Head of UN Health Agency Seeks Vaccine Booster Moratorium (apnews.com) 193
The head of the World Health Organization called Wednesday for a moratorium on administering booster shots of COVID-19 vaccines as a way to help ensure that doses are available in countries where few people have received their first shots. From a report: WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus made the appeal mostly to wealthier countries that have far outpaced the developing world in numbers of vaccinations. He said richer countries have administered about 100 doses of coronavirus vaccines for every 100 people on average, while low-income countries -- hampered by short supplies -- have provided only about 1.5 doses per 100 people.
WHO officials say the science is unproven about whether giving booster shots to people who have already received two vaccine doses is effective in preventing the spread of the coronavirus. The U.N. health agency has repeatedly called for rich countries to do more to help improve access to vaccines in the developing world. It has argued that no one is safe until everyone is safe because the longer and more widely the coronavirus circulates, the greater the chance that new variants could emerge -- and prolong a global crisis in fighting the pandemic.
WHO officials say the science is unproven about whether giving booster shots to people who have already received two vaccine doses is effective in preventing the spread of the coronavirus. The U.N. health agency has repeatedly called for rich countries to do more to help improve access to vaccines in the developing world. It has argued that no one is safe until everyone is safe because the longer and more widely the coronavirus circulates, the greater the chance that new variants could emerge -- and prolong a global crisis in fighting the pandemic.
I have to admit I'm kind of torn (Score:2)
Re:I have to admit I'm kind of torn (Score:4, Interesting)
It does appear the effectiveness of the covid mRNA vaccines do dwindle over time.
I"m surprised why in the US they aren't at least mentioning this possibility.
We've got plenty of vaccine here...and for those citizens here that don't want it, I"m sure there are plenty of us (self included) that would happily take a booster.
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Well, it appears that studies in Israel indicate a booster are beneficial in that they're giving some out to the more elderly right now.
It does appear the effectiveness of the covid mRNA vaccines do dwindle over time.
What studies? The link you provided mentions no studies with this conclusion. Where is the objective information supporting this conclusion?
Saying that Israel is doing something is not evidence that Israel is justified in doing so.
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I'm talking about our CDC and government officials...
I've been actually puzzled that on the Sunday morning new shows, when asked the dodge this question big time.
It seems like since they are pushing initial vaccinations so heavily, that they'd want to get ahead of the curve and start now to plant the seeds that a booster might be coming around the corner.
Re:I have to admit I'm kind of torn (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been fully vaccinated for several months now and everything I've read indicates that I'm going to want or need a booster and a couple of months, if not sooner. Preliminary studies indicate that after the first two months you lose about 3% effectiveness per month. It's too soon to say if it bottoms out somewhere though or if it just keeps going down. And of course every single Governor wants to force everything to reopen right now and get people to stop wearing masks. Yeah I can mask up but the effectiveness of masks for the mask wearer is very limited unless you're wearing a properly fitted n95 mask.
The most rational thing to do is to just stop pissing about with vaccine nationalism and *us first* politics. Then really ramp up vaccine production and vaccinate the whole planet ASAP. Otherwise we'll have a situation where the rich countries are vaccinated, the poor countries are not vaccinated and the poor countries become a giant Covid mutant strain factory whose new and wonderful Covid variants constantly spill over into the rich ones who are then always playing catch-up/whack-a-mole with booster shots to combat the new variants coming out of the unvaccinated areas. if it helps the more conservative Any Rand reading elements here to understand this (i.e. the people who voted the buffoons you mentioned into their respective governor's mansions), it is in the 'enlightened selfish interest' of rich countries to vaccinate absolutely everybody as rapidly as possible because viruses don't care about your politics ... Oh, and to hell with the anti-vaxxers
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Or, sooner rather than later...eveyrone that will die from it, will be dead, the rest will be immune naturally.
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So you are going to forgo YOUR SHOT and "donate" it to someone in a third world country. Yeah, right. Another spoiled Westerner telling someone else what to do.
Firstly, I've already had both my shots. Secondly, since you didn't read my post, let me yell the key point of it into your face: The most rational thing to do is to just stop pissing about with vaccine nationalism and *us first* politics. Then REALLY RAMP UP VACCINE PRODUCTION and vaccinate the whole planet ASAP . Did that register or should I yell louder?
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Your 75% effective vaccine (assuming it actually goes that low over time) is still a hell of a lot better than the 0% protection people without the vaccine have. Getting a booster if needed in the future is fine but I would much rather wait until everyone that wants two doses get theirs before I go looking for a third dose. That includes people that don't happen to live in my country and have access to the health care that I do.
