19 ms·

Decline in effectiveness of all three US Covid-19 vaccines over time

85 points by News-Dog 5y ago

5F7bGnd6fWJ66xN 5y ago
Vaccines are supposed to help you fight the virus, not prevent infection. That was never the promise. Effectiveness is measured through reducing probability of death and hospitalization. Antibodies, T-cells and B-cells all together influence effectiveness.
- landemva 5y ago
  This is the new speak definition of vaccine. Back when words had meaning, the smallpox and polio vaccines wiped those out because those vaccines created immunity in the individuals. Now vaccine is akin to airbag in a car ... maybe reduces the individual harm but the individual still gets hit.
- disambiguation 5y ago
  > That was never the promise https://www.businessinsider.com/who-says-no-evidence-coronavirus-vaccine-prevent-transmissions-2020-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/who-says-no-evidence-coronav... > Moderna's chief medical officer, Tal Zaks, said last month that he believed it was likely the vaccine would prevent transmission but warned that there was not yet "sufficient evidence" of it. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/01/health/coronavirus-vaccine-walensky.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/01/health/coronavirus-vaccin... > The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday walked back controversial comments made by its director, Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, suggesting that people who are vaccinated against the coronavirus never become infected or transmit the virus to others. They had a stance, and they walked it back
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
scarygliders 5y ago
If these injections were like traditional vaccines, I might be more acceptable of the responses in this topic. But they're not. They're medical treatments designed to only reduce symptoms of Covid by attuning the body's immune system to a specific part of the virus - its spike protein. I'm 52 with no underlying health conditions. I have already caught Covid-19. I had 3 days of feeling a bit unwell, and a fever. Then it was over. This was in late 2019. It went through the rest of my family that same week/fortnight, and we all had the same symptoms and the same outcome - we all recovered from a "weird flu" as I described it at the time in emails to customers. This was before all the hoo-hah started early 2020. We have suffered no long term ill effects. None of us had "long covid" (Post-Viral Syndrome). Our immune systems became attuned to further Covid infection. In fact the biggest medical problem I had this year was my appendix going BANG! and at hospital I tested negative for Covid. Despite the news that catching it in hospitals was highly likely, that did not happen. Myself and my 19yo son made the informed choice to not consent to this medical treatment people are calling a "vaccine". My wife decided to consent to the medical treatment, and she had such a bad reaction to it she decided not to have further injections. Two weeks ago, my son managed to catch Covid again. LFT and PCR confirmed. This was despite him wearing masks and taking all other recommended precautions. So he had to self-isolate for 10 days and didn't go out or to work. Neither my wife nor I caught it from him - we took Lateral Flow Tests frequently - and we didn't really take any precautions in the house. Meals were done together as usual, no mask wearing etc. My wife had to self-isolate despite negative tests and I work from home anyway. Same symptoms as we all had in late 2019, he has fully recovered from it - again - with no ill effects, no Post-Viral Syndrome (which some people are calling "long covid"), and is back at work and getting outside. My main point is this - a lot of the responses in this topic appear to be made on the premise that these injections are a "vaccine" like the measles, mumps and rubella vaccines are for example, but they are only designed to reduce symptoms of the disease rather than get your immune system to recognise and fight the overall virus. I'm absolutely certain that even though you might have had these injections, your immune system fights the overall virus in parallel with the additional sensitivity to the spike protein (and thus the potential for reduction in symptoms caused by the spike protein). You're still going to catch Covid no matter how many times you've been injected, and you still have the potential to spread the disease to others, injected or not. I now await responses calling me and my son idiots, or selfish, or irrational, or irresponsible - this is incorrect. We have direct experience of the illness. I know for a fact my immune system can take effective action against this particular coronavirus, just as it has taken care of other coronviruses in the past. As far as my son and I are concerned, we have just as much immunity to Covid if not better than those who received an injection which only attunes one's immune system to a spike protein. We are intelligent, rational people who took the time to weigh up the pros, cons and risks of consenting to these injections, and for us, the cons and risks outweighed the pros. "What about everyone else!?!? Why can't you think of others!?" - my response to that is: What do YOU have to worry about from us if YOU have consented to these medical treatments? Either they work as advertised and you've nothing to worry about because you've been fully "vaccinated" - or they do not work and you're in exactly the same situation as we are. Your "vaccine" does not need my "vaccine" in order to work.
