33 ms·

Vaccine experts: Covid-19 booster shots aren't needed now

234 points by KoftaBob 5y ago

encryptluks2 5y ago
Good cause if they are anything like the 2nd dose shots they should find a way to compensate people for missing 2 days of work with headaches, fever, chills, body ache, etc.
- apetrovic 5y ago
  It's like an insurance - you pay with chills now to avoid bigger hit later (more serious sickness or death).
  - swader999 5y ago
    Or if you are young and healthy pay with a real infection for more robust immunity going forward
- newsbinator 5y ago
  The compensation is not missing weeks or years due to Covid... or in rarer cases, you know, dying.
  - encryptluks2 5y ago
    Yes, not having a place to live is so much better than the 99.9% survival rate for someone in my age group.
    - newsbinator 5y ago
      How would getting covid be in any way preferable for someone in your age group than getting the vaccine? You're guaranteed to get one or the other, likely both.
  - kongin 5y ago
    But think of the opportunity cost! If you're under 40 and you spread the virus to your over 50 boss she has at least an order of magnitude more chance of dying than you. You could then move up the corporate ladder with her departure.
    - _red 5y ago
      How about the reverse! If you're a 8 year old male, you get the shot and die of myocarditis, but the 82 yr old overweight cancer patient gets an extra 4 months!!! YAY!
      - MagnumOpus 5y ago
        Myocarditis is about 8x more likely when getting COVID than when getting a covid vaccine, so nope, even an 8-yo should get shot out of pure self interest. (If their chance of catching COVID in the next few years is more than 1/8, which it certainly is.) https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25133462-800-myocarditis-is-more-common-after-covid-19-infection-than-vaccination/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25133462-800-myocardi...
        _red 5y ago
        >Post a study where totals are not separated by age / gender even though thats the claim. Sloppy job. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/06/israel-detects-link-between-myocarditis-and-covid-vaccine.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/06/israel-detects-link-...
- occz 5y ago
  How about you introduce paid medical leave, like the rest of the developed world.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  I don't know why the US is never serious about these things. We don't get a day off to vote, we don't get days off to get our mandatory vaccination. But we get Juneteenth? I'm not from Texas, and where my family lived it didn't matter much that slavery was over until the 1950s. So an awkward, meaningless gesture towards black people for helping the DNC defeat Sanders is prioritized ahead of democracy and epidemic disease.
  - Thlom 5y ago
    If you need a full day off work to vote you have other issues.
    - bigbob2 5y ago
      Sounds like you're assuming your situation applies to everyone.
      - Thlom 5y ago
        I was referring to societal problems, not the individuals problems. Voting should be easy and accessible and not something you have to take the day off or several hours out of your day to get done. I literally spent 3 minutes voting this year on my way out of the vaccination center.
occz 5y ago
I think this is the correct analysis - the focus should be to provide vaccines to the rest of the worlds nations that have not yet gotten widespread access to vaccines. This is likely to cause the greatest benefit in the form of fewer global deaths, and reduced global spread of the disease.
- skrebbel 5y ago
  And, for a selfish western pitch: reduce the chance that bad new variants develop.
  - swader999 5y ago
    How will these vaccines that don't produce immunity lead to less severe variants? If they mute severity of illness they will lead to more severe variants. This is basic.
    - dtech 5y ago
      They do provide immunity in 95% (conservative) of cases, so it massively reduces the population that mutations can happen in.
      - swader999 5y ago
        They reduce severity of illness, and don't produce sterilizing immunity and eliminate transmission. And that's the problem, if you pick up a nasty mutation but because of vaccine you are able to still function, you are more likely to be out and about spreading it. And when your limited immunity wanes in a few months this mutinous bastard copy you pushed on the masses may come back to bite you in the ass. Maybe not though if you got your booster in time and if they designed it to match. Better hope your country went with the gold subscription.
        technothrasher 5y ago
        What data are you referencing to claim that the vaccines do not provide some immunity? But importantly, the vaccines do reduce transmission. See the below study along with others. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2107717 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2107717 Admittedly, one weakness of the above study is that it took place before Delta was widespread. There isn't a lot of data yet on how much the vaccines reduce transmission with Delta, but the likelihood is that they still do even if to a lesser degree.
bbarnett 5y ago
This title is misleading. It isn't about them not being needed. Instead, as per article, it is about how these shots will save more lives, if administered to people without access to first shots! If vaccine doses were unlimited worldwide, 3rd shots (according to article logic) would by recommended for all.
- zarzavat 5y ago
  How do they propose to get Pfizer shots that have to be stored at -70 C, to areas in developing countries that need first doses? As far as I can see, the vaccine that is actually suitable for developing countries is the AstraZeneca one, and this isn't often used in the west because of the blood clot issues.
  - fsh 5y ago
    They will use insulated containers with dry ice, same as everywhere else. This might not work in the middle of the jungle, but most developing contries actually have roads and trucks.
    - zarzavat 5y ago
      Roads and trucks are not a problem but most third world countries also have an abundance of corruption and general apathy towards rules, good luck running a cold chain to all corners of such a country.
  - Tepix 5y ago
    The cooling requirements for Pfizer shots were loosened, it no longer needs -70°C. I don't know the new number, i think it's around -25°C.
- invalidname 5y ago
  Right. The problem is that those guys are pretty hard to convince with facts. I took my 3rd shot because otherwise this would go in the garbage. In that sense it does increase my protection and reduces the overall burden on the system so it does help.
stkdump 5y ago
I can already see this backfiring later when that assessment changes due to more information or increased supply, like it did with the mask messaging.
- swader999 5y ago
  It's a long read but shows what you allude to: https://www.juliusruechel.com/2021/09/the-snake-oil-salesmen-and-covid-zero.html?m=1 https://www.juliusruechel.com/2021/09/the-snake-oil-salesmen...
  - shlant 5y ago
    stop posting unfounded claims and conspiracy theory trash blogs
blagie 5y ago
The paper is thoughtful. The reporting on it is reckless. An accurate headline would be: "Vaccine experts: Widespread booster mandates aren't needed now," or perhaps "recommendations" There's a line between: * Mandatory. * Recommended. * Allowed. * Banned. If I am flying to do humanitarian work in Vietnam tomorrow, I absolutely need a booster shoot. Right now, the only way to get that is to go to a state which doesn't require ids for vaccines, and get a shot. The article discusses that boosters are clearly still appropriate in some circumstances: "Boosting could be appropriate for some individuals in whom the primary vaccination, defined here as the original one-dose or two-dose series of each vaccine, might not have induced adequate protection—eg, recipients of vaccines with low efficacy or those who are immunocompromised2 (although people who did not respond robustly to the primary vaccination might also not respond well to a booster)."
- LurkingPenguin 5y ago
  Why do you "absolutely" need a booster shot? Are you immunocompromised? How do you know what your level of protection currently is? Even if you did a test to look at your antibody titers, antibody titers aren't the end all and be all of immunity (think T-cells).
  - blagie 5y ago
