healthy reactions to similar antigens in the future (and vice versa, if you form a poor immune reaction you my have poor reactions in the future).

tumblewit 5y ago

I have little understanding of this but someone who actually works on vaccines told me this theory: Your body upon coming in contact with the vaccine starts to product antibodies (the first shot). This is generally enough for a normal immune system to fight the disease if in the future the body was to come in contact with the virus. The second shot is for hyper immunity after 4 weeks. What it does is that it basically tells your body make a lot more antibodies now and the second shot is actually a booster shot. So every time you take a shot afterwards (like in the middle of a pandemic) your body produces an abundance of antibodies and will likely fend off the virus much more easily than if there was no booster dose of any kind and just a vaccine shot. This is important because simply protecting your body from the virus is not enough since you could be carrying the virus and spreading it with mild infection which will not be a problem for you but will not protect others and so the hyperimmunity is important for preventing spread during a wave. I won’t be surprised if this one is a yearly dose as you need to be hyperimmune to not show symptoms and spread.

nradov 5y ago
There's more to immunity than the antibodies generated as a short term response to infection or vaccination. Memory cell activity is more important to long term immunity.
3l3c7r1c 5y ago
Another benefit is cell memory. If you see the vaccines kids get, almost all are multiple shots. Including 3-4 shots for Hep-B. It's nothing new. The reason is body takes repeat threat more seriously and builds the cell memory. So even when the antibody is gone the cell memory tells body to act quickly and what to do.

taxicabjesus 5y ago

The best way to prevent your own deterioration and death from COVID-19 is to demand your medical providers implement a science-based approach to your care. This means that you should not consent to your over-oxygenation with medical oxygen. Science figured out 200 years ago that oxygen is toxic. Doctors knew this, then the antidote got forgotten. Some modern doctors are still aware of the toxicity of oxygen, but use oxygen as supportive therapy when people have low oxygen saturation levels without the antidote for toxicity: https://twitter.com/robertpdickson/status/1265254839484854272 https://twitter.com/robertpdickson/status/126525483948485427... To quote the Tuberculosis doctor's tweets: > We've known that oxygen causes lung injury for 250 years. Lavoisier stuck guinea pigs in "l'air vital" and watched them die from "une fièvre ardente" and a "maladie inflammatoire." Their lungs were flacid, red, and engorged with blood. Their right ventricles were dilated. 2/n > He was describing ARDS (w/ cor pulmonale), 200 years before we named it. If he'd had microscopy, he'd have seen epithelial necrosis, hyaline membranes: diffuse alveolar damage. Same injury pattern that COVID causes. (Image from my lab: healthy mouse, 95% FiO2 for 4 days.) 3/n Published science has found that over-oxygenation drives deterioration and death: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22993262 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22993262 NASA originally specified a mixed-gas atmosphere for the Apollo spacecraft: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25883728 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25883728 I've taken to calling medicalists' insane use of oxygen #MedicalHyperventilation: "The Folly of Medical Hyperventilation" - https://www.taxiwars.org/2021/06/folly-medical-hyperventilation.html https://www.taxiwars.org/2021/06/folly-medical-hyperventilat... Gotten a little positive feedback from the twitter, but the people with large followings haven't amplified my message. To survive your own inevitable infection, don't let them hyperventilate you to death. Questions for HN: 1. Were you previously aware that oxygen is toxic at high pressure or in excess, and that this is as settled as science can possibly get? 2. Can doctors be convinced that they are worsening their patients' conditions with their cavalier use of medical oxygen?

hackingforfun 5y ago
Yes, I was aware that oxygen is toxic at high pressure. One thing you don't mention, is that lack of oxygen, as with a serious COVID case, also causes death.

amluto 5y ago

I would love to see more research on whether a different/better vaccine could provide stronger or longer lasting immunity. There are a whole lot of mechanisms by which a vaccine might produce immunity (antibodies, memory B cells that can produce antibodies if needed, various forms of T cells, and probably mechanisms that haven't been discovered or understood yet.) It seems that most research on immunity focuses on antibodies in blood, and I think this is just because they are relatively easy to measure. I haven't seen anything suggesting that mRNA vaccines are especially good as compared to other vaccines. mRNA vaccines were quick to develop given all the past work that had been done, but that isn't the same thing as being good once developed and mass-produced. Novavax's subunit vaccine did extremely well in trials, and it's mostly old technology. Are there useful studies of the efficacy of the J&J and AZ vaccines over time? Those are newish technology, too.

