8 ms·

Covid-19 vaccine doses, once in high demand, now thrown away

41 points by lxm 4y ago

jleyank 4y ago
Because COVID changed (fortunately, I hope). Delta was bad, but Omicron was not so the pressure on people to pay attention was reduced/removed. Hopefully, the changes to Omicron don't return "strength" to go along with "transmissibility". The signal-to-noise ratio for COVID was terrible, and people just decided it was over. The last wave didn't end up in hospital and if they think about it at all they assume all future waves won't either. Hope so... Endemic COVID, which is sorta the endgame that people want/expect, has it turning into somewhere between a cold and a bad flu in strength/effect. We'll see.
- redeeman 4y ago
  - Someone1234 4y ago
    > peoples initial state of extreme fear(that they were told to have) Estimated US flu deaths[0] between 2010 and 2020 (i.e. 10 years): 359K. Estimated US Covid-19 deaths[1] between January 2020 and today (i.e. 2.5 years): 1,044,557 Can we stop with this disingenuous narrative? People rightfully perceived a level of heightened risk, ahead of a working vaccine, and took reasonable precautions. If it was as dangerous as the flu, we would have seen 90K deaths not 1M+. [0] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/past-seasons.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/past-seasons.html [1] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
    - dustinmoris 4y ago
      - saithier 4y ago
        That's a fairly psychopathic take on the situation.
        decebalus1 4y ago
        'Psychopathic' is a generous take, as it would assume some level of truth. The take is just wrong and mindlessly repeats the contrarian bullshit we've been hearing for the past two years. I'm very disappointed to be reading it on hackernews actually.
      - rxhernandez 4y ago
        If it wasn't for the last two sentences I would have thought this wasn't satire. Good god, from calling an order of magnitude in difference as only "a few" to the false equivalences, you really nailed the poor logic I saw at the beginning of the pandemic.
    - slaw 4y ago
      For younger than 60 years olds it was just like flu. Second link on duckduckgo shows average age of mortality from Covid is 81.5 https://www.brightworkresearch.com/how-the-average-age-of-mortality-from-covid-is-81-5/ https://www.brightworkresearch.com/how-the-average-age-of-mo...
    - stolenmerch 4y ago
      ~75% of those deaths were among people of retirement age or older. I think it's fair to question whether it was "reasonable precaution" to shut down schools, people's workplace, and entire sectors of the economy. Simply showing the total body count doesn't even begin to describe the complexity of balanced risk assessment for younger people and what was allowed to be considered a "disingenuous narrative" or not. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-from-covid-by-age-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-...
      - corrral 4y ago
        Operation of our economy relies a lot on free or paid labor from old people, though. We can't isolate them and keep the economy running normally. How do you think poor people get child care so they can go to work, for one thing? I do think there's room to criticize what was done, but I don't think "just isolate old people" was ever a practical option, and I don't think the alternative of "we're keeping things open and not isolating old people, so make sure you say anything you've been meaning to to your elderly parents really soon, because... well, you know" was ever gonna go over well. > I think it's fair to question whether it was "reasonable precaution" to shut down schools, I know enough teachers and was privy to their thoughts and observations during the pandemic that I'm quite confident schools were going to shut down no matter what official policy was. Lots of teachers are married to higher earners, and they're basically all working because they want to. They'd have stopped wanting to, and the schools wouldn't have been able to remain open with normal hours and procedures, with their much-reduced staff. A couple districts I know for a fact faced near-revolt over measures that were regarded as insufficient and coupled with tone-deaf messaging, and had to adjust or the scenario above was definitely going to happen and they'd have lost 10+% of their staff all at once, which is enough to completely mess them up. Whether their opinions were based on reality hardly matters: fact is, schools were going to shutdown, one way or another.
    - listenallyall 4y ago
      There used to be a time when young people challenged the government narrative. Now they are the most vociferous in repeating and amplifying it without an ounce of doubt or questioning.
    - redeeman 4y ago
      dont think you can compare numbers like that, in which years between 2010 and 2020 did they flu test traffic deaths and stabbing victims?
- rajman187 4y ago
  > Endemic COVID, which is sorta the endgame that people want/expect Textbook case of a self-fulfilling prophecy. It was said from the beginning that would be the ultimate result and very little was done as a coordinated global effort to avoid it. And that inspired little confidence in regard to the next pandemic, whenever it may be.
  - azinman2 4y ago
    There was much done, but to ill effect with a large percentage of people actively blocking any efforts. What do you suggest should have been done that wasn’t attempted?
    - rajman187 4y ago
      A lot to unpack but off the top of my head, the US was wide open compared to UK/EU; the biggest mistake initially was the communication from WHO and CDC recommending that masks were not necessary, and subsequent backtrack that eroded public confidence leading to even less compliance; mask mandates were dropped everywhere; and the worst is this insistence of combatting fomite transmission—which is completely false—having hand sanitizers installed everywhere but nowhere do you find improvements to ventilation and air filtration, for instance. edit: and I agree a lot was done, but certainly not in any unified manner. in this age of hyper-globalized economies, countries cannot effectively act as individual entities when dealing with pandemics.
