10 ms·

Pfizer-BioNTech Booster Shot Restores Full Covid Protection in Large Trial

28 points by belltaco 5y ago

G79 5y ago
Excellent business strategy. This'll get repeat business and make sure the bottom line is strong.
- mStreamTeam 5y ago
  Phizer bringing planned obsolescence to the Healthcare industry
  - mattkrause 5y ago
    If you have a better solution, there are literally billions of dollars up for grabs. While parts of the pharma industry have definitely done shady things, the real reason we don't have a durable "cure" for many conditions is actually because the underlying biology is absurdly complex.
    - mStreamTeam 5y ago
      https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/covid-vaccines-create-9-new-billionaires-combined-wealth-greater-cost-vaccinating https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/covid-vaccines-creat... It's a little late for that. Phizer has already taken all those billions of dollars. Not sure the government can afford to hand out a few more billion without making inflation even worse
      - brandon272 5y ago
        A few billion isn't going to have any impact on inflation that is worth worrying about if there is real headway made on COVID. It's the trillions that are probably worth worrying about.
- cromka 5y ago
  It’s only excellent if you don’t have competition. And they do. Anyone offering a significantly longer-lasting protection would effectively put them out of COVID business.
  - mattkrause 5y ago
    And there's a fair bit of competition: Moderna, AstraZeneca, Johnson and Johnson, plus the 88 other ones in various stages of development: https://www.raps.org/news-and-articles/news-articles/2020/3/covid-19-vaccine-tracker https://www.raps.org/news-and-articles/news-articles/2020/3/... If there were an easy route to a durable vaccine, I can't imagine that someone wouldn't have tried to take over that entire market instead of settling for a drip here and there. You could charge a lot more (see also: SMA and Hepatitis C treatments) and the value to the brand ("From the people who ended the pandemic...") would be amazing.
    - touisteur 5y ago
      You're doing the Lord's work here and I'm here to say I regret I can't upvote you more. For all the permanent talk about Hanlon's Razor in here, it seems to all have gone out the window. As if there wouldn't be dozens of pharma researchers whistleblowing 'we have the cure but our lab won't sell it'. An annual vaccine is what mostly works for the flu, and nobody but cranks was talking about labs not really wanting to cure the flu. It's just so damn hard. Now everything is easy? they just decided not to save us?
      - cromka 5y ago
        > As if there wouldn't be dozens of pharma researchers whistleblowing 'we have the cure but our lab won't sell it'. Precisely: lack of information is also an information. Such a simple, even beautiful way to look at things, yet so commonly ignored.
  - isolli 5y ago
    Yet for some reason, people seem to prefer the Pfizer vaccines. Governments too; I'm not following closely but it looks like governments are dragging their feet authorizing and buying available alternatives such as Novavax (spike protein) and Valneva (de-activated virus). Which is a shame, because it could convince those unsure about mRNA technology to get vaccinated.
scohesc 5y ago
We were told only two shots were needed and that if we all did our part that this problem would go away and we'd go back to "normal". Now we need booster shots because two doses of the vaccine that was touted as "safe and effective" isn't so effective after 5-6 months! What a surprise. Now because of this virus and the actions of governments worldwide, we're heading straight into an global economic recession with inflation at levels we haven't seen for decades. That's back to "normal"? I can't wait for governments who have implemented digital passports to invalidate everyone who have taken two shots and don't want to get a booster because of any number of reasons. (OH WAIT - Israel is already doing this! Lets arbitrarily deny rights to citizens based on what the government wants us to do!) This is a HUGE part of why people are vaccine hesitant. You've got people parroting mantras like they're fact and browbeating people with questions or concerns about it.
- WorldMaker 5y ago
  Anyone who "promised" "only two shots and done" was wrong and doesn't understand vaccines. Most vaccines need boosters over time depending on a huge number of variables including the virus' own mutation rate. Everyone should know we get annual Flu boosters, even if they don't remember that you are often recommended to get things like TDAP boosters every 10 years or so (because often it is your doctor's job to remember that for you), and that there are other booster cycles that's just the most recent one in my own memory. There was also plenty of notice anticipating that COVID may need boosters closer to the Flu range than the TDAP or longer range, especially at first because of how fast it has mutated even before we developed vaccines (we were already on the fourth Greek letter named variant, Delta!). That's in line with the fact that this virus family ("coronavirus") is one of the viruses that makes up the virus group we have long colloquially referred to as "the common cold" and that this "uncommon cold" of COVID still directly shares a lot of fast mutating properties that made "annual Cold shots" to go with our annual Flu shots not very economically sound. The jump to being a much more deadlier pathogen than previous "common Colds" greatly changes that equation to make vaccines economic for it, but has raised the question from the start of this pandemic if now is the time we start anticipating "annual Cold shots", perhaps in perpetuity, just as we try to get everyone to get their annual Flu shots to avoid Flu's "uncommon deadly reaction" pneumonia. (A lot of the references to the 1918-1919 Flu parallels included that's when we first started seeing a greater economic need for annual Flu shots, beyond just coinciding with when we were developing the first Flu shots, as before that pandemic the Flu itself was often seen in the same light today we see the "common cold", a mostly harmless irritant rather than a very deadly disease.) (The interesting flipside to some of this is that the pandemic has shown us that we actually have a chance at killing the Flu if we kept COVID restrictions such as social distancing and masking in our societies. The massive "demands" for "normal" that don't include such standards clearly don't want that and we aren't likely to actually cure the flu, but this weird glimpse in 2021 of how close we have come to it is startling. We could almost trade annual Flu shots for annual "Cold" shots right now, if we all did the right thing for a few more years, but most likely we're going to need both. Silver lining, Moderna says their early testing on combined Covid/Flu boosters is going well, so maybe we'll still keep it down to just one annual shot, we can hope.)
eniact 5y ago
How long does "full protection" last? This doesn't seem sustainable.
