Covid Vaccines Fight Serious Illness, But Only Pfizer and Moderna With a Booster Stop Omicron Infections (deccanherald.com) 328
"A growing body of preliminary research suggests the COVID vaccines used in most of the world offer almost no defense against becoming infected by the highly contagious omicron variant," reports the New York Times. (Emphasis added, because they stress that "All vaccines still seem to provide a significant degree of protection against serious illness from omicron, which is the most crucial goal.")
"But only the Pfizer and Moderna shots, when reinforced by a booster, appear to have initial success at stopping infections, and these vaccines are unavailable in most of the world." The other shots — including those from AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson and vaccines manufactured in China and Russia — do little to nothing to stop the spread of omicron, early research shows. And because most countries have built their inoculation programs around these vaccines, the gap could have a profound impact on the course of the pandemic. A global surge of infections in a world where billions of people remain unvaccinated not only threatens the health of vulnerable individuals but also increases the opportunity for the emergence of yet more variants.
The disparity in the ability of countries to weather the pandemic will almost certainly deepen.... Most evidence so far is based on laboratory experiments, which do not capture the full range of the body's immune response, and not from tracking the effect on real-world populations. The results are striking, however. The Pfizer and Moderna shots use the new mRNA technology, which has consistently offered the best protection against infection with every variant. All of the other vaccines are based on older methods of triggering an immune response. The Chinese vaccines Sinopharm and Sinovac — which make up almost half of all shots delivered globally — offer almost zero protection from omicron infection. The great majority of people in China have received these shots, which are also widely used in low- and middle-income countries such as Mexico and Brazil.
A preliminary effectiveness study in Britain found that the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine showed no ability to stop Omicron infection six months after vaccination. Ninety percent of vaccinated people in India received this shot, under the brand name Covishield; it has also been widely used across much of sub-Saharan Africa, where Covax, the global Covid vaccine program, has distributed 67 million doses of it to 44 countries. Researchers predict that Russia's Sputnik vaccine, which is also being used in Africa and Latin America, will show similarly dismal rates of protection against Omicron. Demand for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine had been surging in Africa, because its single-shot delivery regimen makes it easy to deliver in low-resource settings. But it too has shown a negligible ability to block Omicron infection.
"But only the Pfizer and Moderna shots, when reinforced by a booster, appear to have initial success at stopping infections, and these vaccines are unavailable in most of the world." The other shots — including those from AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson and vaccines manufactured in China and Russia — do little to nothing to stop the spread of omicron, early research shows. And because most countries have built their inoculation programs around these vaccines, the gap could have a profound impact on the course of the pandemic. A global surge of infections in a world where billions of people remain unvaccinated not only threatens the health of vulnerable individuals but also increases the opportunity for the emergence of yet more variants.
The disparity in the ability of countries to weather the pandemic will almost certainly deepen.... Most evidence so far is based on laboratory experiments, which do not capture the full range of the body's immune response, and not from tracking the effect on real-world populations. The results are striking, however. The Pfizer and Moderna shots use the new mRNA technology, which has consistently offered the best protection against infection with every variant. All of the other vaccines are based on older methods of triggering an immune response. The Chinese vaccines Sinopharm and Sinovac — which make up almost half of all shots delivered globally — offer almost zero protection from omicron infection. The great majority of people in China have received these shots, which are also widely used in low- and middle-income countries such as Mexico and Brazil.
A preliminary effectiveness study in Britain found that the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine showed no ability to stop Omicron infection six months after vaccination. Ninety percent of vaccinated people in India received this shot, under the brand name Covishield; it has also been widely used across much of sub-Saharan Africa, where Covax, the global Covid vaccine program, has distributed 67 million doses of it to 44 countries. Researchers predict that Russia's Sputnik vaccine, which is also being used in Africa and Latin America, will show similarly dismal rates of protection against Omicron. Demand for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine had been surging in Africa, because its single-shot delivery regimen makes it easy to deliver in low-resource settings. But it too has shown a negligible ability to block Omicron infection.
Data from Denmark tells a different story (Score:5, Interesting)
Look at "Table 4" on page 7, where the absolute and relative numbers of people who tested positive is given per variant (Omikron vs. "other") and per vaccination status: 10.3% of Omikron-positive people were "boostered", 8.5% were "unvaccinated".
Combine this with the number of people who received "booster shots" in Denmark (27.2% on 2021-12-16) or have not been fully vaccinated (22.5%) [ourworldindata.org] and it appears as if, at least in Denmark, "boostered" people have no less positive tests than the not fully vaccinated - so probably also no less infections. (Severity of symptoms is a different story, but TFA claims protection against _infection_ from "booster" shots.)
Re:Data from Denmark tells a different story (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm confused - doesn't your data show that "boostered people" form 27.2% of Danes but only 10.3% of Omicron infections? Which suggests a relatively high level of protection for the booster?
(By the same token, at first glance the data suggests that unvaccinated people are "protected" too. But this conclusion seems to result from a statistical error - 8.5% of Omicron infections in PEOPLE OVER AGE 12 are in unvaccinated people, while 22.5% of THE ENTIRE POPULATION is not fully vaccinated. Of that 22.5%, a large fraction are under age 12, and not included in the Omicron data.)
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Regarding the fact that the Table 4 caption says: "Individuals aged 5-11 years have recently been invited for COVID-19 vaccination, hence the vaccination coverage is relatively low in th
Re:Data from Denmark tells a different story (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Data from Denmark tells a different story (Score:5, Insightful)
And instead of providing any argument or explanation of what "variables" you assume turn the meaning of the Danish measurements upside-down, you just ask us to belief in some published opinion that contradicts the data.
If you want to preach, become a preacher. Scientists can explain their conclusions, and do not need people to blindly belief in some hypothesis.