      - azinman2 4y ago
        You’ve seen how the public has reacted to mask mandates. When something requires cooperation of the entire world, it’s at that point more about risk mitigation than elimination. We have seen similar or even worse numbers in UK/EU over time. Theres a notion of being open, and then there’s public conformance. Totally agree masking and filtration could have been massively improved, but it wasn’t known for a while that masks were the right thing. Everyone needs to give the health officials some latitude when something is brand new and being studied in real time. Of course communication could be improved, but it didn’t help it was also politically inconvenient (along with all the false information) so the comms no matter what would be challenged.
uwagar 4y ago
wonderbore 4y ago
So, good news? I hope this means more will go to underdeveloped countries now. The African continent averages at 40 doses per 100 people while the rest of the world is at 154 https://www.statista.com/statistics/1245573/covid-19-vaccination-rate-in-africa-compared-to-the-world/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1245573/covid-19-vaccina... The NYT’s visualization makes this painfully clear: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/world/covid-vaccinations-tracker.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/world/covid-vaccina...
- bsaul 4y ago
  "painfully clear " although it's quite unclear if (most of) those countries really need vaccines. Their fatality rate has always been orders of magnitude lower than in eur / us..
  - Trouble_007 4y ago
    >Their fatality rate has always been orders of magnitude lower than in eur / us..< You might like to look at the life-expectancy figures for those Countries.
    - alaxsxaq 4y ago
      You might like to explain how population life-expectancy figures correlate with covid fatality rates in a meaningful way.
      - __blockcipher__ 4y ago
        I'll take this one. The vast majority of COVID risk is stratified in the very elderly and/or those with diseases of modernity / metabolic syndrome type conditions. Both of those categories (age & diseases of modernity) are much more present in wealthy, fat first-world countries than they are 2nd and 3rd world countries. Thus the utility of reducing COVID mortality is much, much lower in those less "advanced" countries. I'd also add that even if the absolute death weren't lower in the 3rd world, the relative death would. Being able to be freaked out about an average of .3% chance of dying of COVID if infected is a luxury that those countries struggling with malaria, rampant malnutrition, and insufficient non-COVID vaccination don't really have.
whoomp12342 4y ago
now that ba.5 is the dominant variant, seriously, what is the efficacy of the original covid-19 vaccine? does it actually reduce spreading and by how much?
- superkuh 4y ago
  Look at the UK's monitoring re: vaccine effectiveness against infection as described in table 3 of this document: "COVID-19 vaccine surveillance report: 16 June 2022 (week 24)" https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1083443/Vaccine-surveillance-report-week-24.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... from https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-vaccine-weekly-surveillance-reports https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-vaccine-... The current vaccine effectiveness against infection for either Moderna's, BioNTech/Pfizers, or AstroZeneca's against BA.4/BA.5 is 0-30%.
  - drno123 4y ago
    How does 30% compare to flu vaccine? I heard that the flu vaccine is also around 30% effective.
    - superkuh 4y ago
      It varies from year to year. The traditional seasonal flu intramuscular contains 4 different variants it targets, and sometimes the predictions of which sequences to include are wrong. In those years you see sub 50% vaccine efficiencies against infection. Vaccine efficiency versus hospitalization is much better. But the same situation re: igG humoral antibodies from intramuscular vaccination not getting in your nose/throat/etc mucosa apply to flu vaccines. Most people only get intramuscularly vaccinated and so get upper respiratory flu infections and spread but are mostly asymptomatic and unaware. Actual vaccine efficiency for flu intramusculars is probably lower than reported due to the asymptomatic cases. I personally alternate between intramuscular flu vaccines and the Flu Mist intranasal flu vaccine (which you can get by request).
    - OnlyMortal 4y ago
superkuh 4y ago
Intramuscular sars-cov-2 vaccines to produce humoral igM and igG antibodies (and body serum resident T cells) based on a genetic sequence from 2+ years ago are now thrown away. That's unfortunate but a 4th dose has limited returns. What we need is intranasal sars-cov-2 vaccine boosters to provide igM and igA antibodies, and more importantly trained tissue resident T cells, in the upper respiratory mucosa immune compartment where igG antibodies do not penetrate. That's where infection starts and replication goes (mostly) unchecked. Even just updating the sequence to reflect current variants while remaining intramuscular only would be okay and that will happen this fall (too late). But if we really want to mitigate spread and mutation to complement the protection from hospitalization intramusculars give we're going to need continued funding for new vaccines.
- 8note 4y ago
  But how do first doses do now? I'm sure there's still plenty of places that haven't gotten access to a first shot yet
  - xeromal 4y ago