pupppet 5y ago
Anybody actually read the article? “Dramatic decline” yet still 75% effective at preventing death for 65 and older. Isn’t preventing death what counts?
- bigodbiel 5y ago
  No, because the OSHA vaccination mandate is explicitly about preventing transmission in the workplace. And if covid became so polarizing it is exactly because of lockdowns, vaccine mandates, masks, all measures meant to decrease transmission
  - pupppet 5y ago
    Linked article has nothing to do with OSHA.
dharma1 5y ago
It’s clear now that the efficacy against infection and protection from death wanes significantly - it’s unclear though how this information should affect our behaviour individually and collectively. Is anyone changing their behaviour because of this data? In the U.K. at least people behave like COVID is over and most things are back to normal (restaurants, bars and clubs, public transport). I have relaxed my behaviour a lot too, but not too sure if I should be reducing this type of interactions in the light of the new data or not? I don’t belong to a risk group and am double vaccinated 5 months ago with Moderna.
tzs 5y ago
The paper in Science that the article is about [1] does not appear to be paywalled, in case anyone wants more details. [1] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm0620 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm0620
angelzen 5y ago
There are multiple studies that point to VE declining over time, to about 50% after 6 months. No further data is available. I do not understand why this vaccine behavior was not observed and documented by the original clinical trials, which were conducted over a period of 4 months (July-Nov 2020). The Pfizer FDA EUA application claimed a blanket 95% vaccine efficacy. https://www.fda.gov/media/144416/download https://www.fda.gov/media/144416/download (OA) US, veterans, 3 months VEaI = 78%, 6 months VEaI = 50%, https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm0620 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm0620 US, 5 months VEaI = 47%, https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)02183-8/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... UK, 3 months VEaI = 75%. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01548-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01548-7 Qatar, 3 months VEaI = 70%, 6 months VEaI = 12.8%, https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2114114 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2114114 (preprint) Sweden, <50yo, 2-4 months VEaI = 83%, 4-6 months VEaI = 50%, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3949410 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3949410
kleer001 5y ago
Because these were veterans, the study population comprised six times as many men as women. And they skewed older: about 48% were 65 or older, 29% were between 50 and 64, and 24% were younger than 50.
haspoken 5y ago
https://archive.md/5CIsl https://archive.md/5CIsl
Ambolia 5y ago
Never understood what was the long term plan for non-sterilizing vaccines and trying to get to 100% vaccinated populations. If the vaccines are non-sterilizing limiting them to risk populations seems a much more productive course of action intuitively, but I'm probably missing something.
- pgeorgi 5y ago
  "sterilizing" is just the "100% non-transmitting" case. > a growing body of evidence suggests that COVID-19 vaccines also reduce asymptomatic infection and transmission (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-briefs/fully-vaccinated-people.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br..., with more details further down the article) indicates that vaccines have a non-sterilizing, yet reducing effect on transmission. As such, it still helps reduce at-risk populations' exposure to Covid19 even if it doesn't eliminate it. At-risk people who can't get vaccinated for some reason (e.g. living on immunosuppressants) rely on this.
  - m0zg 5y ago
    We're lucky to have Israel as a trailblaser in all this. Extremely high compliance, all vaccinated with the same vaccine, comparable level of medicine in the country, yet the deaths keep spiking from time to time, only marginally below the levels where they were pre-vaccine. Seems like someone, somewhere, might have not been telling the truth about vaccines alone "ending" the pandemic. Even if we vaccinate at the same level (which is unlikely, since the issue is now highly politicized), we're looking at the same thing 6 months from now, with minor variations.