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I think for the the most part in the US at least, we have reached this point.
I mean, there's no difficulty getting a free vaccine shot or set of shots here, none.
At the point, the people not vaccinated are not WANTING to get vaccinated.
The polls show this pretty clearly.
We have states that are only ordering a fraction of the allocations of c
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Your 75% effective vaccine (assuming it actually goes that low over time) is still a hell of a lot better than the 0% protection people without the vaccine have.
Not necessarily, because at only 75% effective you've massively increased the likelihood of variants that defeat the vaccine.
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Since you're comparing no vaccine with a partially-defeated vaccine, it's obvious the latter is better.
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No, that isn't better, because the claim is that sharing the vaccine is better for Americans who have access to vaccines. Somebody somewhere else not having vaccines is much, much better for me than for them to breed a variant that partially (or completely) defeats the virus.
Keep your eye on the ball, jeeze.
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>"I've been fully vaccinated for several months now and everything I've read indicates that I'm going to want or need a booster and a couple of months, if not sooner."
Same here. But I think it will be OK to wait some additional months.
>" Preliminary studies indicate that after the first two months you lose about 3% effectiveness per month. It's too soon to say if it bottoms out somewhere though or if it just keeps going down."
It is very preliminary at this point. And it all "depends". I don't doubt
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I've been fully vaccinated for several months now and everything I've read indicates that I'm going to want or need a booster and a couple of months, if not sooner.
I know of no substantive evidence to support this conclusion and I've looked everywhere for it. (Q2 Earnings teleconference slide decks about antibody levels does not count as substantive) If anyone has references to evidence it would be most welcome.
Preliminary studies indicate that after the first two months you lose about 3% effectiveness per month. It's too soon to say if it bottoms out somewhere though or if it just keeps going down.
Efficacy figures from the Pfizer data I assume you are referring to apply to infection only not health outcomes post infection including completely asymptomatic infection.
Efficacy in the real world today for Delta is all over the place from 39% up to 88% depe
Re:I have to admit I'm kind of torn (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're vaccinated, why in the world would you bother wearing an N95 mask?
If somebody tells me I should wear a mask, its easier to just put one on and go about my day instead of trying to figure out why. I wear a mask because I literally don't care, and its usually the fastest way to get people to shut up about it. I've found that anti-maskers don't shut up about it, even if you take off your mask, so I just leave it on.
Re: I have to admit I'm kind of torn (Score:5, Funny)
Our education system has prioritized listening to authority over critical thinking.
You see, this is exactly what I am talking about. They literally can't help themselves. They have to keep going.
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Problem is the laissez-faire approach supports viral mutation, which is basically how we the delta variant developed in India. Best if we limit spread through good hygiene (including masks), social distancing, and blanket vaccination programs.
We really don't want any more covid variants.
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Only 36% of African Americans are vaccinated and only 41% of Latinx Americans are vaccinated.
Did it ever occur to you that those two groups are disproportionately represented in essential workers, which means a larger percentage of both groups have already gotten COVID?
A significant percentage of people who have previously gotten sick with COVID don't bother to get vaccinated, because the science isn't particularly clear about whether it is even useful for them to do so. So you would normally expect a lower vaccination rate in ethnic groups with a statistically significantly higher case rate prior
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Did it ever occur to you that those two groups are disproportionately represented in essential workers, which means a larger percentage of both groups have already gotten COVID.
What does that have to do with anything? Even if you got COVID you should get vaccinated. The CDC says so. The science says so. Why are you anti-science?
Your information is out of date [healthline.com]. If there is any benefit to vaccinating people with prior COVID infections, it is small, and likely comparable to getting a third shot of the vaccine.
It is going to tear through blue states and cities as well. Like California (700% rise in cases last 30 days) and New York (800% rise in cases).
But 700% rise from what? You forgot that the per-capita baseline level has been higher in red states for pretty much the entire pandemic. Also, despite the surge, California is at about 20% of its previous peak. Florida is at about 100% of its previous peak.
Those are from the last 30 days like I said. It isn't a Republican issue.
Yes, it is. The bluest parts of California have 75 cases per million, and have much stricter rules than the state does. The reddest county in Florida has 1096 cases per million (though nowhere near a million residents).
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I see that you, too, are stuck somewhere early in 2021. Please try and not troll us by offering significantly old data from unnamed sources.
https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-da... [cdc.gov]
Oh, and if I'm somehow mistaken, and you have a source for the missing data, please just grab a citation and help us all out. ("Race/Ethnicity was available for 104,170,421 (63%) people fully vaccinated.")