    The current vaccine effectiveness against infection for either Moderna's, BioNTech/Pfizers, or AstroZeneca's against BA.4/BA.5 is 0-30%.
    - azinman2 4y ago
      What’s more important is hospitalization / severe disease / death, which it seems to be much better at.
- doliveira 4y ago
  Sad part I remember back in the beginning of the pandemic people mentioning this: we needed intranasal vaccines to properly stomp transmission. Feels like the initial success of Pfizer and Moderna stopped this development
- amluto 4y ago
  > What we need is … What we need is a vaccine that works better. Everything else is just speculation until it’s tested in well-designed trials that test the right thing in actual humans. Sure, you may think we need an intranasal vaccine and I may think we need an attenuated-virus vaccine stimulating a T cell response against ORF1ab peptides, but we could both be entirely wrong. Keep in mind that the measles vaccine is injectable and produces excellent durable protection against the airborn measles virus. The chickenpox vaccine is an injected live virus vaccine that appears to provide excellent durable protection against chickenpox, which, while it sure looks like a virus that would be transmitted mainly by shedding from blisters, is apparently also airborn. Meanwhile, a hypothetical intranasal vaccine that raised an awesome IgA response with the same affinity as the the IgG antibodies in people vaccinated with the current mRNA vaccines but did nothing else seems unlikely to be especially effective against BA.4 and BA.5.
Trouble_007 4y ago
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/america-has-wasted-least-15-million-covid-vaccine-doses-march-n1278211 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/america-has-wasted-leas... >15 million Covid vaccine doses thrown away in the U.S. since March, new data shows As countries across the world clamor for vaccine doses, U.S. pharmacy chains and state health departments have thrown millions away.< NOTE the Date on this Article >Sept. 1, 2021, 3:26 PM UTC / Updated Sept. 1, 2021, 9:23 PM UTC Unsold and now EOL Vaccines are destroyed. For new Vaccines for Fall release see; Covid-19 Vaccines Candidates in Clinical Trials : https://covid19.trackvaccines.org/vaccines/ https://covid19.trackvaccines.org/vaccines/
clpm4j 4y ago
I recently got Covid. My original vaccine was in April 2021, shot #2 in May 2021, and booster in December 2021. It really knocked me out for a solid week + persistent symptoms and very annoying cough for another two weeks. I would happily take another booster shot but apparently I'm not eligible yet (in California). Shame to hear that some doses are being thrown away - I'd take a shot every other month if it would prevent me from getting Covid again.
- Invictus0 4y ago
  Interesting attitude, and I wonder how much you've been affected by the pro-vaccine fervor over the last few years. Vaccines are still a risky product; your immune system is a highly complex, tightly calibrated system, and every vaccine has a small probability of throwing that system out of order. New research is coming out to show that horrific chronic illnesses like post-viral syndrome and long covid are caused by autoantibodies--antibodies that attack healthy cells. There's a good reason why we're not recommended monthly vaccine doses, and it doesn't just have to do with the cost. Flagging this comment is also pretty ridiculous. Here's the source. https://www.science.org/content/article/rare-cases-coronavirus-vaccines-may-cause-long-covid-symptoms https://www.science.org/content/article/rare-cases-coronavir...
- cat_plus_plus 4y ago
  First Omicron infection is like a bad flu even after shots and older variants, but immune system does wise up to the virus with repeated exposures.
  - rajman187 4y ago
    Not entirely the case, BA2.4 and .5 are exhibiting immune escape. And wait till you hear about BA2.75 that’s going to be a wild ride
    - cat_plus_plus 4y ago
      Immune escape is not a binary. Natural infection produces t-cells trained on every viral protein rather than just ones on the surface, they don't prevent infections but get them under control. In the meantime memory b-cells accumulate and diversify with every exposure. Vaccine kick start was sure helpful, but natural adaptive immunity is not easy to outsmart.
Alex3917 4y ago
In all of Connecticut, less than 3,000 of the ~166k children under five have gotten vaccinated so far. Which is pretty crazy, given that Connecticut was consistently among the top three most vaccinated states, at least until the Omicron wave.
- danhak 4y ago
  It's not crazy when you consider the risk to that population is miniscule, and that the vaccine does have side effects, particularly for young people.
- sudden_dystopia 4y ago
  Is it really crazy that adults who are at risk would vaccinate themselves but not their children that have essentially zero/infinitesimal risk? I took the covid vaccine but there is not a chance in hell, mandated or not, that I would vaccinate my 5 year old for Covid. And yes, he has all of his other vaccines.
  - jmckib 4y ago
    Isn't long covid still a common issue for young kids? And doesn't vaccination reduce the chances of having long covid? Admittedly I haven't done a deep dive on the statistics, just a quick google search.
  - cat_plus_plus 4y ago
    Lingering after effects risk is not really zero, I would go for initial doses but not necessarily indefinite boosters of current shot. However slight is your worry about kid catching COVID, it will be a little less with some protection, resulting in fuller enjoyment of life. All in exchange for at most 2-3 days of side effects after shots.
    - slaw 4y ago
      Kids could have more side effects from covid vaccine than from covid itself. I am not a kid but have long term, almost a year, side effects from Pfizer vaccine.
thaeli 4y ago
