The Vaccine Thread

[JennyD]

2 hours ago, Mrs Tiggywinkle said:

Locally; officials are pushing the Janssen shot because there’s been a significant percentage of people who don’t go back for the second dose of the others. 

This has been happening in Israel, too, where they are only using the Pfizer vaccine.

[Kanin]

55 minutes ago, JennyD said:

This has been happening in Israel, too, where they are only using the Pfizer vaccine.

I wonder if that's because people are people.... forgetful, just don't want to do another thing... or if there are side effects, maybe people are afraid of feeling sick?

[Kanin]

1 minute ago, Kanin said:

I wonder if that's because people are people.... forgetful, just don't want to do another thing... or if there are side effects, maybe people are afraid of feeling sick?

Ah, should have read the article first. 🙂 

[Ausmumof3]

Add Germany, France, Italy and Spain to the list of countries with a pause on Astra Zeneca vax 

 

[Roadrunner]

Meanwhile news on mRNA based vaccines:

mRNA vaccines spur lymph nodes for longer-term protection; COVID-19 test accuracy may vary by time of day

https://news.yahoo.com/mrna-vaccines-spur-lymph-nodes-192417303.html

[Ausmumof3]

ABC

Blood clots found in 37 people out of 17 million recipients of AstraZeneca vaccine

A British virologist says international concerns about the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine causing blood clots must be put in perspective.

Associate professor Sterghios Moschos says 17 million people have received the AstraZeneca jab so far and blood clots have been found in just 37 recipients.

10 European nations have now suspended the AstraZeneca rollout, over Norwegian concerns about blood clots.

 

[Roadrunner]

3 hours ago, Ausmumof3 said:

ABC

Blood clots found in 37 people out of 17 million recipients of AstraZeneca vaccine

A British virologist says international concerns about the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine causing blood clots must be put in perspective.

Associate professor Sterghios Moschos says 17 million people have received the AstraZeneca jab so far and blood clots have been found in just 37 recipients.

10 European nations have now suspended the AstraZeneca rollout, over Norwegian concerns about blood clots.

 

That’s good news. 

[Roadrunner]

CA vaccination numbers have really jumped up. This is from LA Times tracker. those are daily vaccination numbers. 

+387,198 today

+367,243 yesterday

[Ausmumof3]

more on why the European countries may be being more cautious over the clotting issues than the initial statistics seem to warrant.  I will post the full thing if I can find it. 
 

In short the clotting being seen is not run of the mill but is specifically being seen in people with low platelet disorders which is extremely rare - much rarer than the background rate that most people that say it’s ok are referring to if I understand correctly 

[Ausmumof3]

https://www.abc.net.au/7.30/australian-experts-confident-in-astrazeneca/13254218
 

The full thing is here although not much more info

[Laura Corin]

In case you are interested in donating to support worldwide vaccine distribution, this is one option:

https://www.unicefusa.org/?form=FUNUNRDQFQB

https://www.unicef.org.uk/donate/coronavirus/

Edited March 16, 2021 by Laura Corin

[mommyoffive]

What it's like being one of the few people with 'super antibodies' against COVID-19 | CBC Radio

[mommyoffive]

Israel says 600 children given Covid jab had no serious side-effects | Vaccines and immunisation | The Guardian

[mommyoffive]

Moderna begins study of Covid-19 vaccine in kids (nbcnews.com)

[mommyoffive]

We had a 4.6 million vaccine day!!!

More Than 381 Million Shots Given: Covid-19 Vaccine Tracker (bloomberg.com)

[Soror]

4 minutes ago, mommyoffive said:

We had a 4.6 million vaccine day!!!

More Than 381 Million Shots Given: Covid-19 Vaccine Tracker (bloomberg.com)

It is so nice watching the numbers of vaccines climb faster and faster instead of the exponential climb of cases we had last year at this time.

[Soror]

On our state vaccine site they now have a section underneath vaccine events where they can list what vaccine they are using. Not all of them have the vaccine maker but most do. The vast majority of vaccinations are still Pfizer, some Moderna and only a few J&J.

Edited March 16, 2021 by Soror

[Soror]

21 hours ago, Mrs Tiggywinkle said:

My husband got the Janssen shot last week.  No side effects other than a sore arm for a day.

