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This vaccine isn't even effective any more against modern forms of Covid. Covid mutates multiple times per year. And by and large, low income countries have not

This vaccine isn't even effective any more against modern forms of Covid. Covid mutates multiple times per year. And by and large, low income countries have not been "overwhelmed" by Covid. I'll add, this study is not comprehensive, there could be other risk factors as well, the other vaccines could have issues, majority of the general population has already contracted Covid at least once, etc etc but some people insist on quadrupling down on dubious mRNA treatments with unknown compounding risks for unknown numbers of people. It's the definition of insanity. It might be worth revisiting alternative therapeutic treatments including monoclonal antibodies and antiviral drugs, rather than continue on this ignorant path. Just a thought.

keewee7 4y ago
>low income countries have not been "overwhelmed" by Covid India was completely devastated by COVID-19. One reason was that India failed to focus their care on actually vulnerable elderly people and they instead had 30-something dudes demanding intensive care and taking up oxygen cylinders for themselves and their families.
- fancybouncy 4y ago
  Isn't most of India's population very young (half of it is under 15)? I'm skeptical that the "vulnerable elderly people" had much impact on India's covid story. Either way, the elderly have already lived their life, isn't it better to focus on the younger people when a choice must be made?
  - noduerme 4y ago
    If you had two hard drives and had to destroy one, without knowing what was on them, only how much information they each contained... wouldn't you keep the one with more stored in its memory?
    - Kwpolska 4y ago
      You’re focusing on the memories and experiences of a person, but are completely ignoring the potential to grow, develop, and do things - something that 30-year-olds have, and 90-year-olds pretty much don’t.
      - noduerme 4y ago
        But it only takes 30 years to make a 30 year old. They're at least 3x more replaceable than 90 year olds. [edit] also, do things for whom? To what end if not to build experience?
        abofh 4y ago
        Alternatively, most 30 year olds have 30 more years to contribute to society. Most 90 year olds do not.
        archagon 4y ago
        Why is “ability to contribute to society” a factor in considering who to save? Down that path lies euthanasia of the disabled and mentally ill.
        fancybouncy 4y ago
        and this is bad how?
    - headsoup 4y ago
      Yeah it definitely makes sense to sacrifice the children for the elderly, I mean what good are the kids of tomorrow without the old of today. In other words I'm saying that's a silly analogy
      - noduerme 4y ago
        >> what good are the kids of tomorrow without the old of today Worshipping youth in its ignorance and speed while discarding the wisdom of elders is called fascism. The right question would be what can civilization hope to achieve besides a reversion to barbarism and "Lord of the Flies" if it doesn't hold its oldest, most vulnerable and most wise members, and their experience, in the highest regard? The young have always been proud and disposable. And if they don't die young, they get old. Then maybe they have something more interesting to say.
  - joshuahedlund 4y ago
    When you have 1.4 billion people, even a lower proportion of older folks is a huge number. Including a lot lost “only” in their 50’s and 60’s.
- ramraj07 4y ago
  I agree that india bungled their Covid response royally (though not unexpectedly for me) but what evidence do you have that it was all because of 30-somethings hogging the oxygen cylinders. I myself predicted there will be a run on oxygen concentrators and had one rented for my mom in case. But when delta hit I couldn’t in good conscience keep it and returned it back to the hospital. I know many rich families did not do that and hoarded cylinders and concentrators like this when people were dying. However I’m not convinced that this was the reason for the massive suffering caused in india. It’s just another facet of the cruelty that happened during this time.
- chrisco255 4y ago