Also, a significant number of doses are thrown away in the US because they still come in 5-dose vials. Just shipping single dose would prevent a lot of scenarios where giving one person a booster means throwing away the other four doses in the vial. (The vial is only good for a few hours after being opened.)
cat_plus_plus 4y ago
Well, they are obsolete. If there was a vaccine that could bring Omicron to R < 1 among those who didn't yet have the latest variant, there would be plenty of demand. Especially if it had mild enough side effects for continued regular shots to be preferable to occasional reinfections. As it is, a second Omicron infection after 3 shots seems to be 1-2 days of sniffles while each additional shot is 3 solid days of fever/puking/misery. Common sense suggests not taking something that makes you quite sick again and again. Mind you, someone with no preexisting immunity or one natural infection would do well to get 3 shots rather than risking severe disease or lingering after effects. But how many people in the world are in this position anymore? Everyone willing and able has got the shots and the rest have been exposed multiple times and either developed effective immunity or succumbed to the disease. I can see some corner cases like babies and immunocompromised, but that's not a lot of doses. Hopefully they will have access to stronger / less unpleasant vaccine before long.
- Synaesthesia 4y ago
  Having had the vaccine and COVID, the vaccine has far fewer side effects and offers vetter protection than the virus. This should be pretty clear to anyone who has experienced the same, and the data we have shows that too.
  - slaw 4y ago
    Could you point to that data? My small sample people I know shows the opposite. More side effects from vaccine than covid.
    - Synaesthesia 4y ago
      Well millions dead from COVID and almost none from the vaccine ...
  - cat_plus_plus 4y ago
    How is that different from what I am saying? It's just that if you already had 3 shots and 2 COVIDs, and you had significant side effects from previous shots, the equation is different going forward. But new vaccines that are ahead of circulating variants / tend to not have noticeable side effects would be worth considering.
kmeisthax 4y ago
One thing to remember is that the reason why these doses aren't going to countries that want them is that Bill "Open Source is Communism" Gates said so. Remember when Biden wanted to suspend COVID vaccine patents? Yeah, that got the entire rogues gallery of copyright and patent maximalists to circle the wagons and kill anything even remotely related to poorer countries being able to print their own mRNA. The current situation we have now is what they wanted: rich countries buying up dose after dose long after they are needed while poor countries have to beg and plead for nearly-expired scraps. The end result of this is that vaccine immunity has a shelf-life because the virus has plenty of unexposed individuals to mutate in. No, this wasn't planned, but it is an example of how excessive focus on protecting "intellectual property" generates worse public outcomes.
- fxtentacle 4y ago
  Sadly, that argumentation already falls apart inside rich countries bevause even they only get to 70% vaccination rate due to issues and idiots.
icegreentea2 4y ago
I think it's worth pulling out three points in particular from the article. One is that packaging choices (vial size) made to optimize mass vaccination are now somewhat of a hindrance. This isn't exactly unsurprising that packaging should have to evolve with the type of demand. I know that changing vial sizes probably would require the manufacturers to re-run all of their shelf-life and shipping validations. I wonder where they are along that process. One would have hoped that these validations would have been run earlier - the change in consumption patterns was somewhat predictable. The other is that other countries are -refusing- vaccine donations. As it turns out, infrastructure and logistics constraints, as well as vaccine hestitancy continue to be a problem. Here's another article about that from earlier in 2022 (https://www.politico.com/news/2022/02/22/africa-asks-covid-vaccine-donation-pause-00010667 https://www.politico.com/news/2022/02/22/africa-asks-covid-v...). The article claims the US has a ~12% wastage rate. I'd argue that while that's not insignificant, if the rate can be held at 12% (big if to be fair...), that doesn't seem -that- bad. There's quite a lot of literature on vaccine wastage rates even prior to COVID. From what I've found, a 2.5%-5% wastage rate was considered normal for vaccines in steady-state use in developed countries, while flu vaccine wastage could potentially range from 5-40% (https://www.auditor.on.ca/en/content/annualreports/arreports/en14/304en14.pdf https://www.auditor.on.ca/en/content/annualreports/arreports... Figure 6).
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
tmaly 4y ago
I could imagine the shelf life for these are rather short. Pair that with the efficacy of a 4th dose, and it is not surprising what is happening to the demand.
dirtyid 4y ago
I don't see much formal policy/discussion of 2nd booster with the new variants around. Most people I know have boosted for 6+ months and wondering if it's worth getting 4th shot but there's no official guidance. Like if you can just walk into a pharmacy and get another shot like in US I'd probably do it.
hn2017 4y ago
What we need is for more truth. Unfortunately many Republican and far-right followers think covid is just like the flu. Or worse, that the vaccines have nanochips that will control you. Worst is influential people like Musk who vote for Mayra Flores who is a qanon believer and is against the covid vaccine. Misinformation is one of the worst problems for the future human race.
- HKH2 4y ago
  Can you not see the irony in saying we need more truth and then cherry picking to suit your argument?

