14 ms·

Pfizer and BioNTech launch trial of Omicron-targeted Covid vaccine

66 points by caaqil 5y ago

peteradio 5y ago
Who is in the control group now? You can't exactly exclude people who have prior contact with older variants or that would mislead populations with high prior exposure. Also how do they factor in prior vaccination? Are they going to have high powered arms for all these different subtypes of immune response?
- IgorPartola 5y ago
  If you read the article, that is addressed there.
  - peteradio 5y ago
    I'm sorry I don't see it. I only see mention of dividing groups by unvaccinated/vaccinated. That doesn't give indication to prior exposure at all.
zaroth 5y ago
Seems to me that Omicron is essentially a vaccine in its own right. Highly attenuated and extremely mild to non-existent symptoms. The best part is even the anti-vax crowd will be innoculated!
- fpgaminer 5y ago
  > Highly attenuated and extremely mild to non-existent symptoms. Hospitals are getting overloaded due to Omicron. People are dying in droves. Omicron is by no means mild. "Omicron may be milder compared to Delta, but it’s not mild. " Source: https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/state-of-affairs-jan-24 https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/state-of-affa...
  - native_samples 5y ago
    Where? In the UK hospitals are quiet for this time of year (less than 80% loaded which for the UK is quiet), and deaths are below the 5 year running average.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - dzhiurgis 5y ago
      UK has somewhat decent (50%) booster uptake
      - OnlyMortal 5y ago
        More than 50% https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/800/cpsprodpb/4BCA/production/_122920491_optimised-vaccine_doses_nation_with_booster_20jan-nc.png https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/800/cpsprodpb/4BCA/production/...
      - iso1210 5y ago
        64.3% currently. 83.9% have had 2 doses.
    - fpgaminer 5y ago
      In the U.S. at least: > There are two states and 618 counties that require circuit breakers (i.e. short-term mitigation measures needed to preserve hospital functioning) at this point because their hospitals are at or above 100% capacity (assuming that the number of staffed beds has not increased in the past week). Medical military personnel have already been dispatched to a number of hospitals across the nation. Nebraska also joined a short list of states that have enacted its Crisis Standards of Care plan. But community-wide efforts to reduce spread desperately need to be taken, too. Fourteen additional states are at high risk of exceeding 100% hospital capacity in the next 1-10 days. Source: https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/state-of-affairs-jan-18 https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/state-of-affa...
      - 5y ago
- rgrieselhuber 5y ago
  Natural immunity, what a concept!
  - NikolaeVarius 5y ago
    As opposed to artificial immunity?
    - rgrieselhuber 5y ago
      Not sure immunity is what I'd call it but, artificial, yes.
      - yladiz 5y ago
        What?
      - flatiron 5y ago
        Maybe “artificially evoked natural immunity”?
      - NikolaeVarius 5y ago
        By what mechanism do you think vaccines work. Magic?
    - pcbro141 5y ago
      Natural immunity is acquired from exposure to the disease organism through infection with the actual disease. Vaccine-induced immunity is acquired through the introduction of a killed or weakened form of the disease organism through vaccination. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/immunity-types.htm https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/immunity-types.htm
      - qbasic_forever 5y ago
        None of the COVID vaccines in use by the western world use an attenuated virus. The mRNA vaccines were specifically built and engineered to not have many of the pitfalls and issues of attenuated vaccines. The vaccines only contain a synthetic spike protein (or instructions how to make it) which is used to stimulate antibodies against it.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  > and extremely mild to non-existent symptoms For some, but hardly guaranteed. Still a lot of hospitalizations happening and the extreme treatments have to be rationed because we’re running out so fast. The thing is: You don’t get to choose or predict if you’ll get the mild case or the severe case. You can’t ignore the serious cases and make your decisions on the assumption that you’ll be in the “no long term effects” group. The vaccine is a much more predictable and tested response. I’d much rather have the vaccine.
- ethbr0 5y ago
  Once the lethality data started to accumulate, I had the same thought. Even though it's still definitely not something you want to get, especially if you have comorbidities. It's insane to think about, but as our biological engineering skills mature, it's worth having a discussion about whether (1) mass vaccination + (2) release of highly-contagious, low-lethality strain should be in the pandemic playbook. There are no sure things in biology, but a hypothetical reality where Delta (or god forbid something like MERS-CoV) is circulating with Omicron-rates of transmissibility... start to beg questions about what the least bad approach is.