- persedes 5y ago
  Last I heard 6 months? That's basically where we're at with the annual flu shots.
  - LurkingPenguin 5y ago
    There are breakthrough cases in individuals who have been fully vaccinated for ~2 months. https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4308373 https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4308373 October 7, 2021: > During a press conference on Thursday, Taipei City Deputy Mayor Huang Shan-shan (黃珊珊) announced that genomic sequencing revealed that a China Airlines first officer in her 40s, who received her second dose of the Moderna vaccine in early August (case No. 16,377), contracted the Delta variant of COVID-19.
    - sterlind 5y ago
      how likely is that?
      - LurkingPenguin 5y ago
        Who knows? Since the majority of healthy vaccinated individuals who get a breakthrough infection are likely to have mild symptoms or be totally asymptomatic, I'd imagine most breakthroughs are not being detected in most places. In this case, the individual (who was ostensibly healthy as she's in her 40s and working as a pilot) was asymptomatic and her infection was only detected because Taiwan has strict border controls that require quarantine and multiple tests. Also worth noting that Moderna appears to be the most efficacious of the vaccines (probably due to its higher amount of mRNA) and even then, it's possible to catch a breakthrough after a couple of months.
        5y ago
0xy 5y ago
The US bankrolled the research, development and manufacturing of all these vaccines and in return they gave Big Pharma billions in profits -- and complete and total indemnity from side effects and manufacturing defects. The way the supply contracts are written (according to leaks), totally indemnify Pfizer from any liability, including wilful negligence and manufacturing errors. They have zero accountability and all of the reward, and it was all bankrolled for them.
- brandon272 5y ago
  The compromises made seem like rational ones given the desperate need we had for vaccines. Easy to look back now that many of us have shots in our arms and critique the procurement process. These companies were tasked with developing and mass producing vaccines on an unprecedented scale and schedule. To say “it’s imperative you do this but also entirely shoulder the risk in case of error” doesn’t make much sense to me, even if the payoff is in the billions for them.
  - scohesc 5y ago
    I have a very big problem with putting essentially unlimited amounts of trust and faith in a pharmaceutical company who has the single goal of increasing profits year over year. All these morally/lawfully abhorrent things Pfizer has done and been successfully sued/fined/whatever for and we're still allowing them complete indemnity to any side-effects or issues for a vaccine that was rushed out and trials aren't even complete for. It's abhorrent to me to see our governments sign liability away while at the same time handing out blank checks to Pfizer.
    - brandon272 5y ago
      What was the alternative? The vaccines have been a miracle when it comes to reducing risk of severe disease from COVID and have saved countless lives. They were desperately needed before and they are still desperately needed in order to confer all of those same benefits. They weren't going to materialize out of thin air. Urgent demands and compromises were required in order to make it happen.
halfjoking 5y ago
Real world analysis shows the vaccine doesn't help stop spread at all - the places with the highest infection rates are also the most vaccinated. [1] Vaccine adverse reactions and deaths are not being investigated by CDC [2], and there are strong signals these things aren't just conspiracy theories. [3] I'm going to sit out whatever Pfizer is pushing for a while. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8481107/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8481107/ [2] https://www.bitchute.com/video/N0T4iPVI0BRb/ https://www.bitchute.com/video/N0T4iPVI0BRb/ [3] https://www.yahoo.com/news/analysis-thousands-more-usual-dying-170117640.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/analysis-thousands-more-usual-dyi...
- scohesc 5y ago
  It's absolutely amazing that we were sold something, being told it would solve all our problems, get us back to "normal", but here we are now. Looks like the vaccine isn't as effective as scientists previously thought (hang on, they didn't know!)
- rp1 5y ago
  The Yahoo article lists numerous possible causes of the few thousand extra deaths, none of which are related to vaccination. For instance, there were 23 million fewer GP visits in 2020 compared to 2019. And most of causes of the additional deaths saw large decreases during the pandemic. Additionally, elective operations fell by 3.5 million from March 2020 to February 2021. Also, in your first link, Figure 2 seems to contradict what you're saying. Higher vaccination rates do lead to fewer covid cases per 100,000 people.
- watershed123 5y ago
  High vaccination rates are however highly correlated with low hospitalization rates. Also, that Yahoo article does not say what you're implying that it does. It is discussing two issues: people forgoing preventative medical care, and the strain on the hospital system. Over the past year and a half, these have resulted in substandard medical care for a lot of people, raising the death rate from non-COVID causes. Your comment implies that the article is about people being killed by the vaccine, which is a severe mischaracterization of what is actually written.
charbonneau 5y ago
> All trial participants previously completed the primary two-dose series of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, and then were randomized 1:1 to receive either a 30-µg booster dose (the same dosage strength as those in the primary series) or placebo. The median time between second dose and administration of the booster dose or placebo was approximately 11 months. Symptomatic COVID-19 occurrence was measured from at least 7 days after booster or placebo, with a median follow-up of 2.5 months. During the study period, there were 5 cases of COVID-19 in the boosted group, and 109 cases in the non-boosted group. The observed relative vaccine efficacy of 95.6% (95% CI: 89.3, 98.6) reflects the reduction in disease occurrence in the boosted group versus the non-boosted group in those without evidence of prior SARS-CoV-2 infection. Median age of participants was 53 years, with 55.5% of participants between 16 and 55 years, and 23.3% of participants 65 years and older. https://investors.biontech.de/news-releases/news-release-details/pfizer-and-biontech-announce-phase-3-trial-data-showing-high https://investors.biontech.de/news-releases/news-release-det...
Factorium 5y ago
Its only a matter of time before booster shots are mandated for everyone, every 6 months, forever. This is why we need to oppose vaccine mandates, now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window We fought a second world war for this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Code