Locally; officials are pushing the Janssen shot because there’s been a significant percentage of people who don’t go back for the second dose of the others. 

It is my understanding that even one shot of Pfizer has more protection than 1 of J&J, unless I am misremembering. I thought I read yesterday at 3 weeks after the first dose Pfizer is showing 92% efficacy. I'm getting my second shot tomorrow but I consider even 1 shot a win (not preferable but it's still pretty darn good).

[mommyoffive]

v-safe (cdc.gov)

Get vaccinated. Get your smartphone. Get started with v-safe.

V-safe is a smartphone-based tool that checks in on you after your COVID-19 vaccination. Your participation helps keep COVID-19 vaccines safe — for you and for everyone.

If you got vaccinated in the last 6 weeks, you can participate in v-safe!

It takes just a few minutes to register and get started. All you need is your smartphone and information about the COVID-19 vaccine you received. This information can be found on your vaccination record card. If you cannot find your card, please contact your healthcare provider.

[kokotg]

My governor is asking people from metro Atlanta to drive to south Georgia to get vaccinated, because there are more vaccines than they have demand for there whereas it's still close to impossible to find appointments near the city. OR (stop me if this is just totally crazy) they could move the VACCINES to where all the PEOPLE are. Instead of suggesting that it's totally easy for people with jobs with no paid time off or with no cars to make an eight hour round trip drive. 

[Pam in CT]

re Friday's 4.6M vaccine day

21 minutes ago, mommyoffive said:

We had a 4.6 million vaccine day!!!

More Than 381 Million Shots Given: Covid-19 Vaccine Tracker (bloomberg.com)

(I've been doing a seriously dorked-out daily data track over on the Politics board...)

Both CDC and JHU had notation on Saturday 3/13 that the heroic blip was a reporting issue -- several large states didn't get their Friday data up into the system until after the cut-off for the daily total, so their Friday jabs got rolled into the Saturday count.  CDC has adjusted their daily chart to put those Friday counts into Friday (see here).  It doesn't change the TOTAL story, of 109+M doses into arms, and steadily rising daily deployment, but it's not quite so dramatic as it originally looked.

[vonfirmath]

5 minutes ago, kokotg said:

My governor is asking people from metro Atlanta to drive to south Georgia to get vaccinated, because there are more vaccines than they have demand for there whereas it's still close to impossible to find appointments near the city. OR (stop me if this is just totally crazy) they could move the VACCINES to where all the PEOPLE are. Instead of suggesting that it's totally easy for people with jobs with no paid time off or with no cars to make an eight hour round trip drive. 

I was wondering -- does the governor not have control of where vaccines are sent in Georgia?  (Or at least couldn't he talk to those who do have control to see what the reasoning is behind the choices?)

[kokotg]

6 minutes ago, vonfirmath said:

I was wondering -- does the governor not have control of where vaccines are sent in Georgia?  (Or at least couldn't he talk to those who do have control to see what the reasoning is behind the choices?)

It seems to be all his show. He's deciding on his own when and how eligibility opens up, too. There's really no transparency.

 

[Pam in CT]

re Georgia's vaccine rollout

6 minutes ago, kokotg said:

My governor is asking people from metro Atlanta to drive to south Georgia to get vaccinated, because there are more vaccines than they have demand for there whereas it's still close to impossible to find appointments near the city. OR (stop me if this is just totally crazy) they could move the VACCINES to where all the PEOPLE are. Instead of suggesting that it's totally easy for people with jobs with no paid time off or with no cars to make an eight hour round trip drive. 

This

Is

Enraging.

 

(Again from the data dork) Georgia is seriously lagging almost all states on almost all indicators: doses administered as % of population; doses all the way into arms as % of supply of doses delivered to state; their (lackluster even compared to other states) performance in reaching minority populations (these charts pack in a YUGE amount of very useful information but it took me quite a while to figure out how to read them -- each state is a dot (labeled on the live link); dots exactly on the line are delivering the same % of vaccine to that demographic as is exactly proportionate to their share in state population; dots in the shaded region show that demographic is getting more vaccines than is proportionate to their % in the state population, and dots in the unshaded triangles represent that segment getting "less vaccine than their share of population")

 

[Pam in CT]

re "states' rights" in vaccine deployment

15 minutes ago, vonfirmath said:

I was wondering -- does the governor not have control of where vaccines are sent in Georgia?  (Or at least couldn't he talk to those who do have control to see what the reasoning is behind the choices?)