    Well, I'm not flying to Vietnam tomorrow, so I'm not claiming I personally need a booster shot. However: - Vietnam is an epicenter right now, so my odds of catching COVID would be high. - They are well beyond hospital capacity, so if I do have a serious case, it's uncertain I'll receive quality care (and if I do, I'm taking a bed from someone else) We don't have full data, so the right way to think about this is with expected outcomes based on best available data. Best available data, in this scenario, places the likely reduction of risks of COVID19 as a much greater risk reduction than any potential risk of vaccines: - We do have multiple studies about how immunity wanes over time from vaccination. Those provide better ground-truth data than theoretical arguments. - We also have some estimates of breakthrough rates, and severity of infection We don't have good data on long COVID post-vaccine, so that's a place we need to make an educated guess and rely on theoretical arguments. You can plug whatever sane numbers you want, but in this scenario -- humanitarian work in an epicenter with limited hospital capacity -- a booster shot makes sense. For other scenarios -- for example general population -- whether a booster makes sense is still often within the very large error bars of the limited data, and reasonable people can disagree, much as the authors of the Lancet article and the CDC currently do. Once more data rolls in, we'll know.
dmix 5y ago
I’m curious what happened to all of the other vaccines that were in development, which we heard about in 2020. Now it still only seems to be Moderna and Pfizer. If supply is a major constraint we would benefit from expanding the number of options in the market and have more pharma production built in other countries. Although the pharma cartel is a very small community with a few mega firms. Making vaccine development an even smaller subset.
- phonon 5y ago
  Novavax is potentially even more efficacious, and should be widely available next year. [1] It's also not mRNA based FWIW. [2] [1] https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/novavax-expects-make-available-least-2-bln-covid-19-vaccine-doses-2022-2021-09-10/ https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/... [2] https://www.nebraskamed.com/COVID/moths-and-tree-bark-how-the-novavax-vaccine-works https://www.nebraskamed.com/COVID/moths-and-tree-bark-how-th...
  - unanswered 5y ago
    > All alone, the spike protein is harmless (From your [2]) This is a lie. The spike protein has been shown to cause cardiovascular issues.
    - phonon 5y ago
      Water can also cause death, in high enough doses. Sola dosis facit venenum.
    - Volundr 5y ago
      > This is a lie. The spike protein has been shown to cause cardiovascular issues. [Citation needed]
      - mmillin 5y ago
        There was an article posted on HN a few days ago indicating such: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28438315 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28438315 Almost necessarily less harmful than the complete virus, but the spike protein isn’t entirely harmless it seems.
colechristensen 5y ago
They need to make the actual data based argument not just appeal to authority. Booster shots have these benefits, these risks, and these tertiary effects. The argument seems to be that boosters have small increases in immunity, very small difficult to quantify side effects likely similar, and because of limited global supply and large numbers of unvaccinated. The optimal deployment might be a very few should have boosters, and the rest of supply should be directed towards people who want but can’t yet get vaccines.
- kongin 5y ago
  Looking at Israel third dose boosters are pretty much the only thing that stopped their deaths from growing in lock step with their cases: https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19vaccine/94344 https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19vaccin... Without them they were headed to the same daily death rate per million as the US. How they are at half the death rate.
  - thehappypm 5y ago
    I’m unconvinced. The death rate in Israel is lower than the US for many reasons — including a far less obese population, a younger population, a higher vaccination rate, and (likely) more willingness to do things like mask up voluntarily. They don’t have an Arkansas. The cases started falling around when the boosters started but it could just be the natural rise and fall. Timing is not enough proof for me.
    - kongin 5y ago
      >The death rate in Israel is lower than the US for many reasons — including a far less obese population, a younger population, a higher vaccination rate, and (likely) more willingness to do things like mask up voluntarily. They don’t have an Arkansas. They have the Ultra Orthodox which make Mississippi look like NYC.
- maxerickson 5y ago
  The US has lots of vaccines (tens of millions) already delivered to administration sites. Using those for boosters won't impact global equity (they will either get used in the US or thrown away). So we could offer boosters to most older folks.
deleted 5y ago
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m0llusk 5y ago
Ah, yes. The eat your dinner because kids are starving in Africa argument. Too bad they didn't mention the exceptions such as people with damaged immune systems, but why bother trying to get things right when you are scoring political points?
- red_trumpet 5y ago
  > Too bad they didn't mention the exceptions What are you talking about? From the article: > They did say booster doses could be appropriate for immunocompromised people, and indeed that population can get a third dose of an mRNA vaccine.
deleted 5y ago
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dfawcus 5y ago
The Lancet article referred to seems to be here: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)02046-8/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
sradman 5y ago
There is not strong evidence supporting a 3rd booster dose in immunocompetent people. We have partly seen a misinterpretation of the Israeli data [1] and specifically the single low effectiveness value that appears to be the result of Simpson's Paradox [2]. Dr. Fauci reported this single value decline from the high nineties to the high seventies on Andy Slavitt's podcast [3]. Pfizer's CEO has promoted this same data, Israel's 3rd dose campaign is well under way, and Fauci's public statements are a strong indicator that the U.S. will follow the same path. British Columbia's Dr. Bonnie Henry indicated yesterday [4] that the Canadian numbers do not yet support a general 3rd dose booster but, like the UK, a longer 2nd dose interval due to a First Doses First (FDF) strategy may be a factor. The 3rd dose is safe and will probably provide a small benefit to the recipient as Shane Crotty described in TWiV 802 [5]. The downside is that these doses are in short supply globally where they could make a significant difference. [1] https://www.covid-datascience.com/post/israeli-data-how-can-efficacy-vs-severe-disease-be-strong-when-60-of-hospitalized-are-vaccinated https://www.covid-datascience.com/post/israeli-data-how-can-... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox [3] https://lemonadamedia.com/podcast/dr-fauci-answers-your-biggest-questions/ https://lemonadamedia.com/podcast/dr-fauci-answers-your-bigg... [4] (YouTube ~3.5min @36m45s) https://youtu.be/93Rnjmr7iCk?t=36m45s https://youtu.be/93Rnjmr7iCk?t=36m45s [5] https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-802/ https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-802/
- nullc 5y ago
  > a strong indicator that the U.S. will follow the same path. British Columbia's Dr. Bonnie Henry indicated yesterday [4] that ...an even stronger indicator is that the Biden administration seems to have asked two multi-decade long FDA vaccine approval experts to resign following them authoring this report saying that the evidence didn't support the widespread use of boosters as a public health measure.
  - SamBam 5y ago
    Link?
    - 5y ago
epmaybe 5y ago
