15 ms·

Omicron evades Moderna vaccine too, study suggests, but boosters help

26 points by theonething 5y ago

SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
Is the Moderna booster not just more of the vaccine?
- bsjks 5y ago
  Logic? What are you, a fascist? Take the booster and don’t question it.
- bigodbiel 5y ago
  Even if lower neutralization, higher antibody loads post booster (much larger than post second dose). I wonder how this works with Moderna’s lower dosage shots.
  - Amezarak 5y ago
    I have been skeptical that antibodies are a good proxy for vaccine effectiveness. Your immune system "remembers" how to create antibodies, and there's no clear reason why it would continue to produce them after an infection has been eradicated. So I would expect antibody levels to always drop off naturally over time until your next exposure (or vaccine) with little or no impact on actual effectiveness, regardless of the virus or vaccine. I mean, I suppose that also suggests that "high antibody loads" indicate your immune system is an a high-alert state against coronavirus, actively fighting the virus (or what it thinks is the virus, the vaccine) and a "low" load a less alert state, so perhaps the rapid immune response in a "high alert" state is better...but surely there is some reason our immune system doesn't remain in a high-alert state indefinitely? [Edit - plus, of course, antibodies are far from the only immune response, they're just the easiest to measure, something that also makes me very leery of their use as a metric.]
    - zpeti 5y ago
      I think you are right, and I think health officials and politicians basically want society’s immune system to be on high alert for a long time. I have no idea scientifically how good an idea that is. Second shots have a higher risk of myocardiatis, what about third, fourth, fifth? At what point can you let go and rely on T cell immunity?
    - acdha 5y ago
      This is the reason for the split between getting sick and having a severe case. In pandemic conditions, having antibodies present is desirable means you’re less likely to spread it to someone else because the virus doesn’t have time to replicate much before your immune system fights it off.
      - Amezarak 5y ago
        How much are antibodies present in your sinuses versus your bloodstream or various organs? My layman education here would suggest that antibodies are not really a big factor with the initial infection and spread, only when someone develops a serious infection and is sick enough they probably aren't walking around willy-nilly in public anyway. So that would explain why the vaccine protects against serious illness, but is less helpful in preventing infection and spread. [EDIT: A quick google suggests that, fascinatingly, the mucosal system in your sinuses apparently has its own independent antibody development and production. The vaccines apparently don't trigger antibody production in your sinuses.] Similarly, it might be beneficial if we could train this initial immune response better. I am not sure how it works. I know that despite extreme and very prolonged exposure to a very sick Covid-19 victim, I was unable to test positive for Covid and didn't have antibodies.
JPKab 5y ago
Less virulent, less dangerous than delta by far, according to the South African medical authorities who first identified and reported it. It's been a long established medical fact that viruses evolve to become less severe over time, due to selective pressures of being able to spread easier if you don't incapacitate your host. Micheal Crichton's Andromeda Strain featured this as a key plot point, written in the 70s. For some reason, the international community treated South African scientists like third-world know-nothings, and overreacted, ignoring the fact that it's less severe. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/12/14/south-africa-omicron-coronavirus/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/12/14/south-africa... Most everyone is vaxxed that is high-risk. Let the rest deal with their consequences. We have a few treatments that are highly effective, including monoclonal AB and the new Pfizer pill that has been shown in clinical trials to be absurdly effective: https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/14/health/pfizer-paxlovid-pills-covid-treatment/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/14/health/pfizer-paxlovid-pills-... Let's move on from this fear and get back to living instead of just existing.
- dombesz 5y ago
  100% agree with you. If it turns out that it’s so much less deadly than the other strains, we should definitely be positive about it and stop the fear mongering. But all you can hear these days, is that how so much contagious Omicron is, without mentioning the chance of being a lot less harmful. This biased representation in the news turns me into being a skeptic of all the media outlets, regardless of their political agenda. On the good side, even the inventor of mRna vaccines, Karikó Katalin says that Omicron could end the pandemic if it proves to be less harmful.[1] 1. https://hungarytoday.hu/kariko-omicron-pfizer-coronavirus/ https://hungarytoday.hu/kariko-omicron-pfizer-coronavirus/
  - rsynnott 5y ago
