5 ms·

There no longer exists any real debate. Effectiveness of the vaccines have waned over time but as stated in the article "Our findings support the conclusion tha

There no longer exists any real debate. Effectiveness of the vaccines have waned over time but as stated in the article "Our findings support the conclusion that COVID-19 vaccines remain the most important tool to prevent infection and death."

sojournerc 5y ago
Unless you've been infected already. Natural immunity is as good or better than the vaccine.
- throw0101a 5y ago
  This is does not appear to be true: "Antibodies elicited by mRNA-1273 vaccination bind more broadly to the receptor binding domain than do those from SARS-CoV-2 infection" * https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scitranslmed.abi9915 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scitranslmed.abi9915 > These findings suggest that among persons with previous SARS-CoV-2 infection, full vaccination provides additional protection against reinfection. Among previously infected Kentucky residents, those who were not vaccinated were more than twice as likely to be reinfected compared with those with full vaccination. All eligible persons should be offered vaccination, including those with previous SARS-CoV-2 infection, to reduce their risk for future infection. * https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7032e1.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7032e1.htm
  - sojournerc 5y ago
    I don't know enough about immunology to say whether "binding more broadly" confers more immunity or not. It would certainly go against prior knowledge about human immune responses for a single spike protein (vaccine) to elicit a greater immune response than _the actual virus_. That CDC study is so bad I'm surprised they had the gall to publish it with the conclusion they did. Testing positive says nothing about severity of infection. > were about five times more likely to test positive for the infection than people who had been vaccinated Testing positive is not a very good metric. Were they hospitalized? Was it severe? Did they even get sick, or just test positive? They even admit to a sampling flaw in the discussion: > Second, persons who have been vaccinated are possibly less likely to get tested. Therefore, the association of reinfection and lack of vaccination might be overestimated. The best study on this so far is from Israel with a much larger sample in a highly vaccinated country. Here's a Harvard doctor discussing the contradictory studies. https://brownstone.org/articles/a-review-and-autopsy-of-two-covid-immunity-studies/ https://brownstone.org/articles/a-review-and-autopsy-of-two-... > For a low-risk person, which includes most people with natural immunity, a 35% risk reduction is more marginal in terms of absolute risk. > Based on the solid evidence from the Israeli study, the Covid recovered have stronger and longer-lasting immunity against Covid disease than the vaccinated. Hence, there is no reason to prevent them from activities that are permitted to the vaccinated. In fact, it is discriminatory.
    - angelzen 5y ago
      I found a Feb 2021 piece from Derek Lowe a good 30k ft overview of how the immune system works. tl;dr it is stochastic, with a wide range of antibodies having different effects against an infection, some of them even negative (OAS). Usually the aggregate effect is positive, and the infection is cleared out. "It's important to realize, though, that all immune responses to a viral infection generate a mixture of neutralizing and non-neutralizing antibodies. That's one of the things about the immune system - it revs up production of a wide variety of antibodies, selected from the untold billions of them circulating around in your bloodstream. Some of them bind to one part of the pathogen, and some to another. And they bind in different conformations, sticking to different parts of the surface of the invading virus from different directions." It is conceivable that a targeted vaccine is more effective at shutting down an infection than natural immunity by focusing the immune system to produce a narrow band of very effective antibodies. The tradeoff is that a virus mutation can create a catastrophic situation where the same antibodies are less effective, possibly having negative efficiency enhancing the