I'm pretty surprised to still see some misinformation in some of the posts here.<p>I have a friend who has a PhD in molecular biology and she described the mRNA vaccines to me.<p>The mRNA is only a piece of the spike protein, and does not enter the cell's nucleus. It only interacts with the cytoplasm. Normally, if a cell had to deal with an actual SARS-CoV-2 virus, it would be dealing with the spike proteins and the entire virus, basically, a much higher dose, and it would also invade the actual cell.<p>She also described the ingredients of an mRNA vaccine, which were basically:<p>-mRNA (which is gone from the body in a few days)<p>-lipids<p>-salt and sugars<p>It's also worth noting that the mRNA does not interact with a person's actual DNA. I just don't see why there is so much concern out there. This is a potentially deadly virus. Look at the states with the highest amount of unvaccinated individuals in the US. They are running out of hospital beds [1]. This is not about taking our freedoms, this is about getting this under control.<p>I do agree with the other posters here that say that COVID will likely just become endemic. My understanding is that eventually it will probably be a common cold, once humans have enough antibodies for it.<p>[1] <a href="https://fortune.com/2021/08/25/states-icu-beds-covid-cases-delta-variant/" rel="nofollow">https://fortune.com/2021/08/25/states-icu-beds-covid-cases-d...</a>
I am fascinated to know what the effects are of over-vaccination. Is there some spillover effects where a highly-primed immune system begins to get into weird autoimmune reactions? Do weird plaques develop or a build-up of antibodies begin to form in random parts of the body, like in a blood dyscrasia? Or does nothing happen?<p>Chronic vaccine overdoses are so exotic, as access to vaccines had been historically so tightly controlled, and it’s unlikely that someone would routinely subject themselves to daily/weekly IM injections.<p>Edit: After seeing a few responses, I meant to say that my curiosity is for vaccine doses way over and above what might be comparable to current practices with annual vaccinations.
Assuming it's only as effective as the original two-dose shot and prevents for the same duration, it seems like COVID will never go away. Assuming the current trend and a 9 month prevention, that pretty much aligns to what happened last year. So we'd need no new significant variants to develop or any outbreaks. Seems unlikely given that there are many countries with vaccination rates under 50%<p>Probably better to focus on the minimum number of vaccinations necessary to make hospitalization/death unlikely and move on from there. Preventing infection might be too high a bar to meet now.
I have little understanding of this but someone who actually works on vaccines told me this theory: Your body upon coming in contact with the vaccine starts to product antibodies (the first shot). This is generally enough for a normal immune system to fight the disease if in the future the body was to come in contact with the virus. The second shot is for hyper immunity after 4 weeks. What it does is that it basically tells your body make a lot more antibodies now and the second shot is actually a booster shot. So every time you take a shot afterwards (like in the middle of a pandemic) your body produces an abundance of antibodies and will likely fend off the virus much more easily than if there was no booster dose of any kind and just a vaccine shot. This is important because simply protecting your body from the virus is not enough since you could be carrying the virus and spreading it with mild infection which will not be a problem for you but will not protect others and so the hyperimmunity is important for preventing spread during a wave. I won’t be surprised if this one is a yearly dose as you need to be hyperimmune to not show symptoms and spread.
I'm starting to feel that when people protest things they disagree with that it has less to do with the actual issue than with a desire to voice a contrary opinion in general.<p>I suspect that the opposition—even anger sometimes—is a lot less about vaccines, or abortion than some other unmet need that finds expression though this kind of opposition.<p>And I also think that even discussing these issues with the intent to persuade is futile and giving the protesters exactly what they are seeking.<p>I think it's deeply ironic that an army of well intentioned people fan out on the internet to 'educate' people who are against <i>X</i> actually end up giving the protesters what they actually want, free therapy for some sort of frustrated need to be heard.¹<p>Even funnier is that both sides are playing out this psychodrama while being completely ignorant of the actual motivations behind their behaviour.<p>1. Or maybe the need to exercise the power expressed by holding an entire state or country hostage via a virus...?
I would love to see more research on whether a different/better vaccine could provide stronger or longer lasting immunity. There are a whole lot of mechanisms by which a vaccine might produce immunity (antibodies, memory B cells that can produce antibodies if needed, various forms of T cells, and probably mechanisms that haven't been discovered or understood yet.) It seems that most research on immunity focuses on antibodies in blood, and I think this is just because they are relatively easy to measure.<p>I haven't seen anything suggesting that mRNA vaccines are especially good as compared to other vaccines. mRNA vaccines were quick to develop given all the past work that had been done, but that isn't the same thing as being <i>good</i> once developed and mass-produced. Novavax's subunit vaccine did extremely well in trials, and it's mostly old technology.<p>Are there useful studies of the efficacy of the J&J and AZ vaccines over time? Those are newish technology, too.
I’m curious if we have data wrt to safety and approval process length. How fast (in terms of trial - size and duration) - can we go on approvals without compromising safety? Maybe a progressive approval is best. Approve for x% of population for next n months then study the data and lift limits. What if it was dangerous that we went from 0-100 with the current round of vaccines?
The headline doesn't quite do the article justice.<p>Boosters in this one study reduced measured infection (they didn't measure actual hospitalization/disease!) by some amount in the very short term.<p>But experts say this tells us very little about what effect they will have over even months, instead of weeks/days.<p>Last paragraph:<p>> If the booster’s additional immunity fades quickly, or if the booster campaign distracts from surveillance efforts or from reaching people who have not been vaccinated at all, Dowdy says, the effort will have little long-term impact: “We need longer term data before we can say that giving people boosters at any given interval is the right strategy.”