  - chasd00 5y ago
    > (2) release of highly-contagious, low-lethality strain should be in the pandemic playbook. political and ethical suicide
    - mercy_dude 5y ago
      > release of highly contagious Yet when China does it (accidentally or not) it’s considered unthinkable for our political class. If you think people in Washington couldn’t be less worried about their electorates. If anything COVID has been a boon to hide their massive incompetence diverting discussions around mandates, vaccinations and other woke virtue signaling.
    - ben_w 5y ago
      Political suicide, certainly. Ethically — assuming such engineering is even possible without unexpected consequences — it sounds like a trolley problem, only instead of 6 on the default track and 1 on the alternate it might be 6 million by default and 1 million with the airborne cowpox analogy. (Numbers completely made up, of course).
      - chasd00 5y ago
        performing a medical experiment/procedure on someone against their will is unethical.
- samwillis 5y ago
  I don’t think that is fully confirmed as so many people who are getting it are double or triple vaccinated already. (I currently have Covid, probably Omicron, triple vaxed, and would describe it as a rotten cold)
- qbasic_forever 5y ago
  Wait, didn't people make this exact same argument about the alpha variant (B.1.1.7) that had a massive worldwide surge around this time a year ago? What happened--why did we go on to have delta, omicron, etc. surges? Or put more bluntly--why should anyone believe that *this time* omicron will be any different than the past variants which were touted as finally bringing herd immunity, but failed to do so? Why is it that every surge seems to bring the exact same arguments and people saying "don't worry this one will stop the pandemic"? I've been reading it for two years and still haven't seen it happen anywhere in the world.
  - mercy_dude 5y ago
    I don’t buy Omicron will be the one ending this. There will be more variants. Midterm variant will be a very good one to watch out for. Our political class have figured it’s much easier to defer judgements or lack thereof to scientists and thus take no responsibility for failed policy measures or debates.
- groby_b 5y ago
  Just one country as an example: The US lost 15K people last week to Omicron. 150K people hospitalized, 25K in the ICU. That's nowhere close to "mild to non-existent" compared to a vaccine.
  - qbasic_forever 5y ago
    As a point of comparison too about 690k Americans die of heart disease a year, or a rate of about 13k deaths from heart disease a week. Currently the 'mild' omicron strain of the virus is killing more people per week than the number one killer of Americans (heart disease). https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm Usurping the top spot for causes of death in a week is not mild by any means.
  - jaywalk 5y ago
    > The US lost 15K people last week to Omicron. Bullshit. There is no data to suggest all of those deaths were from omicron, and no reason to believe that's the case either. Don't spread misinformation.
    - qbasic_forever 5y ago
      Take your argument up with the New York Times, their death tracker is showing that ~15k people have died from COVID in the last 7 days: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html Count up the daily counts yourself and check. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. You have provided no evidence that 15k, as reported by one of the most reputable new organizations in the world, is wrong or should be considered misinformation.
      - jaywalk 5y ago
        I'm not debating the Covid death number. You specifically called out omicron, while none of the actual data does so. There's no data (that I'm aware of) breaking out the US deaths by variant.
  - 5y ago
- Ourgon 5y ago
  - qbasic_forever 5y ago
    You are making an argument against vaccination. Ergo, you are speaking anti-vaccination rhetoric. You are an anti-vaxxer. QED
    - Ourgon 5y ago
      You write short sentences. Ergo, you are using childish language. You are a child. QED?
- guelo 5y ago
  The biggest logical fallacy I've noticed during the pandemic is people making definitive statements like yours while the science remains uncertain and changing. I don't know how much weight to put on this news snippet from yesterday from a Dutch scientist saying they're seeing people that got infected with Omicron getting reinfected with new Omicron subvariant BA.2: https://nyheder.tv2.dk/2022-01-21-ny-omikron-variant-spreder-sig-du-kan-muligvis-blive-smittet-to-gange-siger-ssi-forsker https://nyheder.tv2.dk/2022-01-21-ny-omikron-variant-spreder...
  - Gibbon1 5y ago