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It's relevant assuming the distribution of vaccinated non-whatever-people-you-listed is even among the states. It isn't.
Just because the national rate for white people is higher than those people, it doesn't mean it's that in every state, and indeed- statewide vaccination rates bear this out.
So you (and your sock puppet) are still fucking morons.
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Only 36% of African Americans are vaccinated and only 41% of Latinx Americans are vaccinated. It is going to tear through blue states and cities as well.
Christ that is some really, really, really misapplied statistics.
...
Regardless of the racial component, we're discussing the rate at which it burns through states, therefor only the vaccine ratio in that state is relevant.
Let's explore.
1. Vermont
2. Massachusetts
3. Maine
4. Connecticut
5. Rhode Island
6. Maryland
7. New Jersey
8. New Hampshire
9. Washington
10. New Mexico
11. New York
12. Oregon
13. District of Columbia
14. Virginia
15. Colorado
37. Texas
38. North Carolina
39. Missouri
40. South C
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Think it through. If the vaccine doesn't 100% keep you from getting infected, but it does reduce or remove the symptoms, you might get the disease and spread it, possibly to immune compromised or unvaccinated individuals, who might die.
Wearing a mask is nothing. It's like wearing underwear. Are you so callous regarding the lives of others that you won't take even the simplest precautions that would protect them? I can see why you posted anonymously.
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But you are talking about seriously diminishing returns; over the next 4 months the general population might stand a 10% chance of getting the virus. If the vaccine is 70% effective for preventing infection then you only have a 7% chance (excuse the overly simplified math) of getting infected. If you do manage to get infected, the chance of serious symptoms or hospitalization is in the 1-2% range, or a ~0.7-1.4% chance of serious symptoms.
All the mask is going to do is reduce that 10% probability of expos
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Masks slash your odds of catching COVID further, from your 10% figure to 0.1 to 0.5%. But only if you don't take it off to have a conversation like most people do.
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Masks slash the chance of a huge range of viruses and diseases being passed on - if we started wearing masks as standard, a lot of infection and death rates would decline, such as the annual flu season (which people just seem to accept...)
One can only dream tho :(
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Wearing a mask is nothing. It's like wearing underwear.
We've all been wearing masks for over a year now, so we all know that this is nonsense. Masks are uncomfortable and inconvenient, at the very least.
Re:I have to admit I'm kind of torn (Score:5, Insightful)
Not really. Plenty of professions had to wear them before COVID. Did you hear doctors, nurses, or construction workers complaining? No, because unlike some folks, they are not whiney, entitled children.
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Not really. Plenty of professions had to wear them before COVID. Did you hear doctors, nurses, or construction workers complaining? No, because unlike some folks, they are not whiney, entitled children.
Just because you didn't hear of the complaints (and of course there were some) doesn't say anything about whether they were uncomfortable or inconvenient. Are you a total fucking idiot?
People have been largely willing to wear masks for the last year. It's certainly not because it's "nothing," though.
Re:I have to admit I'm kind of torn (Score:5, Insightful)
The “fuck your feelings” crowd is triggered over having to wear a thin paper mask. Do their masks not have bootstraps?
Re: I have to admit I'm kind of torn (Score:3)
causes acne
Uh, Thats your own hygiene problem. Wash or change your mask more often⦠I wonder what other basic actions you have not taken which you blame on the boogeymask
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>"[acne]Uh, Thats your own hygiene problem. Wash or change your mask more oftenæ I wonder what other basic actions you have not taken which you blame on the boogeymask"
I never said *I* got acne from it. In fact, I don't, because I do change masks and use salicylic acid and benzoyl peroxide . But I know people who do have problems with it, even changing masks every day.
Re: I have to admit I'm kind of torn (Score:5, Funny)
What do you do about being full of shit? Coffee enemas?
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In fact, I don't, because I do change masks and use salicylic acid and benzoyl peroxide
So instead of trying to kill people by spreading infection during a pandemic, teach these techniques to your stupid whiny friend?
Re:I have to admit I'm kind of torn (Score:5, Informative)
For those of us with breathing difficulties, it is it a major pain.
They did a study on this a year ago. Wearing an N95 mask does not reduce oxygen levels in people with breathing difficulties. What is causing your pain is the negative psychological effects of excessive and compulsive whining.
It also greatly interferes with communication, causes acne, fogs glasses, irritates ears and nose, is hot and annoying, among other things.
Oh noes! Call the whaambulance!
If it is some cloth-thing and not a properly-fitted N95, also worn properly, it doesn't do much for this virus, anyway.
Liar liar, pants on fire!
