Is catching Covid now better than more vaccine?
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
Thread on intramuscular (arm injection) vs intranasal (inhaled) vaccines: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28165287
>"However, he said the argument in children had "already been won" as "40-50% have already been infected and most weren't ill or particularly ill"."
This sounds like a pretty different conclusion than CDC guidelines to have children wear masks in school. I understand it might just be to slow the spread but it seems inevitable that the virus has to move through the population and those who aren't vaccinated right now aren't going to get vaccinated in the future.
Another question no one is asking in a lot of these is should people who have had covid get one dose or two? (Pfizer / Moderna) Every study on the subject seems to point to higher immunity after one shot than people who haven't had covid getting 2. This would have greatly increased the supply and rate we could immunize others.
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The idea that the corporate scientists are all utterly corrupt and also so much better at science that they can undermine the effectiveness of the vaccines without ruining them completely is nonsensical.
The idea that the government overseeing efficacy study design invites corruption is also sort of tedious. Just deciding to regulate something reaches that same low bar of inviting corruption, but that would not be a good reason to not have regulation.
No, that's not what I mean. The scientists at Moderna are effectively lobbying for the effectiveness of their product and "inviting" NIH to apply a thin veneer of respectability by "participating" in their studies. It's no different from getting scientists at a large research university from "participating" in a large, well-funded corporate study; merely the association of the well-known brand gives the study a certain gravitas, but, and perhaps more importantly, bathes it in an aura of independence.
If I invent a new vitamin supplement and claim to have clinical studies that it does anything at all, fine. If I invite the FDA to "participate" in the studies, and they accept, then that instantly changes everything.
And if those seemingly independent FDA scientists then actively shill (or even demand) that my product be widely deployed, even better.
And NIH is doing a lot more beyond "regulating". If that was all they were doing, we'd have no argument, but NIH is actually issuing "public health" decrees that are becoming de facto mandates for hundreds of millions of people, and keeping secret any data that might go against their preferred narrative.
"Pfizer, Moderna seen reaping billions from COVID-19 vaccine booster market"
https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/...
The proper rabid screaming is that public research was privatized for profit, not that a public research agency is giving a veneer of respectability to a scam vaccine.
And then there's also the option of not rabidly screaming.
I don't believe the scientists are corrupt, but there's been enough corrupt businessmen in America that I take everything they say with a bag of salt. Promoting boosters sooner than needed is par for the course
As an alternative I haven’t heard much of, updating the vaccines would seem to be a good option, as well? The first round was developed fast enough to almost outrun variants, so it should work quite well second time around.
It’s important to avoid the naturalistic fallacy: infection is not necessarily better protection. That is why, for example, tetanus and rabies vaccines work even when given after infection.
Of course, vaccination is far, far better than nothing. But for a 5-year old, or a 50 year old who's already vaccinated, it's not clear that more vaccination is better than just having your immune system learn from the real thing.
It's all a moot point, of course, since it seems like we're all getting exposed, regardless of what we want. Even white-tailed deer in Canada are getting covid-19, so it's not likely that humans living in cities are going to avoid it.
What is this in reference to? All evidence I've seen points to vaccine provided immunity being more protective.
A better question, though, would be "who needs a vaccine more now, a 1st world 10-year old, a 1st world 50-year old who's already been vaccinated, or a 3rd world 65-year old?"
Vaccinations with current vaccines don't stop infections/spread at all - it's very obvious now with the Delta variant in countries that are already massively vaccinated like Israel and Island.
In fact, vaccinated people can apparently carry just as high of a viral load as unvaccinated people (while vaccinated people will likely experience less symptoms). So the virus will happily keep infecting as many people as it can regardless of the vaccines.
Having parts of the spike protein targeted helps with existing variants, but not with new variants that might escape those markers. Delta is weakening the effects of vaccines already. Sure, booster shots might include new markers, but it's still a narrow moving target.
However, natural infection will provide broader immune response and antibodies. So if one could be sure to remain in good health, infection is much less terrible after two vaccine shots. That might provide additional protection that vaccines may not. It's more random though, but researchers are not foreign to the idea.
Nobody is able to predict future outcomes of it, but at some point society will need to accept widely spread of infections and deal with those outcomes. Hopefully, vaccine shots is enough to deal with the initial shock so the body can do the rest. It's not just about avoiding killing old people, but also avoiding degrading public health too much.