I think this reporting is dancing around the issue, that the vaccine supply is most concentrated in countries that have essentially reached their maximum vaccination percentage. By not providing access to those developing or smaller countries, larger countries are shooting themselves in the proverbial global foot. I don’t think countries like the US and Canada aren’t trying to do that, I just think these experts would like more of a conscious effort. I also think this advice feels like a slap to healthcare workers like myself who desperately want to continue taking care of patients as safely as possible. When your coworkers can spread virus more easily due to less immunity, being unvaccinated, etc, it would be more reassuring to continue to have stronger immunity to continue seeing patients. I don’t have the luxury of waiting for a patient to test negative before seeing them in the emergency room or clinic.
- hanselot 5y ago
  I fail to see why Dr Robert Malone is being ignored during this pandemic. If we are going to invoke the "my piece of paper is bigger than yours argument", I think he wins.
- ianhawes 5y ago
  If you are continually exposed to COVID-19, wouldn’t you effectively be “re-upping” your immune system every time there is additional exposure?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - leeter 5y ago
    No, exposure to the virus is like exposure to combat. You may not die, but the likelihood goes up the more time you spend exposed to it and the more of it you get exposed to. To keep with that metaphor a vaccine is like a war game, it won't kill you but it's not the real thing either. But if you've done it you're better off than if you hadn't.
    - ds206 5y ago
thrownaway561 5y ago
ugh... can we please just get a medical expert to publish a report directly rather than having the media report it? I am so tried of the way the media twists things to suit their point of view or sensationalize things. I just want direct information... is that too hard to ask for?
- KoftaBob 5y ago
  This is the direct link to the medical journal that this article is reporting on: https://www.thelancet.com/pb-assets/Lancet/pdfs/S0140673621020468.pdf https://www.thelancet.com/pb-assets/Lancet/pdfs/S01406736210...
  - Anthony-G 5y ago
    Thanks for the link to the source article. That URL might work for users who have an account with the Lancet but when I followed that link, I got a PDF containing the following text: > For full text of this paper please go to https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)02046-8/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... This URL (also posted earlier in another comment by dfawcus) contains the journal article.
mensetmanusman 5y ago
It is arguably unethical to provide a rich person a third or fourth shot before helping the poor with their first shot. (it is also counterproductive, since the rich would benefit if the poor were immune. This applies to the current debate around natural immunity and mandates.)
- MagnumOpus 5y ago
  By the same measure it is arguably far more unethical to provide a rich person ineffectual million-dollar cancer chemotherapy before helping the poor with malaria chemo-prevention that demonstrably saves a thousand lives...
  - mensetmanusman 5y ago
    Not necessarily more unethical, because in your example we know that this contributes to future advances which eventually reach more people including the poor. With vaccines we know the end game, especially with an endemic virus.
beervirus 5y ago
Booster shots aren’t needed in the same way that masks weren’t recommended at the beginning of the pandemic. Not because they don’t help, but to save supplies for other people (health care workers for the masks, foreigners for the vaccine shots). I still plan to get a booster ASAP though.
mactitan 5y ago
Informed consent disclosure to vaccine trial subjects of risk of COVID‐19 vaccines worsening clinical disease https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7645850/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7645850/
- SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
  That's really burying the lede - all they are saying is that there should be bigger, more explicit forms given stating that that there is possibly a chance of ADE. That article doesn't even attempt to prove that as possiblity. They even admit that "Current data on COVID‐19 vaccines is limited, but does not so far reveal evidence of ADE of disease."
kalaido 5y ago
covid recovered here. The denial of natural immunity is unbearable. unscientific and erodes trust.
mchusma 5y ago
The whole booster conversation seems like a political game. If you have a vaccine, then your risk of death is far below that of the flu (statistically). If you don't have a vaccine by now, you want covid instead and this booster conversation is irrelevant. Kids are banned from taking anything. So I expect booster or no booster, frankly it just won't matter much at the population scale. I also don't understand the mask/booster thing now. Is it to protect kids? If so, then all that effort is better directed at the FDA who has banned them from getting the vaccine. I think this is the area where people should have the most anger and Biden should frankly push legislation to replace or reform the FDA. Their behavior has been atrocious. Is it to protect the unvaccinated? COVID is not going away, so IMO here we just want everyone in this population to get the disease as fast as possible to get it over with. Spreading is basically "good" for this group. Is it to protect the vaccinated? This makes no sense, as the risk to the vaccinated well below the range we have accepted for decades.
- CydeWeys 5y ago
  > Is it to protect the unvaccinated? COVID is not going away, so IMO here we just want everyone in this population to get the disease as fast as possible to get it over with. No we definitely do not want that. There are large deaths of the country where vaccinated people are dying of unrelated conditions simply because hospitals are too full of dying unvaccinated COVID patients. The only way this works is if hospitals deny admittance to unvaccinated patients entirely, to reserve capacity for all the normal reasons that people need hospitals. No one is seriously suggesting this level of care rationing though.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - pasquinelli 5y ago
    it's really simple: you ration care according to the urgency of need. it's no different than any other event that would bring more people to the hospital than usual. i've heard stories like what you're talking about. they don't make much sense. hospitals running out of oxygen? get more oxygen. that's why we have roads and trucks. not enough beds in the icu? build more. i think often about the start of the pandemic, before it got over here. i saw a story on the news that china had put up several hospitals practically overnight to handle the influx of patients. but here there's nothing but lame excuses. when i hear that kind of stuff it feels like i'm talking to someone that owes me money but doesn't have it.
imwillofficial 5y ago
“Trust the science”
henron 5y ago
The recent CDC study [1] suggests that vaccine efficacy against hospitalization for people 65+ is ~80% in the US. If we have reason to believe that a third vaccine dose would increase that efficacy, and the immunological data suggests that we do, then IMO it's clearly the right thing to do. Incontrovertible data will mean many seniors being hospitalized and dying in the interim. There's so much we can do to increase the global supply of vaccines without sacrificing American citizens. Let's focus on those things to improve vaccine equity. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7037e3.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7037e3.htm
moviewise 5y ago
The CDC has a pdf (downloadable) presentation about the data being used to decide on COVID booster vaccines: https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/108332/cdc_108332_DS1.pdf https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/108332/cdc_108332_DS1.pdf The UK government has data showing that about 2X more fully vaccinated people are dying from COVID than the unvaccinated (1,091 fully vaccinated vs. 536 vaccinated), even though the unvaccinated account for 3X more patients coming in for emergency care (6,492 fully vaccinated vs 14,319 unvaccinated) p.21: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1014926/Technical_Briefing_22_21_09_02.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/investigation-of-novel-sars-cov-2-variant-variant-of-concern-20201201 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/investigation-of-... A summary and analysis of the data can be found here: https://notobiggov.medium.com/angry-about-anti-vaxxers-15a151306cd1 https://notobiggov.medium.com/angry-about-anti-vaxxers-15a15...
