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Comment by arisAlexis | Hacker News Reader

Sorry Pfizer, maybe we don't need to order billions of vaccines more but thank you for your service.

Edit: this comment exploded, I was being sarcastic because Pfizer Ceo said confidently that we will all need frequent boosters like a good salesman would. And it's true that maybe it's prudent to buy boosters just in case.

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The mRNA based technology underlying both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are expected to power a whole slew of applications in the future. I think these companies are quite happy that they just got an expedited, large scale demonstration of the effectiveness and safety of their tech, which will lead to many billions in future revenue.

I know they are completely different virus, but I am hoping they can use the tech on HIV

Seems like Moderna is already working on it:

https://www.popsci.com/story/health/hiv-vaccine-mrna-moderna...

They still have billions to produce to cover us the first time.

Ehm, nope: ivmmeta.com

If you don't mind the higher lethality and long-term damage of getting hospitalized with COVID-19 and then given ivermectin to try and cure yourself, sure.

I'd just get the vaccine and not get sick in the first place.

Your opinion on this is worthless lol. Clearly the vaccines ended Covid in countries like Israel and Malta. Open your eyes.

I think you misunderstood, the GP is commenting on the Pfizer CEO saying that boosters will be required in 6 months which this paper seems to indicate won't be necessary.

Might boosters still be required to provide immunity from new escape variants?

No. The variants are variants, not strains. It's based on gene deletes primarily. More Sneaky just means a bit less effective. Studies suggest about half as effective. So from 90% to 80% etc still highly effective.

Most people would pay $20 for improved effectiveness against newer variants, I would presume.

Most people in 1st world countries (where $20 is not that much) would, but I like that it might not be needed. It's less hassle, and it also breaks all the assumptions were made by the anti vaccine misinformation.

Anti-vax, anti-mask crowd have been so wrong so many times over the last year. I doubt another huge L would change their minds. It's twilight zone level stuff.

Alright. I mean on an individual level, I and I'm sure a large majority of people would take a single booster for improved safety from the variants that took this evolutionary path. All for like $20 (cost of a shot).

It is possible the spike proteins mutate too much and we need a booster

That'd be no (for natural immunity). Even SARS-1 survivors have immunity to COVID, all these years later.

Maybe for the synthetic immunity (who knows).

But in any case, SARS-1 and covid are about 80% similar. The "variants" of different covids are about 99.7% similar. Draw your own conclusions.

I did not know that, honestly quite surprised! One thing to keep in consideration is that there is a very big evolutionary pressure for covid to get a mutation that bypasses the vaccine antibodies and still infect others, given that there are so many active infections still out there. I now have good hope though!

You didn't know that, because it's most likely BS.

BTW people and chimpanzees share 99% of their DNA. We're basically the same, aren't we. /s

80% is not close at all, and 99.7% still can render a vaccine ineffective, of course the specifics matter.

To be fair humans are almost identical to chimpanzees biologically in many ways. As long as the spike proteins tertiary structure has not changed to much from SARS to COVID, op could be correct. Emphasis on could.

Emphasis affirmed.

I feel like talking about genes in % similarity seems to be useless.

That was the point I was trying to drive home, more or less.

Do you have a source for your claim? Can't find anything about SARS, covid transimmunity.

Here's something [0]:

> Next, we showed that patients (n = 23) who recovered from SARS (the disease associated with SARS-CoV infection) possess long-lasting memory T cells that are reactive to the N protein of SARS-CoV 17 years after the outbreak of SARS in 2003; these T cells displayed robust cross-reactivity to the N protein of SARS-CoV-2.

[0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32668444/

Thank you, seems to support OP's statement. Given that COVID antibody tests also show cross-reactivity with SARS it seems likely to me he is in fact correct.

Seconding the request for a source. The papers I've found say that SARS-1 survivors have antibodies that react to SARS-CoV-2 but don't neutralize the virus, and thus may not provide immunity.

So far the mRNA vaccines have shown strong effectiveness against the variants, but the others like AZ and the Chinese/Russian vaccines much less so. It's also worth noting that natural immunity is a somewhat random process (more random than the antibodies produced with vaccines) and not everyone develops the same level of protection.

This should be relatively easy to verify, we have millions of people who have been infected early last year so we can see how many of them got reinfected recently with one of the more recent strains.

If the immune response of the virus is close enough to what a vaccine gives and the mutation rate remains relatively constant, the number of reinfections would probably be a good indication of how much would we need subsequent shots, at least for a yearly renewal cycle.

I wonder, are there any such studies?

Is that still a booster at that point?

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