    - usrusr 5y ago
      And Israel did it with a very short interval between first and second dose. It's not unusual for vaccines to require a three dose regimen, with sufficient time between penultimate and last dose for the immune system to abandon high alert status, in order to achieve long term effect.
    - deleted 5y ago
sva_ 5y ago
If you're looking for the graph(s), https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm0620#F1 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm0620#F1 Vaccine-as-a-service it is, I guess. What a 'happy accident'.
- mjevans 5y ago
  These graphs don't quite tell me enough. It's a complex problem and even with margins of error for varying health condition I'd expect at least a 3d projection to be required to map between age, time (since 'full inoculation') and risks of illness / disease / hospitalization / death. I have also heard that lifestyles which encourage sitting all day and correlate strongly with lower fitness and higher carried fat are increased risk factors. I guess I'd appreciate a formula from the FDA and CDC that tells me roughly what time frame they recommend a (regular interval?) booster shot, rather than some oversimplified coarse number.
- throwaway4good 5y ago
  Why is the "VE-D" number nowhere near the original 95% efficacy number widely reported for the Pfizer/Moderna vaccines when they were originally approved? Is it different methodology or is it changed nature of the pandemic?
  - rsynnott 5y ago
    The major variant around during the original trials was the ancestral one (Alpha may just about have been showing up). In a way we may have been lucky here; there’s some reason to think that Beta is less susceptible to the vaccines than Delta, but Delta outcompeted it.
  - nonameking2026 5y ago
    This provides a good reason. Link to the bmj peer reviewed article in the show notes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THv33zWykJc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THv33zWykJc
    - News-Dog 5y ago
tonis2 5y ago
Its like making lightbulbs, terrible for business to make them last long.
- thendrill 5y ago
  Also why bother making light bulbs. Just change the definition of candle to lightbulb....
- throwaway4good 5y ago
  Yeah. It is probably a worldwide conspiracy by those scientist people just like in that V scifi show.
  - forgotmypw17 5y ago
    They've never lied before, and they're not about to start.
  - dham 5y ago
    The lightbulb reference was actually a thing.
    - nickpp 5y ago
      And even that conspiracy didn’t last for long.
  - White_Wolf 5y ago
    He does have a point though. Recurrent income is a lot better than 1 sale in any business. Scientists can have all the good will in the world if they are not allowed to publish by those sponsoring the research or not even given the funds to do the research in the first place.
    - retrac 5y ago
      For example, consider the rather enormous amounts of money the industry spends on developing new statin after statin for blood pressure control. Many newer ones are more or less medically indistinguishable from existing ones on the market, but they are chemically distinct enough to be patentable. Similar story with SSRI antidepressants. Compare with the absolute dearth of research on new antibiotics and vaccines (until recently). We need those far more than we need yet another statin or SSRI, but those you can sell daily for life, and the others are a single dose.
thendrill 5y ago
It sounds like a donkey, it moves like a donkey, and it smells like ass.... I shall call it! A Vaccine! Please someone explain the logic....
M0r13n 5y ago
I don't find that too surprising. I can well remember that it was clear from the beginning that the vaccination would probably have a limited temporal scope. It was just not clear how long the vaccination effect would actually last. Now we know that very likely after 6 months a significant part of the protective effect has passed. Does anyone know what this looks like in recovered people who have gone through COVID disease?
- colechristensen 5y ago
  Immunity seems to have a dependence on the intensity of infection. A mild or asymptomatic infection confers less immunity than a serious infection. This kind of thing will have a few dimensions and a lot of uncertainty to it.
  - landemva 5y ago
    Do you have a published reference that natural immunity depends on infection intensity?
- mewpmewp2 5y ago
  I think many governments left their people an impression that those vaccines would end the pandemic and that vaccinated can't get the disease at all pretty much.
  - libertine 5y ago
    But that's the problem os current politics, while some bluntly lie, others "protect" people from the truth/reality. I don't see why we couldn't trust people into telling them that vaccines are a great tool, but we will still need to keep using extra measures - like mask wearing - as a means to keep preventing infections. They chose to create the narrative that the vaccine would be the cure, now it will backlash and create more doubt in people. Imo the right approach should have been tolerance zero.
