Pfizer vaccine immunity diminishes, can reach as low as 20% after 4 months | Hacker News Reader

Pfizer vaccine immunity diminishes, can reach as low as 20% after 4 months

insider.com

19 pointsAndrewBissell23 comments

This should be remembered:

'Still, Pfizer's protection against hospitalization and death remained "robust" at 90% or higher for six months after the second dose'

Sure, but that's a very thin reed on which to hang mandates and vaccine passports. Just yesterday the POTUS was saying that being vaccinated means "you are protected and can't spread" COVID as part of his case for them: https://twitter.com/Breaking911/status/1446211115738931209

Where I live, protecting the hospitals from overload was the main reason given for the lockdowns that started in March 2020. The vaccine succeeds in protecting hospitals (the rate of hospitalisation is now about one sixth of what it was at comparable infection incidence at the end of last year), so it maybe a thin reed but it's a reed that does the job.

This. I'm a doc covering our ICU and I'm seeing an endless stream of Delta COVID-19 patients which are 95% unvaccinated and younger than in 2020.

There are many socio-politico-scientific issues/stories surrounding SARS-CoV-2 but, in my opinion, the most dangerous impact of this virus is the ability it has to massively deplete medical resources in a region. In real-time, SARS-CoV-2 is saturating our beds/resources and burning-out staff. No staff have been dismissed from our healthcare system (~20 hospitals) due to unvaccinated status and nurse staffing has been critical since spring of 2020. Considerable effort is expended daily just to find staffed beds for patients within our hospital (or within our region if we are at max).

(Have been a long-time reader of HN and this is my first post. Just want to thank everyone for a great community over the years. Well done.)

How would that work? How is immunity defined? Anti-body count?

There is no simple definition of immunity. It's not a binary condition. The human immune system is complex with multiple mechanisms at work. Long term immunity tends to depend more on memory cells than circulating antibodies.

Note that it didn’t say immunity. The quoted number is saying the rate of hospitalization and death among the vaccinated is 90% lower than it is among the unvaccinated. It’s a simple calculation. Group a had X hospitalizations, group b had Y. Adjusting for population sizes, X is 90% lower than Y.

Not sure if this is against HN guidelines, but these are his submissions from THIS WEEK.

I let you decide what is going on here:

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Pfizer vaccine immunity diminishes, can reach as low as 20% after 4 months (insider.com) 6 points by AndrewBissell 1 hour ago | flag | past | 6 comments 2.

Hospitals consider universal DNR orders for coronavirus patients (2020) (washingtonpost.com) 4 points by AndrewBissell 19 hours ago | flag | past | 1 comment 3.

Finland joins Sweden and Denmark in limiting Moderna vaccine in men under 30 (yahoo.com) 14 points by AndrewBissell 22 hours ago | flag | past | 6 comments 4.

Pfizer Asks FDA to Authorize Its Covid-19 Vaccine for Children Aged 5 to 11 (nytimes.com) 2 points by AndrewBissell 1 day ago | flag | past | discuss 5.

Contrived Spectacles of “Protecting and Caring for the People” (brownstone.org) 2 points by AndrewBissell 1 day ago | flag | past | discuss 6.

A Report on Covid-19 Vaccine Associated Myocarditis Adverse Events in VAERS (sciencedirect.com) 20 points by AndrewBissell 1 day ago | flag | past | discuss 7.

Mechanism of molnupiravir-induced SARS-CoV-2 mutagenesis (nature.com) 2 points by AndrewBissell 1 day ago | flag | past | discuss 8.

Sweden pauses use of Moderna COVID vaccine for people under 30 (reuters.com) 7 points by AndrewBissell 2 days ago | flag | past | 1 comment 9.

University of Colorado Health denies kidney transplant to unvaccinated patient (twitter.com/tgeitner) 10 points by AndrewBissell 2 days ago | flag | past | 6 comments 10.

A ‘Pacemaker for the Brain’: No Treatment Helped Her Depression – Until This (nytimes.com) 9 points by AndrewBissell 2 days ago | flag | past | 1 comment 11.

Predominance of antibody-resistant Covid variants in Bay Area breakthrough cases (medrxiv.org) 10 points by AndrewBissell 3 days ago | flag | past | discuss 12.

A Company Family: The Untold History of Obama and the CIA (covertactionmagazine.com) 2 points by AndrewBissell 4 days ago | flag | past | discuss 13.

How OSHA will enforce the vaccine mandate for 80 million workers (npr.org) 3 points by AndrewBissell 4 days ago | flag | past | 1 comment 14.