    I always ask myself when someone makes a definitive statement if they actually have a way of knowing that. That detector has been off the charts this whole pandemic. The usual suspects proclaimed Omicron was 'mild' whatever that actually means well before any data was available to show either way. It's looking more and more like Omicron isn't mild. In particular it's producing worse infections in children. Not to mention it's immune escape means it's infecting vaccinated people. Mild infection in vaccinated people vs no infection in vaccinated people as you had with other variants.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > Seems to me that Omicron is essentially a vaccine in its own right. Highly attenuated and extremely mild to non-existent symptoms. > The best part is even the anti-vax crowd will be innoculated! I don't think it's anything close to "highly attenuated": https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/01/25/world/omicron-covid-vaccine-tests/omicron-infections-lead-to-fewer-hospitalizations-than-delta-a-cdc-report-finds https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/01/25/world/omicron-covid-... > The C.D.C. attributed the tendency of Omicron cases to cause less severe illness to the virus itself, as well as growing levels of immunity from prior infections and from the rollout of vaccinations. It said that roughly 30 million more people were fully vaccinated during the Omicron surge than during the Delta wave in the fall. > As a result, a smaller proportion of coronavirus cases are ending in hospitalizations: The C.D.C. said there had been a peak of 27 hospital admissions for every 1,000 cases in January, compared with 78 admissions per 1,000 cases in the fall. If it were "highly attenuated," I'd expect close to 0 hospital admissions for every 1,000 cases, not 27. Exaggerating "less severe" to "near harmless" is one of those errors anti-vax people and other denialists commonly make in their arguments.
- fivea 5y ago
  > Seems to me that Omicron is essentially a vaccine in its own right. Highly attenuated and extremely mild to non-existent symptoms. No, not really. Fully vaccinated individuals in highly vaccinated populations who contract covid tend to experience mild to non-existent symptoms. Omicron is not a vaccine. The vaccine is the vaccine. https://www.euro.who.int/en/health-topics/health-emergencies/pages/news/news/2022/01/the-omicron-variant-sorting-fact-from-myth https://www.euro.who.int/en/health-topics/health-emergencies...
adolph 5y ago
No Studies found for: covid-19 | pfizer BioNTech | Start date on or after 01/01/2022 Maybe it is part of an existing study? https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?cond=covid-19&spons=pfizer+BioNTech https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?cond=covid-19&spons=p...
smallerfish 5y ago
Reuters crashes if the browser has a cookie blocker active - its js expects a certain cookie to be there.
noahmbarr 5y ago
Seems like a day late and a dollar short on this effort.
- thehappypm 5y ago
  Um, Omicron was discovered 2 months ago.
- fpgaminer 5y ago
  It's not about Omicron today, it's about Omicron's descendants. Before Omicron, two doses provided >90% protection, and held up well against Delta. Now, two doses provides only 40% protection against Omicron. Whereas three doses bumps that back up to 80%. Given these trends it's clear that we need a plan forward, just in case, for whatever comes on the menu next year. It's likely to be an Omicron descendant, since Omicron is dominating the gene pool. It's a reasonable assumption that an Omicron derived vaccine would have provided >90% protection against Omicron. And so, reasonably, being Omicron-boosted in the future should provide something like 80% protection against whatever the next dominate strain will be, whereas the existing boosters might not fare as well. That's the hope anyway.
  - nradov 5y ago
    If you're going to state vaccine effectiveness percentages then you need to define the endpoint. Stating that it provides 40% protection against Omicron is meaningless. Is that against PCR confirmed infection, symptomatic infection, hospitalization, death, or something else? And over what time period? The reality is that two doses of the existing mRNA vaccines still provide very good protection against severe disease for the vast majority of patients. https://peterattiamd.com/covid-part2/ https://peterattiamd.com/covid-part2/
  - EricE 5y ago
    Omnicron is so mild for the VAST majority of people that frankly the best thing that can happen is for it to just spread and we all get to heard immunity that much faster. Thankfully it's so much more virulent that this is going to happen whether we like it or not. Makes me think of the old chicken pox parties when I was a kid. The virus is carried by animals and it's not going away. So we had better start figuring out how to more reasonably live with it, stop with the asinine one size fits all solutions; many of them (like cloth masks) that are actually anti-science based and stop destroying so many people's lives - especially children - I can't imagine being a child in todays idiotic overreactive and politically energized environments, especially since children had the least to fear even from the original, pretty nasty virus. Yes, there are even kids that are more at risk - but you don't screw everyone - you protect the vulnerable. Common sense seems to be utterly out the window as everyone is running around panicking; it's beyond nuts.