Re:Data from Denmark tells a different story (Score:4, Informative)
Nah. He'll get downvoted for oversimplifying a graph and not correcting for variables. You'll get downvoted for supporting people who think they are smarter than researches. And you'll both deserve your place.
Researchers don't come here and tell you how to post stupid garbage on the internet, show them the curtesy of not telling them how to do their job.
I wish people would read the rules:
https://slashdot.org/faq [slashdot.org]
Not a single one of the above is a valid reason for a down mod. Being wrong is only a good reason not to be modded up.
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Not a single one of the above is a valid reason for a down mod.
Holy shit modding has rules? We should tell moderators that!
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Holy shit modding has rules? We should tell moderators that!
We should tell everyone because many seem to have a false impression of Slashdot's moderation system. Slashdot mods are NOT analogues of social media like and dislike.
There is no -1 I disagree or -1 this person is wrong. If these were valid mods they would be selectable. The Slashdot FAQ enumerates in sufficient detail the purpose of each mod. Everyone should read it prior to moderation.
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The poster gets that distinction by posting some isolated facts, then chaining them to their own conclusion with "so probably".
As soon as I read the parent, I was pretty sure the poster discarded a bunch of context to then leap to his conclusion.
What other context than the entirety of of the linked Danish Statens Serum Institut do you need?
Also, concluding that somebody is infected with Sars-Cov-2 based on a positive test is not my idea, but an assumption that is made in almost any publication on the Sars-Cov-2 topic. Can you explain why you consider it "my own conclusion" that the reported number of people with positive tests correlates with the number of people infected?
Another one bites the dust (Score:5, Informative)
After saying Washington (the state) was out of step with the rest of the nation when it came to the science behind wearing masks and getting vaccinated, (now former) state Senator Doug Ericksen has died from covid [cnn.com].
He did his own research and visited El Salvador where he contracted covid, then begged for expensive treatment chemicals with who knows what in them to be immediately shipped in, at the taxpayer's expense, to help him because getting a vaccine was too difficult.
As per usual, we're supposed to offer thoughts and prayers for the dumb ass while respecting his family's privacy rather than laughing our asses off [memesmonkey.com].
Re:Another one bites the dust (Score:5, Insightful)
After saying Washington (the state) was out of step with the rest of the nation when it came to the science behind wearing masks and getting vaccinated, (now former) state Senator Doug Ericksen has died from covid [cnn.com].
Basically, he didn't like how Governor Inslee was enforcing mask mandates and pushing vaccination - so I guess the "rest of the nation" that we're "out of step with" means states like Texas, Florida, and South Dakota.
While I would have been pleased to read that Doug Ericksen had lost reelection, I'm not going to celebrate his death. I would have been happier if he'd recovered to learn (and say) "I was wrong".
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That's not how risk management decisions are judged. If you die without ever having had a house fire, it isn't that you were wrong to have paid for fire insurance all those years. And if you are rich enough that a house fire won't wipe you out and you decide that fire insurance is mathematically a poor value for you, it doesn't mean that you were wrong if you get unlucky and have a fire.
In the same way, people who evaluate the risks, costs and benefits of vaccination and make a decision are not wrong if t
Re:Another one bites the dust (Score:4, Funny)
He can put this on his tombstone. Died pwning the libs
Re:Another one bites the dust (Score:5, Insightful)
Anecdotes are not a good way scientifically prove anything. I am sure people who are anti vaccinations can find people who took the vaccine and died anyway. It proves nothing, your story doesn't prove that Dough Ericksen wouldn't have died anyway if he had the vaccine. Everybody can supply these stories long after people are tire of listening to them.
Note:
I am NOT saying that I believe people shouldn't get vaccinated, just that your argument is emotive rather than rational.
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No man is an island, and even if he dies because of his own foolish choices the consequences of his death aren't confined to him; they affect his family and everyone who depends on him. So it gives me no pleasure when someone is killed through his own foolish choices.
Mocking the foolish and willfully ignorant only reinforces the perception that this is about choosing sides in some kind of political game, rather than facing a sometimes harsh reality that doesn't care one way or the other about our bullshit.
Re:Another one bites the dust (Score:4, Interesting)
Are you laughing because he didn't get vaccinated (if so please cite evidence of the same) and died or because he has a different political ideology from your own and died?
The U.S. State Department has, since August, been advising Americans to reconsider travel to El Salvador because of COVID concerns.
Also this
Also unclear has been why Ericksen visited El Salvador – but it’s not his first visit to that country or others in recent years.
Ericksen in 2019 registered with the U.S. Department of Justice as a foreign agent to conduct lobbying work on behalf of the Cambodian government, scoring a $500,000 contract for his new firm.
That contract came after Ericksen traveled to Cambodia to observe – and ultimately praise – the country’s widely condemned 2018 elections. Those elections took place as a government crackdown shuttered independent media organizations and dissolved a key opposition party.
Taking notes I suppose.
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This is going too far. Please stop with the harassing mods whomever is doing it stop now.
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their imposition on others under threat of violence.
Eh?
This is academic speak for a government demand backed by credible threat of the government exercising its monopoly on the use of violence to back / enforce it. Most enforceable laws fall into this category.
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When blacks are hassled by the police, certain groups yell
"why don't you just comply?"
Well why aren't they following their own advice when asked to wear a mask or get a vaccine?
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Re: Another one bites the dust (Score:4, Funny)
These are just people of the land, the common clay of the West. You know morons
Re: Another one bites the dust (Score:4, Informative)
Nah, he put ignorance and politics ahead of people's lives.
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People's behavior should not be whitewashed because they are dead. As a society, we need to remember who people were and what they stood for.
Would you not be unkind to those who initiated the second world war?
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He was a Trump supporting anti mask anti vaccine retard who deserved to die. It's too bad he didn't help Darwin by doing it much sooner.
