12 ms·
Covid vaccine immunity is waning – how much does that matter?
- Factorium 5y agoVaccines that wane are great for business, if you're a vaccine manufacturer. The question now is: will people tolerate 6-monthly booster shots for life? How long will superior natural immunity be ignored?
- hellotomyrars 5y agoCan you show any evidence to your claim that natural immunity is superior?
- kbelder 5y agoI would think that's the default position, right? Vaccines are simply a trigger to try to replicate what happens during normal disease exposure. A vaccine that's as effective as natural immunity is a great success.
- antoniuschan99 5y agoI remember seeing a few articles on the mainstream Reddit boards (/r/coronavirus and /r/medicine) studies coming out of Israel and Japan. But some say it's not peer reviewed yet? https://www.science.org/content/article/having-sars-cov-2-once-confers-much-greater-immunity-vaccine-vaccination-remains-vital https://www.science.org/content/article/having-sars-cov-2-on...
- Factorium 5y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bamaEMftg4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bamaEMftg4 Dr John Campbell
- OrvalWintermute 5y ago> Can you show any evidence to your claim that natural immunity is superior? Sure [1] this is pretty well known at this point. From an elementary perspective, this is simple math Spike-Vaccines = Antibody to Protein spike from original Covid Spike-Vaccine Booster = Antibody to Protein spike from whichever variant Infection Immunity = Antibodies to spike & other proteins inside the virus & the "Reverse Transcription Defense" [2]. The reverse transcription defense is not well-known at this point, but it is believed to be one of the sources of endogenous viruses found on the human genome (EHV) One of the papers I read on it stated paraphrased 'these other proteins we see antibodies for in recovered individuals are potential vaccine targets for future vaccines'. However, at this point we do not yet have a vaccine that contains the respective strengths of previous infection based immunity. [1] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v... [2] https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.12.422516v1.full-text https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.12.422516v1....
- zeepzeep 5y agoWe don't have to, we just need to keep the numbers low enough that hospitals function properly
- txsoftwaredev 5y agoHospitals are a business and will expand capacity if it is profitable.
- amalantony06 5y agoSeems like most people here think hospitals and health care companies act purely out of the benevolence of their hearts and not for profit, judging by the down-votes on your comment ;)
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- johnisgood 5y agoSome people here really ought to replace Pfizer with Google or Facebook and re-read their sentences. According to some comments here, we have a purely free market and all actors are benevolent, there are no profit incentives "for the worse" (at all, that is, let me quote: "conspiratorial thinking" to think that people are motivated by profits) and so forth, but only as so far as we are talking about COVID-19. I typically read the exact opposites when there are discussions about Facebook, Google, or the market in general.
- zeepzeep 5y agoYeah but they can't do that fast enough, as we've seen. One of the many points where pure captialism fails.
- SV_BubbleTime 5y agoI was curious if you were right. So I found numbers here instead of just claims. It’s been big money, that’s true. - Pfizer revenue for the quarter ending June 30, 2021 was $18.977B, a 92.39% increase year-over-year. - Pfizer revenue for the twelve months ending June 30, 2021 was $55.520B, a 59.83% increase year-over-year. - Pfizer annual revenue for 2020 was $41.908B, a 1.79% increase from 2019. -Pfizer annual revenue for 2019 was $41.172B, a 0.85% increase from 2018. - Pfizer annual revenue for 2018 was $40.825B, a 22.31% decline from 2017. As to Moderna, they were very poorly performing until COVID, their vaccine likely saved their business. Good for them, I guess. I haven’t ever been a fan of big Pharma (textbook regulatory capture to start), and that hasn’t changed unlike some people who now cheerleader for them after years of skepticism. As to boosters, and people’s tolerance? Nothing either way surprises me anymore. Edit: factual Pfizer numbers, no “conspiracy narrative”, still not allowed, got it
- libertine 5y agoMan you can wrap that up with the good ol'conspiracy theory what if it was big pharma that MADE the virus and were sitting on this vaccine?! What you're saying is the same as saying that some US weapon manufacturer cashed in big whenever the US went to war - how the hell did they pull that off, right?