 

8 minutes ago, kokotg said:

It seems to be all his show. He's deciding on his own when and how eligibility opens up, too. There's really no transparency.

 

It's not quite entirely all the governors' discretion -- there is a segment of vaccine going through FEMA and DoD; and last week Biden issued new guidelines that effectively brought the segment of vaccine going through the Federal Pharmacy Partnership to K-12 teachers even if state guidelines have not yet brought teachers to the head of the line.  So teachers can now get vaccinated through CVS/Walgreen/Walmart sites even in states where they are not otherwise eligible.  This new expansion really has not been adequately communicated, so if you are or know any K-12 teacher (public or private school), let them know.

But the FEMA/DoD and federal pharmacy allocations combined add up to only about ~20% of total vaccine being distributed (and until last week, the pharmacy distributions were implementing along state guidelines).  So state governments do have discretion over how the vast majority of vaccines are deployed.

[mommyoffive]

57 minutes ago, Pam in CT said:

re Friday's 4.6M vaccine day

(I've been doing a seriously dorked-out daily data track over on the Politics board...)

Both CDC and JHU had notation on Saturday 3/13 that the heroic blip was a reporting issue -- several large states didn't get their Friday data up into the system until after the cut-off for the daily total, so their Friday jabs got rolled into the Saturday count.  CDC has adjusted their daily chart to put those Friday counts into Friday (see here).  It doesn't change the TOTAL story, of 109+M doses into arms, and steadily rising daily deployment, but it's not quite so dramatic as it originally looked.

Oh yeah I read that too.  

[mommyoffive]

Citeline Engage (trialscope.com)

Moderna trial for kids 6 months to 11  years

 

 

[kokotg]

28 minutes ago, Pam in CT said:

re "states' rights" in vaccine deployment

 

It's not quite entirely all the governors' discretion -- there is a segment of vaccine going through FEMA and DoD; and last week Biden issued new guidelines that effectively brought the segment of vaccine going through the Federal Pharmacy Partnership to K-12 teachers even if state guidelines have not yet brought teachers to the head of the line.  So teachers can now get vaccinated through CVS/Walgreen/Walmart sites even in states where they are not otherwise eligible.  This new expansion really has not been adequately communicated, so if you are or know any K-12 teacher (public or private school), let them know.

But the FEMA/DoD and federal pharmacy allocations combined add up to only about ~20% of total vaccine being distributed (and until last week, the pharmacy distributions were implementing along state guidelines).  So state governments do have discretion over how the vast majority of vaccines are deployed.

There is a federal site doing vaccinations now, but it IS in Atlanta. I think that's the only one in the state, although I'm not sure. Trying to figure out the giant web of private pharmacies vs. county sites vs. state vs. federal is...difficult.

[Masers]

On 3/15/2021 at 12:25 AM, Roadrunner said:

Maybe.

I am just concerned that if we get all immunized here while everywhere else the virus is raging and mutating, our immunity will be no good anyway. We almost need to extinguish this everywhere simultaneously. Forget philanthropic reasons and look at selfish ones. 

I would love to see what production capacity looks like this year for various vaccines es to get a more global picture

I’m actually more concerned that if we all get immunized, the new strains will become increasingly lethal, and there is no way that they will be able to keep up with booster shots containing the new strains. I found this video to be pretty alarming, actually. As a vaccine developer and researcher, and having worked for GAVI and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, this guy obviously knows his stuff. Of course I saw this *after* our entire family, minus the kids, got the vaccine!

 

[JennyD]

2 hours ago, kokotg said:

My governor is asking people from metro Atlanta to drive to south Georgia to get vaccinated, because there are more vaccines than they have demand for there whereas it's still close to impossible to find appointments near the city. OR (stop me if this is just totally crazy) they could move the VACCINES to where all the PEOPLE are. Instead of suggesting that it's totally easy for people with jobs with no paid time off or with no cars to make an eight hour round trip drive. 

Neither DH nor I qualify yet under our state's rules (TN), but I have been looking at appointment calendars across the state and it is mind-blowing how many appointments are going unfilled at the Walmarts in some rural counties.  Just hundreds of appointments available for those eligible.  Meanwhile, here in the city 10,000 slots at a mass vaccination event filled up in 2 hours.