No, nobody "deserved to die". Comments like that are just asinine and rude. Sure, he's a jerk, and you didn't like his politics...doesn't give you any right to say that.
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Unlikely. If he was vaccinated he would have been yelling about HIPAA when asked, just like Marjorie Taylor Green does. But she isn't even bright enough to know that HIPAA doesn't apply to individuals asking her.
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He was also fully vaccinated.
Show. Every story I've read has said it was unclear if he was vaccinated. None have said definitively he was vaccinated.
According to you he got what he deserved.
Yes, he did. Just like these two [imgur.com] or this guy [nytimes.com]. How's that saying go? Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Your God struck him down for his blasphemy.
My god? Clearly you haven't been paying attention. But speaking of god, here's how tolerant [cnn.com] anti-vaxxers are. They'll fire you if you follow scientific principles.
Author, radio host and prominent evangelical Christian Dave Ramsey told the employees at his financial advice company Ramsey Solutions they would not be permitted to work from home because it would show a "weakness of spirit," according to a lawsuit filed in federal court Monday. .
. .
It further claims that he was terminated for "taking scientifically prescribed precautions, as required by his sincerely held religious beliefs, in the Covid pandemic rather than relying on prayer alone to protect himself."
Getting my third Pfizer shot this week (Score:2)
I get the regular flu shot every year. I don't mind adding it to my list, bringing the total to... 2. I also got a shingles shot, vaccination shots for travel to Mexico, and whatever else was offered to me. The risk/reward is so far skewed in favour of getting the shot that it mystifies me that anybody would say it's too risky. Unless, of course, it's political identity, partisanship, and vapid point repetition masquerading as critical thought.
I'm not qualified to judge the results of "a" study. But I'm cap
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My first two were Pfizer, but I decided to take advantage of the "mix and match" approach allowed by the CDC - so the booster I got this past week was Moderna.
I will note that, the night after the shot, I woke up with significant chills which lasted an hour or two (I didn't bother to check my temperature, knowing this was almost certainly a response to the shot). And the next day I felt pretty run down... but that was it for symptoms. Pretty similar to how I felt after each of the original Pfizer shots - al
Breakthrough infections are not rare (Score:2)
Severe breakthrough COVID-19 cases in the SARS-CoV-2 delta (B.1.617.2) va [thelancet.com]
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Is this an argument against vaccinations?
Boosters "STOP" Infections? (Score:4, Insightful)
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While this is a very vague and source-less sentence to write, it clearly speaks of "infection", not of symptoms or disease.
And while one can argue that protection against symptomatic disease is the one and only goal that the vaccine makers promised an
Mixed vaccinations? (Score:2)
So in Canada, a lot of us are fully vaccinated with two different vaccines. We did it to get around supply constraints, and it seemed safe and fairly effective. Later studies seemed to show that in some cases, a mixed course was BETTER than two of the same type. Now I'm wondering what's happening with those people (like my partner) who were vaccinated first with AZ but then later with Moderna. I was vaccinated with Pfizer and then Moderna.
I'd like my booster soon and I don't really care what it is, but it w
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I wonder why questions on such studies, manufacturing or an approval process are not asked by journalists currently as often a
What about body size vs doses (Score:2)
Re: Stop the doublespeak. (Score:4, Insightful)
Except this article says that two of the vaccines (the ones based on new mRNA tech) actually do prevent infections.
Re: Stop the doublespeak. (Score:5, Insightful)
Except this article says that two of the vaccines (the ones based on new mRNA tech) actually do prevent infections.
It all depends on what you mean by "infection". From a biology definition, as soon as the first cell is spiked by the virus, you're infected. From an epidemiological definition, you aren't infected until the infection is detectable, which means that either you're symptomatic or you're shedding the virus (where a swab test can detect it) and thus contagious.
Vaccines can't prevent the first one, but they can cause your body to react so quickly that the infection is snuffed out before the second one happens.
Re: Stop the doublespeak. (Score:5, Informative)
Vaccines can't prevent the first one, but they can cause your body to react so quickly that the infection is snuffed out before the second one happens.
They can actually prevent virus infecting a cell as well. Immunoglobulins are secreted onto mucosal surfaces and can bind virus particles and prevent them from interacting with the ACE2 receptor.
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Vaccines can't prevent the first one, but they can cause your body to react so quickly that the infection is snuffed out before the second one happens.
They can actually prevent virus infecting a cell as well. Immunoglobulins are secreted onto mucosal surfaces and can bind virus particles and prevent them from interacting with the ACE2 receptor.
Natural immunity produces mucosal immunity, but COVID vaccines really don't (much). I mean yes, ostensibly, if antibody titres are high enough and the viral dose is low enough, it might help a little, but COVID vaccines largely produce immunoglobulin in your bloodstream, not mucosal iG* [frontiersin.org]. That's why they're experimenting with other delivery mechanisms (e.g. nasal spray) to try to get higher immunoglobulin levels externally so that it can really boost your body's first line of defense.
Illegal aliens (Score:4, Informative)
Without googling, tell me who said this quote, Ronald Reagan or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez?
I believe in the idea of amnesty for those who have put down roots and lived here, even though sometime back they may have entered illegally,
jeopardytheme.mp3
You're not going to like the answer.
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If you imagined that "consistency" is one of their characteristics, you're not going to like the answer.
Ask an evangelical about Trump's marital record. Anything Reagan ever said that they don't like will be like Trump's marital record: just somehow not relevant, or an acceptable fault in one serving a higher purpose.
It's freeing. You can give up on most lines of argument, that would only have frustrated you.
Re: Illegal aliens (Score:2, Insightful)
Correct Reagan said that, with the understanding that strict border control and penalties for business employing further illegal immigrants would subsequently be enforced. Which didn't happen.
Afaik, Reagan thought Kennedy was on board (Score:2)
And that the United States government would have bipartisan support in adhering to the compromise that had been hammered out.