  India suffered a 28% increase in excessive deaths from 2020-2021: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.09.30.21264376v2 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.09.30.21264376v... In line with many first world countries: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-deaths-cumulative-per-100k-economist?country=OWID_WRL~CHN~IND~USA~IDN~BRA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-deaths-cumulative-... Notably, sub-Saharan Africa did not suffer greatly from Covid.
  - noduerme 4y ago
    >> Notably, sub-Saharan Africa did not suffer greatly from Covid. Neither did China. How stunning. It must be due to their fantastic public health systems.
    - headsoup 4y ago
      Ah, it's a conspiracy when these countries 'do well' but everything you are told in the West is true huh?
      - noduerme 4y ago
        Even if everything stated in western journalism were complete lies, I don't see how that would make the reporting out of autocratic dictatorships any truer.
        DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
        Do you know anyone in China? Just ask them what life was like for most of zero-CoVID. Most people didn't even know a single person who had gotten infected. You don't have to arbitrarily trust some authority. Everyone in the country could see from their own experience that spread of the virus really was being effectively controlled.
        headsoup 4y ago
        Depends if you believe everything that comes out of a dictatorship is a lie. How untrue is it? We know it's under-reported, but who do you trust to find the truth? The question is, do you think it is easier or harder to spot the lies of Western journalism, and what problems does that cause in forming a base to judge others?
- chiefalchemist 4y ago
  It sounds more like India was devestated by selfishness and misguided priorities. Covid just happened to be there to take the blame.
tsimionescu 4y ago
I'm not sure about the monoclonal antibody treatments, but antivirals have much much worse side-effects than vaccinating the entire population, even if we did have one that worked on Covid-19 (which, unlike vaccines, we don't). By and large, the Covid-19 mRNA vaccines have probably been some of the most extraordinary accomplishments in medicine, with unthinkably low risks given the speed with which they were developed. We took a gamble, but the magnitude of evidence we now have that they are safe is incredible, they are up there with some of the most common OTC medicine. Fortunately, the vaccines still seem to offer some protection to make sure that vaccinated people are less likely to have a severe form of Covid-19.
- chrisco255 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - fabian2k 4y ago
    The mRNA vaccines drastically reduce severe disease and death in elderly people, it's a really strong and easily observed effect. And they were developed in record time compared to any previous vaccine, so that is certainly a very impressive accomplishment. Against earlier variants of the virus the vaccines were also very impressive in preventing infections. Far higher than the 50% minimum standard that was set when the development started.
- jinpa_zangpo 4y ago
  I'm willing to believe the mRNA vaccines have "saved a lot of lives" but there is a study that I haven't yet seen and I'd like to see: compare the number of deaths per hundred thousand in 2022 between the vaccinated and unvaccinated broken down into ten year age groups. 2022 because it's the year that the omicron strain has dominated. My hypothesis is that there will be no significant difference below 60 and an advantage for the vaccinated above 60, but that's just my guess and I'd like to see this very simple study done.
  - headsoup 4y ago
noduerme 4y ago
The AZ vax is not an mRNA vaccine. In fact the entire point of this article is that the adenovirus vehicle in the AZ vax is the culprit. When all is said and done, the mRNA vaccines (Pfizer, Moderna) saved a lot of lives. Moreover they showed that the technology is safe and viable, so expect to see a lot more of that type of in-body, self assembling vaccine for everything from influenza to cancer in the next decade. Of course any formula can have unwanted side effects, whether it's generated in your body or not, but doing nothing and waiting to see how a virus treats you isn't safe, either. You could get pretty fucked up either way, but you're less likely to get fucked up from the vax, and less likely to get fucked up from covid if you had the vax. There's risk in everything. Do the math and take the route with best survival rate. In this case, even the AZ vax was a clear winner over getting covid unvaccinated in 2021.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