- refurb 5y ago
  But that would somewhat makes sense? Those at highest risk of Covid would be vaccinated, those at lowest risk unvaccinated.
  - moviewise 5y ago
    Yes. Also this: “It isn’t the absolute number of deaths that should be compared as there are 20 times MORE people vaccinated over age 50 (where most deaths occur) than unvaccinated. The UK has a 95% vaccination rate for people over 50. The rate of deaths is much, much lower in the vaccinated population. The rate of death is the number who have died in a population (vaccinated or unvaccinated) relative to the size of the population, usually expressed as number per 100,000 people. With 20,000,000 vaccinated people over 50, the death rate is 3.2 (per 100,000 people), but for the 1,000,000 UNvaccinated people, the death rate is 32 (per 100,000 people) — ten times higher. In other words, the vaccine is 90% effective against death, consistent with what was found in the original clinical trials.”
    - refurb 5y ago
WhompingWindows 5y ago
How can any healthcare professional, who has probably had multiple vaccines in the past, not take this Covid-19 vaccine? Isn't this akin to a tech worker using "password" as their PW?
- shapefrog 5y ago
  How can any human, who has probably had multiple meals in the past, not eat McDonalds?
setgree 5y ago
I just got an unsanctioned booster in NY (a 2nd J&J). I expect a 2nd J&J, though classified as a booster, to provide an immunogenic response comparable to a second dose of Moderna or Pfizer; the fact that J&J marketed itself as a 1-dose rather than 2-dose solution seems to have been motivated by a desire to get to market faster [0] rather than something intrinsic about the vaccine, and we already know that one dose of J&J ~= one dose of Moderna/Pfizer [1]. Now that many months have passed since our first dose, I think it makes sense for people who got Johnson & Johnson to get a second dose, and to treat it as a "full" dosage, equivalent to the Moderna/Pfizer/AZ shots. I basically decided to go it alone, and diverge from our public health experts, when the CDC started recommending boosters for people who got Moderna and Pfizer shots and not for people who got J&J; as Alex Tabarrok pointed out at the time [2], that makes no sense. In light of that, I think we need to do our best to apply scientific reasoning to the issue, rather than deferring to people with scientific degrees and political authority. [0] https://apnews.com/article/which-virus-vaccine-shot-is-best-82a23b237ffb6a15624daa8616166f00 https://apnews.com/article/which-virus-vaccine-shot-is-best-... [1] https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2021/02/single-shot-and-first-doses-first.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2021/02/si... [2] https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2021/08/the-fda-and-cdc-standards-on-the-jj-vaccine-and-the-immunocompromised-are-unintelligible.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2021/08/th...
- adolph 5y ago
  > I basically decided to go it alone . . . apply scientific reasoning to the issue Please be sure to publish the results of your study of one.
  - setgree 5y ago
    it's been two whole days since my booster and no covid yet :)
    - adolph 5y ago
      Ok, let’s put that on PLOS and roll up some sleeves!
gentryb 5y ago
I put myself out there as a frontline healthcare worker and was vaccinated prior to Christmas. My second dose fell before the 1/20 time frame by over a week. It was a one-off thing for me - trying to help - did COVID testing and vaccination until late April... As one of the first groups of people to be vaccinated, I am concerned that my immune response is starting to lessen. It's sad and ironic that if I were the type to lie at all about this, I'd even have my state paying me to get a first vaccination - no ID required... It's a hard decision - and I suppose my actions may depend on how booster shots are or are not approved.
- beamatronic 5y ago
  "It's easier to regret something you have done, than something you haven't done"
  - gentryb 5y ago
    I so want to respond with Orbital lyrics... but this is a very good point.
- setgree 5y ago
  are you still on the frontline? If so I'd personally be less worried about getting severely ill because you've probably had many small doses of exposure in your time there. Which is not precisely equivalent to a vaccine but is in the same ballpark.
  - gentryb 5y ago
    I am not. I reported something and was fired the next day. I was also wearing a PAPR (N100 Powered Air Purifying Resperator) for the time I was doing testing. Though I was in close contact with many infected patients, I was also in pretty hardcore PPE. I'm doing much more photography for now and some music work as I find the right place in tech again.
jrjarrett 5y ago
In the mid 70s I contracted measles. I was only 9 or 10 but I think I remember it was because there was a batch of vaccines that didn’t work, or maybe it was doctors learned we actually needed two doses. Whatever; I’d had the vaccination prescribed at the time, it didn’t work, I got measles. Fast forward 25 years to when I applied to grad school. There was a measles outbreak happening and in order to attend I either needed to have a recent vaccination or a blood test proving immunity. Even though I had natural immunity I just went ahead and got the additional vaccination. It was faster, cheaper, and I didn’t care. The point is, medical knowledge changed. No one made a big deal about needing an extra vaccination. No one made a big deal about even needing certain vaccinations to do things like go to school. Why now?
- sand500 5y ago
  > No one made a big deal about needing an extra vaccination This is fine when there are plenty of vaccines to go around. The point is we should use the vaccines globally on unvaccinated people rather than giving existing vaccinated populations a booster.
- grillvogel 5y ago
  the pfizer authorization is based on 4 months of data (https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/08/23/does-the-fda-think-these-data-justify-the-first-full-approval-of-a-covid-19-vaccine/ https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/08/23/does-the-fda-think-thes...) your 2nd measles vaccine had 25 years of data since your last one, they probably had enough time to know that it would be fine
varelse 5y ago
So one in 500 Americans have died of covid-19 at this point. If you get vaccinated, your chance of death from this stupid virus drops by a factor of 10. But apparently these are not good enough odds for those of us who consider ourselves armchair epidemiologists doing the research so to speak. So let's rephrase this. I just gave you a free ticket to Disney world. But what will make this trip to Disney world unlike any other trip you will ever have to Disney world is that for every 60 visitors I'm going to give a sniper a bullet. And that sniper gets to shoot anyone the sniper wants to shoot. Are you going to accept my free visit to Disney World? Because basically one in eight Americans have had covid-19 to the extent that their case was recorded. And 1:61 of those people then died of it. And and before you think I'm some sort of weird tyrant enabler, I support your right not to get vaccinated if you support my right to require you to be tested whenever you want to mix among the vaccinated. But what's funny is when anti-vaccine ideology was considered part of one political party that sort of viewpoint was just fine but now it's some sort of Nazi Germany outlook because reasons or something. What changed? For bonus points please explain how this is consistent with getting a cavity search every time you want to fly or you hate America.
exabrial 5y ago
Booster shots and vaccine mandates aren't about public safety or helping people, its politics, generating attention, and ultimately getting votes.
say_it_as_it_is 5y ago
This seems misleading. Saying that vaccines would be better spent on the unvaccinated isn't the same as saying that a booster is unnecessary.
arrakis2021 5y ago
I’ve been vaccinated. I’ve had Covid. I’m done, thank you. I’m not subscribing to a lifetime of shots. If anyone else wants to do so please go ahead, but Im good. And I expect this create even more pushback to the vaccine. The anti-vax crowd will say this is what the pharma gods want, to be paid subscription revenue in perpetuity by entire populations.