41 points by lxm 4y ago

Because COVID changed (fortunately, I hope). Delta was bad, but Omicron was not so the pressure on people to pay attention was reduced/removed. Hopefully, the changes to Omicron don't return "strength" to go along with "transmissibility". The signal-to-noise ratio for COVID was terrible, and people just decided it was over. The last wave didn't end up in hospital and if they think about it at all they assume all future waves won't either. Hope so... Endemic COVID, which is sorta the endgame that people want/expect, has it turning into somewhere between a cold and a bad flu in strength/effect. We'll see.

redeeman 4y ago
- Someone1234 4y ago
  > peoples initial state of extreme fear(that they were told to have) Estimated US flu deaths[0] between 2010 and 2020 (i.e. 10 years): 359K. Estimated US Covid-19 deaths[1] between January 2020 and today (i.e. 2.5 years): 1,044,557 Can we stop with this disingenuous narrative? People rightfully perceived a level of heightened risk, ahead of a working vaccine, and took reasonable precautions. If it was as dangerous as the flu, we would have seen 90K deaths not 1M+. [0] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/past-seasons.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/past-seasons.html [1] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
  - dustinmoris 4y ago
    - saithier 4y ago
      That's a fairly psychopathic take on the situation.
      - decebalus1 4y ago
        'Psychopathic' is a generous take, as it would assume some level of truth. The take is just wrong and mindlessly repeats the contrarian bullshit we've been hearing for the past two years. I'm very disappointed to be reading it on hackernews actually.
    - rxhernandez 4y ago
      If it wasn't for the last two sentences I would have thought this wasn't satire. Good god, from calling an order of magnitude in difference as only "a few" to the false equivalences, you really nailed the poor logic I saw at the beginning of the pandemic.
  - slaw 4y ago
    For younger than 60 years olds it was just like flu. Second link on duckduckgo shows average age of mortality from Covid is 81.5 https://www.brightworkresearch.com/how-the-average-age-of-mortality-from-covid-is-81-5/ https://www.brightworkresearch.com/how-the-average-age-of-mo...
  - stolenmerch 4y ago
    ~75% of those deaths were among people of retirement age or older. I think it's fair to question whether it was "reasonable precaution" to shut down schools, people's workplace, and entire sectors of the economy. Simply showing the total body count doesn't even begin to describe the complexity of balanced risk assessment for younger people and what was allowed to be considered a "disingenuous narrative" or not. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-from-covid-by-age-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-...
    - corrral 4y ago
      Operation of our economy relies a lot on free or paid labor from old people, though. We can't isolate them and keep the economy running normally. How do you think poor people get child care so they can go to work, for one thing? I do think there's room to criticize what was done, but I don't think "just isolate old people" was ever a practical option, and I don't think the alternative of "we're keeping things open and not isolating old people, so make sure you say anything you've been meaning to to your elderly parents really soon, because... well, you know" was ever gonna go over well. > I think it's fair to question whether it was "reasonable precaution" to shut down schools, I know enough teachers and was privy to their thoughts and observations during the pandemic that I'm quite confident schools were going to shut down no matter what official policy was. Lots of teachers are married to higher earners, and they're basically all working because they want to. They'd have stopped wanting to, and the schools wouldn't have been able to remain open with normal hours and procedures, with their much-reduced staff. A couple districts I know for a fact faced near-revolt over measures that were regarded as insufficient and coupled with tone-deaf messaging, and had to adjust or the scenario above was definitely going to happen and they'd have lost 10+% of their staff all at once, which is enough to completely mess them up. Whether their opinions were based on reality hardly matters: fact is, schools were going to shutdown, one way or another.
  - listenallyall 4y ago
    There used to be a time when young people challenged the government narrative. Now they are the most vociferous in repeating and amplifying it without an ounce of doubt or questioning.
  - redeeman 4y ago
    dont think you can compare numbers like that, in which years between 2010 and 2020 did they flu test traffic deaths and stabbing victims?
rajman187 4y ago
> Endemic COVID, which is sorta the endgame that people want/expect Textbook case of a self-fulfilling prophecy. It was said from the beginning that would be the ultimate result and very little was done as a coordinated global effort to avoid it. And that inspired little confidence in regard to the next pandemic, whenever it may be.
- azinman2 4y ago
  There was much done, but to ill effect with a large percentage of people actively blocking any efforts. What do you suggest should have been done that wasn’t attempted?
  - rajman187 4y ago
    A lot to unpack but off the top of my head, the US was wide open compared to UK/EU; the biggest mistake initially was the communication from WHO and CDC recommending that masks were not necessary, and subsequent backtrack that eroded public confidence leading to even less compliance; mask mandates were dropped everywhere; and the worst is this insistence of combatting fomite transmission—which is completely false—having hand sanitizers installed everywhere but nowhere do you find improvements to ventilation and air filtration, for instance. edit: and I agree a lot was done, but certainly not in any unified manner. in this age of hyper-globalized economies, countries cannot effectively act as individual entities when dealing with pandemics.
    - azinman2 4y ago
      You’ve seen how the public has reacted to mask mandates. When something requires cooperation of the entire world, it’s at that point more about risk mitigation than elimination. We have seen similar or even worse numbers in UK/EU over time. Theres a notion of being open, and then there’s public conformance. Totally agree masking and filtration could have been massively improved, but it wasn’t known for a while that masks were the right thing. Everyone needs to give the health officials some latitude when something is brand new and being studied in real time. Of course communication could be improved, but it didn’t help it was also politically inconvenient (along with all the false information) so the comms no matter what would be challenged.