0xDEEPFAC 5y ago
- xadhominemx 5y ago
  Two shots reduces chances of hospitalization/death by about 90%. Two shots and a booster by like 98%. Sorry you got the sniffles though.
  - 0xDEEPFAC 5y ago
    Yea its hard to argue with Pfizer's data about its own products.
    - NikolaeVarius 5y ago
      - mandmandam 5y ago
        xadhominemx 5y ago
        This estimate is based on actual death/hospitalization statistics across a number of countries: https://ourworldindata.org/covid-deaths-by-vaccination https://ourworldindata.org/covid-deaths-by-vaccination
        EricE 5y ago
        Two countries. Now do the same with Israel.
        xadhominemx 5y ago
        What data are you referring to?
fpgaminer 5y ago
Whether this pans out into an approved vaccine or not, I'm terribly curious about the results of the study comparing Omicron booster versus existing booster. Apparently the existing booster shot elicited a more diverse set of antibodies compared to the ones from just a two shot regimen. Which is kinda interesting. I forget what it's called, but there's this phenomenon in immunology where the immune system can get "stuck" with whatever initial antibodies it comes up with and doesn't adapt well. Seems that wasn't the case with the COVID boosters, thankfully. And that explains why the boosters have been so dramatically more effective against Omicron (80% versus <40% for those with just two shots, natural immunity, etc; IIRC). But would an Omicron booster have elicited an even "better" set of antibodies? Would we get back to 90% protection like the good ole days? And of course the big question; is an Omicron booster going to provide better forward protection? The results of this study are going to be deliciously intriguing.
- flatiron 5y ago
  I feel like we are going to have to get a yearly booster and they will be guessing the strains every year just like the flu. Note: 100% a gut feeling
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    That was pretty obvious since March 2020. Highly contagious respiratory viruses with non-human reservoirs don't go back into the bottle, once they're circulating.
    - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
      No, but flu is the only one that evolves so quickly that we need a new shot every year.
      - ethbr0 5y ago
        Coronaviruses give people colds too, they just weren't as widespread or symptomatic as influenza. Now, they probably will be.
ukie 5y ago
jbirer 5y ago
- NikolaeVarius 5y ago
  - bpodgursky 5y ago
    non-natural immunity means an immune response to a very specific part of the spike protein introduced via vaccine (vs exposure to the entire virus wherein your body produces antibodies which target a diversity of binding sites)
    - hcknwscommenter 5y ago
      a diversity of binding sites, almost none of which (outside spike protein binders) actually neutralize the virus.
      - bpodgursky 5y ago
        If there as no difference, the Moderna vaccine would be as effective as infection at preventing reinfection, but it isn't. So what drives the difference? (yes, it is highly effective at preventing hospitalization and death, but it's clearly a muted response)
        hcknwscommenter 5y ago
        "but it isn't" That is simply untrue. You are likely referring to the Israeli data which has not reproduced. Proof: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7044e1.htm?s_cid=mm7044e1_w https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7044e1.htm?s_cid=mm... . Bottom line: natural immunity is not so great. Get vaccinated. What drives the difference? Just speculating, but during natural infection the immune system will generate a huge number of disparate antibodies that do nothing because when they bind their targets it doesn't block the virus. Vaccination localizes the immune response to the key cell-receptor binding sites.
b0sk 5y ago
Omicron is not mild to the unvaccinated.. and as a result, to the hospital infrastructure.
- qbasic_forever 5y ago
  50% of people recently hospitalized in King county, Washington, (where Seattle is located) are vaccinated: https://kingcounty.gov/depts/health/covid-19/data/vaccination-outcomes.aspx https://kingcounty.gov/depts/health/covid-19/data/vaccinatio... It appears for some vaccinated people Omicron is not mild either.
  - foxyv 5y ago
    Keep in mind that 69% of the population in Washington is vaccinated. This will skew the proportion of hospitalized towards the vaccinated. Vaccination seems to be about 70% effective at preventing serious disease requiring hospitalization. So yeah, not mild in vaccinated people either, just less horrifyingly bad. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2119270 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2119270
    - Ancapistani 5y ago
      It’s not quite that simple, because the proportion of the population who are vaccinated isn’t representative of the whole.