Either reallocate the vaccines or let counties with less demand get their lower-priority residents vaccinated. It is so frustrating.  

[Roadrunner]

There are significant differences in availability in CA as well. You can’t get an appointment (all booked) in my county, but people are driving couple of hours to get them elsewhere with less trouble. 

Edited March 16, 2021 by Roadrunner

[Pam in CT]

re inefficiencies in matching supply to demand

13 minutes ago, JennyD said:

Neither DH nor I qualify yet under our state's rules (TN), but I have been looking at appointment calendars across the state and it is mind-blowing how many appointments are going unfilled at the Walmarts in some rural counties.  Just hundreds of appointments available for those eligible.  Meanwhile, here in the city 10,000 slots at a mass vaccination event filled up in 2 hours.

Either reallocate the vaccines or let counties with less demand get their lower-priority residents vaccinated. It is so frustrating.  

 

10 minutes ago, Roadrunner said:

There is significant differences in availability in CA as well. You can’t get an appointment (all booked) in my county, but people are driving couple of hours to get them elsewhere with less trouble. 

Yeah, that is crazy-making.

There's a system here for "on-call" registries, where folks can put themselves on lists and get called, usually the night prior, if there are unused appointment slots, and if the time/logistics allow, you can take an unused slot.  It's still pretty inefficient because you have to take specific action to get yourself on each municipality's list, but AT A MINIMUM all states that are experiencing supply > demand should be doing that.

[Roadrunner]

1 minute ago, Pam in CT said:

re inefficiencies in matching supply to demand

 

Yeah, that is crazy-making.

There's a system here for "on-call" registries, where folks can put themselves on lists and get called, usually the night prior, if there are unused appointment slots, and if the time/logistics allow, you can take an unused slot.  It's still pretty inefficient because you have to take specific action to get yourself on each municipality's list, but AT A MINIMUM all states that are experiencing supply > demand should be doing that.

Yours is a smaller state? 

I can tell you here different counties were in different vaccination tiers, so you could qualify in a county north of me, but not in mine. Nuts. Things have improved but differences are still here. For example, I can get a shot with my HMO (doesn’t have clinics in my county) if I drive an hour, but can’t find an appointment locally even if I quality. 

[Pam in CT]

47 minutes ago, Roadrunner said:

Yours is a smaller state? 

I can tell you here different counties were in different vaccination tiers, so you could qualify in a county north of me, but not in mine. Nuts. Things have improved but differences are still here. For example, I can get a shot with my HMO (doesn’t have clinics in my county) if I drive an hour, but can’t find an appointment locally even if I quality. 

Oh good grief.  No, eligibility is the same across the state.

We've moved now to age-only cohorts, but even when we had HCW and other emergency response workers and most recently teachers as "priority," it's always been statewide.  Eligible people have *always* been allowed to drive anywhere they're willing to drive.  My husband's and my age cohort just opened up 3/1, and we decided in advance we'd be willing to drive literally *anywhere in the state.*  (It is not a very big state -- we're in one of the "corners" and the farthest-most opposite corner is only a bit over 2 hours.)  We did each end up driving about an hour, on different days in different directions to (obviously) different sites.

CT doesn't have truly meaningful "counties."  There are lines on the map, but there are no county seats or other government functions organized that way.  Maybe it helps to not have that layer adding stickiness to the effort?  The state vaccine allocation has been distributed all the way down to specific municipalities including quite-small towns; and also to groups like Visiting Nurse Association, as well as to the major hospital/health networks (some of which are using the creaky VAMS appointment portal and some of which have built their own). There are a lot of *parts* but at least if you invest the time/effort to learn the parts you can access appointments anywhere you're willing to go.

Business schools, public policy programs, and public health programs will be examining at this deployment as a case study for a LOOOOONG time. A lot of lessons to be learned here.

[JennyD]

1 hour ago, Pam in CT said:

re inefficiencies in matching supply to demand

 

Yeah, that is crazy-making.

There's a system here for "on-call" registries, where folks can put themselves on lists and get called, usually the night prior, if there are unused appointment slots, and if the time/logistics allow, you can take an unused slot.  It's still pretty inefficient because you have to take specific action to get yourself on each municipality's list, but AT A MINIMUM all states that are experiencing supply > demand should be doing that.