    > But all you can hear these days, is that how so much contagious Omicron is, without mentioning the chance of being a lot less harmful. We _know_ that it's spreading very quickly (there is some legitimate question over how much of this is inherent spreading ability vs immunity evasion). The idea that it's "a lot less harmful" is largely speculative; there just isn't the data to say that right now. Now, it may emerge that it is, and that would be great, but it would be extremely dangerous to assume it at the moment.
Nemrod67 5y ago
We've been living in the Clown Timeline for 20 years now, no sign of it changing so far... "Here! look at that shiny thing!"
sabersei2 5y ago
A study funded by the booster manufacturer lol Wake up ppl!
refurb 5y ago
Anyone feel like covid has exposed the western obsession with optimization. There were even people who preferred Pfizer’s vaccine over Moderna’s because the risk reduction was some marginal number like 96.5% versus 94.7%? Clearly statistically insignificant? Just because the Moderna vaccine is 50x less effective (measure by neutralizing ability of generated antibodies) doesn’t mean it doesn’t offer substantial protection. There is this weird obsession with driving risk as close to 0% as possible with no regards to relative risk. 2x as man people in BC, Canada have died of drug overdoses over the past 2 years than Covid. And nobody blinks an eye at those deaths.
- michelb 5y ago
  I think that is mostly a communication and education problem, and a general problem most people have when dealing with a crisis with a lot of unknowns and an easily transmissible disease. In my country you can't choose your vaccine, but there also wasn't much education about how it works, why the protection is sufficient, etc. This then leads to people valuing their own 'researched' opinions higher than facts from experts/scientists/biology. Also, nobody really understands statistics.
- jrootabega 5y ago
  People want to feel like they have some control over the health and success of themselves and their society at a time when they have almost none. Kinda like kicking the tires to help decide if you should buy a car.
mensetmanusman 5y ago
Omicron is an evolution in the spike, which is what the mRNA vaccines focused on. When the spike changes sufficiently, there is no mechanism by which the vaccine works, except in so much as that person may have already had sars-cov-2 with no symptoms and built additional immunity to other topologies of the system. Since everyone will eventually host the virus at some time scale, the best one could hope for is initially being vaccinated, then catching a similar virus with no symptoms to build immunity and so on. Vaccines are simply preparation for the inevitable exposure to spreaders with R0>>1.
- hcknwscommenter 5y ago
  > When the spike changes sufficiently, there is no mechanism by which the vaccine works this is not entirely correct T cell response uses a vast array of much smaller epitopes as compared to the antibody response. These much smaller and much more numerous epitopes almost certainly cannot be entirely mutated away while maintaining function.
supermatt 5y ago
Why would the antibodies be more effective after 3 shots than 2? Shouldn't they be the same/similar antibodies? Is it more a case of the 3rd dose being more recent than the 2nd dose was for participants so there are more present? If so, why are we talking about number of vaccines instead of recency of vaccination?
- maxerickson 5y ago
  It isn't a linear response. Which biological processes certainly don't behave linearly as any sort of rule.
- rsfern 5y ago
  One hypothesis I have seen around is that is not so much the time since the last shot, but the longer time span between shots that slows for more robust antibody response Seems reasonable, as many of the booster doses for more established vaccines are spaced months to a year apart. There hasn’t really been enough time to study this comprehensively for the coronavirus vaccines
- volker48 5y ago
  Many vaccines have multiple doses. DTaP for example is 5 shots and Polio is 4. They are also normally spread out much farther than the 3 or 4 weeks the COVID vaccines are separated. Other vaccines are more like 6 months to years apart. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/schedules/hcp/imz/child-adolescent.html https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/schedules/hcp/imz/child-adolesc...
- native_samples 5y ago
  They wouldn't but there are other possible mechanisms. As a hypothetical example, if the body doesn't consider Omicron to be particularly threatening then it wouldn't devote much resources to fighting it. The vaccine would override that response by forcing a massive counter-response (antibody titers after vaccination are much higher than after infection), and those antibodies would then help suppress the symptoms. If you assume symptoms to what appears to be a common cold is all that matters, then this is "effective". If you assume flooding the immune system with dangerous proteins to make it manufacture tons of antibodies isn't free, then you'd have to weigh up the costs and benefits of doing things this way. However COVID is a magical disease in which costs and benefits don't apply - for whatever the public health community wants to do there are only ever benefits, never costs. Hence: effectiveness.