234 points by KoftaBob 5y ago

Good cause if they are anything like the 2nd dose shots they should find a way to compensate people for missing 2 days of work with headaches, fever, chills, body ache, etc.

apetrovic 5y ago
It's like an insurance - you pay with chills now to avoid bigger hit later (more serious sickness or death).
- swader999 5y ago
  Or if you are young and healthy pay with a real infection for more robust immunity going forward
newsbinator 5y ago
The compensation is not missing weeks or years due to Covid... or in rarer cases, you know, dying.
- encryptluks2 5y ago
  Yes, not having a place to live is so much better than the 99.9% survival rate for someone in my age group.
  - newsbinator 5y ago
    How would getting covid be in any way preferable for someone in your age group than getting the vaccine? You're guaranteed to get one or the other, likely both.
- kongin 5y ago
  But think of the opportunity cost! If you're under 40 and you spread the virus to your over 50 boss she has at least an order of magnitude more chance of dying than you. You could then move up the corporate ladder with her departure.
  - _red 5y ago
    How about the reverse! If you're a 8 year old male, you get the shot and die of myocarditis, but the 82 yr old overweight cancer patient gets an extra 4 months!!! YAY!
    - MagnumOpus 5y ago
      Myocarditis is about 8x more likely when getting COVID than when getting a covid vaccine, so nope, even an 8-yo should get shot out of pure self interest. (If their chance of catching COVID in the next few years is more than 1/8, which it certainly is.) https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25133462-800-myocarditis-is-more-common-after-covid-19-infection-than-vaccination/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25133462-800-myocardi...
      - _red 5y ago
        >Post a study where totals are not separated by age / gender even though thats the claim. Sloppy job. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/06/israel-detects-link-between-myocarditis-and-covid-vaccine.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/06/israel-detects-link-...
occz 5y ago
How about you introduce paid medical leave, like the rest of the developed world.
pessimizer 5y ago
I don't know why the US is never serious about these things. We don't get a day off to vote, we don't get days off to get our mandatory vaccination. But we get Juneteenth? I'm not from Texas, and where my family lived it didn't matter much that slavery was over until the 1950s. So an awkward, meaningless gesture towards black people for helping the DNC defeat Sanders is prioritized ahead of democracy and epidemic disease.
- Thlom 5y ago
  If you need a full day off work to vote you have other issues.
  - bigbob2 5y ago
    Sounds like you're assuming your situation applies to everyone.
    - Thlom 5y ago
      I was referring to societal problems, not the individuals problems. Voting should be easy and accessible and not something you have to take the day off or several hours out of your day to get done. I literally spent 3 minutes voting this year on my way out of the vaccination center.

occz 5y ago

I think this is the correct analysis - the focus should be to provide vaccines to the rest of the worlds nations that have not yet gotten widespread access to vaccines. This is likely to cause the greatest benefit in the form of fewer global deaths, and reduced global spread of the disease.

skrebbel 5y ago
And, for a selfish western pitch: reduce the chance that bad new variants develop.
- swader999 5y ago
  How will these vaccines that don't produce immunity lead to less severe variants? If they mute severity of illness they will lead to more severe variants. This is basic.
  - dtech 5y ago
    They do provide immunity in 95% (conservative) of cases, so it massively reduces the population that mutations can happen in.
    - swader999 5y ago
      They reduce severity of illness, and don't produce sterilizing immunity and eliminate transmission. And that's the problem, if you pick up a nasty mutation but because of vaccine you are able to still function, you are more likely to be out and about spreading it. And when your limited immunity wanes in a few months this mutinous bastard copy you pushed on the masses may come back to bite you in the ass. Maybe not though if you got your booster in time and if they designed it to match. Better hope your country went with the gold subscription.
      - technothrasher 5y ago
        What data are you referencing to claim that the vaccines do not provide some immunity? But importantly, the vaccines do reduce transmission. See the below study along with others. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2107717 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2107717 Admittedly, one weakness of the above study is that it took place before Delta was widespread. There isn't a lot of data yet on how much the vaccines reduce transmission with Delta, but the likelihood is that they still do even if to a lesser degree.

bbarnett 5y ago

This title is misleading. It isn't about them not being needed. Instead, as per article, it is about how these shots will save more lives, if administered to people without access to first shots! If vaccine doses were unlimited worldwide, 3rd shots (according to article logic) would by recommended for all.

zarzavat 5y ago
How do they propose to get Pfizer shots that have to be stored at -70 C, to areas in developing countries that need first doses? As far as I can see, the vaccine that is actually suitable for developing countries is the AstraZeneca one, and this isn't often used in the west because of the blood clot issues.
- fsh 5y ago
  They will use insulated containers with dry ice, same as everywhere else. This might not work in the middle of the jungle, but most developing contries actually have roads and trucks.
  - zarzavat 5y ago
    Roads and trucks are not a problem but most third world countries also have an abundance of corruption and general apathy towards rules, good luck running a cold chain to all corners of such a country.
- Tepix 5y ago
  The cooling requirements for Pfizer shots were loosened, it no longer needs -70°C. I don't know the new number, i think it's around -25°C.
invalidname 5y ago
Right. The problem is that those guys are pretty hard to convince with facts. I took my 3rd shot because otherwise this would go in the garbage. In that sense it does increase my protection and reduces the overall burden on the system so it does help.

stkdump 5y ago

I can already see this backfiring later when that assessment changes due to more information or increased supply, like it did with the mask messaging.

swader999 5y ago
It's a long read but shows what you allude to: https://www.juliusruechel.com/2021/09/the-snake-oil-salesmen-and-covid-zero.html?m=1 https://www.juliusruechel.com/2021/09/the-snake-oil-salesmen...
- shlant 5y ago
  stop posting unfounded claims and conspiracy theory trash blogs

blagie 5y ago

The paper is thoughtful. The reporting on it is reckless. An accurate headline would be: "Vaccine experts: Widespread booster mandates aren't needed now," or perhaps "recommendations" There's a line between: * Mandatory. * Recommended. * Allowed. * Banned. If I am flying to do humanitarian work in Vietnam tomorrow, I absolutely need a booster shoot. Right now, the only way to get that is to go to a state which doesn't require ids for vaccines, and get a shot. The article discusses that boosters are clearly still appropriate in some circumstances: "Boosting could be appropriate for some individuals in whom the primary vaccination, defined here as the original one-dose or two-dose series of each vaccine, might not have induced adequate protection—eg, recipients of vaccines with low efficacy or those who are immunocompromised2 (although people who did not respond robustly to the primary vaccination might also not respond well to a booster)."