    - mewpmewp2 5y ago
dannyw 5y ago
Wonder how this change the benefit vs risk trade-offs. I've personally known two people who had myocarditis and ER visits after the vaccine (which seems unlikely for a X in 100,000 event; given I probably only know maybe fifty people tops who might share their adverse reactions with me), but if vaccines provide lasting protection, rare side effects can be justified. Now, if annual boosters are required (along with the associated risks for myocarditis and other side effects), for young/healthy/fit people, it could very turn out that the harms outweigh the benefits.
- croes 5y ago
  The chance of getting myocarditis from Corona is still higher and more severe. And don't forget the higher risks for blood clots, strokes etc. And we know that some viruses like HPV have long term effects like raising the probability of certain kinds of cancer. It's a risky bet. You can stop getting vaccinated if yearly shot should be necessary but you can't stop being infected once.
  - jquery 5y ago
    HN is a hair’s breadth away from advocating for Ivermectin. Only a matter of time at the rate misinformation spreads unchecked in this country.
    - secondcoming 5y ago
      (Not USA) If your doctor prescribed you Ivermectin would you refuse it? Being vaccinated doesn't stop you from getting coronavirus. My family are all fully vaccinated (Pfizer) yet quite a few of them have tested positive for coronavirus in the past two weeks. My grandmother died from it apparently (she was also 99). No-one else has needed hospitalisation. So I don't quite understand the 'not being vaccinated harms others' argument; I fully get the 'being vaccinated puts less pressure on health services' argument though.
      - croes 5y ago
        "not being vaccinated harms others" because "being vaccinated puts less pressure on health service" or in other words the unvaccinated put more pressure on the health services. You don't want having a stroke or a severe accident and all ICUs are blocked because of unvaccinated COVID patients.
legulere 5y ago
The article does apparently only talk about attack rate efficacy/effectiveness. What is much more important in a population with high vaccination rates is the reduction of hospitalization and mortality which is much more long lasting with the vaccines. Edit: here are the graphs for mortality from the study: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm0620#F3 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm0620#F3
- nosianu 5y ago
  The article does talk about mortality rates quite extensively, immediately after the first section about infection rates. Starting sentence for that 2nd section is > The three vaccines held up better in their ability to prevent COVID-19 deaths.. You will find the changes in two age groups, above and below 65. Modena and Pfizer/BioNTech again much better than J&J, albeit still showing a significant decline in the ability to prevent death.
cletus 5y ago
It's almost like the existence of vaccines places evolutionary pressure on a mutating virus. This whole pandemic has highlighted something that I really prefer not to think about, which is just how irrational, selfish, incapable of assessing risk and prone to confirmation bias too many people are. The vaccine isn't 100% effective in stopping transmission? Or stopping you catching the disease? Or dying? Each of these becomes some pseudo-gotcha moment that leads some down an invermectin-taking path with Tucker Carlson or Joe Rogan as the pied piper. It's basically equivalent to arguing that people wearing seat belts can die in car accidents therefore seat belts are ineffective. Worse, you can suffer an injury from a seat belt so they're net harmful. What many non-Americans may not understand is that there are a nontrivial number of Americans who still doggedly and genuinely believe that about seat belts to this day and view laws requiring their use as impinging on their ffeedom. And we want people to make sacrifices for climate change? Yeah, never gonna happen.
- jquery 5y ago
  It seems HN is quite eager to upvote vaccine skepticism of all kinds. It could provide quite the distorted view of reality if I were to trust HN karma over the near-universal medical scientific consensus (FDA approving vaccines for 5-11 year olds with a universal vote). I wouldn’t be surprised if HN starts advocating for ivermectin soon.
  - throwaway2077 5y ago
    well, there's always reddit if enjoy the company of intellectual majority.
  - native_samples 5y ago
    Approving vaccines for children is nowhere near being a near-universal medical scientific consensus. Far from it. Lots of people in medicine think that's clearly insane. See the testimony of Peter Doshi to the Senate recently for an example.
    - jquery 5y ago
gusennan 5y ago
I get a flu shot every year, getting boosters of these vaccines doesn't bother me at all. There will be other vaccine "implementations" (Novavax, for example) that will get better over time.