26 points by theonething 5y ago

SV_BubbleTime 5y ago

Is the Moderna booster not just more of the vaccine?

bsjks 5y ago
Logic? What are you, a fascist? Take the booster and don’t question it.
bigodbiel 5y ago
Even if lower neutralization, higher antibody loads post booster (much larger than post second dose). I wonder how this works with Moderna’s lower dosage shots.
- Amezarak 5y ago
  I have been skeptical that antibodies are a good proxy for vaccine effectiveness. Your immune system "remembers" how to create antibodies, and there's no clear reason why it would continue to produce them after an infection has been eradicated. So I would expect antibody levels to always drop off naturally over time until your next exposure (or vaccine) with little or no impact on actual effectiveness, regardless of the virus or vaccine. I mean, I suppose that also suggests that "high antibody loads" indicate your immune system is an a high-alert state against coronavirus, actively fighting the virus (or what it thinks is the virus, the vaccine) and a "low" load a less alert state, so perhaps the rapid immune response in a "high alert" state is better...but surely there is some reason our immune system doesn't remain in a high-alert state indefinitely? [Edit - plus, of course, antibodies are far from the only immune response, they're just the easiest to measure, something that also makes me very leery of their use as a metric.]
  - zpeti 5y ago
    I think you are right, and I think health officials and politicians basically want society’s immune system to be on high alert for a long time. I have no idea scientifically how good an idea that is. Second shots have a higher risk of myocardiatis, what about third, fourth, fifth? At what point can you let go and rely on T cell immunity?
  - acdha 5y ago
    This is the reason for the split between getting sick and having a severe case. In pandemic conditions, having antibodies present is desirable means you’re less likely to spread it to someone else because the virus doesn’t have time to replicate much before your immune system fights it off.
    - Amezarak 5y ago
      How much are antibodies present in your sinuses versus your bloodstream or various organs? My layman education here would suggest that antibodies are not really a big factor with the initial infection and spread, only when someone develops a serious infection and is sick enough they probably aren't walking around willy-nilly in public anyway. So that would explain why the vaccine protects against serious illness, but is less helpful in preventing infection and spread. [EDIT: A quick google suggests that, fascinatingly, the mucosal system in your sinuses apparently has its own independent antibody development and production. The vaccines apparently don't trigger antibody production in your sinuses.] Similarly, it might be beneficial if we could train this initial immune response better. I am not sure how it works. I know that despite extreme and very prolonged exposure to a very sick Covid-19 victim, I was unable to test positive for Covid and didn't have antibodies.

JPKab 5y ago

Less virulent, less dangerous than delta by far, according to the South African medical authorities who first identified and reported it. It's been a long established medical fact that viruses evolve to become less severe over time, due to selective pressures of being able to spread easier if you don't incapacitate your host. Micheal Crichton's Andromeda Strain featured this as a key plot point, written in the 70s. For some reason, the international community treated South African scientists like third-world know-nothings, and overreacted, ignoring the fact that it's less severe. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/12/14/south-africa-omicron-coronavirus/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/12/14/south-africa... Most everyone is vaxxed that is high-risk. Let the rest deal with their consequences. We have a few treatments that are highly effective, including monoclonal AB and the new Pfizer pill that has been shown in clinical trials to be absurdly effective: https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/14/health/pfizer-paxlovid-pills-covid-treatment/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/14/health/pfizer-paxlovid-pills-... Let's move on from this fear and get back to living instead of just existing.

dombesz 5y ago
100% agree with you. If it turns out that it’s so much less deadly than the other strains, we should definitely be positive about it and stop the fear mongering. But all you can hear these days, is that how so much contagious Omicron is, without mentioning the chance of being a lot less harmful. This biased representation in the news turns me into being a skeptic of all the media outlets, regardless of their political agenda. On the good side, even the inventor of mRna vaccines, Karikó Katalin says that Omicron could end the pandemic if it proves to be less harmful.[1] 1. https://hungarytoday.hu/kariko-omicron-pfizer-coronavirus/ https://hungarytoday.hu/kariko-omicron-pfizer-coronavirus/
- rsynnott 5y ago
  > But all you can hear these days, is that how so much contagious Omicron is, without mentioning the chance of being a lot less harmful. We _know_ that it's spreading very quickly (there is some legitimate question over how much of this is inherent spreading ability vs immunity evasion). The idea that it's "a lot less harmful" is largely speculative; there just isn't the data to say that right now. Now, it may emerge that it is, and that would be great, but it would be extremely dangerous to assume it at the moment.