66 points by caaqil 5y ago

Who is in the control group now? You can't exactly exclude people who have prior contact with older variants or that would mislead populations with high prior exposure. Also how do they factor in prior vaccination? Are they going to have high powered arms for all these different subtypes of immune response?

IgorPartola 5y ago
If you read the article, that is addressed there.
- peteradio 5y ago
  I'm sorry I don't see it. I only see mention of dividing groups by unvaccinated/vaccinated. That doesn't give indication to prior exposure at all.

zaroth 5y ago

Seems to me that Omicron is essentially a vaccine in its own right. Highly attenuated and extremely mild to non-existent symptoms. The best part is even the anti-vax crowd will be innoculated!

fpgaminer 5y ago
> Highly attenuated and extremely mild to non-existent symptoms. Hospitals are getting overloaded due to Omicron. People are dying in droves. Omicron is by no means mild. "Omicron may be milder compared to Delta, but it’s not mild. " Source: https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/state-of-affairs-jan-24 https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/state-of-affa...
- native_samples 5y ago
  Where? In the UK hospitals are quiet for this time of year (less than 80% loaded which for the UK is quiet), and deaths are below the 5 year running average.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - dzhiurgis 5y ago
    UK has somewhat decent (50%) booster uptake
    - OnlyMortal 5y ago
      More than 50% https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/800/cpsprodpb/4BCA/production/_122920491_optimised-vaccine_doses_nation_with_booster_20jan-nc.png https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/800/cpsprodpb/4BCA/production/...
    - iso1210 5y ago
      64.3% currently. 83.9% have had 2 doses.
  - fpgaminer 5y ago
    In the U.S. at least: > There are two states and 618 counties that require circuit breakers (i.e. short-term mitigation measures needed to preserve hospital functioning) at this point because their hospitals are at or above 100% capacity (assuming that the number of staffed beds has not increased in the past week). Medical military personnel have already been dispatched to a number of hospitals across the nation. Nebraska also joined a short list of states that have enacted its Crisis Standards of Care plan. But community-wide efforts to reduce spread desperately need to be taken, too. Fourteen additional states are at high risk of exceeding 100% hospital capacity in the next 1-10 days. Source: https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/state-of-affairs-jan-18 https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/state-of-affa...
    - 5y ago
rgrieselhuber 5y ago
Natural immunity, what a concept!
- NikolaeVarius 5y ago
  As opposed to artificial immunity?
  - rgrieselhuber 5y ago
    Not sure immunity is what I'd call it but, artificial, yes.
    - yladiz 5y ago
      What?
    - flatiron 5y ago
      Maybe “artificially evoked natural immunity”?
    - NikolaeVarius 5y ago
      By what mechanism do you think vaccines work. Magic?
  - pcbro141 5y ago
    Natural immunity is acquired from exposure to the disease organism through infection with the actual disease. Vaccine-induced immunity is acquired through the introduction of a killed or weakened form of the disease organism through vaccination. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/immunity-types.htm https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/immunity-types.htm
    - qbasic_forever 5y ago
      None of the COVID vaccines in use by the western world use an attenuated virus. The mRNA vaccines were specifically built and engineered to not have many of the pitfalls and issues of attenuated vaccines. The vaccines only contain a synthetic spike protein (or instructions how to make it) which is used to stimulate antibodies against it.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> and extremely mild to non-existent symptoms For some, but hardly guaranteed. Still a lot of hospitalizations happening and the extreme treatments have to be rationed because we’re running out so fast. The thing is: You don’t get to choose or predict if you’ll get the mild case or the severe case. You can’t ignore the serious cases and make your decisions on the assumption that you’ll be in the “no long term effects” group. The vaccine is a much more predictable and tested response. I’d much rather have the vaccine.
ethbr0 5y ago
Once the lethality data started to accumulate, I had the same thought. Even though it's still definitely not something you want to get, especially if you have comorbidities. It's insane to think about, but as our biological engineering skills mature, it's worth having a discussion about whether (1) mass vaccination + (2) release of highly-contagious, low-lethality strain should be in the pandemic playbook. There are no sure things in biology, but a hypothetical reality where Delta (or god forbid something like MERS-CoV) is circulating with Omicron-rates of transmissibility... start to beg questions about what the least bad approach is.
- chasd00 5y ago
  > (2) release of highly-contagious, low-lethality strain should be in the pandemic playbook. political and ethical suicide
  - mercy_dude 5y ago
    > release of highly contagious Yet when China does it (accidentally or not) it’s considered unthinkable for our political class. If you think people in Washington couldn’t be less worried about their electorates. If anything COVID has been a boon to hide their massive incompetence diverting discussions around mandates, vaccinations and other woke virtue signaling.
  - ben_w 5y ago
    Political suicide, certainly. Ethically — assuming such engineering is even possible without unexpected consequences — it sounds like a trolley problem, only instead of 6 on the default track and 1 on the alternate it might be 6 million by default and 1 million with the airborne cowpox analogy. (Numbers completely made up, of course).
    - chasd00 5y ago
      performing a medical experiment/procedure on someone against their will is unethical.