85 points by News-Dog 5y ago

Vaccines are supposed to help you fight the virus, not prevent infection. That was never the promise. Effectiveness is measured through reducing probability of death and hospitalization. Antibodies, T-cells and B-cells all together influence effectiveness.

landemva 5y ago
This is the new speak definition of vaccine. Back when words had meaning, the smallpox and polio vaccines wiped those out because those vaccines created immunity in the individuals. Now vaccine is akin to airbag in a car ... maybe reduces the individual harm but the individual still gets hit.
disambiguation 5y ago
> That was never the promise https://www.businessinsider.com/who-says-no-evidence-coronavirus-vaccine-prevent-transmissions-2020-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/who-says-no-evidence-coronav... > Moderna's chief medical officer, Tal Zaks, said last month that he believed it was likely the vaccine would prevent transmission but warned that there was not yet "sufficient evidence" of it. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/01/health/coronavirus-vaccine-walensky.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/01/health/coronavirus-vaccin... > The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday walked back controversial comments made by its director, Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, suggesting that people who are vaccinated against the coronavirus never become infected or transmit the virus to others. They had a stance, and they walked it back

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

scarygliders 5y ago

If these injections were like traditional vaccines, I might be more acceptable of the responses in this topic. But they're not. They're medical treatments designed to only reduce symptoms of Covid by attuning the body's immune system to a specific part of the virus - its spike protein. I'm 52 with no underlying health conditions. I have already caught Covid-19. I had 3 days of feeling a bit unwell, and a fever. Then it was over. This was in late 2019. It went through the rest of my family that same week/fortnight, and we all had the same symptoms and the same outcome - we all recovered from a "weird flu" as I described it at the time in emails to customers. This was before all the hoo-hah started early 2020. We have suffered no long term ill effects. None of us had "long covid" (Post-Viral Syndrome). Our immune systems became attuned to further Covid infection. In fact the biggest medical problem I had this year was my appendix going BANG! and at hospital I tested negative for Covid. Despite the news that catching it in hospitals was highly likely, that did not happen. Myself and my 19yo son made the informed choice to not consent to this medical treatment people are calling a "vaccine". My wife decided to consent to the medical treatment, and she had such a bad reaction to it she decided not to have further injections. Two weeks ago, my son managed to catch Covid again. LFT and PCR confirmed. This was despite him wearing masks and taking all other recommended precautions. So he had to self-isolate for 10 days and didn't go out or to work. Neither my wife nor I caught it from him - we took Lateral Flow Tests frequently - and we didn't really take any precautions in the house. Meals were done together as usual, no mask wearing etc. My wife had to self-isolate despite negative tests and I work from home anyway. Same symptoms as we all had in late 2019, he has fully recovered from it - again - with no ill effects, no Post-Viral Syndrome (which some people are calling "long covid"), and is back at work and getting outside. My main point is this - a lot of the responses in this topic appear to be made on the premise that these injections are a "vaccine" like the measles, mumps and rubella vaccines are for example, but they are only designed to reduce symptoms of the disease rather than get your immune system to recognise and fight the overall virus. I'm absolutely certain that even though you might have had these injections, your immune system fights the overall virus in parallel with the additional sensitivity to the spike protein (and thus the potential for reduction in symptoms caused by the spike protein). You're still going to catch Covid no matter how many times you've been injected, and you still have the potential to spread the disease to others, injected or not. I now await responses calling me and my son idiots, or selfish, or irrational, or irresponsible - this is incorrect. We have direct experience of the illness. I know for a fact my immune system can take effective action against this particular coronavirus, just as it has taken care of other coronviruses in the past. As far as my son and I are concerned, we have just as much immunity to Covid if not better than those who received an injection which only attunes one's immune system to a spike protein. We are intelligent, rational people who took the time to weigh up the pros, cons and risks of consenting to these injections, and for us, the cons and risks outweighed the pros. "What about everyone else!?!? Why can't you think of others!?" - my response to that is: What do YOU have to worry about from us if YOU have consented to these medical treatments? Either they work as advertised and you've nothing to worry about because you've been fully "vaccinated" - or they do not work and you're in exactly the same situation as we are. Your "vaccine" does not need my "vaccine" in order to work.