jrochkind1 5y ago

The headline doesn't quite do the article justice. Boosters in this one study reduced measured infection (they didn't measure actual hospitalization/disease!) by some amount in the very short term. But experts say this tells us very little about what effect they will have over even months, instead of weeks/days. Last paragraph: > If the booster’s additional immunity fades quickly, or if the booster campaign distracts from surveillance efforts or from reaching people who have not been vaccinated at all, Dowdy says, the effort will have little long-term impact: “We need longer term data before we can say that giving people boosters at any given interval is the right strategy.”

op00to 5y ago
It's almost as if we can't science our way out of this. Instead we need selfish, ignorant people to take the smallest steps to make a real impact.

hackingforfun 5y ago

I'm pretty surprised to still see some misinformation in some of the posts here. I have a friend who has a PhD in molecular biology and she described the mRNA vaccines to me. The mRNA is only a piece of the spike protein, and does not enter the cell's nucleus. It only interacts with the cytoplasm. Normally, if a cell had to deal with an actual SARS-CoV-2 virus, it would be dealing with the spike proteins and the entire virus, basically, a much higher dose, and it would also invade the actual cell. She also described the ingredients of an mRNA vaccine, which were basically: -mRNA (which is gone from the body in a few days) -lipids -salt and sugars It's also worth noting that the mRNA does not interact with a person's actual DNA. I just don't see why there is so much concern out there. This is a potentially deadly virus. Look at the states with the highest amount of unvaccinated individuals in the US. They are running out of hospital beds [1]. This is not about taking our freedoms, this is about getting this under control. I do agree with the other posters here that say that COVID will likely just become endemic. My understanding is that eventually it will probably be a common cold, once humans have enough antibodies for it. [1] https://fortune.com/2021/08/25/states-icu-beds-covid-cases-delta-variant/ https://fortune.com/2021/08/25/states-icu-beds-covid-cases-d...

graeme 5y ago
> My understanding is that eventually it will probably be a common cold, once humans have enough antibodies for it. This can’t be right. Antibodies fade: for other coronaviruses within 6-12 months. They aren’t a thing the body keeps around forever. Lasting immunity would be from memory T cells or memory T cells, if their long run response worked well and the virus didn’t change enough between infections.
- hackingforfun 5y ago
  Actually we didn't get into antibodies and memory T cells when talking with my friend. I don't have a PhD in this, so I can't say either way. I mostly just wanted to pass on the information from her regarding the ingredients and how the mRNA only interacts with the cytoplasm of the cell, and not the actual DNA. That's the important part.
5y ago

kjaftaedi 5y ago

I was unaware Isreal repaired their relationship with Pfizer. Last I saw Israel was trying to stiff Pfizer for 2.5 million doses and Pfizer execs were calling Israel a 'banana republic' and were going to cut them off entirely.

dvirsky 5y ago
Perhaps the new government fixed things?
yibers 5y ago
Citation needed
- kjaftaedi 5y ago
  https://www.insider.com/pfizer-halts-shipment-of-covid-vaccines-after-israel-doesnt-pay-2021-4 https://www.insider.com/pfizer-halts-shipment-of-covid-vacci...

DSingularity 5y ago

I’m curious if we have data wrt to safety and approval process length. How fast (in terms of trial - size and duration) - can we go on approvals without compromising safety? Maybe a progressive approval is best. Approve for x% of population for next n months then study the data and lift limits. What if it was dangerous that we went from 0-100 with the current round of vaccines?

imwillofficial 5y ago

> I'm pretty surprised to still see some misinformation in some of the posts here. “Anything I don’t agree with is misinformation” The data on COVID related subjects has been murky, inconsistent, and poorly collected. The label of misinformation should be used with care. > It's also worth noting that the mRNA does not interact with a person's actual DNA. Like this gem. This is false. RNA can burn back into DNA via reverse transcriptase(sp) Making assumptions on something so important, like your DNA is foolish. Anyone remember Viox? https://www.jefferson.edu/about/news-and-events/2021/6/discovery-shows-human-cells-can-write-rna-sequences-to-dna.html https://www.jefferson.edu/about/news-and-events/2021/6/disco...