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>"They did a study on this a year ago. Wearing an N95 mask does not reduce oxygen levels in people with breathing difficulties"
ANYTHING that restricts or deflects airflow will decrease breathing efficiency. Period. It will either lower O2/raise CO2, or cause more labor in breathing, or both. The study you are like citing is most likely qualifying in some manner. I await an actual citation for further examination.
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So, you understand the implication of the study is that the mask does not restrict airflow?
Or no, you're too stupid to get there?
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No, I wouldn't. Spewing links does not improve argument, it only encourages neckbeards to grow longer.
Citations are something you include when you're publishing a scientific paper. Here, you should just look it the fuck up. Jeeze. It will be easy to find. There was probably even a slashdot story about it.
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You're still waiting to look it the fuck up, and succeed at finding it?
You'll be waiting a long time, because you don't read shit!
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>"You're still waiting to look it the fuck up, and succeed at finding it? You'll be waiting a long time, because you don't read shit!"
It seems all you can do is curse and insult and assume. It is tiring and unproductive. In any case I have looked, and I am perfectly capable of reading; I could find no study that says masks do not reduce breathing efficiency and thus have no negative effects.
Since there is no doubt you simply have to get the "last word" and will post another inflammatory, childish rant
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I could find no study that says masks do not reduce breathing efficiency and thus have no negative effects.
Nor will you find a study claiming that a reduction in "breathing efficiency without coinciding reduction in O2 saturation" produces negative effects.
Hypoxia is a negative effect.
Respiratory acidosis- that's a negative effect.
Reduction in "breathing efficiency without coinciding reduction in O2 saturation" will not cause either of them.
For a mask to be the deciding factor that pushing you into hypoventilation, you'd have to already be using permanent oxygen supplementation.
Ergo, you're not qualified
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Note the claim. That masks don't reduce O2 levels.
I don't need a study to know that is almost certainly true.
On the other hand, of course you're correct that it does reduce breathing efficiency.
However, breathing efficiency has very little to do with O2 saturation.
You will have to breathe harder- that is certain. Your O2 saturation also won't drop. That's nearly certain.
The body is very good at modulating breathing frequency as required to keep your CO2 and O2 where it wants it.
What is highly
Re:I have to admit I'm kind of torn (Score:5, Informative)
Not really. His claim was trying to retort my posting that masks cause issues for those with breathing difficulties. There are more issues than just O2 saturation, and more types of masks than just N95. And if your baseline saturation is lower than normal, throwing any type of mask in front of your breathing is absolutely going to affect saturation at some point of activity. ANY restriction will cause re-breathing some fraction of exhaled air and increase breathing effort.
Yes, really. He literally said that.
As for the "more than O2 sat claim" goes,
You already "re-breathe" around 91% of the air in your lungs while at rest.
This is normal, and quite OK.
Your assertion here is simply false, I'm sorry.
A mask does create an additional amount of effective dead space, but your breathing will change to compensate for it.
This has been studied since the 1910's (gas masks)
Unless you have underlying breathing issues to begin with (which is what I was asserting). I have discussed this at length with respiratory therapists and health professionals. I don't understand all the complexities involved, but every one of them confirmed that masks of ANY type will cause negative issues for those with persistent asthma, COPD, CF, etc. Approx 45 million people in the USA.
No, even if you have underlying issues, you still increase respiratory rate to compensate for additional dead space (to keep the partial pressures where they need to be)
You definitely have not discussed this at length with health professionals, unless by that definition you include alternative medicine, because your claim simply isn't backed up by the science.
It has been found [nih.gov] that masks do not negatively affect gas exchange in the lungs (as measured by dissolved blood oxygen and end-tidal CO2)
Though realistically, O2 saturation is enough, if we're accepting the dead-space theory, because if the miniscule increase in re-breathing caused by a mask (~+0.83%) you must also accept that O2 sat will drop, since end-tidal gas contains less oxygen)
So I'm sorry dude. You're just wrong.
You should seek better health professionals. I suspect the ones you refer to are not licensed medical school graduates.
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They did a study on this a year ago. Wearing an N95 mask does not reduce oxygen levels in people with breathing difficulties.
I won't bother looking up the study because it is... obviously true to anyone with any knowledge on the subject. Your lungs are beasts for soaking up oxygen and you do not come close to depleting all the available O2 in the air with each breath (which is why rebreathers work).
You also wouldn't notice if your O2 levels dropped. Your body doesn't monitor them or notice if you aren't getting enough.