My city has a system for this -- every day you send an email to put yourself on the list for any extra doses.  I put my name in every day.  The last time they released stats, though, it was something like 11,000 people a day for between 0 and 4 doses.

A ton of vaccines are being distributed through supermarkets and Walmarts, though, and there is no system for letting people sign up for any of those unused slots -- it's all up to the individual (overworked) pharmacies to manage their flow.   A friend of mine who recently drove out to a Walmart in a rural county to get a vaccine said that the pharmacist was actually walking around the store, trying to convince shoppers to get vaccinated.  

 

 

[JennyD]

1 hour ago, Roadrunner said:

I can tell you here different counties were in different vaccination tiers, so you could qualify in a county north of me, but not in mine.

We had this for a while, too, and as crazy-making as it was (teachers were driving all over the state to get vaccinated) it was arguably more efficient than what we have right now, which is everyone stuck in the same tier with wildly different uptake in different areas.

9 minutes ago, Pam in CT said:

Business schools, public policy programs, and public health programs will be examining at this deployment as a case study for a LOOOOONG time. A lot of lessons to be learned here.

Definitely.  

[Roadrunner]

41 minutes ago, Pam in CT said:

Oh good grief.  No, eligibility is the same across the state.

We've moved now to age-only cohorts, but even when we had HCW and other emergency response workers and most recently teachers as "priority," it's always been statewide.  Eligible people have *always* been allowed to drive anywhere they're willing to drive.  My husband's and my age cohort just opened up 3/1, and we decided in advance we'd be willing to drive literally *anywhere in the state.*  (It is not a very big state -- we're in one of the "corners" and the farthest-most opposite corner is only a bit over 2 hours.)  We did each end up driving about an hour, on different days in different directions to (obviously) different sites.

CT doesn't have truly meaningful "counties."  There are lines on the map, but there are no county seats or other government functions organized that way.  Maybe it helps to not have that layer adding stickiness to the effort?  The state vaccine allocation has been distributed all the way down to specific municipalities including quite-small towns; and also to groups like Visiting Nurse Association, as well as to the major hospital/health networks (some of which are using the creaky VAMS appointment portal and some of which have built their own). There are a lot of *parts* but at least if you invest the time/effort to learn the parts you can access appointments anywhere you're willing to go.

Business schools, public policy programs, and public health programs will be examining at this deployment as a case study for a LOOOOONG time. A lot of lessons to be learned here.

Here early distribution was county specific. You had to show you lived in the county. Once the pharmacies started to offer shots, they didn’t ask, hence the movement of people across the county lines. 
There is no question some counties in CA got a worse deal then others. It seems to me now we have caught up to other counties in terms of tiers, but availability is still more limited here than elsewhere.   
 

The worse I have heard is NC - they completely threw the sick under the bus favoring other categories of people instead. 
https://www.cbs17.com/news/north-carolina-news/terminally-ill-mom-tired-of-nc-pushing-back-cancer-patients-for-covid-19-vaccine-wants-action/

 

Edited March 16, 2021 by Roadrunner

[JennyD]

nm

 

Edited March 16, 2021 by JennyD

[Roadrunner]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/ive-had-astrazeneca-vaccine-says-161412983.html
 

Pretty cool use of celebrity status 😉

I've had AstraZeneca vaccine, says Britain's Duchess of Cornwall

[Corraleno]

2 hours ago, Masers said:

I’m actually more concerned that if we all get immunized, the new strains will become increasingly lethal, and there is no way that they will be able to keep up with booster shots containing the new strains. I found this video to be pretty alarming, actually. As a vaccine developer and researcher, and having worked for GAVI and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, this guy obviously knows his stuff. Of course I saw this *after* our entire family, minus the kids, got the vaccine!

 

But all of the variants that have developed so far did so before the vaccines were widely available (or available at all), so they are clearly not a response to the vaccines. And the SA & Brazilian variants seem to have developed in populations that had very high levels of infection with the original strain, so the idea that we should just let everyone get it in order to prevent dangerous variants from developing has already been contradicted by real world data. People in Brazil and SA who had the original strain are getting reinfected — and therefore also spreading — the new variants to others who have also been previously infected.