Might not have been Kennedy's fault, or there might never have been a real understanding, but political opportunism from both parties ended up eroding what should have been a long lasting governmental policy.
Never forget that a lot of the Chamber of Commerce loves the idea of cheaper labor coming in and acting to hold down wages, while stimulating sales and rentals.
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Conjecture on your part.
Re: Illegal aliens (Score:2)
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Ask an evangelical about Trump's marital record.
Arguably that's one reason Biden was able to win over Trump.
Re:How to actually get vaccinated DIY (Score:5, Insightful)
It gets really difficult to enter the mind of anti-vaxxers these days. When I was young, it was "but they inject you the virus!!!". And actually, they had a point, one mistake during the inactivation could in principle lead to an infection. Now that we invented vaccines that do not require to inject the virus, and have therefore exactly zero chances of giving you the disease, it is "but I wanted the real vaccine that had the virus!!!".
Now, overselling the extremely rare side-effects possibly caused by the adjuvants while promoting home-made recipes that have 10%+ chances to give you the actual deadly disease. Also, the adjuvants were added to vaccines since 1925 for a reason, and your inoculation procedure that does not include adjuvants will produce a low immunity.
If one wanted to deliver undercover gene therapy to people, that should have been done through inserting adequate vector viruses into a real vector virus vaccines (AstraZeneca, J&J, Russian and Chinese vaccines mentioned in the summary and that you seem to promote) rather than the mRNA vaccines where it makes no sense (different formulation, maybe does not work at all).
Re:How to actually get vaccinated DIY (Score:5, Insightful)
What is strange to me is that at least some anti-vaxxers believe that
1) Thee government is trying to inject people with some poison or microchips.
2) It only does this with the consent of the person.
If the first part is true and the government really is trying to kill off large numbers of people or inejct them with microchips or whatever, then it would not ask for permission. At the very least if someone goes to a hospital, for any reason, they would be injected with the microchips without obtaining permission (if a person is seriously ill, it is very difficult for them to resist the nurse injecting anything).
And yet, people refuse the vaccine, get covid and then go to the hospital for some reason. I mean if I was afraid of the government injecting me with a microchip, I would not trust it to only do so after getting my permission - there would be no way I would go to a hospital. I would find a private doctor, or better, a witch doctor, who is more likely to not be bribed by the government than a regular doctor working in a government-funded hospital.
Re: How to actually get vaccinated DIY (Score:3)
Re:How to actually get vaccinated DIY (Score:4, Insightful)
It gets really difficult to enter the mind of anti-vaxxers these days.
According to Merriam-Webster [merriam-webster.com] I am an anti-vaxxer (because while me and my entire family are vaccinated, I opppose a mandate), so ask me any question you want!
Re:How to actually get vaccinated DIY (Score:4, Insightful)
so ask me any question you want!
Why do you oppose schools requiring vaccines for measles, polio and mumps vaccines?
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I believe you'll find that it's the anti-vaxxers who invented the word "anti-vaxxer".
My suspicion is that, if you bothered looking, pro-vaccination people hold that if enough people are vaccinated then R will be permanently below 1 and the virus will simply die off. Which is a Good Thing.
Re:How to actually get vaccinated DIY (Score:5, Insightful)
If you don't bother to look for yourself, then you're quite right. Finding things involves looking and you clearly haven't looked at a damn thing.
First, it's not the only argument, emotional or otherwise, and I frankly don't care who is using it now.
Nobody thinks that the human immune system stopped working. Vaccines, no scare quotes please it makes you look stupid, do depend on the immune system, yes. They train the immune system to identify the virus so that the immune system can react faster to an infection. That is the point of vaccines. It is what the scientists have been saying and what the press has been reporting. If you're not seeing these reports, that's your problem.
Re:How to actually get vaccinated DIY (Score:5, Interesting)
I've figured it out: There is a curious symmetry between the political left and political right: The left is delusional about crime, and the right is delusional about covid for similar sorts of reasons:
1. The left thinks crime is no big deal; the right thinks covid is no big deal.
2. Then, because they think the issue at hand is not important, they offer lip service and ineffectual policies to address the problem.
3. They may feel their interests are harmed by effective policies (left-crime: I fear police brutality and unfair treatment from the justice system; right-covid: I fear lockdowns, masks, vaccines because they harm my livelihood, and they are inconvenient and expensive, and they might have side effects, respectively).
4. Finally, they both couch their arguments against effective policies in terms of civil rights and freedoms (left-crime: don't want to be attacked by police and wrongly incarcerated; right: don't tell me what to do, making me wear a mask is like the Holocaust).
I think the core cause is a failure of risk analysis. The left fears being harmed by law and law enforcement more than they fear being harmed by criminals (a cursory investigation would indicate which is the bigger threat). The right fears the economic and social impacts of covid mitigation policies more than they fear covid (a disease which has killed 800K people in 20 months, World War II killed 406K people in 45 months (Dec 7, 1941 to Sep 2 1945), 40K people dead per month from covid vs 9K people dead a month from WWII).
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You can't compare a war to a disease. Wars kill 20-somethings with their entire life ahead of them. Diseases like COVID kill 80 year olds who have lived the vast majority of their life already. Yes there are plenty of diseases that kill younger folks, COVID isn't one of them. Also, there are plenty of diseases to compare COVID to, why don't you do that. This is an extremely poor way to frame lockdown risk and you need to rethink your methodologies if you want to convince people with a background in ris
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I understand you don't like some particular phrama company, they are greedy and have been caught wrongdoing in the past, but that still does not make an argument against their current vaccine, which works.
