[1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/12/08/omi...
Moderna’s revenue since 2016:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1107794/revenue-and-net-...
These companies certainly don’t mind the state of things.
Consider that Apple's annual revenue from just airpods is over 10 billion.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/judystone/2020/12/03/the-people...
I might be wrong, but I think covid boosters so far are all just extra doses of the same old material. I don’t think anyone would get flu shots if we were expected to get 4 doses of the same thing with demonstrated lower efficacy.
I’m perfectly fine with getting boosters if they’re adjusted to be more effective against new strains. Getting a third, fourth, or fifth dose of the same old strain that’s basically been evolutionarily eliminated seems off to me.
A yearly shot for vulnerable people possibly rolled in with your flu shot (or at least scheduled the same way).
I go get my flu shot every year since I'm classed as vulnerable for health reasons - the exact same reasons I went and got both covid shots and the booster the second I could.
If you make some highly specific omicron booster, it might not do anything against whatever variant comes next.
As long as the original shot keeps working, it’s the best one to ride with for now.
Why not, instead of shots, do these pharmaceutical companies not prioritise developing an effective at home treatment for the symptoms of Covid-19? It's very hard to see light at the end of this tunnel, which appears to be becoming a booster merry-go-round.
Because the population on HN is not homogeneus and different regions in the world approach the flu vaccine differently? In some countries it's completely free and it's normal to get it every year, and even in some countries where it isn't, there's only a nominal cost and usually the employer covers it - so most people get the flu shot too. Not a big deal at all.
>> they have always been reserved for the sick and elderly
See above. Maybe that's true where you live.
>> instead of shots, do these pharmaceutical companies not prioritise developing an effective at home treatment for the symptoms of Covid-19
Why not both? Treatment for symptoms is under development, as well as vaccine which you take with an inhaler at home. Or would you rather that they stopped the development of vaccines completely and focused just on the treatment of symptoms?
No, but surely it would be easier to produce an antiviral for home use that would alleviate the symptoms of Covid-19, rather than relying on the development of a vaccine, and then demanding almost universal uptake for it to work?
Then we could have had vaccines for the sick, elderly, immunocompromised and whoever else wanted them after a while, and treatment of symptoms for everyone else.
We knew, pretty much from the beginning, that Covid was here to stay. I would like to know what the path out of this pandemic is now, now that we still aren't discussing treatment and are talking about additional boosters.
I can't see how this pandemic ends without an effective treatment.
We missed the 'golden window' early on in the epidemic when (for instance like SARS-CoV) it could have been contained. But now we have a real problem. The big difference between SARS-CoV and COVID-19 is that the former first gives you symptoms and then makes you contagious and with COVID-19 it is the other way around. That simple fact alone possible made it impossible to contain this. But we never really tried (except for a very few countries).
Trying to be as apolitical as possible here, but the leadership flopped hard and wrong here, and…well…welcome to the endemic reality.
As an aside: the World of Warcraft model was more accurate than most would have expected.
What makes you think that? Honest question.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/prevent/flushot.htm
>CDC recommends use of any licensed, age-appropriate influenza vaccine during the 2021-2022 influenza season.
>Everyone 6 months of age and older should get an influenza (flu) vaccine every season with rare exception. CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices has made this recommendation since the 2010-2011 flu season.
>There are many flu vaccine options to choose from, but the most important thing is for all people 6 months and older to get a flu vaccine every year.
The government using private industry as a proxy to enforce policy they know will not pass the legal process is wrong.
What's likely to happen is a covid vax will get rolled in with the quadrivalent annual flu vax so most people will just get one annual booster.
Granted this article shared that the rate is low, it also surfaced mandates for healthcare:
And since 2004 the average effectiveness for the flu vaccine is about 40% so I guess if you are in a high risk group it might increase your survival a bit, but not enough effectiveness for a national mandate. The death rate of the flu is about 0.01% for all populations.
I mean, would you get a surgery that had a 40% success rate if your chance of dying without the surgery was 0.01%?
Should you rx chemo therapy this afternoon? Probably not… unless you have a known tumor. Radiating random people off the street is not a good idea—I fully agree!
I do not mind mandates for vaccines for certain workers, but for young bartenders?
A jab isn't as evasive as surgery, it doesn't carry the same risks,costs,time etc
Remember, that hospital systems in pretty much all countries has collapsed. They have to move surgeries and some patients are even afraid to go to hospitals at this point.
This is just factually incorrect. This kind of fearmongering is helping nobody.
There are actual technical and medical answers to this, but somehow I have a feeling you aren't interested in knowing them.
One can say obesity, but what does that mean physiologically? Is it just they already how too much inflammation?
https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/CIRCRESAHA.119....
Of is it that they are deficiency in some nutrient that causes the inflammation?
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09466...
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/fsn3.2203
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12011-020-02060-8
Vaccines are the low hanging fruit but they are obviously are not working so well. Maybe we should all be talking about human nutrition a bit more.