Nemrod67 5y ago

We've been living in the Clown Timeline for 20 years now, no sign of it changing so far... "Here! look at that shiny thing!"

sabersei2 5y ago

A study funded by the booster manufacturer lol Wake up ppl!

refurb 5y ago

Anyone feel like covid has exposed the western obsession with optimization. There were even people who preferred Pfizer’s vaccine over Moderna’s because the risk reduction was some marginal number like 96.5% versus 94.7%? Clearly statistically insignificant? Just because the Moderna vaccine is 50x less effective (measure by neutralizing ability of generated antibodies) doesn’t mean it doesn’t offer substantial protection. There is this weird obsession with driving risk as close to 0% as possible with no regards to relative risk. 2x as man people in BC, Canada have died of drug overdoses over the past 2 years than Covid. And nobody blinks an eye at those deaths.

michelb 5y ago
I think that is mostly a communication and education problem, and a general problem most people have when dealing with a crisis with a lot of unknowns and an easily transmissible disease. In my country you can't choose your vaccine, but there also wasn't much education about how it works, why the protection is sufficient, etc. This then leads to people valuing their own 'researched' opinions higher than facts from experts/scientists/biology. Also, nobody really understands statistics.
jrootabega 5y ago
People want to feel like they have some control over the health and success of themselves and their society at a time when they have almost none. Kinda like kicking the tires to help decide if you should buy a car.

mensetmanusman 5y ago

Omicron is an evolution in the spike, which is what the mRNA vaccines focused on. When the spike changes sufficiently, there is no mechanism by which the vaccine works, except in so much as that person may have already had sars-cov-2 with no symptoms and built additional immunity to other topologies of the system. Since everyone will eventually host the virus at some time scale, the best one could hope for is initially being vaccinated, then catching a similar virus with no symptoms to build immunity and so on. Vaccines are simply preparation for the inevitable exposure to spreaders with R0>>1.

hcknwscommenter 5y ago
> When the spike changes sufficiently, there is no mechanism by which the vaccine works this is not entirely correct T cell response uses a vast array of much smaller epitopes as compared to the antibody response. These much smaller and much more numerous epitopes almost certainly cannot be entirely mutated away while maintaining function.

supermatt 5y ago

Why would the antibodies be more effective after 3 shots than 2? Shouldn't they be the same/similar antibodies? Is it more a case of the 3rd dose being more recent than the 2nd dose was for participants so there are more present? If so, why are we talking about number of vaccines instead of recency of vaccination?

maxerickson 5y ago
It isn't a linear response. Which biological processes certainly don't behave linearly as any sort of rule.
rsfern 5y ago
One hypothesis I have seen around is that is not so much the time since the last shot, but the longer time span between shots that slows for more robust antibody response Seems reasonable, as many of the booster doses for more established vaccines are spaced months to a year apart. There hasn’t really been enough time to study this comprehensively for the coronavirus vaccines
volker48 5y ago
Many vaccines have multiple doses. DTaP for example is 5 shots and Polio is 4. They are also normally spread out much farther than the 3 or 4 weeks the COVID vaccines are separated. Other vaccines are more like 6 months to years apart. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/schedules/hcp/imz/child-adolescent.html https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/schedules/hcp/imz/child-adolesc...
native_samples 5y ago
They wouldn't but there are other possible mechanisms. As a hypothetical example, if the body doesn't consider Omicron to be particularly threatening then it wouldn't devote much resources to fighting it. The vaccine would override that response by forcing a massive counter-response (antibody titers after vaccination are much higher than after infection), and those antibodies would then help suppress the symptoms. If you assume symptoms to what appears to be a common cold is all that matters, then this is "effective". If you assume flooding the immune system with dangerous proteins to make it manufacture tons of antibodies isn't free, then you'd have to weigh up the costs and benefits of doing things this way. However COVID is a magical disease in which costs and benefits don't apply - for whatever the public health community wants to do there are only ever benefits, never costs. Hence: effectiveness.