8 in 10 children suffered mental health issues due to Covid response (express.co.uk) 2 points by AndrewBissell 4 days ago | flag | past | discuss 15.

Nosocomial Delta variant outbreak in a highly vaccinated and high PPE population (eurosurveillance.org) 3 points by AndrewBissell 5 days ago | flag | past | 1 comment 16.

Increases in Covid-19 are unrelated to levels of vaccination across 68 countries (springer.com) 14 points by AndrewBissell 5 days ago | flag | past | 2 comments 17.

“Look It Up, Check It Out”: REX 84 and the History of an American Conspiracy (wearethemutants.com) 3 points by AndrewBissell 5 days ago | flag | past | discuss 18.

Tamiflu and influenza vaccines: More harm than good? (bmj.com) 9 points by AndrewBissell 5 days ago | flag | past | discuss 19.

Merck created hit list to discredit dissenting doctors (2009) (cbsnews.com) 39 points by AndrewBissell 6 days ago | flag | past | 6 comments 20.

Ontario university will not allow unvaccinated students to take online courses (ctvnews.ca) 5 points by AndrewBissell 6 days ago | flag | past | 3 comments 21.

Molnupiravir inhibits SARS-CoV-2 in vitro but is mutagenic in mammalian cells (bvsalud.org) 3 points by AndrewBissell 6 days ago | flag | past | discuss 22.

Durability of immune responses to the Pfizer vaccine (biorxiv.org) 2 points by AndrewBissell 7 days ago | flag | past | discuss 23.

Vietnam abandons zero-Covid strategy after record drop in GDP (ft.com) 8 points by AndrewBissell 7 days ago | flag | past | 1 comment 24.

IRS would track all bank transactions over $600 in Biden plan; Businesses revolt (yahoo.com) 12 points by AndrewBissell 7 days ago | flag | past | 4 comments 25.

Incidence of Audiological Adverse Effects Induced by Covid-19 Vaccines (sagepub.com) 1 point by AndrewBissell 7 days ago | flag | past | discuss

I had some flagged submissions too:

"We Are All Cattle Now": https://eugyppius.substack.com/p/we-are-all-cattle-now

"An Open Letter to Dr. Anthony Fauci (1988)": https://www.villagevoice.com/2020/05/28/an-open-letter-to-dr...

In spite I disagree with his opinion (see for example [1]) I think it's important to keep the discussion as open as possible. The data in the article is real, and it's important to discuss it. I prefer to have a discussion about why the 20% in the submission title is a bad metric. Is it a bad metric? Why? (It looks like a result of a study that is not a RCT. It may be a good study, but I'm getting tired of reading non RCT to try to understand what they are doing and not been sure if it's a good or bad study.)

In this post I'm slightly concerned by the title. The guidelines ask to use the original title, that is "Pfizer's COVID-19 protection against infection may wane after 2 months, but it still prevents hospitalization and death for at least 6, new study finds" . It's too long.

You can be pessimist and use the first part, or optimist and use the second part. Both are opinionated reductions. The OP used a sentence somewhere in the middle of the article, that is also a possibility in case the title is too bad, but in this case it's also a very opinionated choice.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28721282

The headline and link have changed from the original Yahoo News post I submitted. I can't find it now (they have since been changed to emphasize the durability against hospitalization), but it said something like "Pfizer vaccine immunity diminishes after 2 months, may reach as low as 20% after 4 months." It was too long and I tried to cut it down while preserving the most salient details in the original headline.

Sorry for that. I forget to include that possibility. It's still visible in the URL https://www.insider.com/pfizer-covid-19-immunity-protection-... ( to avoid the ... in HN: pfizer-covid-19-immunity-protection-wanes-reaches-20-four-months-2021-10 )

No worries. I will confess to sometimes adding "restrictions" to "due to Covid" headlines (e.g. with "Hunger increases sharply in the developing world due to Covid" I would add it), but I see that as just remedying the editorialization implicit in the originals.

I for one look forward to OP's submissions, and I am perfectly capable of forming my own opinion on the quality and content of each one.

its questionable to me that this "person" has such a vested interest in the vaccine and why he wants his viewpoint to be spread so actively

Yeah people are just openly calling for the unvaccinated to take the side effects lottery or lose their jobs with no possibility of unemployment assistance, don't know why anyone would care so much.

I'm sure the potential for spreading a virus for an employer knowingly not taking preventable measures will be challenged in court.

Its not really a side effects lottery any longer. This is complete nonsense.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com