LurkingPenguin 5y ago
Why do you "absolutely" need a booster shot? Are you immunocompromised? How do you know what your level of protection currently is? Even if you did a test to look at your antibody titers, antibody titers aren't the end all and be all of immunity (think T-cells).
- blagie 5y ago
  Well, I'm not flying to Vietnam tomorrow, so I'm not claiming I personally need a booster shot. However: - Vietnam is an epicenter right now, so my odds of catching COVID would be high. - They are well beyond hospital capacity, so if I do have a serious case, it's uncertain I'll receive quality care (and if I do, I'm taking a bed from someone else) We don't have full data, so the right way to think about this is with expected outcomes based on best available data. Best available data, in this scenario, places the likely reduction of risks of COVID19 as a much greater risk reduction than any potential risk of vaccines: - We do have multiple studies about how immunity wanes over time from vaccination. Those provide better ground-truth data than theoretical arguments. - We also have some estimates of breakthrough rates, and severity of infection We don't have good data on long COVID post-vaccine, so that's a place we need to make an educated guess and rely on theoretical arguments. You can plug whatever sane numbers you want, but in this scenario -- humanitarian work in an epicenter with limited hospital capacity -- a booster shot makes sense. For other scenarios -- for example general population -- whether a booster makes sense is still often within the very large error bars of the limited data, and reasonable people can disagree, much as the authors of the Lancet article and the CDC currently do. Once more data rolls in, we'll know.

dmix 5y ago

I’m curious what happened to all of the other vaccines that were in development, which we heard about in 2020. Now it still only seems to be Moderna and Pfizer. If supply is a major constraint we would benefit from expanding the number of options in the market and have more pharma production built in other countries. Although the pharma cartel is a very small community with a few mega firms. Making vaccine development an even smaller subset.

phonon 5y ago
Novavax is potentially even more efficacious, and should be widely available next year. [1] It's also not mRNA based FWIW. [2] [1] https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/novavax-expects-make-available-least-2-bln-covid-19-vaccine-doses-2022-2021-09-10/ https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/... [2] https://www.nebraskamed.com/COVID/moths-and-tree-bark-how-the-novavax-vaccine-works https://www.nebraskamed.com/COVID/moths-and-tree-bark-how-th...
- unanswered 5y ago
  > All alone, the spike protein is harmless (From your [2]) This is a lie. The spike protein has been shown to cause cardiovascular issues.
  - phonon 5y ago
    Water can also cause death, in high enough doses. Sola dosis facit venenum.
  - Volundr 5y ago
    > This is a lie. The spike protein has been shown to cause cardiovascular issues. [Citation needed]
    - mmillin 5y ago
      There was an article posted on HN a few days ago indicating such: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28438315 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28438315 Almost necessarily less harmful than the complete virus, but the spike protein isn’t entirely harmless it seems.

colechristensen 5y ago

They need to make the actual data based argument not just appeal to authority. Booster shots have these benefits, these risks, and these tertiary effects. The argument seems to be that boosters have small increases in immunity, very small difficult to quantify side effects likely similar, and because of limited global supply and large numbers of unvaccinated. The optimal deployment might be a very few should have boosters, and the rest of supply should be directed towards people who want but can’t yet get vaccines.

kongin 5y ago
Looking at Israel third dose boosters are pretty much the only thing that stopped their deaths from growing in lock step with their cases: https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19vaccine/94344 https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19vaccin... Without them they were headed to the same daily death rate per million as the US. How they are at half the death rate.
- thehappypm 5y ago
  I’m unconvinced. The death rate in Israel is lower than the US for many reasons — including a far less obese population, a younger population, a higher vaccination rate, and (likely) more willingness to do things like mask up voluntarily. They don’t have an Arkansas. The cases started falling around when the boosters started but it could just be the natural rise and fall. Timing is not enough proof for me.
  - kongin 5y ago
    >The death rate in Israel is lower than the US for many reasons — including a far less obese population, a younger population, a higher vaccination rate, and (likely) more willingness to do things like mask up voluntarily. They don’t have an Arkansas. They have the Ultra Orthodox which make Mississippi look like NYC.
maxerickson 5y ago
The US has lots of vaccines (tens of millions) already delivered to administration sites. Using those for boosters won't impact global equity (they will either get used in the US or thrown away). So we could offer boosters to most older folks.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

m0llusk 5y ago

Ah, yes. The eat your dinner because kids are starving in Africa argument. Too bad they didn't mention the exceptions such as people with damaged immune systems, but why bother trying to get things right when you are scoring political points?

red_trumpet 5y ago
> Too bad they didn't mention the exceptions What are you talking about? From the article: > They did say booster doses could be appropriate for immunocompromised people, and indeed that population can get a third dose of an mRNA vaccine.

deleted 5y ago

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dfawcus 5y ago

The Lancet article referred to seems to be here: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)02046-8/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

sradman 5y ago

There is not strong evidence supporting a 3rd booster dose in immunocompetent people. We have partly seen a misinterpretation of the Israeli data [1] and specifically the single low effectiveness value that appears to be the result of Simpson's Paradox [2]. Dr. Fauci reported this single value decline from the high nineties to the high seventies on Andy Slavitt's podcast [3]. Pfizer's CEO has promoted this same data, Israel's 3rd dose campaign is well under way, and Fauci's public statements are a strong indicator that the U.S. will follow the same path. British Columbia's Dr. Bonnie Henry indicated yesterday [4] that the Canadian numbers do not yet support a general 3rd dose booster but, like the UK, a longer 2nd dose interval due to a First Doses First (FDF) strategy may be a factor. The 3rd dose is safe and will probably provide a small benefit to the recipient as Shane Crotty described in TWiV 802 [5]. The downside is that these doses are in short supply globally where they could make a significant difference. [1] https://www.covid-datascience.com/post/israeli-data-how-can-efficacy-vs-severe-disease-be-strong-when-60-of-hospitalized-are-vaccinated https://www.covid-datascience.com/post/israeli-data-how-can-... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox [3] https://lemonadamedia.com/podcast/dr-fauci-answers-your-biggest-questions/ https://lemonadamedia.com/podcast/dr-fauci-answers-your-bigg... [4] (YouTube ~3.5min @36m45s) https://youtu.be/93Rnjmr7iCk?t=36m45s https://youtu.be/93Rnjmr7iCk?t=36m45s [5] https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-802/ https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-802/

nullc 5y ago
> a strong indicator that the U.S. will follow the same path. British Columbia's Dr. Bonnie Henry indicated yesterday [4] that ...an even stronger indicator is that the Biden administration seems to have asked two multi-decade long FDA vaccine approval experts to resign following them authoring this report saying that the evidence didn't support the widespread use of boosters as a public health measure.
- SamBam 5y ago
  Link?
  - 5y ago

epmaybe 5y ago

I think this reporting is dancing around the issue, that the vaccine supply is most concentrated in countries that have essentially reached their maximum vaccination percentage. By not providing access to those developing or smaller countries, larger countries are shooting themselves in the proverbial global foot. I don’t think countries like the US and Canada aren’t trying to do that, I just think these experts would like more of a conscious effort. I also think this advice feels like a slap to healthcare workers like myself who desperately want to continue taking care of patients as safely as possible. When your coworkers can spread virus more easily due to less immunity, being unvaccinated, etc, it would be more reassuring to continue to have stronger immunity to continue seeing patients. I don’t have the luxury of waiting for a patient to test negative before seeing them in the emergency room or clinic.