- NackerHughes 5y agoYes, and all wars in the last few decades came about entirely naturally and by chance and certainly weren't provoked if not initiated by the US. That's just a good ol'conspiracy theory.
- libertine 5y agoUh... you didn't get it, I'll break it down to you: according to the parent comment it would be the US Weapon Industry that were causing the wars. That's the conspiracy theory. Being surprised that companies have better results when their products are in high demand seems odd that's all.
- c0nducktr 5y agoAirplanes that break down quickly are great for business, if you're an aircraft manufacturer. Wait, no it doesn't work that way.
- generalizations 5y ago> Wait, no it doesn't work that way. It kinda does, in a lot of cases. But sure, use extreme examples that don't do anyone any good. There's lots of reasonable examples. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence
- johnisgood 5y agoFalse equivalence, because airplanes breaking down midair does not equal to vaccines killing people.
- TurkishPoptart 5y agoNeither the vaccine manufacturers nor the White House explained that the product "craps out" after 6-9 months. Had people known this in January, they might have just taken their chances with natural immunity. But this is awfully convenient for Pfizer and Moderna's coffers, to rollout a system where people need boosters every 6 months, especially if businesses and the White House are going to mandate it. Oddly, there's little-to-no information about covid natural immunity waning.
- Tagbert 5y agoThere are discussions about vaccine and infection immunity. https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/10/prior-infection-vs-vaccination-why-everyone-should-get-a-covid-19-shot/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/10/prior-infection-vs-v...
- allturtles 5y agoa) It was impossible to know the rate at which immunity would decay in January. b) Even if the vaccine only lasts 6-9 months without boosting, why would that change your mind about taking it? It just means we need boosters. You only acquire natural immunity by getting COVID, and avoiding that is kind of the whole point. c) In any case, if you read the article, the truth about immunity decline is actually still very unclear. Antibody numbers clearly decline within months, but cellular immunity does not. Decline of protection is probably most severe in the elderly, and there still seems to be strong protection against severe illness.
- throwawayboise 5y ago> It was impossible to know the rate at which immunity would decay in January. Yet it was possible to declare the vaccines safe enough to make them mandatory?
- allturtles 5y agoI'm not aware of any organization that made them mandatory in January, so I don't know what you're talking about.
- binaryorganic 5y agoFriendly reminder that the purpose of the vaccines was to reduce death and severe disease, which all of the approved vaccines continue to do, even as “immunity from infection” wanes.
- silisili 5y agoYeah. My county puts out hospital numbers about weekly. I haven't checked recently but a couple weeks ago, of current hospitalizations from covid, 203 were unvaccinated, and 14 fully vaccinated. And this is in a county where > 50% of the people are vaccinated. How anyone can look at those numbers and be against vaccines or question their effectiveness is...mindboggling to me.
- txsoftwaredev 5y agoAre the hospitalizations actually from covid? Or did they show up to the hospital for a separate reason and happened to have positive covid test as well?
- silisili 5y agoI imagine, but cannot confirm, the latter. It's titled COVID-19 Hospitalizations for the week of xxx. In any case, when more than half your population is vaccinated, especially the older aged folks, at that point it doesn't make a remarkable difference what it's from as the correlation is still clear.
- DeRock 5y agoAre you purporting that Covid numbers are overinflated only for non-vaccinated individuals, but not for vaccinated? Because otherwise it still doesn’t explain the discrepancy in hospitalization.
- anoonmoose 5y agoA 203:14 ratio when the country is over 50% vaccinated would be more bizarre, not less, if it was "all hospitalizations" and not "all COVID vaccinations" you'd need to come up with a good reason why unvaccinated people were about 10x (or more) likely to be hospitalized than vaccinated people
- infinitezest 5y agoAs someone who was happy to get the vaccine (and would do it again if necessary), I find it eerie that there's basically no discussion anywhere in the mainstream about how any of this affects the bottom lines of vaccine producers. Why would they NOT want to develop a product that produces a neverending revenue stream?