It's been, and is being very intensively investigated. We know an awful lot about some aspects of it, but the factors that lead to different immune system responses are very difficult to figure out despite many decades of research into the mechanisms.
In the first instance, the specific sites and pathways in the body the virus initially infects and propagates through make a big difference. It might initially infect the nasal passage, throat, lungs or even the nervous system. Even the specific sites in those areas and the initial viral load make a big difference to the progression of the disease.
As the infection spreads the many, many different combinations of which systems in the body are infected, in what order, how severely and in combination with what stages in the immune response, together with the weaknesses and strengths of different systems in an individual leads to a massive explosion in the number of possible different scenarios and hence likely outcomes.
A big problem though is our limited understanding of the various failure modes of the immune system, or at least in our ability to manage it. Inflamation is our immune system causing collateral damage to our own bodies. There are many, many diseases related to this and they can all be extremely difficult to treat.
I totally disagree with this. It is not difficult, they are ignoring it.
Zinc deficiency is a well known risk for immunological dysfunction, yet where is all the zinc testing and research during this pandemic?
https://www.nature.com/articles/1601479
https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.nutr.2...
And Why is all this not front page news?
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221454002...
https://sljch.sljol.info/articles/abstract/10.4038/sljch.v50...
https://wjpr.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/article_issue/800cc...
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-n...
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2021.6993...
I have an aunt who's adamantly ant-vax. She goes on and on about how we should all be 'boosting our immune systems' to naturally protect us against the virus. The fact is there's no such thing as boosting a naturally healthy immune system. You can mitigate deficiencies to strengthen a compromised immune system, yes, but load up excessively on supplements and such and you can quickly end up suffering from toxicities to no measurable advantage. Nutrition is best left to being managed by doctors and nutritionists using the established health service mechanisms for that discipline (well, here in the UK anyway).
Nutrition may well play an important role for individuals based on their specific needs, but it's just not at all appropriate to push it as a mitigation at a population level. For the vast majority of people it's either a complete distraction or could even do more harm than good. People need specific guidance based on their health circumstances - if there even are any significant benefits at all which isn't even entirely clear.
"The estimate was based on the food balance sheets, the bioavailability of Zn in the food supply, the estimated physiological requirement of Zn in individuals, population demographics, and stunting observed in children."
I am not pushing it as a population level mitigation. But what if 50% of people could avoid covid if they fixed their zinc deficiency?
And you even admit "Nutrition may well play an important role for individuals based on their specific needs". So why are they not letting people get tested for nutritional deficiencies? What wold that even hurt?
And I agree that your aunt is an idiot and knows nothing about nutritional genomics.
That's a truly absurd exaggeration. We're talking about a marginal effect on at best a marginal proportion of the population.
>So why are they not letting people get tested for nutritional deficiencies?
"they' (whoever "they" may be) are preventing people from getting tested for mineral deficiencies? Really? How are 'they' doing this?
I'm in the UK so if you're in the US maybe there's a different process, but if you're worried about your Zinc levels can't you just talk to your doctor?
You have no evidence for this statement because it is not being tested. When they test patients with severe covid they find a high level of zinc deficiency.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7482607/
"The study data clearly show that a significant number of COVID-19 patients were zinc deficient. These zinc deficient patients developed more complications, and the deficiency was associated with a prolonged hospital stay and increased mortality."
I do not see how you could deny the importance of that. Does that sound marginal? So why are they not testing EVERY every COVID patient for a zinc deficiency?
>but if you're worried about your Zinc levels can't you just talk to your doctor?
1) You have to KNOW to ask and doctors SHOULD know this but they do not. 2) Doctors here will say it is useless even when you are chronically ill. 3) Most health insurance companies in the US will not reimburse for the test if they cannot give a medical reason. 4) If Fauci came out and said all doctors should test their patients for nutritional deficiencies Doctors it would help. But he never talks about it.
So no, it is not easy.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/do-vitamin-d-zinc-and-ot...
"The researchers found that people receiving the supplements, whether individually or combined, had no improvement in symptoms or a faster recovery when compared with otherwise similar patients receiving neither supplement."
Also it's just an absurd fantasy to say that 'they' are stopping people taking supplements or being tested.
"Despite questions about the overall benefit of these supplements, many doctors began prescribing them routinely in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic..."
So some doctors have been doing this and all the options have been explored, and the kind of evidence you'd need to push this at the population level just isn't there. Look, the information is out there, these supplements are available, you can get tested for deficiencies any time you like, go for it. There is no conspiracy, it's just that overall many medical professionals feel that this has been studies and they just don't agree with you that this is a significant factor, that's all.
Why do you think they disagree, if not a genuine difference of opinion? What's the alternative narrative? The entire medical profession across many disciplines and diverse political opinions and different nationalities is united against humanity?
I can say several things about that zinc study; it was give too late, it was not mucosal, it was performed in non-hospitalized patients. All these patients might have been fine with Zinc but low in selenium of vitamin D.
But you will not listen.
I can ask you, is a zinc deficiency good or bad for balanced immunity?