infection. The risk is amplified by vaccinating the entire population with the exact same protein sequence, creating hundreds of millions of living incubators for the virus to learn how to evade the narrow antibody response. We are creating a biological landscape prone to black swan events. Good luck convincing any total vaxer that this is a very real risk. They will laugh and sneer and maybe call you criminal because obviously the data shows the vaccines are safe and effective. "Hahaha, I've been told that we're all going to be dead by now, look at those peddling conspiracy theories." Just like the Wall Street crowd created the run-up to the 2008 crisis. Who could have possibly predicted that CDOs were prone to a black swan? https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/antibody-dependent-enhancement-and-coronavirus-vaccines https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/antibody-dependent...
      - throw0101a 5y ago
        > We are creating a biological landscape prone to black swan events. Good luck convincing any total vaxer that this is a very real risk. They will laugh and sneer and maybe call you criminal because obviously the data shows the vaccines are safe and effective. If you don't survive the problems of today, then there's no point in worrying about tomorrow's possibilities because you're dead. The data does show that the COVID vaccines are generally safe and pretty effective. Not 100%, but the perfect is the enemy of the good, and so let's try to improve our lot now so we have a chance to fight for later.
formerly_proven 5y ago
A charitable interpretation of GP would be that he referred to ending of restrictions (masks, testing, papers please, lockdowns etc.) after a vaccine becomes widely available. These hopes have certainly been raised by politicians in late 2020 and early 2021 ("just have to get herd immunity through the vaccine and we're done"[1]). However, the reality is that e.g. in Germany case numbers and incidence numbers are reaching new all-time-highs every day now despite 70-75 % of all people being vaccinated. These hopes were probably based on experiences with "normal" vaccines, which are apt to eradicate diseases through sterile immunity (though there are a bunch of exceptions to this, it's not like we're getting rid of the flu and some other stuff by vaccinations [2]). However, we since learned that a vaccine providing sterile immunity against COVID-19 seems to be off the table (as none of them are), so herd immunity against COVID-19 will likely never be a thing and eradicating COVID-19 is just not possible. [1] Herd immunity was THE talking point in early 2021 in Germany. Also, remember a few countries trying to get herd immunity by intentionally letting the virus spread (great britain cough cough)? [2] Sterile immunity seems to be difficult with respiratory diseases (flu, covid, cold, pertussis come to mind). Naively I'd guess that's because the critters have some time to multiply on the surface of the airways and be infectious before the immune system gets a chance to nuke 'em. If that's the explanation though I'm kinda wondering why the herd immunity theory was so common, so it's probably more complicated than that.
- Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
  > However, the reality is that e.g. in Germany case numbers and incidence numbers are reaching new all-time-highs every day now despite 70-75 % of all people being vaccinated. COVID cases are nearing all-time highs, but COVID deaths remain significantly lower than before. Source: https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data?country=~DEU https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data?country=~DEU
  - formerly_proven 5y ago
    Which is great, but we're still seeing a large influx to ICUs which will cause problems allocating ICU beds shortly (unless the trend reverses). To get that trend reversal high incidence districts are getting more restrictions again. Ironically we also had a reduction in ICU capacity during COVID because working conditions didn't improve so people reasonably resigned instead of being continually exploited. There has also been a huge increase in hostility towards nurses, doctors and medical personnel in general (mostly driven by the small but aggressive anti-vaxx "community"), which certainly doesn't help retain people.