Data from Israel indicates that Pfizer is 94% effective in preventing even asymptomatic infection, and there is no question that the fewer people who are infected, the fewer opportunities for mutation there are. Pfizer also appears to be just as effective against the UK strain as the original strain, and I believe Moderna and Novavax had similar results. All the vaccines so far seem less effective against the SA strain, but one of the big advantages of the mRNA and protein subunit vaccines is that they are supposed to be very easy to "tweak" by modifying the spike proteins they target to match the mutations in the variants. Vaccines are really our only hope of staying ahead of this virus.

 

[Masers]

23 minutes ago, Corraleno said:

But all of the variants that have developed so far did so before the vaccines were widely available (or available at all), so they are clearly not a response to the vaccines. And the SA & Brazilian variants seem to have developed in populations that had very high levels of infection with the original strain, so the idea that we should just let everyone get it in order to prevent dangerous variants from developing has already been contradicted by real world data. People in Brazil and SA who had the original strain are getting reinfected — and therefore also spreading — the new variants to others who have also been previously infected.

Data from Israel indicates that Pfizer is 94% effective in preventing even asymptomatic infection, and there is no question that the fewer people who are infected, the fewer opportunities for mutation there are. Pfizer also appears to be just as effective against the UK strain as the original strain, and I believe Moderna and Novavax had similar results. All the vaccines so far seem less effective against the SA strain, but one of the big advantages of the mRNA and protein subunit vaccines is that they are supposed to be very easy to "tweak" by modifying the spike proteins they target to match the mutations in the variants. Vaccines are really our only hope of staying ahead of this virus.

 

Right, but so far those variants aren’t necessarily more dangerous? I guess what I understand him to be saying in that our natural innate immunity (which is more effective in younger people) is pretty good at handling all the different Covid strains. And that there isn’t anything wrong with the Covid vaccine per se, it’s just that mass vaccination with a vaccine that reduces symptoms but doesn’t necessarily stop transmission will lead to it more freely mutating into more dangerous and virulent strains. And by then, our innate broad immunity has been replaced by specific immunity for the strains in the vaccine and we can’t fight off newer strains as well. And that it will be impossible to keep up with boosters for new mutations. 

here’s his original letter...I found it when I did a little digging. I don’t know. Maybe I’m unnecessarily worrying. But it was the first time I’ve really paused in regards to the vaccine. 

https://mcusercontent.com/92561d6dedb66a43fe9a6548f/files/bead7203-0798-4ac8-abe2-076208015556/Public_health_emergency_of_international_concert_Geert_Vanden_Bossche.01.pdf

[Masers]

55 minutes ago, kand said:

There doesn’t appear to be any basis to his claims, though, so don’t let him scare you about having been vaccinated. Here are a couple written summaries of what he says and responses for those that don’t like watching videos (raising hand):

https://vaxopedia.org/2021/03/14/who-is-geert-vanden-bossche/
 

https://www.deplatformdisease.com/blog/addressing-geert-vanden-bossches-claims (Disclaimer on this one: this is not written by someone who is an expert on this subject, and I almost didn’t include it for that reason. He has compiled so many links to relevant studies and authors though, that I decided to link with this caveat). 

Thanks, I appreciate it. Like I said, it was really the first thing I’ve seen that has “scared” me with regards to the vaccine. So I certainly hope your sources are right!!
I did see one other scientist agree with the assertion and he explained it like this, which again freaked me out, haha:

“It is to the advantage of a virus to spread widely, of course.  It's not that a virus has a mind, but rather that the more-widely it spreads without killing the host the more replicants of it there are.  It therefore "wins" genetically.  A virus that violently attacks a host and disables or kills the host before it is passed to another victim loses; a clearly diseased human will be shunned by others, and one that is dead cannot interact with anyone else.  Thus, by pure mathematics, viruses as they mutate tend to favor less-virulent but more easily-transmitted mutations; those are more-successful in getting passed on to others before their more-virulent cousin manages to infect the same person and, as the population gains antibodies so long as the immunity has cross-reaction capacity those particular mutations are the ones most-likely to get passed on and the more-virulent ones are selected against.

