7 ms·

Johnson and Johnson says its Covid booster shot provides increased protection

27 points by rastafang 5y ago

aurizon 5y ago
It is obvious that the antigen kinetics of ALL the vaccines require 2 shots - and they all seem to converge to ~~95% efficacy. J&J now has the data and should relaunch as a two shot going forward. The usual vaccines with inactivated virus have the full code(broken - but antigenic) and this full code has all the little parts that a genuine infection has - inactivated but these fragments are sensed by the immune system as foreign and hold danger = antigens are created. The rNA vaccines are spike focussed and ignore these fragmentary 'nuts and bolts' that the virus uses to construct a reproduction capable daughter virus that emerges when the cell lyses to proliferate. I feel these nuts and bolts are the key to the higher speed spread of the delta variant - which creates 1000 times as much virus at the infection peak = each spread droplet holds 1000 times as many virions = faster spread. I anticipate that a full examination of the reaction kinetics will reveal that the delta virus makes and uses all these nuts and bolts in a more optimal ratio, so when the cell lyses there is less waste and more fully assembled virions. As a mechanical analog, a car factory has an assembly line fed by subassembly lines. Let us pick, engine, transmission, gas tank, headlights, and horn. All these lines need to be tuned to make the same number of their units to make complete cars. A car can not be sold with no horn, or engine etc. If they are not in tune, the factory will only make as many cars as the slowest(critical part) line. All these excess parts will pile up, uses steel etc, waste resources and eventually fill the factory and burst the walls = lysis. All the functional virions will go on to infect, and all the waste parts will become scavenged by the cell for re-use. This is a crude, but representative analogy to the beta variant - I am sure there are people analysing the reaction kinetics of virion production that lead to the observed 1000 fold increase in peak virion titer as the infection peaks and then wanes. The cell does not need to hold 1000 x virions at lysis - a faster replicative cycle to lysis and repeat will lead to the 1000 fold blood titer with only 20-25% more virions at lysis due to the shorter time to lysis = more completed cycles before the immune response suppresses the virus.
JohnWhigham 5y ago
Experts have said coronavirus boosters will be needed down the road because the efficacy of these vaccines, including the two-dose Pfizer and Moderna shots, wanes over time. And I've seen other talk about "experts" saying that boosters are not needed (https://www.axios.com/covid-19-vaccine-booster-not-needed-experts-fda-lancet-44bc8a25-c640-4268-8841-e652e285d8fe.html https://www.axios.com/covid-19-vaccine-booster-not-needed-ex...) This shit is so fucking exhausting.
- sneak 5y ago
  Even if it turns out that the data is clear in the long run: I had my third Pfizer today (along with influenza minutes later) and if this is the vaccine hangover I'm going to get twice a year, that's pretty exhausting too. Still waaay better than covid or the flu, but damn. The world is never going to be the same.
  - rgbbtc4life 5y ago
    Hahahha you're retarded. Keep getting those jabs vaxxie.
  - dham 5y ago
    The world will go back to normal when we accept that everyone will get Covid and there's no need to hide from it. People have some kind of mild mental illness from Covid and they haven't even gotten it. > Still better than covid, but damn I mean maybe?
    - sneak 5y ago
      That's what they said about chicken pox when I was a child. Technology advances, fortunately. There is no going back to normal if everyone gets covid: it is a deadly disease that has killed close to five millions of people. This sort of fatalism is not a really useful approach for reasoning about the risk, in my view.
      - dham 5y ago
fasteddie31003 5y ago
To be a contrarian, wouldn't the best booster be a low dose of actual COVID-19 a few months after being vaccinated? This would give the individual natural immunity to more antigen sites than just the spike protean. Having the vaccine and COVID-19 exposure would prevent a strong case of COVID-19 and give long lasting natural immunity.
- ramesh31 5y ago
  >Having the vaccine and COVID-19 exposure would prevent a strong case of COVID-19 and give long lasting natural immunity. No one's ever going to inject a live virus into themselves. Inoculation is effective but we've moved past the need for that with modern vaccines. The current thinking is that we will end up getting a "mRNA cocktail" of different variants, and that that will provide the broad spectrum immune response you're talking about.
  - fasteddie31003 5y ago
    I'd probably get it but try promoting that "mRNA cocktail" to the average American.
  - vibrato2 5y ago
    Live virus vaccines are actually a proven technology. I'd much sooner take a live virus than rushed to market mRNA technology. https://www.verywellhealth.com/what-is-a-live-virus-vaccine-200925 https://www.verywellhealth.com/what-is-a-live-virus-vaccine-...
  - No1 5y ago
    > No one's ever going to inject a live virus into themselves. Ironically, that is exactly what people are doing when they get the J&J vaccine. At this point, I think that's 20 million people proving you wrong.
- pfisherman 5y ago
  No. Risk / benefit is not favorable. There is no scenario outside of biological warfare where you would want to intentionally spread a deadly respiratory virus.
ramesh31 5y ago
I find the "one and done" way in which the J&J shot was marketed and approved was really disingenuous. It seems more like J&J knew they had a slightly riskier vaccine and wanted to cover themselves from the additional liability of a second shot, while also speeding up the approval process.
- aurizon 5y ago
  Well, vaccines based on a single aspect - the spike are weaker than a natural infection immune response, but of course the patient suffers the disease which stimulates the immune system with all the carried detritus of an infection = a more comprehensive immunity. I suspect later rNA based Covid vaccines will add some of this detritus code to broaden the response? This will complicate testing, but will improve the vaccines.
brianmcc 5y ago
Like it or not, we've no choice but to live through this massive planet-wide experiment in real time. Short term we'll see lots of bursts of news, and new exciting findings, but it's only in the long term maybe even years from now that we'll know which science is truly the "settled" science. As a layperson I am trying to sit back and watch the experts figuring it all out, because on the surface it is frustrating how hard it is to extract truth and facts instantaneously. But, it is what it is...
deadalus 5y ago
The full Phase 3 results for the J&J vaccine will be released on January 2,2023 : https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04505722 https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04505722
- javagram 5y ago
  From your link: - Actual Primary Completion Date : January 22, 2021 - Estimated Study Completion Date : January 2, 2023 There are quite a lot of secondary outcomes listed!
js290 5y ago
NPR knows who pays the bills...
bitL 5y ago
When will they finally release a vaccine targeting surface proteins instead of the mutating spike protein? All we got are ancient spike protein-based vaccines that need to be renewed, while it's been sufficient time to develop a proper vaccine targeting all variants, or at least adjust spike fragments to new variants. Is this really just business-driven decision now? Is a vaccine subscription coming next?
ipspam 5y ago
They are pretty much just making this all up now. There is very little relevance to the effectiveness when measured in double digit days. It's all fudged to say you are protected a month or two after your last shot.