threatofrain 4y ago
It would be helpful if you made specific citations for empirical work. This isn't the kind of question that is benefitted by reasoning from first principles.
- dennis_jeeves1 4y ago
  >It would be helpful if you made specific citations for empirical work. Are personal observations be good enough, or will they be dismissed as mere anecdotes?
rajman187 4y ago
This makes no sense, the AstraZeneca vaccine isn’t an mRNA formulation but rather a vector vaccine (genetic material from the COVID-19 virus is placed in a modified version of a different virus—the vector—which gets into your cells and delivers genetic material that gives your body’s cells instructions to make copies of the S protein). The mRNA vaccines worked to improve immunity and reduce the effects once infected; and to your point about mutations, the mRNA encoding the spike can be modified accordingly as this is a very quick and scalable method of delivery. Given the hundreds of millions of people that have received mRNA vaccines I think generally we have an understanding of their safety. The only insanity I see is people still now trying to deny vaccine efficacy, either as government conspiracy theories or through poor scientific understanding.
- sneak 4y ago
  > Given the hundreds of millions of people that have received mRNA vaccines I think generally we have an understanding of their safety. The conclusion does not follow from the premise. Five months following a covid infection in which I had 4-6 weeks of neurological deficit, I received the bivalent mRNA booster, which seemed to somehow reactivate the neurological issues for a few days or a week. Doctors told me this is not uncommon. These are not "safe" in the same way we mean that MSG or acetaminophen are "safe". Corners were necessarily cut in the trials of these during development to accelerate time to market. They saved lives, the gamble paid off. But the trial protocols are in place for a reason and we do not fully understand these drugs as yet.
  - landemva 4y ago
    > following a covid infection ... I received the bivalent mRNA booster After a real infection you develop anti-bodies. Why then get the vaccine which would be less good protection and have risks?
  - rajman187 4y ago
    The post I replied to stated > dubious mRNA treatments with unknown compounding risks for unknown numbers of people If that was the case, after 100s of millions of doses given out shouldn’t these have surfaced in sufficient numbers? Sorry about your condition, but there’s nothing there that suggests it is related to the mRNA formulation; you could just as easily experienced the same with a viral vector formulation or even without any booster (long covid, if that’s what you had, is not without relapses) Development corners were not cut, that’s the point of the mRNA formulation, it is incredibly faster than conventional methods to create a brand new product. I assume what you meant was the regulatory requirements for safety, which yes were accelerated and reduced because of the emergency use case. Two years ago. Those trials are tests on large populations , phase 3 being the largest then phase 4 a post-marketing surveillance period [0]. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phases_of_clinical_research https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phases_of_clinical_research
Zigurd 4y ago
China is currently amidst an explosion of covid cases and deaths. Outside the first tier cities, China is still a low income country. If you look at the excess deaths numbers across nations, you will see that some kept good records, while some did not. The deaths reported through official channels are about 1/3rd of excess deaths. There is plenty of room for official reports to understate deaths, which makes it tempting for incompetent governments to minimize failures.