sfink 5y ago
>> It's also worth noting that the mRNA does not interact with a person's actual DNA. > Like this gem. This is false. RNA can burn back into DNA via reverse transcriptase(sp) Irrelevant. The vaccine mRNA cannot interact with your DNA, because it doesn't enter the nucleus at all. It is used to produce spike proteins within the cell, outside of the nucleus. The mRNA vaccine is not as exotic or unnatural as people seem to think. Cells have ribosomes. Ribosomes process mRNA instructions to build proteins. All the time.
- imwillofficial 5y ago
  This is false. We don’t know this for a fact currently. Best assumption at best.

logicalmonster 5y ago

Just 15 days to slow the spread. Don't wear masks, only doctors can wear masks. Don't shop at your local store you might get Covid, just go to Wal-mart (TM) and shop at Amazon (TM). No just kidding, wear 2 masks. Don't try any generic, low-cost alternative treatments, we can't get vaccines authorized if there's a treatment. Let's just stick you on a ventilator. Try not to look at the financial incentives and risks on that. Ok finally, if you just take this vaccine we'll let you have your life back. You need a vaccine passport to eat at restaurants. Just kidding. Take this booster shot too. (you are here) Actually no wait, take the boosters every 6 months. Who knows what dehumanization will come next? They're going to blame the unvaxxed for any problems with the vaxx, despite this never before being a thing in human history. Big Pharma is laughing all the way to the bank at our mass psychosis.

imwillofficial 5y ago

47 boosters later…

dukeofdoom 5y ago

Since the daily cases are now up to where they were before the vaccine. Its pretty clear the original promise of the vaccine has been a giant failure. And serious erosion of trust with major medical and political implications. A more sensible approach would be have the at risk group vaccinate. And let the young and strong opt for natural immunity, which it turns out is superior and much more longer lasting anyway. In any case, since, viruses prey on the weak with compromised immune systems. This should be compared to a nation wide weight loss program. Eating healthy, proper sleep and dental health, and managing stress levels. Instead we got lockdowns with gyms shutdown, and people forced to sit inside away from the sun, scared and stressed.

jimmyjazz14 5y ago
I don't think the vaccines have been a failure at all, they still prevent hospitalization and deaths from COVID quite well, and breakthroughs were predicted to be fairly common from the start. I think what has been a failure is the public messaging about the vaccines and COVID in general. That said, I do agree that we need to move on from the fear based approach to life many have held on to even after getting vaccinated.
ac2u 5y ago
>natural immunity, which it turns out is superior and much more longer lasting anyway where are you getting this from?
- disgruntledphd2 5y ago
  I don't know, but lots of people seem to claim this (without citations).
  - dukeofdoom 5y ago
    "This study demonstrated that natural immunity confers longer lasting and stronger protection against infection" https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v1.full.pdf https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v...

andred14 5y ago

Dr. Robert Malone, the inventor of mRNA, said that we should not be taking it. These sh0ts are injuring and killing thousands however statistics show there is no increase of deaths after 2020 globally. This is medical fraud plain and simple