sojournerc 5y ago

Unless you've been infected already. Natural immunity is as good or better than the vaccine.

throw0101a 5y ago
This is does not appear to be true: "Antibodies elicited by mRNA-1273 vaccination bind more broadly to the receptor binding domain than do those from SARS-CoV-2 infection" * https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scitranslmed.abi9915 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scitranslmed.abi9915 > These findings suggest that among persons with previous SARS-CoV-2 infection, full vaccination provides additional protection against reinfection. Among previously infected Kentucky residents, those who were not vaccinated were more than twice as likely to be reinfected compared with those with full vaccination. All eligible persons should be offered vaccination, including those with previous SARS-CoV-2 infection, to reduce their risk for future infection. * https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7032e1.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7032e1.htm
- sojournerc 5y ago
  I don't know enough about immunology to say whether "binding more broadly" confers more immunity or not. It would certainly go against prior knowledge about human immune responses for a single spike protein (vaccine) to elicit a greater immune response than _the actual virus_. That CDC study is so bad I'm surprised they had the gall to publish it with the conclusion they did. Testing positive says nothing about severity of infection. > were about five times more likely to test positive for the infection than people who had been vaccinated Testing positive is not a very good metric. Were they hospitalized? Was it severe? Did they even get sick, or just test positive? They even admit to a sampling flaw in the discussion: > Second, persons who have been vaccinated are possibly less likely to get tested. Therefore, the association of reinfection and lack of vaccination might be overestimated. The best study on this so far is from Israel with a much larger sample in a highly vaccinated country. Here's a Harvard doctor discussing the contradictory studies. https://brownstone.org/articles/a-review-and-autopsy-of-two-covid-immunity-studies/ https://brownstone.org/articles/a-review-and-autopsy-of-two-... > For a low-risk person, which includes most people with natural immunity, a 35% risk reduction is more marginal in terms of absolute risk. > Based on the solid evidence from the Israeli study, the Covid recovered have stronger and longer-lasting immunity against Covid disease than the vaccinated. Hence, there is no reason to prevent them from activities that are permitted to the vaccinated. In fact, it is discriminatory.
  - angelzen 5y ago
    I found a Feb 2021 piece from Derek Lowe a good 30k ft overview of how the immune system works. tl;dr it is stochastic, with a wide range of antibodies having different effects against an infection, some of them even negative (OAS). Usually the aggregate effect is positive, and the infection is cleared out. "It's important to realize, though, that all immune responses to a viral infection generate a mixture of neutralizing and non-neutralizing antibodies. That's one of the things about the immune system - it revs up production of a wide variety of antibodies, selected from the untold billions of them circulating around in your bloodstream. Some of them bind to one part of the pathogen, and some to another. And they bind in different conformations, sticking to different parts of the surface of the invading virus from different directions." It is conceivable that a targeted vaccine is more effective at shutting down an infection than natural immunity by focusing the immune system to produce a narrow band of very effective antibodies. The tradeoff is that a virus mutation can create a catastrophic situation where the same antibodies are less effective, possibly having negative efficiency enhancing the infection. The risk is amplified by vaccinating the entire population with the exact same protein sequence, creating hundreds of millions of living incubators for the virus to learn how to evade the narrow antibody response. We are creating a biological landscape prone to black swan events. Good luck convincing any total vaxer that this is a very real risk. They will laugh and sneer and maybe call you criminal because obviously the data shows the vaccines are safe and effective. "Hahaha, I've been told that we're all going to be dead by now, look at those peddling conspiracy theories." Just like the Wall Street crowd created the run-up to the 2008 crisis. Who could have possibly predicted that CDOs were prone to a black swan? https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/antibody-dependent-enhancement-and-coronavirus-vaccines https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/antibody-dependent...
    - throw0101a 5y ago
      > We are creating a biological landscape prone to black swan events. Good luck convincing any total vaxer that this is a very real risk. They will laugh and sneer and maybe call you criminal because obviously the data shows the vaccines are safe and effective. If you don't survive the problems of today, then there's no point in worrying about tomorrow's possibilities because you're dead. The data does show that the COVID vaccines are generally safe and pretty effective. Not 100%, but the perfect is the enemy of the good, and so let's try to improve our lot now so we have a chance to fight for later.

formerly_proven 5y ago

A charitable interpretation of GP would be that he referred to ending of restrictions (masks, testing, papers please, lockdowns etc.) after a vaccine becomes widely available. These hopes have certainly been raised by politicians in late 2020 and early 2021 ("just have to get herd immunity through the vaccine and we're done"[1]). However, the reality is that e.g. in Germany case numbers and incidence numbers are reaching new all-time-highs every day now despite 70-75 % of all people being vaccinated. These hopes were probably based on experiences with "normal" vaccines, which are apt to eradicate diseases through sterile immunity (though there are a bunch of exceptions to this, it's not like we're getting rid of the flu and some other stuff by vaccinations [2]). However, we since learned that a vaccine providing sterile immunity against COVID-19 seems to be off the table (as none of them are), so herd immunity against COVID-19 will likely never be a thing and eradicating COVID-19 is just not possible. [1] Herd immunity was THE talking point in early 2021 in Germany. Also, remember a few countries trying to get herd immunity by intentionally letting the virus spread (great britain cough cough)? [2] Sterile immunity seems to be difficult with respiratory diseases (flu, covid, cold, pertussis come to mind). Naively I'd guess that's because the critters have some time to multiply on the surface of the airways and be infectious before the immune system gets a chance to nuke 'em. If that's the explanation though I'm kinda wondering why the herd immunity theory was so common, so it's probably more complicated than that.

Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
> However, the reality is that e.g. in Germany case numbers and incidence numbers are reaching new all-time-highs every day now despite 70-75 % of all people being vaccinated. COVID cases are nearing all-time highs, but COVID deaths remain significantly lower than before. Source: https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data?country=~DEU https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data?country=~DEU
- formerly_proven 5y ago
  Which is great, but we're still seeing a large influx to ICUs which will cause problems allocating ICU beds shortly (unless the trend reverses). To get that trend reversal high incidence districts are getting more restrictions again. Ironically we also had a reduction in ICU capacity during COVID because working conditions didn't improve so people reasonably resigned instead of being continually exploited. There has also been a huge increase in hostility towards nurses, doctors and medical personnel in general (mostly driven by the small but aggressive anti-vaxx "community"), which certainly doesn't help retain people.