What it does monitor is CO2 level, which obviously does increase substantially in exhaled air, does affect you
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What it does monitor is CO2 level, which obviously does increase substantially in exhaled air, does affect you physically, is something you respond to. The fact you don't know this and think it is a question of oxygen levels does not bode well for assumptions of your understanding.
is false, because
I won't bother looking up the study because it is... obviously true to anyone with any knowledge on the subject. Your lungs are beasts for soaking up oxygen and you do not come close to depleting all the available O2 in the air with each breath (which is why rebreathers work).
is true.
Wearing a mask during cardio is not a risk factor for hypercapnia.
It does however require you to breathe faster, which will place a functional limit on your VO2 Ma, thus reducing your cardiovascular performance.
You will not have an excess of CO2, or a lack of oxygen, though.
You know what else isn't a good look? Talking about shit you don't understand.
100% of all cases of mask breathing difficulty are anxiety.
If a mask is inhibiting your abili
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Oh OMBad you so silly.
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Normal people do not like to wear masks.
All around the whole planet, normal people don't mind wearing masks during a pandemic. It is a simple, sensible, painless precaution.
It is only right wing assholes who get all whiny about it.
And normal people will not forget that.
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YER RONG. It is only right wing assholes who get whiny.
Visit the surface and check, if you don't believe me. That's where that empirical stuff happens.
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Funny how your "proof" doesn't exist anymore. Could it be that you are lying? Yes. Is it likely? Yes. Yes it is very likely that you are a lying liar who lies.
This disease is not like the flu. I thought we'd all figured that out by now? Guess some people refuse to change their minds as new evidence comes up.
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This disease is not like the flu. I thought we'd all figured that out by now? Guess some people refuse to change their minds as new evidence comes up.
Likely the primary difference in terms of real world outcomes between flu and sars2 is that nobody has any acquired immunity to sars2.
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There's no reason to think that antibodies stimulated by "naturally acquired immunity" (aka getting sick) would protect any better or longer than those exact same antibodies stimulated by the vaccine.
Re: I have to admit I'm kind of torn (Score:3)
Vaccine enhances response to the RBD, natural immunity does not. This means the vaccine immunity likely confers greater immune response to variants compared.
Anecdotal evidence: I believe my family caught delta, I have natural immunity and my experience was that of a bad cold so a little worse than minor but not major. My wife, vaccinated, had very mild symptoms and for half the duration of my illness.
However my infection came from Alpha and let me tell you that was the worst experience ever, based on that a
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the vaccine immunity likely confers greater immune response to variants compared.
Anecdotal evidence: I believe my family caught delta, I
great, nice anecdotal evidence.
Meanwhile actual evidence says the exact opposite of that:
These papers supercede earler speculative papers published by Pfizer about how the vaccine response might be stronger based on antibody titers. You can read in the papers themselves that they explicitly supercede the old papers by looking at actual even
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hope this helps
The first paper you linked says:
However, the applicability of these studies to new variants or to vaccine-induced immunity remains uncertain.
The second paper you linked says:
We evaluated 254 COVID-19 patients longitudinally from early infection and for eight months thereafter
There is nothing in those papers that compares vaccine immunity to immunity following infection. There is nothing in them that claims that it applies to delta variant, or the new delta-plus.
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The evidence [biorxiv.org] against the suppositions that those papers make (that the differences they detect in antibodies will provide superior performance) hasn't panned out.
Note: that doesn't make their papers wrong- it just makes their suppositions as to the effects noted in the paper don't appear to be correct- notedly, that natural COVID infection confers greater immunity with its more div
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There's no reason to think that antibodies stimulated by "naturally acquired immunity" (aka getting sick) would protect any better or longer than those exact same antibodies stimulated by the vaccine.
There is no reason to think they are the exact same antibodies. As a matter of fact, we know for a fact, that they fucking arent. What the fuck are you doing?
How come ever other fucking slashdot thread has you being a lying cunt in it?
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There was a study published on this exact topic in the last couple of days. Post-viral is better but so what? You'd have to be a moron to deliberately infect yourself.
https://www.news-medical.net/a... [news-medical.net]
Re: I have to admit I'm kind of torn (Score:2)
What the actual fuck? What the fuck about the millions of people infected last year? There was no vaccine then. What the actual fuck?
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There's no reason to think that antibodies stimulated by "naturally acquired immunity" (aka getting sick) would protect any better or longer than those exact same antibodies stimulated by the vaccine.
Right now its academic. The vaccines are providing a slightly better response than natural infection and with much less pain, suffering and death.
There is a general argument immune system is able to target a broader range of features of the virus making natural infection response more broad against future mutations.