28 points by belltaco 5y ago

G79 5y ago

Excellent business strategy. This'll get repeat business and make sure the bottom line is strong.

mStreamTeam 5y ago
Phizer bringing planned obsolescence to the Healthcare industry
- mattkrause 5y ago
  If you have a better solution, there are literally billions of dollars up for grabs. While parts of the pharma industry have definitely done shady things, the real reason we don't have a durable "cure" for many conditions is actually because the underlying biology is absurdly complex.
  - mStreamTeam 5y ago
    https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/covid-vaccines-create-9-new-billionaires-combined-wealth-greater-cost-vaccinating https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/covid-vaccines-creat... It's a little late for that. Phizer has already taken all those billions of dollars. Not sure the government can afford to hand out a few more billion without making inflation even worse
    - brandon272 5y ago
      A few billion isn't going to have any impact on inflation that is worth worrying about if there is real headway made on COVID. It's the trillions that are probably worth worrying about.
cromka 5y ago
It’s only excellent if you don’t have competition. And they do. Anyone offering a significantly longer-lasting protection would effectively put them out of COVID business.
- mattkrause 5y ago
  And there's a fair bit of competition: Moderna, AstraZeneca, Johnson and Johnson, plus the 88 other ones in various stages of development: https://www.raps.org/news-and-articles/news-articles/2020/3/covid-19-vaccine-tracker https://www.raps.org/news-and-articles/news-articles/2020/3/... If there were an easy route to a durable vaccine, I can't imagine that someone wouldn't have tried to take over that entire market instead of settling for a drip here and there. You could charge a lot more (see also: SMA and Hepatitis C treatments) and the value to the brand ("From the people who ended the pandemic...") would be amazing.
  - touisteur 5y ago
    You're doing the Lord's work here and I'm here to say I regret I can't upvote you more. For all the permanent talk about Hanlon's Razor in here, it seems to all have gone out the window. As if there wouldn't be dozens of pharma researchers whistleblowing 'we have the cure but our lab won't sell it'. An annual vaccine is what mostly works for the flu, and nobody but cranks was talking about labs not really wanting to cure the flu. It's just so damn hard. Now everything is easy? they just decided not to save us?
    - cromka 5y ago
      > As if there wouldn't be dozens of pharma researchers whistleblowing 'we have the cure but our lab won't sell it'. Precisely: lack of information is also an information. Such a simple, even beautiful way to look at things, yet so commonly ignored.
- isolli 5y ago
  Yet for some reason, people seem to prefer the Pfizer vaccines. Governments too; I'm not following closely but it looks like governments are dragging their feet authorizing and buying available alternatives such as Novavax (spike protein) and Valneva (de-activated virus). Which is a shame, because it could convince those unsure about mRNA technology to get vaccinated.