Liability has never been an argument. If they committed fraud they will get into trouble same as happened in the past, even with their non-liability clause. If 1) they have not committed fraud and 2) the medication has passed all tests required by the regulatory agency, then the cost of unforeseen problems
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Antibody levels were significantly higher after booster vaccination than after recovery from COVID-19
I understand you read this sentence and accept it as proof that the booster is necessary. However, that's not what this sentence actually means. See the amount of antibodies in your system isn't really important unless you are currently fighting off the infection that that antibody is for. Your body doesn't make antibodies when it doesn't need to. The immune system has "memory" cells which record how to make a specific antibody and create those antibodies when the virus is detected. After the infection
Re:How to actually get vaccinated DIY (Score:5, Informative)
who simply read pharmaceutical marketing blurb
I cite the scientific papers I use for the data, if you could do the same we could have a better discussion.
vaccines give you immunity...but only until your next booster!
The decades of research in vaccines have shown that most of them need more than 1 dose. For tetanus it's 3 initial doses separated by 1 month, then a booster every 10 years. Some places changed the booster to 20 years, because they figure that it's enough. We're in a "continuous improvement" process.
Clearly what we could not know when the covid vaccine was launched is how long the immunity would last. Some said it would just last 3 months like immunity from common cold. That would have made a horrible situation. With 6 month immunity we're into a manageable situation. Hopefully with 3 doses it can push immunity to 1 year and we're just as good as for the flu.
You don't get to say what side-effects are 'rare' because we haven't had anywhere near enough time to observe yet
I disagree we did not have time. 18 month is plenty of time for side effects you expect within a month. What new side effects suddenly appearing would you expect 18 months after vaccination? Surely myocarditis is serious, but it is "extremely rare", like much, much more rare than your overall probability of dying from covid by just walking in the streets unvaccinated (simple data: 800,000 covid death in USA for 331 million inhabitants, overall mortality 0.24%; rate of myocarditis in vaccinated people ~0.0001%; that makes dying from covid in USA overall 41,600 times more frequent than dying of myocarditis after taking the vaccine).
well known and well established anti-virals as 'home made recipes'
It's the title chosen by the original poster! That's what DIY means! I called it an "inoculation", which is the correct generic word.
more bizarre is the lie that they somehow give you a chance of giving you the disease.
Again that's not me, that's the original poster. I cite: "it might be a good idea to have some Ivermectin, [] just in case you didn't wait long enough and you end up getting some active virus."
The final lie is calling this a 'deadly' disease.
It has killed 4.34 million people in less than 2 years, how should we name it? The fatality rate of 2% overall, decreasing to 1% (USA), 0.7% (Germany) makes it well into the values for malaria (0.3-2.2%, DOI: 10.3390/microorganisms7060179), which is #1 deadliest (by number of people it kills every year) with 1-3 million per year.
It's a good thing the mRNA vaccines have 90% protection, because the vaccine just released for malaria is only 40% after 3 doses. Also there is still no good vaccine for HIV despite decades of trials. I'm not in favour of giving vaccines that don't work just for the sake of it, our limited resources could be better employed than using inefficient vaccination. However we could all see that the mRNA covid vaccines have been a great success.
Re: How to actually get vaccinated DIY (Score:4, Insightful)
The side effects thing is especially bullshit with the mRNA vaccines, as the half-life of the material in your system is on the order of days. Within a week or two, itâ(TM)s gone completely. Unless you believe in homeopathic quackery, any side effects would show up in the first week.
No, not quite. Autoimmune disorders triggered by a virus or vaccine can take several weeks to become meaningfully symptomatic, because the immune system gets trained wrong and starts attacking cells, which produces inflammation that causes your immune system to continue attacking those cells, in a sort of vicious cycle.
But even for autoimmune disorders, you'd still expect to see some percentage of the cases showing up within low-single-digit weeks, give or take, so we're way past the point where the appearance of any new side effects would be plausible, short of tampering/manufacturing defects or something with truly one-in-a-few-billion odds.
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You also have no clue whatsoever how vaccines work, either now or in the past. The immune system magically doesn't exist in this process, but vaccines give you immunity...but only until your next booster!
??? No idea what you're talking about here. The immune system produces the antibodies. But the immune system, in the absence of re-exposure, tends to lose interest. More exposure events translates to greater levels of t-cell and b-cell memory, which leads to better antibody availability long-term and faster response when reinfection occurs. It has nothing to do with needing a booster every n months. The extra doses increase the effectiveness of vaccination.
You don't get to say what side-effects are 'rare' because we haven't had anywhere near enough time to observe yet, and I'm afraid it doesn't matter whether they are considered to be rare.
We've had several billion doses given. Any s
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Isn't "Lick the Mask" one of Spinal Tap's most popular albums?
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Isn't "Lick the Mask" one of Spinal Tap's most popular albums?
I think it was a straight-to-video sequel of a Jim Carry movie [wikipedia.org] ... :-)
Re:Stop the doublespeak. (Score:5, Informative)
A virus entering your body is not an infection. A virus replicating in your body is an infection. And yes, vaccines can prevent that.
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Not necessarily. It's possible for viral contact to result in replication, but having a robust immune response means it won't be able to do so in sufficient numbers to cause a disease. SARS-CoV-2 is the virus in this case, and COVID-19 is the disease. The virus might be able to replicate, but it won't be able to do so enough that it will matter. A lot of times, even after your immune system has cleared out a viral infection enough to prevent disease from manifesting, the virus isn't completely gone. Chicken
"sterilizing" vaccines (Score:4, Informative)
Vaccines were never designed or able to prevent infection.
Well, that's correct. To pass as a "vaccine", a candidate need to show a reduction of symptomatic disease of at least 50%.
If the virus enters your body, that's an infection, and there's no way to stop that.
Nope. If a virus enters your body, it's just presence of the virus.
For an infection, the virus need to manage to start replicating, i.e.: it nees to successfully enter cells and its RNA payload need to successfully start getting transcribed into proteins by the host cell's machinery.
It's is possible to stop that. The mRNA vaccine (Pfizer/Biontec and Moderna) where specially designed to target the exact protein (Spike) that the virus uses to enter a host cell.