A question to consider is, how to we move from pandemic to endemic? COVID-19 isn't going away and will join the other endemic viruses like chicken pox, the other widely out there coronaviruses, etc.
When will we stop seeing this vague click-baity titles?
"new studies suggest" - not conclusive.<p>"Protection increases in the weeks following a third dose, but it’s unclear how long the effect will last"<p>"by more than 10-fold 2 weeks later."<p>After the first paragraph, it was only established that it provides short term immunity against Delta variant. How long will it last? How well will it do against other variants? Also, the demographic receiving booster shot in Israel are mostly elderly. So this impressive infection rate drop was observed only in older demographic. The effect probably won't be as good among younger generations. Repeated vaccination adds more risk, even if it is small per dose, it is being accumulated. Can we keep up with booster shots every six months? Even flu shot is only once a year and choosing next year flu shot strain is a year long challenge.
I am absolutely pro-vaccine, but can someone help me work through the relative risk calculations here?<p>Vaccine:
-?% reduction in likelihood of infection (there is currently no monitored control group and no transparent dataset that accurately accounts for baseline infection rates, geographical and demographic variation, etc.)<p>-?% chance of ?% reduction in severity of disease (there is no empirical evidence that has been consistent across time and location, especially as the virus mutates. All the data I've seen is aggregated across the entire vaccination campaign, never accounting for changing rate of vaccinated vs changes in baseline infection rate in each location)<p>-?% chance of acute vaccine side effects (VAERS unreliable, no transparent alternative dataset accessible to the public)<p>-?% risk of future unknown long-term effects of vaccination (including unpredictable outcomes like ADE)<p>-100% chance of assuming above risk of unknown long-term vaccine side effects (simply no data available by definition)<p>-?% chance of getting breakthrough infected with COVID-19 if exposed (I haven't seen any challenge studies, probably not possible for ethical reasons)<p>-?% risk of future long-term effects for recovered breakthrough infections (again, no data available. only time will tell whether breakthrough infections are less likely to lead to potential long-term effects than unvaccinated recovered infections)<p>-each additional vaccine booster dose adds ?% cumulative risk of both acute and long-term side effects, with no indication that boosters will ever end.<p>No Vaccine:
-0% chance of reduction in severity of disease<p>-0% chance of acute vaccine side effects<p>-0% chance of long-term vaccine side effects<p>-?% chance of getting infected and assuming a ?% risk of future long-term effects of recovered infection (my risk of getting infected is low and partially under my own control since I don't travel, work from home, self-isolate, etc)<p>Am I missing anything?<p>Even if I am relatively confident that the vaccine reduces the likelihood of infection and the severity of infection significantly and will continue to do so for variants (the data suggests this, though it less transparent than I would like, since there is no publicly accessible unaggregated dataset (e.g. infection rates for vaxxed vs unvaxxed starting AFTER 50% vaccination rate in a given region, there is no longer a control group and all "natural" control groups suffer from inherent geographical and demographic biases)<p>It seems to me that the number of unknowns makes the risk calculation much harder than people are making it out to be, but I would be very happy to to hear considered, thoughtful counterpoints to the above.
I was unaware Isreal repaired their relationship with Pfizer.<p>Last I saw Israel was trying to stiff Pfizer for 2.5 million doses and Pfizer execs were calling Israel a 'banana republic' and were going to cut them off entirely.
How much time before this flawed study is retracted ? Who pays for it ? Who gets the money when booster after booster is inefective ? Most grave cases in Israel are vaccinated people. Number of cases exploded since population is mostly vaccinated. Wake up people. You're being lied to in a major way. Don't let your intelligence be insulted any more.
My understanding is that if you've had a two-shot series you should get a third shot within 12 months of your second in order to extend immunity for a significant period of time. I'm hoping boosters are offered for Pfizer & Moderna soon, because most people I know are fully vaccinated but also aware that COVID is basically endemic at this point.
As far as I can tell is bad news for rare vaccine side effects. If the side effects are rare but you take a booster twice a year for 50 years, rare outcomes become much more likely. (Referring here to the high count but not that high stuff that shows up in VAERS like tinnitus.)<p>Hopefully more vaccines are developed that become safer over time so that the danger falls faster than the repeated risk accumulates. Or perhaps the rare side effects are due to personal susceptibility and aren't cumulative so people who didn't get bad side effects the first time won't get them the 90th.
Since the daily cases are now up to where they were before the vaccine. Its pretty clear the original promise of the vaccine has been a giant failure. And serious erosion of trust with major medical and political implications.<p>A more sensible approach would be have the at risk group vaccinate. And let the young and strong opt for natural immunity, which it turns out is superior and much more longer lasting anyway.<p>In any case, since, viruses prey on the weak with compromised immune systems. This should be compared to a nation wide weight loss program. Eating healthy, proper sleep and dental health, and managing stress levels.<p>Instead we got lockdowns with gyms shutdown, and people
forced to sit inside away from the sun, scared and stressed.
> I'm pretty surprised to still see some misinformation in some of the posts here.<p>“Anything I don’t agree with is misinformation”<p>The data on COVID related subjects has been murky, inconsistent, and poorly collected. The label of misinformation should be used with care.<p>> It's also worth noting that the mRNA does not interact with a person's actual DNA.
Like this gem. This is false. RNA can burn back into DNA via reverse transcriptase(sp)
Making assumptions on something so important, like your DNA is foolish.
Anyone remember Viox?
<a href="https://www.jefferson.edu/about/news-and-events/2021/6/discovery-shows-human-cells-can-write-rna-sequences-to-dna.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.jefferson.edu/about/news-and-events/2021/6/disco...</a>