pupppet 5y ago

Anybody actually read the article? “Dramatic decline” yet still 75% effective at preventing death for 65 and older. Isn’t preventing death what counts?

bigodbiel 5y ago
No, because the OSHA vaccination mandate is explicitly about preventing transmission in the workplace. And if covid became so polarizing it is exactly because of lockdowns, vaccine mandates, masks, all measures meant to decrease transmission
- pupppet 5y ago
  Linked article has nothing to do with OSHA.

dharma1 5y ago

It’s clear now that the efficacy against infection and protection from death wanes significantly - it’s unclear though how this information should affect our behaviour individually and collectively. Is anyone changing their behaviour because of this data? In the U.K. at least people behave like COVID is over and most things are back to normal (restaurants, bars and clubs, public transport). I have relaxed my behaviour a lot too, but not too sure if I should be reducing this type of interactions in the light of the new data or not? I don’t belong to a risk group and am double vaccinated 5 months ago with Moderna.

tzs 5y ago

The paper in Science that the article is about [1] does not appear to be paywalled, in case anyone wants more details. [1] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm0620 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm0620

angelzen 5y ago

There are multiple studies that point to VE declining over time, to about 50% after 6 months. No further data is available. I do not understand why this vaccine behavior was not observed and documented by the original clinical trials, which were conducted over a period of 4 months (July-Nov 2020). The Pfizer FDA EUA application claimed a blanket 95% vaccine efficacy. https://www.fda.gov/media/144416/download https://www.fda.gov/media/144416/download (OA) US, veterans, 3 months VEaI = 78%, 6 months VEaI = 50%, https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm0620 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm0620 US, 5 months VEaI = 47%, https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)02183-8/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... UK, 3 months VEaI = 75%. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01548-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01548-7 Qatar, 3 months VEaI = 70%, 6 months VEaI = 12.8%, https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2114114 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2114114 (preprint) Sweden, <50yo, 2-4 months VEaI = 83%, 4-6 months VEaI = 50%, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3949410 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3949410

kleer001 5y ago

Because these were veterans, the study population comprised six times as many men as women. And they skewed older: about 48% were 65 or older, 29% were between 50 and 64, and 24% were younger than 50.

haspoken 5y ago

https://archive.md/5CIsl https://archive.md/5CIsl

Ambolia 5y ago

Never understood what was the long term plan for non-sterilizing vaccines and trying to get to 100% vaccinated populations. If the vaccines are non-sterilizing limiting them to risk populations seems a much more productive course of action intuitively, but I'm probably missing something.

pgeorgi 5y ago
"sterilizing" is just the "100% non-transmitting" case. > a growing body of evidence suggests that COVID-19 vaccines also reduce asymptomatic infection and transmission (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-briefs/fully-vaccinated-people.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br..., with more details further down the article) indicates that vaccines have a non-sterilizing, yet reducing effect on transmission. As such, it still helps reduce at-risk populations' exposure to Covid19 even if it doesn't eliminate it. At-risk people who can't get vaccinated for some reason (e.g. living on immunosuppressants) rely on this.
- m0zg 5y ago
  We're lucky to have Israel as a trailblaser in all this. Extremely high compliance, all vaccinated with the same vaccine, comparable level of medicine in the country, yet the deaths keep spiking from time to time, only marginally below the levels where they were pre-vaccine. Seems like someone, somewhere, might have not been telling the truth about vaccines alone "ending" the pandemic. Even if we vaccinate at the same level (which is unlikely, since the issue is now highly politicized), we're looking at the same thing 6 months from now, with minor variations.
  - usrusr 5y ago
    And Israel did it with a very short interval between first and second dose. It's not unusual for vaccines to require a three dose regimen, with sufficient time between penultimate and last dose for the immune system to abandon high alert status, in order to achieve long term effect.
  - deleted 5y ago

sva_ 5y ago

If you're looking for the graph(s), https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm0620#F1 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm0620#F1 Vaccine-as-a-service it is, I guess. What a 'happy accident'.