So either you sacrifice 1-2% of the population and let variants continue while not vaccinating anyone. Or you get vaccinated and reduce your risks of going to the hospital by a ratio of 30:1.
Even the flu vaccine doesn't cause new variants, and that has a spotty coverage at best.
Like, what you said sounds scienc-y enough that a lot of people seem to believe it, but it's literally not true and has never been true.
It’s widely regarded to be true for Marek’s disease.
Look up “leaky vaccines”
Though there is still concern due to the focus of these vaccines on the spike protein
It’s a long story, but part of the reason is that bacteria evolve resistance in the presence of the antibiotic, while here, the virus would need to randomly evolve it in the unvaccinated, then sustain useless adaption for a while until it gets the opportunity to infect a vaccinated person.
With Covid, many of the vaccines target a highly functional portion of the virus for the induced immunity. This means that mutations that make the vaccine induced antibodies less effective are at least somewhat likely to alter the function of the virus.
My understanding is that we aren't really able to analytically determine the possibility space.
That's only true if the vaccine stops almost all infections, which the COVID vaccines do not.
There's another comment in this thread from someone who's been vaccinated and sick for 9 days. That's a great environment for the virus to evolve immunity to the vaccine. And it's not an uncommon situation.
Again, like the person above you said, it's not that simple. Bacteria can develop resistance to antibiotics because they can either avoid or start to digest the chemical that would normally be harmful to them. Here it's not the vaccine that's killing the virus - it's your own immune system, and every single one is different. So yeah, maybe in this person's body the immune system didn't learn to recognize the virus and kill it - it means literally nothing for how another person's immune system will behave when they encounter it.
Vaccinations teach everyone's immune system to target the same part of the virus. Since everyone has immunity to the same spike protein, a change in that protein means something to all vaccinated people.
Big pharma also has an interest in promoting booster shots. It would be a steady flow of revenue. If it causes selective pressures that create new variants, that just means a perpetual market for booster shots.
Except that it literally doesn't, there is no data to suggest that it would, and I have no idea why this particular idea is repeated so much. Like I said in the comment above, none of the vaccines that we use have ever caused super variants to emerge. Zero. We don't have a super variant of Polio, or any other diseases that people get vaccinated against.
I suspect we have the deadlier variants not despite, but because we are vaccinating and the vaccination is not effective in preventing spread.
But we have seen that Delta reinfects previously infected patients, ergo, an infection is at a best a leaky vaccine (ie as good as current vaccines, though there are indications that it is not [1]), and at worse, a catalyst to worse outcomes considering the danger done during previous infection, b) a vaccine is not offered to the previously infected, c) the effects of long term covid.
[1] https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2021/06/22/how-immunity-genera...
[1] https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2021/06/22/how-immunity-genera...
https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19vaccin...
(from a leaked CDC memo; it seems like figuring out whether the CDC data should have been kept secret at all is left as an exercise for the reader.)
(edit: better source)
Consider the limit case, a 100% vaccinated population. If you have an outbreak, everyone that gets sick will have been vaccinated.
Put another way, if 3/4 of the population was vaccinated, vaccinated people representing 3/4 of the cases would mean that the vaccine has no impact on the cases.
Annoyingly my first test was negative even though I was symptomatic so I was wandering around being infectious for seven days. I’m now in isolation and my wife and kids are quarantined. Thankfully my wife tested negative yesterday, she was a couple of weeks ahead of me in terms of getting vaccinated so hopefully a combo of that and me having a relatively mild case means she stays healthy. I’ve got at least another 13 days of being stuck by myself in an apartment to go before I can rejoin the world.
TLDR; please get vaccinated, this sucks.
My country attempted a 3rd dose, and within 2 weeks they were already reporting data on reduced risk of catching the virus in comparison to 2, 1, and 0 doses. These are studies done with sample sizes of millions of people.
After the 3rd vaccine, afaik, they compared the rates of hospitalizations of people do did vs. didn't yet get the 3rd vaccine, as compared to what happened the week before. They saw a drop in 3rd-vaccinated, and only in 3rd-vaccinated, implying that it did have an effect. And this wasn't a small population (I don't know exact numbers but I assume several 10s/100s of thousands).