scohesc 5y ago

We were told only two shots were needed and that if we all did our part that this problem would go away and we'd go back to "normal". Now we need booster shots because two doses of the vaccine that was touted as "safe and effective" isn't so effective after 5-6 months! What a surprise. Now because of this virus and the actions of governments worldwide, we're heading straight into an global economic recession with inflation at levels we haven't seen for decades. That's back to "normal"? I can't wait for governments who have implemented digital passports to invalidate everyone who have taken two shots and don't want to get a booster because of any number of reasons. (OH WAIT - Israel is already doing this! Lets arbitrarily deny rights to citizens based on what the government wants us to do!) This is a HUGE part of why people are vaccine hesitant. You've got people parroting mantras like they're fact and browbeating people with questions or concerns about it.

WorldMaker 5y ago
Anyone who "promised" "only two shots and done" was wrong and doesn't understand vaccines. Most vaccines need boosters over time depending on a huge number of variables including the virus' own mutation rate. Everyone should know we get annual Flu boosters, even if they don't remember that you are often recommended to get things like TDAP boosters every 10 years or so (because often it is your doctor's job to remember that for you), and that there are other booster cycles that's just the most recent one in my own memory. There was also plenty of notice anticipating that COVID may need boosters closer to the Flu range than the TDAP or longer range, especially at first because of how fast it has mutated even before we developed vaccines (we were already on the fourth Greek letter named variant, Delta!). That's in line with the fact that this virus family ("coronavirus") is one of the viruses that makes up the virus group we have long colloquially referred to as "the common cold" and that this "uncommon cold" of COVID still directly shares a lot of fast mutating properties that made "annual Cold shots" to go with our annual Flu shots not very economically sound. The jump to being a much more deadlier pathogen than previous "common Colds" greatly changes that equation to make vaccines economic for it, but has raised the question from the start of this pandemic if now is the time we start anticipating "annual Cold shots", perhaps in perpetuity, just as we try to get everyone to get their annual Flu shots to avoid Flu's "uncommon deadly reaction" pneumonia. (A lot of the references to the 1918-1919 Flu parallels included that's when we first started seeing a greater economic need for annual Flu shots, beyond just coinciding with when we were developing the first Flu shots, as before that pandemic the Flu itself was often seen in the same light today we see the "common cold", a mostly harmless irritant rather than a very deadly disease.) (The interesting flipside to some of this is that the pandemic has shown us that we actually have a chance at killing the Flu if we kept COVID restrictions such as social distancing and masking in our societies. The massive "demands" for "normal" that don't include such standards clearly don't want that and we aren't likely to actually cure the flu, but this weird glimpse in 2021 of how close we have come to it is startling. We could almost trade annual Flu shots for annual "Cold" shots right now, if we all did the right thing for a few more years, but most likely we're going to need both. Silver lining, Moderna says their early testing on combined Covid/Flu boosters is going well, so maybe we'll still keep it down to just one annual shot, we can hope.)

eniact 5y ago

How long does "full protection" last? This doesn't seem sustainable.

persedes 5y ago
Last I heard 6 months? That's basically where we're at with the annual flu shots.
- LurkingPenguin 5y ago
  There are breakthrough cases in individuals who have been fully vaccinated for ~2 months. https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4308373 https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4308373 October 7, 2021: > During a press conference on Thursday, Taipei City Deputy Mayor Huang Shan-shan (黃珊珊) announced that genomic sequencing revealed that a China Airlines first officer in her 40s, who received her second dose of the Moderna vaccine in early August (case No. 16,377), contracted the Delta variant of COVID-19.
  - sterlind 5y ago
    how likely is that?
    - LurkingPenguin 5y ago
      Who knows? Since the majority of healthy vaccinated individuals who get a breakthrough infection are likely to have mild symptoms or be totally asymptomatic, I'd imagine most breakthroughs are not being detected in most places. In this case, the individual (who was ostensibly healthy as she's in her 40s and working as a pilot) was asymptomatic and her infection was only detected because Taiwan has strict border controls that require quarantine and multiple tests. Also worth noting that Moderna appears to be the most efficacious of the vaccines (probably due to its higher amount of mRNA) and even then, it's possible to catch a breakthrough after a couple of months.
      - 5y ago