samwillis 5y ago
I don’t think that is fully confirmed as so many people who are getting it are double or triple vaccinated already. (I currently have Covid, probably Omicron, triple vaxed, and would describe it as a rotten cold)
qbasic_forever 5y ago
Wait, didn't people make this exact same argument about the alpha variant (B.1.1.7) that had a massive worldwide surge around this time a year ago? What happened--why did we go on to have delta, omicron, etc. surges? Or put more bluntly--why should anyone believe that *this time* omicron will be any different than the past variants which were touted as finally bringing herd immunity, but failed to do so? Why is it that every surge seems to bring the exact same arguments and people saying "don't worry this one will stop the pandemic"? I've been reading it for two years and still haven't seen it happen anywhere in the world.
- mercy_dude 5y ago
  I don’t buy Omicron will be the one ending this. There will be more variants. Midterm variant will be a very good one to watch out for. Our political class have figured it’s much easier to defer judgements or lack thereof to scientists and thus take no responsibility for failed policy measures or debates.
groby_b 5y ago
Just one country as an example: The US lost 15K people last week to Omicron. 150K people hospitalized, 25K in the ICU. That's nowhere close to "mild to non-existent" compared to a vaccine.
- qbasic_forever 5y ago
  As a point of comparison too about 690k Americans die of heart disease a year, or a rate of about 13k deaths from heart disease a week. Currently the 'mild' omicron strain of the virus is killing more people per week than the number one killer of Americans (heart disease). https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm Usurping the top spot for causes of death in a week is not mild by any means.
- jaywalk 5y ago
  > The US lost 15K people last week to Omicron. Bullshit. There is no data to suggest all of those deaths were from omicron, and no reason to believe that's the case either. Don't spread misinformation.
  - qbasic_forever 5y ago
    Take your argument up with the New York Times, their death tracker is showing that ~15k people have died from COVID in the last 7 days: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html Count up the daily counts yourself and check. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. You have provided no evidence that 15k, as reported by one of the most reputable new organizations in the world, is wrong or should be considered misinformation.
    - jaywalk 5y ago
      I'm not debating the Covid death number. You specifically called out omicron, while none of the actual data does so. There's no data (that I'm aware of) breaking out the US deaths by variant.
- 5y ago
Ourgon 5y ago
- qbasic_forever 5y ago
  You are making an argument against vaccination. Ergo, you are speaking anti-vaccination rhetoric. You are an anti-vaxxer. QED
  - Ourgon 5y ago
    You write short sentences. Ergo, you are using childish language. You are a child. QED?
guelo 5y ago
The biggest logical fallacy I've noticed during the pandemic is people making definitive statements like yours while the science remains uncertain and changing. I don't know how much weight to put on this news snippet from yesterday from a Dutch scientist saying they're seeing people that got infected with Omicron getting reinfected with new Omicron subvariant BA.2: https://nyheder.tv2.dk/2022-01-21-ny-omikron-variant-spreder-sig-du-kan-muligvis-blive-smittet-to-gange-siger-ssi-forsker https://nyheder.tv2.dk/2022-01-21-ny-omikron-variant-spreder...
- Gibbon1 5y ago
  I always ask myself when someone makes a definitive statement if they actually have a way of knowing that. That detector has been off the charts this whole pandemic. The usual suspects proclaimed Omicron was 'mild' whatever that actually means well before any data was available to show either way. It's looking more and more like Omicron isn't mild. In particular it's producing worse infections in children. Not to mention it's immune escape means it's infecting vaccinated people. Mild infection in vaccinated people vs no infection in vaccinated people as you had with other variants.
tablespoon 5y ago
> Seems to me that Omicron is essentially a vaccine in its own right. Highly attenuated and extremely mild to non-existent symptoms. > The best part is even the anti-vax crowd will be innoculated! I don't think it's anything close to "highly attenuated": https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/01/25/world/omicron-covid-vaccine-tests/omicron-infections-lead-to-fewer-hospitalizations-than-delta-a-cdc-report-finds https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/01/25/world/omicron-covid-... > The C.D.C. attributed the tendency of Omicron cases to cause less severe illness to the virus itself, as well as growing levels of immunity from prior infections and from the rollout of vaccinations. It said that roughly 30 million more people were fully vaccinated during the Omicron surge than during the Delta wave in the fall. > As a result, a smaller proportion of coronavirus cases are ending in hospitalizations: The C.D.C. said there had been a peak of 27 hospital admissions for every 1,000 cases in January, compared with 78 admissions per 1,000 cases in the fall. If it were "highly attenuated," I'd expect close to 0 hospital admissions for every 1,000 cases, not 27. Exaggerating "less severe" to "near harmless" is one of those errors anti-vax people and other denialists commonly make in their arguments.
fivea 5y ago
> Seems to me that Omicron is essentially a vaccine in its own right. Highly attenuated and extremely mild to non-existent symptoms. No, not really. Fully vaccinated individuals in highly vaccinated populations who contract covid tend to experience mild to non-existent symptoms. Omicron is not a vaccine. The vaccine is the vaccine. https://www.euro.who.int/en/health-topics/health-emergencies/pages/news/news/2022/01/the-omicron-variant-sorting-fact-from-myth https://www.euro.who.int/en/health-topics/health-emergencies...