And (unlike the DNA+viralvector ones like Oxford/Astrazeneca, Johnson&Johnson, Sputnik, etc.), the mRNA vaccines manage to generate a very strong immune response against spike. So much that, when the virus enters your body, its spikes on the surface can possibly get completely disabled, and in those cases it's completely unable to even enter a host cell.
This effect of the vaccine is said to be "sterilizing" - the vaccine renders your body completely impossible for the virus to replicate in.
(Most of the article I've read point to a roughly ~50% reduction of people who can even carry the virus assymptomatically among vaccinated people, but these date back from before omicron)
This level of success (~50%) is exceptionally good compared to other vaccine (e.g. compared to the flu vaccine that you mention).
Of course Omicron change the balance by being quite mutated compared to the original Wuhan Spike sequence that is used to design the vaccine.
Your antibodies have a ~40x lower chance of binding on Spike. Except that, the whole point of the few articles on which this NYTimes piece is based is that by having 3 imunnizing events (2 doses + booster, or recovery from disease + 2 doses), you increase your titer of antibody by >30x.
(one recent article point that this might be due of booster causing higher diversity in antibodies, in addition to increasing the absolute quantity of them).
So the net effect is that you can still bind to omicron's spike and block it.
We don't have the numbers yet for a sterilizing effect, but the articles thus far show that in that case the reduction of disease is still significant.
What the vaccines were designed to do is make your body's response to that infection more robust, preventing viral replication and serious illness (like flu vaccines).
Mostly, yes.
Preventing viral replication can completely block the virus if successful enough. (mRNA vaccine excel at that, apparently, as mentioned above).
All of the approved and EUA vaccines offer this protection.
Medical nerd nitpicking: all of the approved vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 offer this protection.
There exist also vaccines that absolutely don't target microbe (viruses nor bacteria).
The vaccine against tetanus absolutely doesn't target Clostridium tetani. Its replication isn't affected at all (it doesn't replicate that well in humans anyway, it's a bacteria that mostly live in soil).
What the vaccine targets is the toxine excreted by that bactria, and which causes the spasms of tetanus.
Okay, end of nerdy nitpicking, we can go back to the discussion.
The question is, which one (if any) is right for you and your individual health profile. What are the risks vs. rewards for yourself?
And, after a whole year of vaccination campain and billions of doses administered on our planet, the verdict for risk/reward balance of mRNA vaccine is:
they are mostly harmless.
For individuals with higher testosterone levels (so biological males in the 18-30 age range) there is a tiny increase of the occurence of myocarditis compared to the background in the gene
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The problem isn't doublespeak, it's that layman always use language too *loosely*. That's why every profession that has ever existed has jargon, or uses terms that laymen think they understand in ways laymen aren't familiar with.
If you look at studies that talk about "infections", they mean "infections as counted by some particular measure". They don't talk about "prevention" as some kind of absolute, but a degree of risk reduction.
By that measure it is absolutely clear that vaccination "prevents" "infec
What vaccines can do (Score:2)
A compelling historical example of how vaccination can reduce the spread of an illness is the story of how we sent smallpox back to the hell it came from. "Ring vaccination" prevented so many transmissions that we eradicated it. 95% efficacy against infection is not 100% but it's provably enough.
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The problem isn't doublespeak, it's that layman always use language too *loosely*. That's why every profession that has ever existed has jargon, or uses terms that laymen think they understand in ways laymen aren't familiar with.
For example: The word Theory -- most notably vs. Hypothesis.
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Vaccines were never designed or able to prevent infection. If the virus enters your body, that's an infection, and there's no way to stop that.
Vaccines are designed to prevent disease.
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Re:Stop the doublespeak. (Score:4, Interesting)
So I really don't want to hear any bullshit about vaccine "risks" when anyone with a rudimentary understanding of probability will see that the risks associated with a COVID infection are far, far worse than being vaccinated. Especially given that with this new variant, essentially everyone who has not been vaccinated IS going to be infected.
Re:Stop the doublespeak. (Score:4, Insightful)
Yep. I, personally, am on permanent disability from a (rubella) vaccine side effect. Still already 3 shots in for COVID vax because I'm not a fucking moron and I understand probability and exponential growth.
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Indeed. There is no substitute for understanding how things actually work. Fantasies make things worse, sometimes much worse.
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I know a 60 year old woman with diabetes who was vaccinated and beat covid although she was very sick..
I also know two unvaccinated brothers the older around 40 got Covid and was very sick and told his younger brother he should really reconsider getting the vaccine. Well Covid killed him a couple of days ago, he didn't get vaccinated.
Most people I know have had very little reaction to the pfizer vaccine, I do know a couple of friends who were feeling sick with the vaccine for a couple of days.
It looks like
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Most people I know have had very little reaction to the Pfizer vaccine, I do know a couple of friends who were feeling sick with the vaccine for a couple of days.
I've had three shots of Moderna and the last two put my in bed with chills and a (slight) fever for two days each time. No congestion or breathing issues -- at all -- so, still *way* better than actually getting COVID, or even the Flu.
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Indeed. Getting my 3rd Moderna shot next week and expect to be somewhat down the next day. That is really next to nothing compared to the benefits. Oh, and I am also vaccinated against the Flu and hope that we will get a more effective mRNA Flu vaccine in the next few years.
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Oh, and I am also vaccinated against the Flu and hope that we will get a more effective mRNA Flu vaccine in the next few years.
I got the Flu shot (my first Flu shot ever) along with the Moderna booster -- one in each arm -- so that probably exacerbated my response to each shot.
Re: Stop the doublespeak. (Score:2)
Except the poor countries of Africa are seeing less infections and deaths than the U.S. They seem to have learned from prior outbreaks like ebola and have effectively mobilized as a continent.