uwagar 4y ago

wonderbore 4y ago

So, good news? I hope this means more will go to underdeveloped countries now. The African continent averages at 40 doses per 100 people while the rest of the world is at 154 https://www.statista.com/statistics/1245573/covid-19-vaccination-rate-in-africa-compared-to-the-world/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1245573/covid-19-vaccina... The NYT’s visualization makes this painfully clear: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/world/covid-vaccinations-tracker.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/world/covid-vaccina...

bsaul 4y ago
"painfully clear " although it's quite unclear if (most of) those countries really need vaccines. Their fatality rate has always been orders of magnitude lower than in eur / us..
- Trouble_007 4y ago
  >Their fatality rate has always been orders of magnitude lower than in eur / us..< You might like to look at the life-expectancy figures for those Countries.
  - alaxsxaq 4y ago
    You might like to explain how population life-expectancy figures correlate with covid fatality rates in a meaningful way.
    - __blockcipher__ 4y ago
      I'll take this one. The vast majority of COVID risk is stratified in the very elderly and/or those with diseases of modernity / metabolic syndrome type conditions. Both of those categories (age & diseases of modernity) are much more present in wealthy, fat first-world countries than they are 2nd and 3rd world countries. Thus the utility of reducing COVID mortality is much, much lower in those less "advanced" countries. I'd also add that even if the absolute death weren't lower in the 3rd world, the relative death would. Being able to be freaked out about an average of .3% chance of dying of COVID if infected is a luxury that those countries struggling with malaria, rampant malnutrition, and insufficient non-COVID vaccination don't really have.

whoomp12342 4y ago

now that ba.5 is the dominant variant, seriously, what is the efficacy of the original covid-19 vaccine? does it actually reduce spreading and by how much?

superkuh 4y ago
Look at the UK's monitoring re: vaccine effectiveness against infection as described in table 3 of this document: "COVID-19 vaccine surveillance report: 16 June 2022 (week 24)" https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1083443/Vaccine-surveillance-report-week-24.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... from https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-vaccine-weekly-surveillance-reports https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-vaccine-... The current vaccine effectiveness against infection for either Moderna's, BioNTech/Pfizers, or AstroZeneca's against BA.4/BA.5 is 0-30%.
- drno123 4y ago
  How does 30% compare to flu vaccine? I heard that the flu vaccine is also around 30% effective.
  - superkuh 4y ago
    It varies from year to year. The traditional seasonal flu intramuscular contains 4 different variants it targets, and sometimes the predictions of which sequences to include are wrong. In those years you see sub 50% vaccine efficiencies against infection. Vaccine efficiency versus hospitalization is much better. But the same situation re: igG humoral antibodies from intramuscular vaccination not getting in your nose/throat/etc mucosa apply to flu vaccines. Most people only get intramuscularly vaccinated and so get upper respiratory flu infections and spread but are mostly asymptomatic and unaware. Actual vaccine efficiency for flu intramusculars is probably lower than reported due to the asymptomatic cases. I personally alternate between intramuscular flu vaccines and the Flu Mist intranasal flu vaccine (which you can get by request).
  - OnlyMortal 4y ago

superkuh 4y ago

Intramuscular sars-cov-2 vaccines to produce humoral igM and igG antibodies (and body serum resident T cells) based on a genetic sequence from 2+ years ago are now thrown away. That's unfortunate but a 4th dose has limited returns. What we need is intranasal sars-cov-2 vaccine boosters to provide igM and igA antibodies, and more importantly trained tissue resident T cells, in the upper respiratory mucosa immune compartment where igG antibodies do not penetrate. That's where infection starts and replication goes (mostly) unchecked. Even just updating the sequence to reflect current variants while remaining intramuscular only would be okay and that will happen this fall (too late). But if we really want to mitigate spread and mutation to complement the protection from hospitalization intramusculars give we're going to need continued funding for new vaccines.