adolph 5y ago

No Studies found for: covid-19 | pfizer BioNTech | Start date on or after 01/01/2022 Maybe it is part of an existing study? https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?cond=covid-19&spons=pfizer+BioNTech https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?cond=covid-19&spons=p...

smallerfish 5y ago

Reuters crashes if the browser has a cookie blocker active - its js expects a certain cookie to be there.

noahmbarr 5y ago

Seems like a day late and a dollar short on this effort.

thehappypm 5y ago
Um, Omicron was discovered 2 months ago.
fpgaminer 5y ago
It's not about Omicron today, it's about Omicron's descendants. Before Omicron, two doses provided >90% protection, and held up well against Delta. Now, two doses provides only 40% protection against Omicron. Whereas three doses bumps that back up to 80%. Given these trends it's clear that we need a plan forward, just in case, for whatever comes on the menu next year. It's likely to be an Omicron descendant, since Omicron is dominating the gene pool. It's a reasonable assumption that an Omicron derived vaccine would have provided >90% protection against Omicron. And so, reasonably, being Omicron-boosted in the future should provide something like 80% protection against whatever the next dominate strain will be, whereas the existing boosters might not fare as well. That's the hope anyway.
- nradov 5y ago
  If you're going to state vaccine effectiveness percentages then you need to define the endpoint. Stating that it provides 40% protection against Omicron is meaningless. Is that against PCR confirmed infection, symptomatic infection, hospitalization, death, or something else? And over what time period? The reality is that two doses of the existing mRNA vaccines still provide very good protection against severe disease for the vast majority of patients. https://peterattiamd.com/covid-part2/ https://peterattiamd.com/covid-part2/
- EricE 5y ago
  Omnicron is so mild for the VAST majority of people that frankly the best thing that can happen is for it to just spread and we all get to heard immunity that much faster. Thankfully it's so much more virulent that this is going to happen whether we like it or not. Makes me think of the old chicken pox parties when I was a kid. The virus is carried by animals and it's not going away. So we had better start figuring out how to more reasonably live with it, stop with the asinine one size fits all solutions; many of them (like cloth masks) that are actually anti-science based and stop destroying so many people's lives - especially children - I can't imagine being a child in todays idiotic overreactive and politically energized environments, especially since children had the least to fear even from the original, pretty nasty virus. Yes, there are even kids that are more at risk - but you don't screw everyone - you protect the vulnerable. Common sense seems to be utterly out the window as everyone is running around panicking; it's beyond nuts.