There are issues that have been studied in the past with flu strains where there is evidence prior vaccinations reduce effectiveness against new strains in certain instances.
https://academic.oup [oup.com]
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If you're vaccinated, why in the world would you bother wearing an N95 mask? The vaccination supposedly protects you from getting severely sick and dying of COVID-19. But it does not protect you from getting infected. You need to get naturally acquired immunity for that. And an N95 is just going to make it that much harder for you to achieve natural immunity while you still have some protection afforded by the vaccine.
The long-term effects of COVID no one on the planet knows about yet (we're not even there yet), so you championing "natural immunity" is as stupid as "COVID parties" early in the pandemic.
You do not want to get COVID. Now, or anytime soon. And you sure as hell don't want to spread it to anyone else, feeding the variant problem. We simply do not know what this does to you long-term, and the short term effects are bad enough. Dying certainly isn't the only concern.
Re:I have to admit I'm kind of torn (Score:5, Insightful)
The takeaway from this is, if you are vaccinated, you likely will have extremely light or asymptomatic experiences, and extremely good odds that you will not die from it.
If you catch it un-vaccinated, well...you can see what happens in the bad cases.
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The long-term effects of COVID no one on the planet knows about yet
Well, thats odd. You guys have been bleating about specific "long COVID effects" since the whole COVID thing started to get hyped up by the media. Now you say the long-term effects aren't known?? It never stopped your scaremongering before, geekmux. Time to go back to the office geekmux. You aren't going to die of COVID.
No one should be bleating about specific long effects because we're not even close to that timeline yet. Every effect thus far is short-term. We don't know if all effects right now could disappear in a year or two, or if there will be more problems cropping up 3-5 years from now.
You're too ignorant to understand the simple fact that no one knows the long effects of COVID regardless of what the idiot MSM is pimping today. Time to stick your head back in the hole.
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And science shows the vaccine doesn't always stop you from getting it, just the symptoms are milder. Lets see have whatever lasting effects from covid that you're going to get either way, or also inject some barely tested not fully approved cocktail into your system that may have even more untold effects years down the road. It will be funny if we find out the vaccine does reproductive harm, Genocide of the libtards and the conservatives take over the world.
There are still undoubtedly many unknowns. Not going to argue that. But one known is starting to emerge in quite an obvious manner.
If you get the vaccine, you aren't going to die from COVID. You probably won't even end up in a hospital. Regardless of age.
Life is all about risks. You could choke to death on your next meal. Life could end on your next commute to work. Choose.
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You need to get naturally acquired immunity for that.
Incorrect.
A prior COVID infection is less effective than 2 mRNA vaccine doses at preventing infection.
The fact that a vaccinated person is also less likely to get severely ill if they do in fact get it is orthogonal.
Thanks for the misinformation, AC. Kindly go fucking kill yourself.
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If you're vaccinated, why in the world would you bother wearing an N95 mask?
Because, Dear Moron, 90% is not the same as 100%.
I can haz numberz?
And an N95 is just going to make it that much harder for you to achieve natural immunity
You either made that up, or are repeating something stupid from your social media. Fuck an A, people can't even figure out what an epidemiologist is.
Wrong Way to Think About It (Score:5, Interesting)
Trying to solve the problems of getting vaccines to the developing world by banning booster shots in the developed world is like trying to solve a famine in Somalia by banning all you can eat buffets in Michigan. The problem isn't the absolute number of vaccines in the world so much as the ability to effectively distribute them.
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Re:Wrong Way to Think About It (Score:4, Interesting)
I think there really is a problem with absolute numbers of vaccines and production. That said, symptomatic breakthrough infections due to the Delta variant are increasing, and those are also a chance for a virus to mutate inside a person. I think we should bias our distribution to places that have low vaccination rates—it seems particularly unjust that India produces a tremendous amount of vaccine doses but is relatively under-vaccinated itself—but boosters should certainly be able to be spread out over several months without impacting distribution to under-vaccinated areas.
I got my second shot at the beginning of July. I'll need a booster, what, around January? Maybe later? That's a lot of time to ship out vaccines to everywhere else while they get around to making and distributing my booster.
(Though, frankly, if they say I have to keep working from home so that my booster can be someone's first dose, I'm okay with it. I have the privilege of not only being able to work from home, but also being the kind of introvert that doesn't mind their current situation.)
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Trying to solve the problems of getting vaccines to the developing world by banning booster shots in the developed world is like trying to solve a famine in Somalia by banning all you can eat buffets in Michigan. The problem isn't the absolute number of vaccines in the world so much as the ability to effectively distribute them.
If a country like the US suddenly started perpetrating "you need a booster", that's 100+ million doses removed from the supply chain.
That's one country.