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This virus goes after elderly obese and inactive people.
That doesn't mean we force vaccines on normal people.
No. The virus doesn't "go after" targeted segments of the population and will infect anyone with equal change given equal opportunity. What happens, though, is that it does disproportionately *affect* certain groups of people more than others. Vaccinations help reduce the spread of the virus by enabling peoples' immune systems to combat their infections more quickly and effectively and lowers the chances of (a) serious illness, (b) the virus spreading to others and/or (c) mutating in the process -- for exa
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Zero deaths in people who have Vitamin D levels above 50. Yes -zero- death. Can't believe I have to point out facts
I'd like to see your citation *proving* that. So far, research [nih.gov] notes a possible relationship and "theoretical" zero rate at/above 50 ng/mL:
Title: COVID-19 Mortality Risk Correlates Inversely with Vitamin D3 Status, and a Mortality Rate Close to Zero Could Theoretically Be Achieved at 50 ng/mL 25(OH)D3: Results of a Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
In any case, that has *nothing* to do with your premise that the virus "goes after elderly obese and inactive people" as those are unrelated to Vitamin D3 levels *and* my commentary still holds.
So, nice try at a recovery, but you still botched the landing.
Re: Stop the doublespeak. (Score:5, Insightful)
Your friend was overweight/obese and unhealthy and should have gotten the vaccine. This virus goes after elderly obese and inactive people. That doesn't mean we force vaccines on normal people.
My dad was active and the hardest working person I know. He put in 40+ hours a week of physical labor up until the day he caught covid. He died of covid and not from overworking while sick because he took off when he got sick and spent the last month in the hospital. Yes, the elderly, obese, and inactive people have a higher probability of dying but it's a probability game. A 60 year old vaccinated person has about the same odds of dying as a 40 year old unvaccinated person. A 40 year old vaccinated person has about the same probability of dying as a 20 year old unvaccinated person. That doesn't mean that 20 year old unvaccinated people are not dying. It just means that they die at a lower rate. They still die. Heck, 20 year olds still die after getting vaccinated just at a much lower rate. The vaccine lowers your odds of dying by almost exactly a full order of magnitude. So if your odds of dying was 3/100, after vaccination, your odds of dying are 3/1000. That's a pretty good improvement. Now for young kids (or someone who has already had covid) where the odds of dying is already 3/1000 and the vaccine lowers it to 3/10000, you could argue that it might not be worth it as the odds are already quite low but you still get that order of magnitude improvement in odds. Very few other safety devices give you that kind of improvement in odds. Not even seatbelts give you an order of magnitude improvement like the covid vaccine does. Seatbelts only improve your odds by 50% not 1000% like a full order of magnitude gives you.
Re: Stop the doublespeak. (Score:4, Insightful)
My 22 year old niece had a stillborn baby 2 weeks after vaccination of the second shot. It was blood clots and they said coincidence. You make it sound like the vaccine has zero risk which everyone knows is false and they are covering up deaths by calling it something else.
The vaccine is not without risk. My brother and one of my coworkers both had bad reactions from Moderna. Neither died though. Anecdotally, I don't personally know a single person who has died from the vaccine while I know quite a few who have died from covid. I would challenge anyone to do the same thing. Count up the number of people you personally know in your local community who has died from the vaccine and then count the number of people you personally know who have died from covid. You can say that everyone is lying and you might actually believe that but, at this point, almost everyone personally knows multiple people who have died from covid and even if they know someone who they think has died from the vaccine, the number of people they personally know who have died from covid is most certainly going to be much much greater.
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Absolutely true. I have nothing to gain. I am vaccinated myself and believe older people should get it
We have no reason to believe you a random, pseudonymous entity on the internet, especially when there are a bunch more people out there deliberately lying. Even so I pretty much do believe you.
But that doesn't mean that the vaccine caused it. In fact, it's probably more likely that she caught COVID without knowing, likely just before the vaccination, and that caused blood clots which killed her baby. There are also random blood clotting events that happen to people with low probability, but higher than the
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Re:Stop the doublespeak. (Score:5, Informative)
And the "vaccine" risks are indeed quite substantial...
No. They're not.
As of today, the world has administered ~4.5 billion COVID vaccines. It is now, by far, the largest vaccination campaign in history.
And here we all are.
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And the "vaccine" risks are indeed quite substantial...
No. They're not.
As of today, the world has administered ~4.5 billion COVID vaccines. It is now, by far, the largest vaccination campaign in history.
And here we all are.
Indeed. Some people are just utterly disconnected from reality.
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Sure, the vaccinated people are fine right now and even look like they're doing better than the unvaccinated, but what you don't realize is that 99.9% of those vaccinated people are going to be dead in less than 100 years. Can you think of anything else that has such a high mortality rate, yet the government is forcing it on us!?
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You are entirely mistaken. Also ever heard that exponential events (infection) always dominate linear ones (lesser risk when infected)? Apparently not.
And you know what happens when numbers get too high? Yes, more people die. Apparently Covid death rate goes to around 5% if no ICU space is available and even higher if no hospital bed is available.
So, lets say Omicron is 10 times less deadly (it is probably much more dangerous, but lets assume this). It seems to double every 2 days. Do you know how long it t
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I was told there would be no math in virology OR public health class!
Re:Comparing boosted vs. non boosted (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Almost useless against becoming infected... (Score:4, Informative)
It is not useless. If it reduces viral load in the body (measured by using qPCR to count the number of copies of virus per milliliter of blood), the amount of virus you cough out will be reduced. Basic math. Also, reducing the severity of the illness means less people would die from the virus. The vaccineâ(TM)s job is to make the body produce antibodies to the virus. Normally the body takes two weeks to produce an antibody to a new virus. Within that two weeks, the virus can multiply and infect too many cells. However, if the body has seen those virus proteins before, it will have cells that know how to make the antibody much faster. Those are called immunological memory cells. Also, there will be some patrolling around in the blood to quickly neutralize any copies of the virus it encounters.