8note 4y ago
But how do first doses do now? I'm sure there's still plenty of places that haven't gotten access to a first shot yet
- xeromal 4y ago
  The current vaccine effectiveness against infection for either Moderna's, BioNTech/Pfizers, or AstroZeneca's against BA.4/BA.5 is 0-30%.
  - azinman2 4y ago
    What’s more important is hospitalization / severe disease / death, which it seems to be much better at.
doliveira 4y ago
Sad part I remember back in the beginning of the pandemic people mentioning this: we needed intranasal vaccines to properly stomp transmission. Feels like the initial success of Pfizer and Moderna stopped this development
amluto 4y ago
> What we need is … What we need is a vaccine that works better. Everything else is just speculation until it’s tested in well-designed trials that test the right thing in actual humans. Sure, you may think we need an intranasal vaccine and I may think we need an attenuated-virus vaccine stimulating a T cell response against ORF1ab peptides, but we could both be entirely wrong. Keep in mind that the measles vaccine is injectable and produces excellent durable protection against the airborn measles virus. The chickenpox vaccine is an injected live virus vaccine that appears to provide excellent durable protection against chickenpox, which, while it sure looks like a virus that would be transmitted mainly by shedding from blisters, is apparently also airborn. Meanwhile, a hypothetical intranasal vaccine that raised an awesome IgA response with the same affinity as the the IgG antibodies in people vaccinated with the current mRNA vaccines but did nothing else seems unlikely to be especially effective against BA.4 and BA.5.

Trouble_007 4y ago

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/america-has-wasted-least-15-million-covid-vaccine-doses-march-n1278211 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/america-has-wasted-leas... >15 million Covid vaccine doses thrown away in the U.S. since March, new data shows As countries across the world clamor for vaccine doses, U.S. pharmacy chains and state health departments have thrown millions away.< NOTE the Date on this Article >Sept. 1, 2021, 3:26 PM UTC / Updated Sept. 1, 2021, 9:23 PM UTC Unsold and now EOL Vaccines are destroyed. For new Vaccines for Fall release see; Covid-19 Vaccines Candidates in Clinical Trials : https://covid19.trackvaccines.org/vaccines/ https://covid19.trackvaccines.org/vaccines/

clpm4j 4y ago

I recently got Covid. My original vaccine was in April 2021, shot #2 in May 2021, and booster in December 2021. It really knocked me out for a solid week + persistent symptoms and very annoying cough for another two weeks. I would happily take another booster shot but apparently I'm not eligible yet (in California). Shame to hear that some doses are being thrown away - I'd take a shot every other month if it would prevent me from getting Covid again.

Invictus0 4y ago
Interesting attitude, and I wonder how much you've been affected by the pro-vaccine fervor over the last few years. Vaccines are still a risky product; your immune system is a highly complex, tightly calibrated system, and every vaccine has a small probability of throwing that system out of order. New research is coming out to show that horrific chronic illnesses like post-viral syndrome and long covid are caused by autoantibodies--antibodies that attack healthy cells. There's a good reason why we're not recommended monthly vaccine doses, and it doesn't just have to do with the cost. Flagging this comment is also pretty ridiculous. Here's the source. https://www.science.org/content/article/rare-cases-coronavirus-vaccines-may-cause-long-covid-symptoms https://www.science.org/content/article/rare-cases-coronavir...
cat_plus_plus 4y ago
First Omicron infection is like a bad flu even after shots and older variants, but immune system does wise up to the virus with repeated exposures.
- rajman187 4y ago
  Not entirely the case, BA2.4 and .5 are exhibiting immune escape. And wait till you hear about BA2.75 that’s going to be a wild ride
  - cat_plus_plus 4y ago
    Immune escape is not a binary. Natural infection produces t-cells trained on every viral protein rather than just ones on the surface, they don't prevent infections but get them under control. In the meantime memory b-cells accumulate and diversify with every exposure. Vaccine kick start was sure helpful, but natural adaptive immunity is not easy to outsmart.

Alex3917 4y ago

In all of Connecticut, less than 3,000 of the ~166k children under five have gotten vaccinated so far. Which is pretty crazy, given that Connecticut was consistently among the top three most vaccinated states, at least until the Omicron wave.

danhak 4y ago
It's not crazy when you consider the risk to that population is miniscule, and that the vaccine does have side effects, particularly for young people.
sudden_dystopia 4y ago
Is it really crazy that adults who are at risk would vaccinate themselves but not their children that have essentially zero/infinitesimal risk? I took the covid vaccine but there is not a chance in hell, mandated or not, that I would vaccinate my 5 year old for Covid. And yes, he has all of his other vaccines.
- jmckib 4y ago
  Isn't long covid still a common issue for young kids? And doesn't vaccination reduce the chances of having long covid? Admittedly I haven't done a deep dive on the statistics, just a quick google search.
- cat_plus_plus 4y ago
  Lingering after effects risk is not really zero, I would go for initial doses but not necessarily indefinite boosters of current shot. However slight is your worry about kid catching COVID, it will be a little less with some protection, resulting in fuller enjoyment of life. All in exchange for at most 2-3 days of side effects after shots.
  - slaw 4y ago
    Kids could have more side effects from covid vaccine than from covid itself. I am not a kid but have long term, almost a year, side effects from Pfizer vaccine.