mjevans 5y ago
These graphs don't quite tell me enough. It's a complex problem and even with margins of error for varying health condition I'd expect at least a 3d projection to be required to map between age, time (since 'full inoculation') and risks of illness / disease / hospitalization / death. I have also heard that lifestyles which encourage sitting all day and correlate strongly with lower fitness and higher carried fat are increased risk factors. I guess I'd appreciate a formula from the FDA and CDC that tells me roughly what time frame they recommend a (regular interval?) booster shot, rather than some oversimplified coarse number.
throwaway4good 5y ago
Why is the "VE-D" number nowhere near the original 95% efficacy number widely reported for the Pfizer/Moderna vaccines when they were originally approved? Is it different methodology or is it changed nature of the pandemic?
- rsynnott 5y ago
  The major variant around during the original trials was the ancestral one (Alpha may just about have been showing up). In a way we may have been lucky here; there’s some reason to think that Beta is less susceptible to the vaccines than Delta, but Delta outcompeted it.
- nonameking2026 5y ago
  This provides a good reason. Link to the bmj peer reviewed article in the show notes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THv33zWykJc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THv33zWykJc
  - News-Dog 5y ago

tonis2 5y ago

Its like making lightbulbs, terrible for business to make them last long.

thendrill 5y ago
Also why bother making light bulbs. Just change the definition of candle to lightbulb....
throwaway4good 5y ago
Yeah. It is probably a worldwide conspiracy by those scientist people just like in that V scifi show.
- forgotmypw17 5y ago
  They've never lied before, and they're not about to start.
- dham 5y ago
  The lightbulb reference was actually a thing.
  - nickpp 5y ago
    And even that conspiracy didn’t last for long.
- White_Wolf 5y ago
  He does have a point though. Recurrent income is a lot better than 1 sale in any business. Scientists can have all the good will in the world if they are not allowed to publish by those sponsoring the research or not even given the funds to do the research in the first place.
  - retrac 5y ago
    For example, consider the rather enormous amounts of money the industry spends on developing new statin after statin for blood pressure control. Many newer ones are more or less medically indistinguishable from existing ones on the market, but they are chemically distinct enough to be patentable. Similar story with SSRI antidepressants. Compare with the absolute dearth of research on new antibiotics and vaccines (until recently). We need those far more than we need yet another statin or SSRI, but those you can sell daily for life, and the others are a single dose.

thendrill 5y ago

It sounds like a donkey, it moves like a donkey, and it smells like ass.... I shall call it! A Vaccine! Please someone explain the logic....

M0r13n 5y ago

I don't find that too surprising. I can well remember that it was clear from the beginning that the vaccination would probably have a limited temporal scope. It was just not clear how long the vaccination effect would actually last. Now we know that very likely after 6 months a significant part of the protective effect has passed. Does anyone know what this looks like in recovered people who have gone through COVID disease?

colechristensen 5y ago
Immunity seems to have a dependence on the intensity of infection. A mild or asymptomatic infection confers less immunity than a serious infection. This kind of thing will have a few dimensions and a lot of uncertainty to it.
- landemva 5y ago
  Do you have a published reference that natural immunity depends on infection intensity?
mewpmewp2 5y ago
I think many governments left their people an impression that those vaccines would end the pandemic and that vaccinated can't get the disease at all pretty much.
- libertine 5y ago
  But that's the problem os current politics, while some bluntly lie, others "protect" people from the truth/reality. I don't see why we couldn't trust people into telling them that vaccines are a great tool, but we will still need to keep using extra measures - like mask wearing - as a means to keep preventing infections. They chose to create the narrative that the vaccine would be the cure, now it will backlash and create more doubt in people. Imo the right approach should have been tolerance zero.
  - mewpmewp2 5y ago

dannyw 5y ago

Wonder how this change the benefit vs risk trade-offs. I've personally known two people who had myocarditis and ER visits after the vaccine (which seems unlikely for a X in 100,000 event; given I probably only know maybe fifty people tops who might share their adverse reactions with me), but if vaccines provide lasting protection, rare side effects can be justified. Now, if annual boosters are required (along with the associated risks for myocarditis and other side effects), for young/healthy/fit people, it could very turn out that the harms outweigh the benefits.