0xy 5y ago

The US bankrolled the research, development and manufacturing of all these vaccines and in return they gave Big Pharma billions in profits -- and complete and total indemnity from side effects and manufacturing defects. The way the supply contracts are written (according to leaks), totally indemnify Pfizer from any liability, including wilful negligence and manufacturing errors. They have zero accountability and all of the reward, and it was all bankrolled for them.

brandon272 5y ago
The compromises made seem like rational ones given the desperate need we had for vaccines. Easy to look back now that many of us have shots in our arms and critique the procurement process. These companies were tasked with developing and mass producing vaccines on an unprecedented scale and schedule. To say “it’s imperative you do this but also entirely shoulder the risk in case of error” doesn’t make much sense to me, even if the payoff is in the billions for them.
- scohesc 5y ago
  I have a very big problem with putting essentially unlimited amounts of trust and faith in a pharmaceutical company who has the single goal of increasing profits year over year. All these morally/lawfully abhorrent things Pfizer has done and been successfully sued/fined/whatever for and we're still allowing them complete indemnity to any side-effects or issues for a vaccine that was rushed out and trials aren't even complete for. It's abhorrent to me to see our governments sign liability away while at the same time handing out blank checks to Pfizer.
  - brandon272 5y ago
    What was the alternative? The vaccines have been a miracle when it comes to reducing risk of severe disease from COVID and have saved countless lives. They were desperately needed before and they are still desperately needed in order to confer all of those same benefits. They weren't going to materialize out of thin air. Urgent demands and compromises were required in order to make it happen.

halfjoking 5y ago

Real world analysis shows the vaccine doesn't help stop spread at all - the places with the highest infection rates are also the most vaccinated. [1] Vaccine adverse reactions and deaths are not being investigated by CDC [2], and there are strong signals these things aren't just conspiracy theories. [3] I'm going to sit out whatever Pfizer is pushing for a while. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8481107/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8481107/ [2] https://www.bitchute.com/video/N0T4iPVI0BRb/ https://www.bitchute.com/video/N0T4iPVI0BRb/ [3] https://www.yahoo.com/news/analysis-thousands-more-usual-dying-170117640.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/analysis-thousands-more-usual-dyi...

scohesc 5y ago
It's absolutely amazing that we were sold something, being told it would solve all our problems, get us back to "normal", but here we are now. Looks like the vaccine isn't as effective as scientists previously thought (hang on, they didn't know!)
rp1 5y ago
The Yahoo article lists numerous possible causes of the few thousand extra deaths, none of which are related to vaccination. For instance, there were 23 million fewer GP visits in 2020 compared to 2019. And most of causes of the additional deaths saw large decreases during the pandemic. Additionally, elective operations fell by 3.5 million from March 2020 to February 2021. Also, in your first link, Figure 2 seems to contradict what you're saying. Higher vaccination rates do lead to fewer covid cases per 100,000 people.
watershed123 5y ago
High vaccination rates are however highly correlated with low hospitalization rates. Also, that Yahoo article does not say what you're implying that it does. It is discussing two issues: people forgoing preventative medical care, and the strain on the hospital system. Over the past year and a half, these have resulted in substandard medical care for a lot of people, raising the death rate from non-COVID causes. Your comment implies that the article is about people being killed by the vaccine, which is a severe mischaracterization of what is actually written.

charbonneau 5y ago

> All trial participants previously completed the primary two-dose series of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, and then were randomized 1:1 to receive either a 30-µg booster dose (the same dosage strength as those in the primary series) or placebo. The median time between second dose and administration of the booster dose or placebo was approximately 11 months. Symptomatic COVID-19 occurrence was measured from at least 7 days after booster or placebo, with a median follow-up of 2.5 months. During the study period, there were 5 cases of COVID-19 in the boosted group, and 109 cases in the non-boosted group. The observed relative vaccine efficacy of 95.6% (95% CI: 89.3, 98.6) reflects the reduction in disease occurrence in the boosted group versus the non-boosted group in those without evidence of prior SARS-CoV-2 infection. Median age of participants was 53 years, with 55.5% of participants between 16 and 55 years, and 23.3% of participants 65 years and older. https://investors.biontech.de/news-releases/news-release-details/pfizer-and-biontech-announce-phase-3-trial-data-showing-high https://investors.biontech.de/news-releases/news-release-det...

Factorium 5y ago

Its only a matter of time before booster shots are mandated for everyone, every 6 months, forever. This is why we need to oppose vaccine mandates, now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window We fought a second world war for this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Code