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2101765
This healthcare provider is able to follow up on people with detail for a really long time - they are notified of any vaccination, PCR test result, hospitalization and death within the country. They've likely made it possible to calculate the same data for the current day within a moment's notice, and use this information for quick decision-making.
I would expect other healthcare providers in other countries to have pooled this information if they are able to do so (and possibly publish it too).
> In lieu of answers, what has emerged is a host of case studies providing somewhat different pictures of breakthrough infections. Variables including when the surveys were conducted, whether the delta variant was present, how much of the population was vaccinated and even what the weather was like at the time make it hard to compare results and suss out patterns. It’s difficult to know which data might ultimately carry more heft.
> For the time being, there are simply more questions than answers. Are breakthrough infections ticking up because of the delta variant, waning immunity or a return to normal life? Are vaccinated people more vulnerable to severe illness than previously thought? Just how common are breakthrough infections? It’s anyone’s guess. “It is generally the case that we have to make public health decisions based on imperfect data,” Frieden said. “But there is just a lot we don’t know.”
Why can't the public draw their own conclusions and make their own health decisions, based on (imperfect) public data? Why does the data have to be kept secret? (Perhaps the data doesn't support the "public health decisions" and dictates of the state?)
If there's a concern that we can't effectively interpret the data, why can't we listen to whatever quack that we prefer and trust on national television that tells us that we really should not wear masks and couldn't wear them effectively, and they'd make us super sick because we'd be stupid about it and are completely untrainable (oh, and they're needed for health workers) -- no, wait, we should all wear masks, even if they're just thin pieces of cotton -- no, wait, even kids should wear at least two masks, even if they're running track and passing out.
It doesn't take much common sense to realize that exposure to virus is bad, masking while running is potentially much worse for everyone and not just the odd infection, and that it should be a choice if there are two evils.
Outdoor masking, outside the context of something like a crowded concert, is probably silly. But we can be pretty confident it won't affect your respiratory health.
Unless you are wearing something like an SCBA mask without an appropriate air supply—which is very much not the masking recommended against COVID—that’s not going to happen, even while exercising strenuously.
> It doesn't take much common sense to realize that exposure to virus is bad, masking while running is potentially much worse for everyone
You are correct, having that “realization” definitely requires very little common sense.
The person running an excel sheet at a state public health office has never had to “clean” data to find duplicates with St and Street… heck even the IRS website needed your exact address in ST or Street form (case sensitive) to inform you of a economic relief payment.
So in a way, I’m very happy our brightest minds are working on clicking ads rather than building an oppressive regime.
Well... as a citizen, I should have the right to stay back and watch what happens, and take it when I feel safe, instead of being forced to join the experiment.
“ Þórólfur wrote in his response to RÚV yesterday that the figures change quickly and that now the non-vaccinated infection rate is twice as high rather than three-times, the hospital admission rate is five-times higher, and the rate of admission to intensive care is also five-times higher than for vaccinated people.” https://www.ruv.is/frett/2021/08/19/unvaccinated-five-times-...
So your take away from someone complaining about the long recovery time from an accident after putting on his seatbelt and having the airbag deploy (which is annoying at the moment) is that we should remove those features because other people in other accidents without them had less severe injuries?
They got unlucky, which sucks. I wish the best for the GP, but the important thing is that this anecdote doesn’t necessarily represent a breakthrough case. But even if it did, the Pfizer vaccine is 96% effective at protecting people, so 4% are still going to get sick. All of this is inline with all the data I’ve seen at least. For this particular case we don’t even need to discuss the recent data showing Pfizer (and possibly Moderna) dropping to 80ish% effectiveness after four-five months.
Literally all the data says people are safer getting vaccinated.
Without the vaccine likelihood of hospitalization is even higher.
It's probably impossible to say whether "the vaccine has kept this relatively mild", especially since you got it despite being vaccinated twice. At least earlier strains showed no or very mild symptoms in 80% of the infected, and yours doesn't sound very mild.
Maybe you'd be dead if not for the vaccine? or perhaps the vaccine allowed your body to contain it to just your nose, where it replicated like crazy until it overwhelmed your defenses. It seems like there just isn't enough data, but it seems like getting vaccinated is not a silver bullet.
Yes his symptoms sound mild.
There's a good chance that whatever you think of as severe cold/flu is all clinically mild (unless you've actually had complications and wound up in the hospital).