keewee7 4y ago

>low income countries have not been "overwhelmed" by Covid India was completely devastated by COVID-19. One reason was that India failed to focus their care on actually vulnerable elderly people and they instead had 30-something dudes demanding intensive care and taking up oxygen cylinders for themselves and their families.

fancybouncy 4y ago
Isn't most of India's population very young (half of it is under 15)? I'm skeptical that the "vulnerable elderly people" had much impact on India's covid story. Either way, the elderly have already lived their life, isn't it better to focus on the younger people when a choice must be made?
- noduerme 4y ago
  If you had two hard drives and had to destroy one, without knowing what was on them, only how much information they each contained... wouldn't you keep the one with more stored in its memory?
  - Kwpolska 4y ago
    You’re focusing on the memories and experiences of a person, but are completely ignoring the potential to grow, develop, and do things - something that 30-year-olds have, and 90-year-olds pretty much don’t.
    - noduerme 4y ago
      But it only takes 30 years to make a 30 year old. They're at least 3x more replaceable than 90 year olds. [edit] also, do things for whom? To what end if not to build experience?
      - abofh 4y ago
        Alternatively, most 30 year olds have 30 more years to contribute to society. Most 90 year olds do not.
        archagon 4y ago
        Why is “ability to contribute to society” a factor in considering who to save? Down that path lies euthanasia of the disabled and mentally ill.
        fancybouncy 4y ago
        and this is bad how?
  - headsoup 4y ago
    Yeah it definitely makes sense to sacrifice the children for the elderly, I mean what good are the kids of tomorrow without the old of today. In other words I'm saying that's a silly analogy
    - noduerme 4y ago
      >> what good are the kids of tomorrow without the old of today Worshipping youth in its ignorance and speed while discarding the wisdom of elders is called fascism. The right question would be what can civilization hope to achieve besides a reversion to barbarism and "Lord of the Flies" if it doesn't hold its oldest, most vulnerable and most wise members, and their experience, in the highest regard? The young have always been proud and disposable. And if they don't die young, they get old. Then maybe they have something more interesting to say.
- joshuahedlund 4y ago
  When you have 1.4 billion people, even a lower proportion of older folks is a huge number. Including a lot lost “only” in their 50’s and 60’s.
ramraj07 4y ago
I agree that india bungled their Covid response royally (though not unexpectedly for me) but what evidence do you have that it was all because of 30-somethings hogging the oxygen cylinders. I myself predicted there will be a run on oxygen concentrators and had one rented for my mom in case. But when delta hit I couldn’t in good conscience keep it and returned it back to the hospital. I know many rich families did not do that and hoarded cylinders and concentrators like this when people were dying. However I’m not convinced that this was the reason for the massive suffering caused in india. It’s just another facet of the cruelty that happened during this time.
chrisco255 4y ago
India suffered a 28% increase in excessive deaths from 2020-2021: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.09.30.21264376v2 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.09.30.21264376v... In line with many first world countries: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-deaths-cumulative-per-100k-economist?country=OWID_WRL~CHN~IND~USA~IDN~BRA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-deaths-cumulative-... Notably, sub-Saharan Africa did not suffer greatly from Covid.
- noduerme 4y ago
  >> Notably, sub-Saharan Africa did not suffer greatly from Covid. Neither did China. How stunning. It must be due to their fantastic public health systems.
  - headsoup 4y ago
    Ah, it's a conspiracy when these countries 'do well' but everything you are told in the West is true huh?
    - noduerme 4y ago
      Even if everything stated in western journalism were complete lies, I don't see how that would make the reporting out of autocratic dictatorships any truer.
      - DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
        Do you know anyone in China? Just ask them what life was like for most of zero-CoVID. Most people didn't even know a single person who had gotten infected. You don't have to arbitrarily trust some authority. Everyone in the country could see from their own experience that spread of the virus really was being effectively controlled.
      - headsoup 4y ago
        Depends if you believe everything that comes out of a dictatorship is a lie. How untrue is it? We know it's under-reported, but who do you trust to find the truth? The question is, do you think it is easier or harder to spot the lies of Western journalism, and what problems does that cause in forming a base to judge others?
chiefalchemist 4y ago
It sounds more like India was devestated by selfishness and misguided priorities. Covid just happened to be there to take the blame.

tsimionescu 4y ago

I'm not sure about the monoclonal antibody treatments, but antivirals have much much worse side-effects than vaccinating the entire population, even if we did have one that worked on Covid-19 (which, unlike vaccines, we don't). By and large, the Covid-19 mRNA vaccines have probably been some of the most extraordinary accomplishments in medicine, with unthinkably low risks given the speed with which they were developed. We took a gamble, but the magnitude of evidence we now have that they are safe is incredible, they are up there with some of the most common OTC medicine. Fortunately, the vaccines still seem to offer some protection to make sure that vaccinated people are less likely to have a severe form of Covid-19.

chrisco255 4y ago
[flagged]
- fabian2k 4y ago
  The mRNA vaccines drastically reduce severe disease and death in elderly people, it's a really strong and easily observed effect. And they were developed in record time compared to any previous vaccine, so that is certainly a very impressive accomplishment. Against earlier variants of the virus the vaccines were also very impressive in preventing infections. Far higher than the 50% minimum standard that was set when the development started.
jinpa_zangpo 4y ago
I'm willing to believe the mRNA vaccines have "saved a lot of lives" but there is a study that I haven't yet seen and I'd like to see: compare the number of deaths per hundred thousand in 2022 between the vaccinated and unvaccinated broken down into ten year age groups. 2022 because it's the year that the omicron strain has dominated. My hypothesis is that there will be no significant difference below 60 and an advantage for the vaccinated above 60, but that's just my guess and I'd like to see this very simple study done.
- headsoup 4y ago