croes 5y ago
The chance of getting myocarditis from Corona is still higher and more severe. And don't forget the higher risks for blood clots, strokes etc. And we know that some viruses like HPV have long term effects like raising the probability of certain kinds of cancer. It's a risky bet. You can stop getting vaccinated if yearly shot should be necessary but you can't stop being infected once.
- jquery 5y ago
  HN is a hair’s breadth away from advocating for Ivermectin. Only a matter of time at the rate misinformation spreads unchecked in this country.
  - secondcoming 5y ago
    (Not USA) If your doctor prescribed you Ivermectin would you refuse it? Being vaccinated doesn't stop you from getting coronavirus. My family are all fully vaccinated (Pfizer) yet quite a few of them have tested positive for coronavirus in the past two weeks. My grandmother died from it apparently (she was also 99). No-one else has needed hospitalisation. So I don't quite understand the 'not being vaccinated harms others' argument; I fully get the 'being vaccinated puts less pressure on health services' argument though.
    - croes 5y ago
      "not being vaccinated harms others" because "being vaccinated puts less pressure on health service" or in other words the unvaccinated put more pressure on the health services. You don't want having a stroke or a severe accident and all ICUs are blocked because of unvaccinated COVID patients.

legulere 5y ago

The article does apparently only talk about attack rate efficacy/effectiveness. What is much more important in a population with high vaccination rates is the reduction of hospitalization and mortality which is much more long lasting with the vaccines. Edit: here are the graphs for mortality from the study: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm0620#F3 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm0620#F3

nosianu 5y ago
The article does talk about mortality rates quite extensively, immediately after the first section about infection rates. Starting sentence for that 2nd section is > The three vaccines held up better in their ability to prevent COVID-19 deaths.. You will find the changes in two age groups, above and below 65. Modena and Pfizer/BioNTech again much better than J&J, albeit still showing a significant decline in the ability to prevent death.

cletus 5y ago

It's almost like the existence of vaccines places evolutionary pressure on a mutating virus. This whole pandemic has highlighted something that I really prefer not to think about, which is just how irrational, selfish, incapable of assessing risk and prone to confirmation bias too many people are. The vaccine isn't 100% effective in stopping transmission? Or stopping you catching the disease? Or dying? Each of these becomes some pseudo-gotcha moment that leads some down an invermectin-taking path with Tucker Carlson or Joe Rogan as the pied piper. It's basically equivalent to arguing that people wearing seat belts can die in car accidents therefore seat belts are ineffective. Worse, you can suffer an injury from a seat belt so they're net harmful. What many non-Americans may not understand is that there are a nontrivial number of Americans who still doggedly and genuinely believe that about seat belts to this day and view laws requiring their use as impinging on their ffeedom. And we want people to make sacrifices for climate change? Yeah, never gonna happen.

jquery 5y ago
It seems HN is quite eager to upvote vaccine skepticism of all kinds. It could provide quite the distorted view of reality if I were to trust HN karma over the near-universal medical scientific consensus (FDA approving vaccines for 5-11 year olds with a universal vote). I wouldn’t be surprised if HN starts advocating for ivermectin soon.
- throwaway2077 5y ago
  well, there's always reddit if enjoy the company of intellectual majority.
- native_samples 5y ago
  Approving vaccines for children is nowhere near being a near-universal medical scientific consensus. Far from it. Lots of people in medicine think that's clearly insane. See the testimony of Peter Doshi to the Senate recently for an example.
  - jquery 5y ago

gusennan 5y ago

I get a flu shot every year, getting boosters of these vaccines doesn't bother me at all. There will be other vaccine "implementations" (Novavax, for example) that will get better over time.