- allturtles 5y agoSo your theory is they know how to make a vaccine that will last for life, but they didn't because it would make them less money? a) This would require global collusion and conspiracy, since any vaccine maker who could make a durable vaccine would drive its competitors out of the market. b) This greatly overestimates, IMO, the capabilities of our biotech/pharma industry. It's an amazing and spectacular achievement that they were able to make working vaccines at all in a < 1 year time frame. They don't have any secret immunity-boosting technology in ther back pockets.
- mrguyorama 5y agoYou're forgetting the most important point: c) There are several vaccines produced that DO provide lifetime or near lifetime immunity. Pfizer isn't making me get a new polio shot every year. If conspiracy theorists were to be believed, shouldn't we have an entire gamut of shots to take every fall instead of just the flu?
- tablespoon 5y agoc) It confuses an isolated incentive for action. That's an error that's super common in conspiracy-theory thinking: focus on one hypothesized incentive (out of many) that usually has nefarious undertones, assume that's the main or only incentive at play, and assume the party in question is successfully acting on that incentive.
- NackerHughes 5y ago>This would require global collusion and conspiracy No it wouldn't. It would only require incentive for profit. If a company makes a highly durable vaccine, its competitors wouldn't make very much money, but neither would the company itself. Less profit. Make a vaccine that wears off after a slightly longer time than your competitors, and you can claim to be the best product on the market while keeping your users coming back for more. Guaranteed ongoing revenue stream. 'Conspiracy' is a loaded term that is used solely to discredit the opposing argument.
- Mikeb85 5y ago> But cellular immune responses are longer lasting — and as Jennifer Gommerman, an immunologist at the University of Toronto in Canada, explains: “Cellular immunity is what’s going to protect you from disease.” Memory B cells, which can rapidly deploy more antibodies in the event of re-exposure to the virus, tend to stick around, and so do T cells, which can attack already-infected cells. Both provide an added measure of protection should SARS-CoV-2 sneak past the body’s first line of defence. So clickbait. Also fearmongering from politicians and others.
- tenpies 5y agoYou say fearmongering from politicians, I say an excuse to spend billions more of tax dollars to the benefit of their cronies. Exhibit A: Canadian PM Trudeau who has signed contracts for boosters all the way up to 2024, in amounts that exceed the Canadian population by a factor of 2 (just in this one contract, never mind the other similiar contracts he has signed).[1] Of course, the full text of the contract, or the cancellation costs, will never be revealed. --- [1] https://www.canada.ca/en/public-services-procurement/news/2021/08/government-of-canada-negotiates-additional-agreement-with-moderna-for-vaccine-supply-beyond-2021.html https://www.canada.ca/en/public-services-procurement/news/20...
- Mikeb85 5y agoWell the fearmongering prevents anyone from questioning the corruption, among other things. Also, I wonder how much the constantly moving goalposts, dishonesty regarding vaccines and politicising vaccines has fed the anti-vaxx movement? I got vaccinated because the evidence suggests it seems to work, but you've got politicians lying about its effectiveness, signing secret contracts, moving goalposts, all the while shaming those who are 'hesitant' while giving no one any reason to actually trust them (the politicians that is). Trudeau's top doctor at various points said there's no evidence that Covid transmits from person to person (when it was already clear it does), that it's not a concern, that masks don't work, and she's still the top doctor advising him... It's been a complete shitshow.
- imustbeevil 5y ago
- tibbydudeza 5y agoIs Covid-19 unique to other respiratory infections causing a severe cytokine storm which causes severe lung damage in some people before the immune system can figure out the correct antibody ???.
- Jabbles 5y agoNo. Hyper-induction of pro-inflammatory cytokines, also known as a cytokine storm or cytokine release syndrome ... is not unique to the SARS-CoV-2 infection; it was prevalent in most of the major human coronavirus and influenza A subtype outbreaks of the past two decades (H5N1, SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, and H7N9). https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2021.629193/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2021.6291...
- tibbydudeza 5y agoThanks for the link - it seems Covid does something different compared to it's cousins. "Our curation indicates that the cytokine response induced by SARS-CoV-2 is different compared to other CRS-causing respiratory viruses".