noduerme 4y ago

The AZ vax is not an mRNA vaccine. In fact the entire point of this article is that the adenovirus vehicle in the AZ vax is the culprit. When all is said and done, the mRNA vaccines (Pfizer, Moderna) saved a lot of lives. Moreover they showed that the technology is safe and viable, so expect to see a lot more of that type of in-body, self assembling vaccine for everything from influenza to cancer in the next decade. Of course any formula can have unwanted side effects, whether it's generated in your body or not, but doing nothing and waiting to see how a virus treats you isn't safe, either. You could get pretty fucked up either way, but you're less likely to get fucked up from the vax, and less likely to get fucked up from covid if you had the vax. There's risk in everything. Do the math and take the route with best survival rate. In this case, even the AZ vax was a clear winner over getting covid unvaccinated in 2021.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

threatofrain 4y ago

It would be helpful if you made specific citations for empirical work. This isn't the kind of question that is benefitted by reasoning from first principles.

dennis_jeeves1 4y ago
>It would be helpful if you made specific citations for empirical work. Are personal observations be good enough, or will they be dismissed as mere anecdotes?

rajman187 4y ago

This makes no sense, the AstraZeneca vaccine isn’t an mRNA formulation but rather a vector vaccine (genetic material from the COVID-19 virus is placed in a modified version of a different virus—the vector—which gets into your cells and delivers genetic material that gives your body’s cells instructions to make copies of the S protein). The mRNA vaccines worked to improve immunity and reduce the effects once infected; and to your point about mutations, the mRNA encoding the spike can be modified accordingly as this is a very quick and scalable method of delivery. Given the hundreds of millions of people that have received mRNA vaccines I think generally we have an understanding of their safety. The only insanity I see is people still now trying to deny vaccine efficacy, either as government conspiracy theories or through poor scientific understanding.

sneak 4y ago
> Given the hundreds of millions of people that have received mRNA vaccines I think generally we have an understanding of their safety. The conclusion does not follow from the premise. Five months following a covid infection in which I had 4-6 weeks of neurological deficit, I received the bivalent mRNA booster, which seemed to somehow reactivate the neurological issues for a few days or a week. Doctors told me this is not uncommon. These are not "safe" in the same way we mean that MSG or acetaminophen are "safe". Corners were necessarily cut in the trials of these during development to accelerate time to market. They saved lives, the gamble paid off. But the trial protocols are in place for a reason and we do not fully understand these drugs as yet.
- landemva 4y ago
  > following a covid infection ... I received the bivalent mRNA booster After a real infection you develop anti-bodies. Why then get the vaccine which would be less good protection and have risks?
- rajman187 4y ago
  The post I replied to stated > dubious mRNA treatments with unknown compounding risks for unknown numbers of people If that was the case, after 100s of millions of doses given out shouldn’t these have surfaced in sufficient numbers? Sorry about your condition, but there’s nothing there that suggests it is related to the mRNA formulation; you could just as easily experienced the same with a viral vector formulation or even without any booster (long covid, if that’s what you had, is not without relapses) Development corners were not cut, that’s the point of the mRNA formulation, it is incredibly faster than conventional methods to create a brand new product. I assume what you meant was the regulatory requirements for safety, which yes were accelerated and reduced because of the emergency use case. Two years ago. Those trials are tests on large populations , phase 3 being the largest then phase 4 a post-marketing surveillance period [0]. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phases_of_clinical_research https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phases_of_clinical_research

Zigurd 4y ago

China is currently amidst an explosion of covid cases and deaths. Outside the first tier cities, China is still a low income country. If you look at the excess deaths numbers across nations, you will see that some kept good records, while some did not. The deaths reported through official channels are about 1/3rd of excess deaths. There is plenty of room for official reports to understate deaths, which makes it tempting for incompetent governments to minimize failures.