hanselot 5y ago
I fail to see why Dr Robert Malone is being ignored during this pandemic. If we are going to invoke the "my piece of paper is bigger than yours argument", I think he wins.
ianhawes 5y ago
If you are continually exposed to COVID-19, wouldn’t you effectively be “re-upping” your immune system every time there is additional exposure?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- leeter 5y ago
  No, exposure to the virus is like exposure to combat. You may not die, but the likelihood goes up the more time you spend exposed to it and the more of it you get exposed to. To keep with that metaphor a vaccine is like a war game, it won't kill you but it's not the real thing either. But if you've done it you're better off than if you hadn't.
  - ds206 5y ago

thrownaway561 5y ago

ugh... can we please just get a medical expert to publish a report directly rather than having the media report it? I am so tried of the way the media twists things to suit their point of view or sensationalize things. I just want direct information... is that too hard to ask for?

KoftaBob 5y ago
This is the direct link to the medical journal that this article is reporting on: https://www.thelancet.com/pb-assets/Lancet/pdfs/S0140673621020468.pdf https://www.thelancet.com/pb-assets/Lancet/pdfs/S01406736210...
- Anthony-G 5y ago
  Thanks for the link to the source article. That URL might work for users who have an account with the Lancet but when I followed that link, I got a PDF containing the following text: > For full text of this paper please go to https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)02046-8/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... This URL (also posted earlier in another comment by dfawcus) contains the journal article.

mensetmanusman 5y ago

It is arguably unethical to provide a rich person a third or fourth shot before helping the poor with their first shot. (it is also counterproductive, since the rich would benefit if the poor were immune. This applies to the current debate around natural immunity and mandates.)

MagnumOpus 5y ago
By the same measure it is arguably far more unethical to provide a rich person ineffectual million-dollar cancer chemotherapy before helping the poor with malaria chemo-prevention that demonstrably saves a thousand lives...
- mensetmanusman 5y ago
  Not necessarily more unethical, because in your example we know that this contributes to future advances which eventually reach more people including the poor. With vaccines we know the end game, especially with an endemic virus.

beervirus 5y ago

Booster shots aren’t needed in the same way that masks weren’t recommended at the beginning of the pandemic. Not because they don’t help, but to save supplies for other people (health care workers for the masks, foreigners for the vaccine shots). I still plan to get a booster ASAP though.

mactitan 5y ago

Informed consent disclosure to vaccine trial subjects of risk of COVID‐19 vaccines worsening clinical disease https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7645850/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7645850/

SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
That's really burying the lede - all they are saying is that there should be bigger, more explicit forms given stating that that there is possibly a chance of ADE. That article doesn't even attempt to prove that as possiblity. They even admit that "Current data on COVID‐19 vaccines is limited, but does not so far reveal evidence of ADE of disease."

kalaido 5y ago

covid recovered here. The denial of natural immunity is unbearable. unscientific and erodes trust.

mchusma 5y ago

The whole booster conversation seems like a political game. If you have a vaccine, then your risk of death is far below that of the flu (statistically). If you don't have a vaccine by now, you want covid instead and this booster conversation is irrelevant. Kids are banned from taking anything. So I expect booster or no booster, frankly it just won't matter much at the population scale. I also don't understand the mask/booster thing now. Is it to protect kids? If so, then all that effort is better directed at the FDA who has banned them from getting the vaccine. I think this is the area where people should have the most anger and Biden should frankly push legislation to replace or reform the FDA. Their behavior has been atrocious. Is it to protect the unvaccinated? COVID is not going away, so IMO here we just want everyone in this population to get the disease as fast as possible to get it over with. Spreading is basically "good" for this group. Is it to protect the vaccinated? This makes no sense, as the risk to the vaccinated well below the range we have accepted for decades.

CydeWeys 5y ago
> Is it to protect the unvaccinated? COVID is not going away, so IMO here we just want everyone in this population to get the disease as fast as possible to get it over with. No we definitely do not want that. There are large deaths of the country where vaccinated people are dying of unrelated conditions simply because hospitals are too full of dying unvaccinated COVID patients. The only way this works is if hospitals deny admittance to unvaccinated patients entirely, to reserve capacity for all the normal reasons that people need hospitals. No one is seriously suggesting this level of care rationing though.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- pasquinelli 5y ago
  it's really simple: you ration care according to the urgency of need. it's no different than any other event that would bring more people to the hospital than usual. i've heard stories like what you're talking about. they don't make much sense. hospitals running out of oxygen? get more oxygen. that's why we have roads and trucks. not enough beds in the icu? build more. i think often about the start of the pandemic, before it got over here. i saw a story on the news that china had put up several hospitals practically overnight to handle the influx of patients. but here there's nothing but lame excuses. when i hear that kind of stuff it feels like i'm talking to someone that owes me money but doesn't have it.

imwillofficial 5y ago

“Trust the science”

henron 5y ago

The recent CDC study [1] suggests that vaccine efficacy against hospitalization for people 65+ is ~80% in the US. If we have reason to believe that a third vaccine dose would increase that efficacy, and the immunological data suggests that we do, then IMO it's clearly the right thing to do. Incontrovertible data will mean many seniors being hospitalized and dying in the interim. There's so much we can do to increase the global supply of vaccines without sacrificing American citizens. Let's focus on those things to improve vaccine equity. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7037e3.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7037e3.htm

moviewise 5y ago

The CDC has a pdf (downloadable) presentation about the data being used to decide on COVID booster vaccines: https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/108332/cdc_108332_DS1.pdf https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/108332/cdc_108332_DS1.pdf The UK government has data showing that about 2X more fully vaccinated people are dying from COVID than the unvaccinated (1,091 fully vaccinated vs. 536 vaccinated), even though the unvaccinated account for 3X more patients coming in for emergency care (6,492 fully vaccinated vs 14,319 unvaccinated) p.21: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1014926/Technical_Briefing_22_21_09_02.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/investigation-of-novel-sars-cov-2-variant-variant-of-concern-20201201 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/investigation-of-... A summary and analysis of the data can be found here: https://notobiggov.medium.com/angry-about-anti-vaxxers-15a151306cd1 https://notobiggov.medium.com/angry-about-anti-vaxxers-15a15...