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Maybe, but that is at peak which is rarer in unvaccinated and furthermore that peak is sustained for a shorter duration .. the overall number of virus a breakthrough case (which is rare) you may breathe out is less. The peak viral load is sustained for a shorter time. Reference: https://www.thelancet.com/jour... [thelancet.com]
Quotes:
"Vaccination reduces the risk of delta variant infection and accelerates viral clearance. Nonetheless, fully vaccinated individuals with breakthrough infections have peak viral load similar to
Doses ; antibody titer ; variant drift. (Score:2, Troll)
So your solution to the pandemic appears to be making an almost useless vaccine ubiquitous.
I. It's only almost useless against omicron.
It was pretty effective against previous strains like delta. Had we had massively vaccinated the whole planet, the virus would have tremendous difficulties finding host in which to replicate. No replication == no change of mutation. Which in turn means no variant.
But because there were region where the virus could still roam around, it had opportunity to mutate.
II. The "mostly uselessness" is limited to 2 doses regiment.
Get a booster dose, and suddenly you're back
3 doses (Score:5, Informative)
It might not be obvious from the title of the /. news, but....
Booster meaning a 3rd shot,
Yes.
Current scientific litterature point out that having 3 doses dramatically increases your titer of anti-Spike antibodies (and perhaps their diversity, according to 1 recent paper?)
And so, this compensates the fact that omicron is rather different than the original Wuhan and your anti-Spike bind a lot less well onto it.
or is it taking into account the whole oh-we-screwed-up-and-this-is-actually-a-three-dose-vaccine debacle
that wasn't a debacle. it's completely independent from Omicron and was just the measuring that after a while, the anitbodies level go down. in some individuals, it means that by now the level might not be high enough to reduce risk.
so there was debate at which point to intoduce a booster.
the arrival of omicron has completely changed the situation. the ultra-mega-rise of antibody that a 3rd dose provokes is actually useful against it.
and it actually means a 4th shot?
Probably going to happen next spring with a new updated vaccine that can better target the highly mutated omicron.
Or maybe something has changed the game yet again and they mean 5th?
Probably, in spring, as infection rate go down (because people stop spending time indoor and breathing eachother's microbes), most of the people are going to go "meh. it's disapearing. why bother with a vaccine ?" and ignore it.
While at the same time the richer countries will still don't do a single move to help vaccinate the lower income countries.
The end result is that omicron will still circulate at a lower rate, and with so much infection and opportunity of mutation, a new variant will emerge, that most people will stupidly ignore during the summer because "meh. low rate.". Until everybody panic after a wave has against started next autumn with a new mutant, for which a new (5th by then) dose might end up necessary.
This is just my blake take after 2 years of pandemic.
Just saying "booster" does not give me the information I need to know if I'm still protected.
You're still protected against older strain (e.g. the currently dominating Delta):
- if you had a normal regimen of 2 doses.
- as long as you're not old or are unlucky with some other cause that reduce your immune response and makes you have less antibody.
You're still protected in general, including against Omicron:
- if you have 3 immunization events, such as:
- normal 2 doses regimen followed (at least 4 months later) by a 3rd booster dose of an mRNA vaccine.
- you got sick (confirmed by PCR that it was actually a COVID-19, caused by SARS-CoV-2) and then had 2 doses of vaccine.
This is a generic medical advice, I don't know your personnel medical recoard, talk to your GP for details.
Re: 3 doses (Score:4, Informative)
Healthy people that had Covid have superimmunity.
That's not what reality and the science says. Vaccinated people are five times less likely to contract a serious case of COVID-19 compared to someone who has acquired immunity from a previous bout of the illness.
There are plenty of reports of people suffering from their second or third COVID-19 infections and of course a lot of people don't survive their first although they're often not "healthy" i.e. middle-aged, overweight, suffering from diabetes or heart disease etc. but COVID-19 has also killed vitamin-enhanced health nuts, bodybuilders etc. Pregnant women are often badly affected by this disease since their body's immune system is depressed due to the foetus they are carrying.
Vaccination after infection gives someone a better chance of doing well when exposed again than no vaccination after infection. Epidemics are statistics though and playing Russian Roulette doesn't always have a bad result for some individuals. For the others it's a Bad End.
Re: 3 doses (Score:4, Informative)
Sweet! Duelling references!
I see your Medrxiv preprint dated August 2021 (the infamous Israeli paper so beloved of anti-vaccination proponents) and raise you this CDC report dated November 2021 based on aggregated data from the much larger US population.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volum... [cdc.gov]
"Among COVID-19-like illness hospitalizations among adults aged 18 years-plus whose previous infection or vaccination occurred 90 - 179 days earlier, the adjusted odds of laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 among unvaccinated adults with previous SARS-CoV-2 infection were 5.49-fold higher than the odds among fully vaccinated recipients of an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine who had no previous documented infection (95% confidence interval = 2.75 - 10.99)."
Next?
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Healthy people that had Covid AND received the vaccine have superimmunity. Those that have just caught it before may catch it again
NOT superimmunity: the details ("decoy" targets) (Score:2)
In addition to nojayuk's post, let's get into the details.
Healthy people that had Covid have superimmunity.
This is a misconception that can sometime be even heard comming from some old medical doctors who haven't kept up with the research and latest understanding of immunology.
In the case of SARS-CoV-2, this misconception stem from the fact that people who have recovered from COVID-19 seem to have more diverse antibodies which target a lot of different proteins, whereas vaccinated people receive shots that only target one single protein - the virus' Spike
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You know exactly what it means, but you just want to be a jerk. If you don't want to get the recommended vaccinations and would prefer to increase the chances of spreading disease and killing people you care about, that says something about you. Of course, you probably don't have people you care about besides yourself.
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