Actual unvaccinated severe COVID-19 is an order of magnitude worse than what you can imagine as severe.
“Order of magnitude worse” of disease severity isn’t defined super clearly, but if I heard that description compared to the worst cold/flu I’ve had that didn’t hospitalize me, my feeling would be that the result would be fatal.
And yes my symptoms are mild and suck a lot. The average length of illness in mild cases is 14 days. COVID is worse than most people (including me before getting it) think.
This is my hypothesis for why we are seeing such spread after a mass vaccine event. The moral hazard of a vaccine and negative test are more dangerous than Covid itself. 7 days of additional spread are exponentially more detrimental to the goal of stopping spread… which stops hospitalizations, which stops deaths and long covids.
Even if the “break throughs” are 1% of cases, if those 1% are 700% more transmissed through false hubris… it’s just like the early days of Covid.
Definitely one of the worst sickness I've had, but both me and especially my parents (60+) had no respiratory problems and didn't need urgent treatment.
I was waiting for my second dose when I got it and my parents were vaccinated, but still I don't get how we can count on treating it as a flu and just get the virus, considering the lack of knowledge on long-term effects.
Most cases seem to be relatively mild. There are always the ones that aren't, though, but it does seem like (in the absence of real, double-blind, public data) the vaccine doesn't have too much of an impact on delta in terms of the harshness of the sickness in breakthrough cases, but it might reduce the overall incidence and prevent the vaccinated from getting sick at all. However, the data always seems very weak, and always lags behind.
EDIT: definitely doesn't seem like getting vaccinated reduces the incidence, either: "three-fourths of the nearly 470 cases were in vaccinated people" from a leaked CDC memo: https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19vaccin...
As always, 4chan has already done the work. (<https://i.redd.it/08qwj2r4kyw61.jpg>)
SARS-CoV-2 will very likely become endemic and everyone in the world will eventually get naturally exposed to it, but delta is probably the optimally worst and most virulent form of the virus to get naturally exposed to.
And yeah kids should get vaccinated, the vaccines are safer than the virus for everyone, that shouldn't even be a question.
Is it? I thought early signs were that Lambda is worse.
Bottom line, a booster shot reduces the chance of a variant emerging. You don’t want immunity to parts of the virus that aren’t the spike protein; that’s a waste of resources. The spike is what’s needed to reproduce.
Unfortunately if you google search, it's buried about 20 pages down. There's no profit in that.
Accordingly to a poorly designed paper, which is probably completely bullshit and not reproducible.
If you catch and do not die from the virus then yay for you I suppose, but you'll still spread it around while you have it, you still might die from the virus, and there is literally no downside to having a better immune response when you inevitably do catch COVID-19 as we're all going to eventually.
Like everything else, the goal of every single public health measure at the moment is to avoid having a huge portion of the population all need hospital services at the same time though.
This article is asking a stupid question, and the answer is predictably stupid.
EDIT: Pile on anti-vaxxer downvotes, the speed with which you're dumping these in makes it apparent you're not reading the article.
There is no situation in which it is a good idea to be infected with a virus rather then vaccinated against it, and comments on provided immunity from infection are irrelevant: you either become immune to what infected you or it kills you.
Non sterilizating is technically true, but misleading. We are still better off with vaccines and can probable eliminate covid with high enough vaccine rates.
> Whilst we feel that current vaccines are excellent for reducing the risk of hospital admission and disease, we propose that research be focused on vaccines that also induce high and durable levels of mucosal immunity in order to reduce infection of and transmission from vaccinated individuals. This could also reduce the possibility of variant selection in vaccinated individuals.
Here are a few (but not all) states someone can be in.
A. vaccinated
B. vaccinated -> natural infection -> recovered
C. vaccinated -> booster
D. vaccinated -> booster -> natural infection -> recovered
But even if boosters are a good idea in all cases, it is worth studying whether people in state B or C have better efficiency against covid variants. Gaining knowledge is good. It may (or may not) be a fact that state B has superior efficiency to state C.
You either get the immunity through a shot or through an infection. One has very much worse chances of bringing you to the hospital.
You don't need to be an anti-vaxxer to disagree with what you wrote.
Side effects increase when we vaccinate younger population - that includes long term ones - Whereas younger population are very unlikely to have serious symptoms from the virus.