A vaccine that mimics natural infection does not tamper with this process because from the virus' point of view a person vaccinated is someone already infected.  There is no difference in regard to how the virus behaves when it encounters someone who was either previously sick or vaccinated with such a formulation.

This is not true for vaccines that do not produce sterilizing immunity or worse, do not mimic natural infections at all.

Specifically it is very possible for such a vaccine to actually make it more-likely that a deadlier form of the virus will survive and in fact thrive!  If the vaccine prevents you from getting seriously ill or dying but not from developing a viral titer and being able to pass the infection to others then it erases the natural disadvantage that mutations making a virus more deadly would otherwise have.

That raises the risk of stopping or even reversing the natural mutation processes by which easily-communicable viruses decrease in their capacity to kill people.

Remember that the CDC and other "authorities" are telling you point-blank that they do not believe these vaccines produce sterilizing immunity.  That is, you cannot take off your mask, stop distancing and resume your normal life after being vaccinated.  Why not?  There is only one reasonable explanation: They do not believe the vaccines prevent you from being infected and producing a titer of virus sufficient to infect others -- the vaccines only decrease the rate of severe disease and death.

Such "vaccines" must NEVER be given on a widespread basis to the public when a particular virus is circulating in the population as doing so risks a catastrophic mutation cascade that will kill tens or even hundreds of millions of people.  While numerically the risk of this occurring is likely quite small the consequence if it does happen is catastrophic and thus that course of action should never be undertaken.  A vaccine that behaves this way is simply never safe in the general population; the only rational use is in very high-risk individuals who make up a too-small and non-concentrated portion of the population to form a disease chain vector for a more-virulent mutation.

[popmom]

57 minutes ago, Masers said:

Thanks, I appreciate it. Like I said, it was really the first thing I’ve seen that has “scared” me with regards to the vaccine. So I certainly hope your sources are right!!
I did see one other scientist agree with the assertion and he explained it like this, which again freaked me out, haha:

“It is to the advantage of a virus to spread widely, of course.  It's not that a virus has a mind, but rather that the more-widely it spreads without killing the host the more replicants of it there are.  It therefore "wins" genetically.  A virus that violently attacks a host and disables or kills the host before it is passed to another victim loses; a clearly diseased human will be shunned by others, and one that is dead cannot interact with anyone else.  Thus, by pure mathematics, viruses as they mutate tend to favor less-virulent but more easily-transmitted mutations; those are more-successful in getting passed on to others before their more-virulent cousin manages to infect the same person and, as the population gains antibodies so long as the immunity has cross-reaction capacity those particular mutations are the ones most-likely to get passed on and the more-virulent ones are selected against.

A vaccine that mimics natural infection does not tamper with this process because from the virus' point of view a person vaccinated is someone already infected.  There is no difference in regard to how the virus behaves when it encounters someone who was either previously sick or vaccinated with such a formulation.

This is not true for vaccines that do not produce sterilizing immunity or worse, do not mimic natural infections at all.

Specifically it is very possible for such a vaccine to actually make it more-likely that a deadlier form of the virus will survive and in fact thrive!  If the vaccine prevents you from getting seriously ill or dying but not from developing a viral titer and being able to pass the infection to others then it erases the natural disadvantage that mutations making a virus more deadly would otherwise have.

That raises the risk of stopping or even reversing the natural mutation processes by which easily-communicable viruses decrease in their capacity to kill people.

Remember that the CDC and other "authorities" are telling you point-blank that they do not believe these vaccines produce sterilizing immunity.  That is, you cannot take off your mask, stop distancing and resume your normal life after being vaccinated.  Why not?  There is only one reasonable explanation: They do not believe the vaccines prevent you from being infected and producing a titer of virus sufficient to infect others -- the vaccines only decrease the rate of severe disease and death.

Such "vaccines" must NEVER be given on a widespread basis to the public when a particular virus is circulating in the population as doing so risks a catastrophic mutation cascade that will kill tens or even hundreds of millions of people.  While numerically the risk of this occurring is likely quite small the consequence if it does happen is catastrophic and thus that course of action should never be undertaken.  A vaccine that behaves this way is simply never safe in the general population; the only rational use is in very high-risk individuals who make up a too-small and non-concentrated portion of the population to form a disease chain vector for a more-virulent mutation.