0xDEEPFAC 5y ago

xadhominemx 5y ago
Two shots reduces chances of hospitalization/death by about 90%. Two shots and a booster by like 98%. Sorry you got the sniffles though.
- 0xDEEPFAC 5y ago
  Yea its hard to argue with Pfizer's data about its own products.
  - NikolaeVarius 5y ago
    - mandmandam 5y ago
      - xadhominemx 5y ago
        This estimate is based on actual death/hospitalization statistics across a number of countries: https://ourworldindata.org/covid-deaths-by-vaccination https://ourworldindata.org/covid-deaths-by-vaccination
        EricE 5y ago
        Two countries. Now do the same with Israel.
        xadhominemx 5y ago
        What data are you referring to?

fpgaminer 5y ago

Whether this pans out into an approved vaccine or not, I'm terribly curious about the results of the study comparing Omicron booster versus existing booster. Apparently the existing booster shot elicited a more diverse set of antibodies compared to the ones from just a two shot regimen. Which is kinda interesting. I forget what it's called, but there's this phenomenon in immunology where the immune system can get "stuck" with whatever initial antibodies it comes up with and doesn't adapt well. Seems that wasn't the case with the COVID boosters, thankfully. And that explains why the boosters have been so dramatically more effective against Omicron (80% versus <40% for those with just two shots, natural immunity, etc; IIRC). But would an Omicron booster have elicited an even "better" set of antibodies? Would we get back to 90% protection like the good ole days? And of course the big question; is an Omicron booster going to provide better forward protection? The results of this study are going to be deliciously intriguing.

flatiron 5y ago
I feel like we are going to have to get a yearly booster and they will be guessing the strains every year just like the flu. Note: 100% a gut feeling
- ethbr0 5y ago
  That was pretty obvious since March 2020. Highly contagious respiratory viruses with non-human reservoirs don't go back into the bottle, once they're circulating.
  - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
    No, but flu is the only one that evolves so quickly that we need a new shot every year.
    - ethbr0 5y ago
      Coronaviruses give people colds too, they just weren't as widespread or symptomatic as influenza. Now, they probably will be.

ukie 5y ago

jbirer 5y ago

NikolaeVarius 5y ago
- bpodgursky 5y ago
  non-natural immunity means an immune response to a very specific part of the spike protein introduced via vaccine (vs exposure to the entire virus wherein your body produces antibodies which target a diversity of binding sites)
  - hcknwscommenter 5y ago
    a diversity of binding sites, almost none of which (outside spike protein binders) actually neutralize the virus.
    - bpodgursky 5y ago
      If there as no difference, the Moderna vaccine would be as effective as infection at preventing reinfection, but it isn't. So what drives the difference? (yes, it is highly effective at preventing hospitalization and death, but it's clearly a muted response)
      - hcknwscommenter 5y ago
        "but it isn't" That is simply untrue. You are likely referring to the Israeli data which has not reproduced. Proof: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7044e1.htm?s_cid=mm7044e1_w https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7044e1.htm?s_cid=mm... . Bottom line: natural immunity is not so great. Get vaccinated. What drives the difference? Just speculating, but during natural infection the immune system will generate a huge number of disparate antibodies that do nothing because when they bind their targets it doesn't block the virus. Vaccination localizes the immune response to the key cell-receptor binding sites.

b0sk 5y ago

Omicron is not mild to the unvaccinated.. and as a result, to the hospital infrastructure.

qbasic_forever 5y ago
50% of people recently hospitalized in King county, Washington, (where Seattle is located) are vaccinated: https://kingcounty.gov/depts/health/covid-19/data/vaccination-outcomes.aspx https://kingcounty.gov/depts/health/covid-19/data/vaccinatio... It appears for some vaccinated people Omicron is not mild either.
- foxyv 5y ago
  Keep in mind that 69% of the population in Washington is vaccinated. This will skew the proportion of hospitalized towards the vaccinated. Vaccination seems to be about 70% effective at preventing serious disease requiring hospitalization. So yeah, not mild in vaccinated people either, just less horrifyingly bad. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2119270 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2119270
  - Ancapistani 5y ago
    It’s not quite that simple, because the proportion of the population who are vaccinated isn’t representative of the whole.