Don't pretend this is simply a distribution problem unaffected by championing boosters.
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No, that isn't how the supply chains works for medicines. There is not a public market for vaccines.
Stop pretending the distribution is affected by boosters. It isn't. This is the WHO just getting whiny because they wish the US would give away more vaccine. Without understanding that we would have to pay the companies for each dose we gave away; there isn't some giant free surplus available. Like the WHO, you're agitating to create one, but your method is foolish and ignorant of the supply chain.
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The problem isn't the absolute number of vaccines in the world so much as the ability to effectively distribute them.
Apparently we've forgotten way back in January when the big problem with the vaccines was getting them to people. There have been improvements since then (turns out, the Pfizer vaccine can be kept merely frozen and not packed in dry ice), but we had serious problems in the US getting the vaccine from places it was being made and stored to places where doses could be administered. The idea that we'd be able to solve those problems just by not giving out booster shots is ridiculous.
Not to mention that quite a
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And, yes, I think it's safe to say that more needs to be done to get the vaccine to places it's not getting. Turns out that also includes parts of the US, as some of the largest unvaccinated populations in the US are people who simply don't have access to it, despite it being available for free*. (*Terms and conditions apply. It's "free" in that your health insurance is required to pay for it. Don't have health insurance? Well, there are local and federal programs you can apply to. Don't know how easy those are to use because I do have health insurance, but I did have to jump through hoops to get approved to get a "free" vaccine.)
Covid shots in the US are totally free.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronaviru... [cdc.gov]
The only hoop you should need to jump through is getting an appointment (although currently that probably isn't going to be a problem). There shouldn't be any hoops to getting approved to get a shot (other than maybe age requirements).
To be fair I am looking at this as an outsider. In Ontario, Canada (where I live) it was a simple matter of going online and booking an appointment. I actually able to book the appointment just two days in advance (and could have booked for same day). Maybe things in the US really are that much worse though.
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The only hoop you should need to jump through is getting an appointment (although currently that probably isn't going to be a problem). There shouldn't be any hoops to getting approved to get a shot (other than maybe age requirements).
That's what I thought right up until I tried to get one. You can't schedule an appointment (at least where I live) without providing insurance information or having applied to that federal program the CDC links to. This meant I had to dig up the appropriate account numbers because I've never had to use them directly before.
Maybe you can do a walk-in without that now. I don't know. I imagine if you do, you're going to be told you have to supply your insurance information and if you don't, you'll be sent off
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I just scheduled an appointment and showed up. All I gave was my name and contact information. I must live in a "blue state." ;)
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That's got to be a regional issue. When I signed up for my shots, there was nothing on the site asking for my insurance info, or even if I had it. It was just age, residency, "vulnerable group", and the like. And when I got to the Moscone Center for the first jab, also no insurance-related questions; they just asked the usual ones about have you experienced symptoms, do you faint from needles, etc.
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Distribution isn't the bottleneck, manufacturing is. We need more factories making these vaccines royalty free and selling them at cost.
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Trying to solve the problems of getting vaccines to the developing world by banning booster shots in the developed world is like trying to solve a famine in Somalia by banning all you can eat buffets in Michigan. The problem isn't the absolute number of vaccines in the world so much as the ability to effectively distribute them.
The difference between famine in Somalia and this situation is that there is enough food in the world to feed everyone. With Covid vaccines you can't even attempt to distribute what doesn't currently exist.
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Except it is a production problem. Food is a distribution problem - there's too much food in some places and not enough in others.
But right now, every dose of vaccine is going into a
If vaccines were that important to the UN (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe they could pony up a few billion and send out a few hundred thousand people to vaccinate those people in countries too poor/vapid/corrupted to actually care about their own people.
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Yeah, and guess where the UN gets it money?
From the US and other countries. You're a frckin genius.
So the US and EU and other countries should pony up the money or provide the vaccines to the UN to distribute.
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You do realize that the UN doesn't print money right?
They also don't tax anyone nor produce any goods for sale. The only way that the UN gets money is from its constituent countries. If these countries aren't sending vaccines to needed countries how is funneling money through the UN going to help. All that will do is lessen the vaccines available since there are more hands that the vaccines have to pass through.
Getting the UN to send out people to "vaccinate those people in countries too poor/vapid/corrupte
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You do realize that the UN doesn't print money right?
Maybe the UN should launch their own cryptocurrency? It seems to be all the rage now. It solves all sorts of problems. Everyone and Miami are doing it.