cuspy 5y ago

I am absolutely pro-vaccine, but can someone help me work through the relative risk calculations here? Vaccine: -?% reduction in likelihood of infection (there is currently no monitored control group and no transparent dataset that accurately accounts for baseline infection rates, geographical and demographic variation, etc.) -?% chance of ?% reduction in severity of disease (there is no empirical evidence that has been consistent across time and location, especially as the virus mutates. All the data I've seen is aggregated across the entire vaccination campaign, never accounting for changing rate of vaccinated vs changes in baseline infection rate in each location) -?% chance of acute vaccine side effects (VAERS unreliable, no transparent alternative dataset accessible to the public) -?% risk of future unknown long-term effects of vaccination (including unpredictable outcomes like ADE) -100% chance of assuming above risk of unknown long-term vaccine side effects (simply no data available by definition) -?% chance of getting breakthrough infected with COVID-19 if exposed (I haven't seen any challenge studies, probably not possible for ethical reasons) -?% risk of future long-term effects for recovered breakthrough infections (again, no data available. only time will tell whether breakthrough infections are less likely to lead to potential long-term effects than unvaccinated recovered infections) -each additional vaccine booster dose adds ?% cumulative risk of both acute and long-term side effects, with no indication that boosters will ever end. No Vaccine: -0% chance of reduction in severity of disease -0% chance of acute vaccine side effects -0% chance of long-term vaccine side effects -?% chance of getting infected and assuming a ?% risk of future long-term effects of recovered infection (my risk of getting infected is low and partially under my own control since I don't travel, work from home, self-isolate, etc) Am I missing anything? Even if I am relatively confident that the vaccine reduces the likelihood of infection and the severity of infection significantly and will continue to do so for variants (the data suggests this, though it less transparent than I would like, since there is no publicly accessible unaggregated dataset (e.g. infection rates for vaxxed vs unvaxxed starting AFTER 50% vaccination rate in a given region, there is no longer a control group and all "natural" control groups suffer from inherent geographical and demographic biases) It seems to me that the number of unknowns makes the risk calculation much harder than people are making it out to be, but I would be very happy to to hear considered, thoughtful counterpoints to the above.

ostenning 5y ago

Poll: I just would like to get a “hands up” if anyone else got significant chest and heart pain from the mRNA vaccines, please comment. Thanks

YeBanKo 5y ago

When will we stop seeing this vague click-baity titles? "new studies suggest" - not conclusive. "Protection increases in the weeks following a third dose, but it’s unclear how long the effect will last" "by more than 10-fold 2 weeks later." After the first paragraph, it was only established that it provides short term immunity against Delta variant. How long will it last? How well will it do against other variants? Also, the demographic receiving booster shot in Israel are mostly elderly. So this impressive infection rate drop was observed only in older demographic. The effect probably won't be as good among younger generations. Repeated vaccination adds more risk, even if it is small per dose, it is being accumulated. Can we keep up with booster shots every six months? Even flu shot is only once a year and choosing next year flu shot strain is a year long challenge.

jojo2000 5y ago

How much time before this flawed study is retracted ? Who pays for it ? Who gets the money when booster after booster is inefective ? Most grave cases in Israel are vaccinated people. Number of cases exploded since population is mostly vaccinated. Wake up people. You're being lied to in a major way. Don't let your intelligence be insulted any more.

gerbilly 5y ago

I'm starting to feel that when people protest things they disagree with that it has less to do with the actual issue than with a desire to voice a contrary opinion in general. I suspect that the opposition—even anger sometimes—is a lot less about vaccines, or abortion than some other unmet need that finds expression though this kind of opposition. And I also think that even discussing these issues with the intent to persuade is futile and giving the protesters exactly what they are seeking. I think it's deeply ironic that an army of well intentioned people fan out on the internet to 'educate' people who are against X actually end up giving the protesters what they actually want, free therapy for some sort of frustrated need to be heard.¹ Even funnier is that both sides are playing out this psychodrama while being completely ignorant of the actual motivations behind their behaviour. 1. Or maybe the need to exercise the power expressed by holding an entire state or country hostage via a virus...?

raxxorrax 5y ago
It is reactionary for the most part and certainly the animosity towards those advertising vaccines is more important than the vaccine itself. The people more actively trying to educate others are in it for their own form of therapy. Their fear lets them ride the soothing assurance of authoritarianism. They are safe if everyone is one the right level. I wouldn't call that well intentioned for the most part. I fear irrationality isn't vaccine-able. It is a serious disease and people should take care. It is actually quite a privilege if you could get a free vaccine, other people might be glad about that. On the other hand, people that got the disease just plainly shouldn't take it and business requiring me to be vaccinate and identify myself can search for other customers. People have to accept that others are less fearful than themselves.
sudosysgen 5y ago
Congratulations, you have discovered reactionary politics. When people feel like society is not going right and that they're missing something that abstractly they had at some point in the past, you get mindsets like these.