thaeli 4y ago

Also, a significant number of doses are thrown away in the US because they still come in 5-dose vials. Just shipping single dose would prevent a lot of scenarios where giving one person a booster means throwing away the other four doses in the vial. (The vial is only good for a few hours after being opened.)

cat_plus_plus 4y ago

Well, they are obsolete. If there was a vaccine that could bring Omicron to R < 1 among those who didn't yet have the latest variant, there would be plenty of demand. Especially if it had mild enough side effects for continued regular shots to be preferable to occasional reinfections. As it is, a second Omicron infection after 3 shots seems to be 1-2 days of sniffles while each additional shot is 3 solid days of fever/puking/misery. Common sense suggests not taking something that makes you quite sick again and again. Mind you, someone with no preexisting immunity or one natural infection would do well to get 3 shots rather than risking severe disease or lingering after effects. But how many people in the world are in this position anymore? Everyone willing and able has got the shots and the rest have been exposed multiple times and either developed effective immunity or succumbed to the disease. I can see some corner cases like babies and immunocompromised, but that's not a lot of doses. Hopefully they will have access to stronger / less unpleasant vaccine before long.

Synaesthesia 4y ago
Having had the vaccine and COVID, the vaccine has far fewer side effects and offers vetter protection than the virus. This should be pretty clear to anyone who has experienced the same, and the data we have shows that too.
- slaw 4y ago
  Could you point to that data? My small sample people I know shows the opposite. More side effects from vaccine than covid.
  - Synaesthesia 4y ago
    Well millions dead from COVID and almost none from the vaccine ...
- cat_plus_plus 4y ago
  How is that different from what I am saying? It's just that if you already had 3 shots and 2 COVIDs, and you had significant side effects from previous shots, the equation is different going forward. But new vaccines that are ahead of circulating variants / tend to not have noticeable side effects would be worth considering.

kmeisthax 4y ago

One thing to remember is that the reason why these doses aren't going to countries that want them is that Bill "Open Source is Communism" Gates said so. Remember when Biden wanted to suspend COVID vaccine patents? Yeah, that got the entire rogues gallery of copyright and patent maximalists to circle the wagons and kill anything even remotely related to poorer countries being able to print their own mRNA. The current situation we have now is what they wanted: rich countries buying up dose after dose long after they are needed while poor countries have to beg and plead for nearly-expired scraps. The end result of this is that vaccine immunity has a shelf-life because the virus has plenty of unexposed individuals to mutate in. No, this wasn't planned, but it is an example of how excessive focus on protecting "intellectual property" generates worse public outcomes.

fxtentacle 4y ago
Sadly, that argumentation already falls apart inside rich countries bevause even they only get to 70% vaccination rate due to issues and idiots.

icegreentea2 4y ago

I think it's worth pulling out three points in particular from the article. One is that packaging choices (vial size) made to optimize mass vaccination are now somewhat of a hindrance. This isn't exactly unsurprising that packaging should have to evolve with the type of demand. I know that changing vial sizes probably would require the manufacturers to re-run all of their shelf-life and shipping validations. I wonder where they are along that process. One would have hoped that these validations would have been run earlier - the change in consumption patterns was somewhat predictable. The other is that other countries are -refusing- vaccine donations. As it turns out, infrastructure and logistics constraints, as well as vaccine hestitancy continue to be a problem. Here's another article about that from earlier in 2022 (https://www.politico.com/news/2022/02/22/africa-asks-covid-vaccine-donation-pause-00010667 https://www.politico.com/news/2022/02/22/africa-asks-covid-v...). The article claims the US has a ~12% wastage rate. I'd argue that while that's not insignificant, if the rate can be held at 12% (big if to be fair...), that doesn't seem -that- bad. There's quite a lot of literature on vaccine wastage rates even prior to COVID. From what I've found, a 2.5%-5% wastage rate was considered normal for vaccines in steady-state use in developed countries, while flu vaccine wastage could potentially range from 5-40% (https://www.auditor.on.ca/en/content/annualreports/arreports/en14/304en14.pdf https://www.auditor.on.ca/en/content/annualreports/arreports... Figure 6).

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

tmaly 4y ago

I could imagine the shelf life for these are rather short. Pair that with the efficacy of a 4th dose, and it is not surprising what is happening to the demand.

dirtyid 4y ago

I don't see much formal policy/discussion of 2nd booster with the new variants around. Most people I know have boosted for 6+ months and wondering if it's worth getting 4th shot but there's no official guidance. Like if you can just walk into a pharmacy and get another shot like in US I'd probably do it.

hn2017 4y ago

What we need is for more truth. Unfortunately many Republican and far-right followers think covid is just like the flu. Or worse, that the vaccines have nanochips that will control you. Worst is influential people like Musk who vote for Mayra Flores who is a qanon believer and is against the covid vaccine. Misinformation is one of the worst problems for the future human race.

HKH2 4y ago
Can you not see the irony in saying we need more truth and then cherry picking to suit your argument?