This advice is irresponsible as hell. (Score:2)
If "the science is unproven" then the WHO shouldn't be making medical recommendations in either direction. We already have too many goddamned maroons running around unvaccinated because "The doctors and scientists are liars. The vaccines are a conspiracy by Bill Gates to implant us with 5G tracking chips that also cause cancer and/or autism." already. Throwing FUD and talk of moratoriums into the mix is only going to feed their delusions and slow the crawl to herd immunity to worse than the snail's pace
Re:The vaccines aren't even working, why bother? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Your motivated reasoning is showing.
No, the vaccines don't prevent infection or spreading of the virus, they just drastically reduce the likelihood of both...and reduce the severity of the infection and the chance of death. Seem like a pretty huge win to me and the lion's share of humanity. These treatments are exactly the sort that will stop COVID-19.
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No, the vaccines don't prevent infection or spreading of the virus, they just drastically reduce the likelihood of both...
If infected the likelihood of spreading Delta is the same regardless of whether or not you are vaccinated according to Fauci who apparently has access to non publically available information. The efficacy (risk of infection) of vaccines against Delta is currently all over the map.
and reduce the severity of the infection and the chance of death.
This is the primary benefit of the vaccines.
These treatments are exactly the sort that will stop COVID-19.
Domain experts who still believe this to be plausible are nearly extinct.
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You got some seriously misleading bullshit there, buddy.
Vaccines don't "prevent infection" or "prevent spreading", but they drastically reduce infection rates. While 100% prevention is the ideal, I'd say 95% efficacy is pretty damn good. (Granted, it may be lower against newer variants.
But this takes the cake:
Get vaxxed if you want... but these are not the treatments that will stop COVID-19.
If everyone were vaccinated and the transmission rate tanked to a fraction of its current value, the epidemic would end quickly.
Hopefully, this can still happen before more variants evolve. As things s
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If everyone were vaccinated and the transmission rate tanked to a fraction of its current value, the epidemic would end quickly.
If everyone were vaccinated the hospitals would be mostly empty and nobody would give a fuck about the pandemic anymore.
Yet even then it will still spread and mutate for far longer than any of us will be alive and nearly everyone will still be exposed to the virus.
Re: The vaccines aren't even working, why bother? (Score:3)
No. Covid has a survivability that varies dramatically with age, health status, care (or location/weather â" which can control how many starting virus particles you inhale (given the 8 hour doubling time, it matters.) Also, covid is no joke even if you do survive, the vaccine reduces the symptoms quite a bit.
My reference is https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/da... [jhu.edu] what is yours?
Re:The vaccines aren't even working, why bother? (Score:5, Informative)
99.74% is an extreme exaggeration. If every single American got infected, there would be 853K deaths with a survival rate that high. We've already had 614K deaths with nowhere near 100% infected. Secondly, death is not the only negative outcome. Even doubling the survivability from your absurd number would make a dramatic difference.
Regardless of all that, you just don't understand the scale and severity of the loss of anything approaching 0.26% of the world's population. Granted, some of what we're seeing in the US is accelerated Boomer retirement among people who would rather leave the workforce than deal with uncertainty/unsafety/difficulty. But we have a situation where the bottom end of the labor market has been emptied of workers from people moving up a level. It will be years before anyone has a clear picture of everything that has been affected.
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Why are they still pushing these crummy vaccines at all? They don't prevent infection, they don't prevent spreading the disease -- the only thing they still claim to do is reduce severity and chances of death.
I am absolutely astounded that people still need to be reminded, a year and a half into this pandemic, that all of the pandemic mitigation efforts are so that there is enough room in the ICU to handle all of the other ICU issues that are usually survivable. If the ICU is at its maximum capacity the survivability rate drops drastically, and so does the survivability rate for things like appendicitis and gunshot wounds. "Flattening the curve" is, and has always been, the entire point or lockdowns, masks, a
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You guys already played that card.
Its the only card "us guys" ever played, and the only reason the survivability rate seems so high right now is because it worked.
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That's nothing to do with Americans' health. Empty ICU beds are not profitable and our healthcare system is one of the most capitalistic in the world. Hospitals do not have spare capacity for anything.
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So dead people come back to life if you lie about the need for ICU beds? Or the shortages right now in many places?
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When an individual ICU fills up, you can transfer a patient to another hospital. When it's large swathes of a state or country, the story is different.
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finally, good honest candor
and it's true for 99.9999% of everybody, but for some reason we have to pretend it's altruism and 'service unto others' like we're all a bunch of phukkin saints
self-interest is not immoral nor unnatural nor does it mean animosity and lack of concern for others
it is the truth... and from what I've seen, harnessing self-interest is the best-yet way of getting folks to do something; much better than force, coercion, shaming, belittlement, name-calling, etc.