refurb 5y ago
But that would somewhat makes sense? Those at highest risk of Covid would be vaccinated, those at lowest risk unvaccinated.
- moviewise 5y ago
  Yes. Also this: “It isn’t the absolute number of deaths that should be compared as there are 20 times MORE people vaccinated over age 50 (where most deaths occur) than unvaccinated. The UK has a 95% vaccination rate for people over 50. The rate of deaths is much, much lower in the vaccinated population. The rate of death is the number who have died in a population (vaccinated or unvaccinated) relative to the size of the population, usually expressed as number per 100,000 people. With 20,000,000 vaccinated people over 50, the death rate is 3.2 (per 100,000 people), but for the 1,000,000 UNvaccinated people, the death rate is 32 (per 100,000 people) — ten times higher. In other words, the vaccine is 90% effective against death, consistent with what was found in the original clinical trials.”
  - refurb 5y ago

WhompingWindows 5y ago

How can any healthcare professional, who has probably had multiple vaccines in the past, not take this Covid-19 vaccine? Isn't this akin to a tech worker using "password" as their PW?

shapefrog 5y ago
How can any human, who has probably had multiple meals in the past, not eat McDonalds?

setgree 5y ago

I just got an unsanctioned booster in NY (a 2nd J&J). I expect a 2nd J&J, though classified as a booster, to provide an immunogenic response comparable to a second dose of Moderna or Pfizer; the fact that J&J marketed itself as a 1-dose rather than 2-dose solution seems to have been motivated by a desire to get to market faster [0] rather than something intrinsic about the vaccine, and we already know that one dose of J&J ~= one dose of Moderna/Pfizer [1]. Now that many months have passed since our first dose, I think it makes sense for people who got Johnson & Johnson to get a second dose, and to treat it as a "full" dosage, equivalent to the Moderna/Pfizer/AZ shots. I basically decided to go it alone, and diverge from our public health experts, when the CDC started recommending boosters for people who got Moderna and Pfizer shots and not for people who got J&J; as Alex Tabarrok pointed out at the time [2], that makes no sense. In light of that, I think we need to do our best to apply scientific reasoning to the issue, rather than deferring to people with scientific degrees and political authority. [0] https://apnews.com/article/which-virus-vaccine-shot-is-best-82a23b237ffb6a15624daa8616166f00 https://apnews.com/article/which-virus-vaccine-shot-is-best-... [1] https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2021/02/single-shot-and-first-doses-first.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2021/02/si... [2] https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2021/08/the-fda-and-cdc-standards-on-the-jj-vaccine-and-the-immunocompromised-are-unintelligible.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2021/08/th...

adolph 5y ago
> I basically decided to go it alone . . . apply scientific reasoning to the issue Please be sure to publish the results of your study of one.
- setgree 5y ago
  it's been two whole days since my booster and no covid yet :)
  - adolph 5y ago
    Ok, let’s put that on PLOS and roll up some sleeves!

gentryb 5y ago

I put myself out there as a frontline healthcare worker and was vaccinated prior to Christmas. My second dose fell before the 1/20 time frame by over a week. It was a one-off thing for me - trying to help - did COVID testing and vaccination until late April... As one of the first groups of people to be vaccinated, I am concerned that my immune response is starting to lessen. It's sad and ironic that if I were the type to lie at all about this, I'd even have my state paying me to get a first vaccination - no ID required... It's a hard decision - and I suppose my actions may depend on how booster shots are or are not approved.

beamatronic 5y ago
"It's easier to regret something you have done, than something you haven't done"
- gentryb 5y ago
  I so want to respond with Orbital lyrics... but this is a very good point.
setgree 5y ago
are you still on the frontline? If so I'd personally be less worried about getting severely ill because you've probably had many small doses of exposure in your time there. Which is not precisely equivalent to a vaccine but is in the same ballpark.
- gentryb 5y ago
  I am not. I reported something and was fired the next day. I was also wearing a PAPR (N100 Powered Air Purifying Resperator) for the time I was doing testing. Though I was in close contact with many infected patients, I was also in pretty hardcore PPE. I'm doing much more photography for now and some music work as I find the right place in tech again.

jrjarrett 5y ago

In the mid 70s I contracted measles. I was only 9 or 10 but I think I remember it was because there was a batch of vaccines that didn’t work, or maybe it was doctors learned we actually needed two doses. Whatever; I’d had the vaccination prescribed at the time, it didn’t work, I got measles. Fast forward 25 years to when I applied to grad school. There was a measles outbreak happening and in order to attend I either needed to have a recent vaccination or a blood test proving immunity. Even though I had natural immunity I just went ahead and got the additional vaccination. It was faster, cheaper, and I didn’t care. The point is, medical knowledge changed. No one made a big deal about needing an extra vaccination. No one made a big deal about even needing certain vaccinations to do things like go to school. Why now?

sand500 5y ago
> No one made a big deal about needing an extra vaccination This is fine when there are plenty of vaccines to go around. The point is we should use the vaccines globally on unvaccinated people rather than giving existing vaccinated populations a booster.
grillvogel 5y ago
the pfizer authorization is based on 4 months of data (https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/08/23/does-the-fda-think-these-data-justify-the-first-full-approval-of-a-covid-19-vaccine/ https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/08/23/does-the-fda-think-thes...) your 2nd measles vaccine had 25 years of data since your last one, they probably had enough time to know that it would be fine

varelse 5y ago

So one in 500 Americans have died of covid-19 at this point. If you get vaccinated, your chance of death from this stupid virus drops by a factor of 10. But apparently these are not good enough odds for those of us who consider ourselves armchair epidemiologists doing the research so to speak. So let's rephrase this. I just gave you a free ticket to Disney world. But what will make this trip to Disney world unlike any other trip you will ever have to Disney world is that for every 60 visitors I'm going to give a sniper a bullet. And that sniper gets to shoot anyone the sniper wants to shoot. Are you going to accept my free visit to Disney World? Because basically one in eight Americans have had covid-19 to the extent that their case was recorded. And 1:61 of those people then died of it. And and before you think I'm some sort of weird tyrant enabler, I support your right not to get vaccinated if you support my right to require you to be tested whenever you want to mix among the vaccinated. But what's funny is when anti-vaccine ideology was considered part of one political party that sort of viewpoint was just fine but now it's some sort of Nazi Germany outlook because reasons or something. What changed? For bonus points please explain how this is consistent with getting a cavity search every time you want to fly or you hate America.

exabrial 5y ago

Booster shots and vaccine mandates aren't about public safety or helping people, its politics, generating attention, and ultimately getting votes.

say_it_as_it_is 5y ago

This seems misleading. Saying that vaccines would be better spent on the unvaccinated isn't the same as saying that a booster is unnecessary.

arrakis2021 5y ago

I’ve been vaccinated. I’ve had Covid. I’m done, thank you. I’m not subscribing to a lifetime of shots. If anyone else wants to do so please go ahead, but Im good. And I expect this create even more pushback to the vaccine. The anti-vax crowd will say this is what the pharma gods want, to be paid subscription revenue in perpetuity by entire populations.