27 points by rastafang 5y ago

It is obvious that the antigen kinetics of ALL the vaccines require 2 shots - and they all seem to converge to ~~95% efficacy. J&J now has the data and should relaunch as a two shot going forward. The usual vaccines with inactivated virus have the full code(broken - but antigenic) and this full code has all the little parts that a genuine infection has - inactivated but these fragments are sensed by the immune system as foreign and hold danger = antigens are created. The rNA vaccines are spike focussed and ignore these fragmentary 'nuts and bolts' that the virus uses to construct a reproduction capable daughter virus that emerges when the cell lyses to proliferate. I feel these nuts and bolts are the key to the higher speed spread of the delta variant - which creates 1000 times as much virus at the infection peak = each spread droplet holds 1000 times as many virions = faster spread. I anticipate that a full examination of the reaction kinetics will reveal that the delta virus makes and uses all these nuts and bolts in a more optimal ratio, so when the cell lyses there is less waste and more fully assembled virions. As a mechanical analog, a car factory has an assembly line fed by subassembly lines. Let us pick, engine, transmission, gas tank, headlights, and horn. All these lines need to be tuned to make the same number of their units to make complete cars. A car can not be sold with no horn, or engine etc. If they are not in tune, the factory will only make as many cars as the slowest(critical part) line. All these excess parts will pile up, uses steel etc, waste resources and eventually fill the factory and burst the walls = lysis. All the functional virions will go on to infect, and all the waste parts will become scavenged by the cell for re-use. This is a crude, but representative analogy to the beta variant - I am sure there are people analysing the reaction kinetics of virion production that lead to the observed 1000 fold increase in peak virion titer as the infection peaks and then wanes. The cell does not need to hold 1000 x virions at lysis - a faster replicative cycle to lysis and repeat will lead to the 1000 fold blood titer with only 20-25% more virions at lysis due to the shorter time to lysis = more completed cycles before the immune response suppresses the virus.

JohnWhigham 5y ago

Experts have said coronavirus boosters will be needed down the road because the efficacy of these vaccines, including the two-dose Pfizer and Moderna shots, wanes over time. And I've seen other talk about "experts" saying that boosters are not needed (https://www.axios.com/covid-19-vaccine-booster-not-needed-experts-fda-lancet-44bc8a25-c640-4268-8841-e652e285d8fe.html https://www.axios.com/covid-19-vaccine-booster-not-needed-ex...) This shit is so fucking exhausting.

sneak 5y ago
Even if it turns out that the data is clear in the long run: I had my third Pfizer today (along with influenza minutes later) and if this is the vaccine hangover I'm going to get twice a year, that's pretty exhausting too. Still waaay better than covid or the flu, but damn. The world is never going to be the same.
- rgbbtc4life 5y ago
  Hahahha you're retarded. Keep getting those jabs vaxxie.
- dham 5y ago
  The world will go back to normal when we accept that everyone will get Covid and there's no need to hide from it. People have some kind of mild mental illness from Covid and they haven't even gotten it. > Still better than covid, but damn I mean maybe?
  - sneak 5y ago
    That's what they said about chicken pox when I was a child. Technology advances, fortunately. There is no going back to normal if everyone gets covid: it is a deadly disease that has killed close to five millions of people. This sort of fatalism is not a really useful approach for reasoning about the risk, in my view.
    - dham 5y ago

fasteddie31003 5y ago

To be a contrarian, wouldn't the best booster be a low dose of actual COVID-19 a few months after being vaccinated? This would give the individual natural immunity to more antigen sites than just the spike protean. Having the vaccine and COVID-19 exposure would prevent a strong case of COVID-19 and give long lasting natural immunity.

ramesh31 5y ago
>Having the vaccine and COVID-19 exposure would prevent a strong case of COVID-19 and give long lasting natural immunity. No one's ever going to inject a live virus into themselves. Inoculation is effective but we've moved past the need for that with modern vaccines. The current thinking is that we will end up getting a "mRNA cocktail" of different variants, and that that will provide the broad spectrum immune response you're talking about.
- fasteddie31003 5y ago
  I'd probably get it but try promoting that "mRNA cocktail" to the average American.
- vibrato2 5y ago
  Live virus vaccines are actually a proven technology. I'd much sooner take a live virus than rushed to market mRNA technology. https://www.verywellhealth.com/what-is-a-live-virus-vaccine-200925 https://www.verywellhealth.com/what-is-a-live-virus-vaccine-...
- No1 5y ago
  > No one's ever going to inject a live virus into themselves. Ironically, that is exactly what people are doing when they get the J&J vaccine. At this point, I think that's 20 million people proving you wrong.
pfisherman 5y ago
No. Risk / benefit is not favorable. There is no scenario outside of biological warfare where you would want to intentionally spread a deadly respiratory virus.

ramesh31 5y ago

I find the "one and done" way in which the J&J shot was marketed and approved was really disingenuous. It seems more like J&J knew they had a slightly riskier vaccine and wanted to cover themselves from the additional liability of a second shot, while also speeding up the approval process.

aurizon 5y ago
Well, vaccines based on a single aspect - the spike are weaker than a natural infection immune response, but of course the patient suffers the disease which stimulates the immune system with all the carried detritus of an infection = a more comprehensive immunity. I suspect later rNA based Covid vaccines will add some of this detritus code to broaden the response? This will complicate testing, but will improve the vaccines.

brianmcc 5y ago

Like it or not, we've no choice but to live through this massive planet-wide experiment in real time. Short term we'll see lots of bursts of news, and new exciting findings, but it's only in the long term maybe even years from now that we'll know which science is truly the "settled" science. As a layperson I am trying to sit back and watch the experts figuring it all out, because on the surface it is frustrating how hard it is to extract truth and facts instantaneously. But, it is what it is...

deadalus 5y ago

The full Phase 3 results for the J&J vaccine will be released on January 2,2023 : https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04505722 https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04505722

javagram 5y ago
From your link: - Actual Primary Completion Date : January 22, 2021 - Estimated Study Completion Date : January 2, 2023 There are quite a lot of secondary outcomes listed!

js290 5y ago

NPR knows who pays the bills...

bitL 5y ago

When will they finally release a vaccine targeting surface proteins instead of the mutating spike protein? All we got are ancient spike protein-based vaccines that need to be renewed, while it's been sufficient time to develop a proper vaccine targeting all variants, or at least adjust spike fragments to new variants. Is this really just business-driven decision now? Is a vaccine subscription coming next?

ipspam 5y ago

They are pretty much just making this all up now. There is very little relevance to the effectiveness when measured in double digit days. It's all fudged to say you are protected a month or two after your last shot.