I get his point. It will be a few more months probably before we know whether or not these mRNA vaccines actually prevent infection and transmission. Even if they don't prevent transmission, I still personally (with my very limited understanding) believe that mass vaccination with these types is still much better than no vax at all if for no other reason than to reduce the strain on hospitals. I mean we can have rampant spread with lots of hospitalizations and deaths or we may or may not have rampant spread without lots of deaths and hospitalizations. I'll take the latter for now. 

Also, we've got  more than one in the pipeline for sterilizing immunity--an intranasal live attenuated virus vaccine.

Edited March 16, 2021 by popmom

[kokotg]

30 minutes ago, kand said:

Some of the new variants do look to be more dangerous. The UK one appears more transmissible AND more deadly. Fortunately, the vaccines are protecting against that one pretty well. But also, they do appear to be drastically reducing transmission. Vanden Bocche is working on making a vaccine using NK cells, which is what he is arguing is needed in order to stop variants. There is no data to back this up, but a significant conflict of interest in him wanting all other vaccination to stop and for people to instead get the kind of vaccine he is working on. 
 

eta: if what he says is true, why have all the years of mass flu vaccination campaigns not resulted in catastrophic flu mutation?

yeah, one study shows the UK variant is 64% more deadly (https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/10/health/coronavirus-variant-uk-more-deadly-study/index.html) which seems to be a fatal blow to his argument, if I'm understanding it at all. That along with the fact that early evidence suggests that the vaccine DOES reduce transmission significantly. 

[Drama Llama]

17 minutes ago, popmom said:

I get his point. It will be a few more months probably before we know whether or not these mRNA and DNA vaccines actually prevent infection and transmission. Even if they don't prevent transmission, I still personally (with my very limited understanding) believe that mass vaccination with these types is still much better than no vax at all if for no other reason than to reduce the strain on hospitals. I mean we can have rampant spread with lots of hospitalizations and deaths or we may or may not have rampant spread without lots of deaths and hospitalizations. I'll take the latter for now. 

Also, we've got  more than one in the pipeline for sterilizing immunity--an intranasal live attenuated virus vaccine.

There are DNA vaccines?  

[popmom]

3 minutes ago, BaseballandHockey said:

There are DNA vaccines?  

That's not the right term. I'll change it. I meant the way the J&J vaccine works. I've seen it referred to that way right or wrong.

Edited March 16, 2021 by popmom

[Corraleno]

2 minutes ago, popmom said:

That's not the right term. I'll change it. I meant the way the J&J vaccine works. I've seen it referred to that way right or wrong.

J&J and AZ are viral vector vaccines; they use adenoviruses.

[Corraleno]

24 minutes ago, Masers said:

Right, but so far those variants aren’t necessarily more dangerous? I guess what I understand him to be saying in that our natural innate immunity (which is more effective in younger people) is pretty good at handling all the different Covid strains. And that there isn’t anything wrong with the Covid vaccine per se, it’s just that mass vaccination with a vaccine that reduces symptoms but doesn’t necessarily stop transmission will lead to it more freely mutating into more dangerous and virulent strains. And by then, our innate broad immunity has been replaced by specific immunity for the strains in the vaccine and we can’t fight off newer strains as well. And that it will be impossible to keep up with boosters for new mutations. 

All three of the bolded assumptions are false. (1) The UK variant appears to be significantly more deadly. (2) The Pfizer vaccine is 94% effective in preventing infection, not just symptomatic disease. (3) We have already seen that infection with the original strain neither prevents the development of variants nor provides full protection against reinfection with those variants — and this seems to be particularly true with exactly the sort of mild/asymptomatic cases that the author sees as a goal when he advocates allowing younger/healthier people to get the disease —  in fact, these people are far more likely to actually spread the disease and therefore increase the opportunities for mutation. 

 

16 minutes ago, Masers said:

Thanks, I appreciate it. Like I said, it was really the first thing I’ve seen that has “scared” me with regards to the vaccine. So I certainly hope your sources are right!!
I did see one other scientist agree with the assertion and he explained it like this, which again freaked me out, haha:

“It is to the advantage of a virus to spread widely, of course.  It's not that a virus has a mind, but rather that the more-widely it spreads without killing the host the more replicants of it there are.  It therefore "wins" genetically.  A virus that violently attacks a host and disables or kills the host before it is passed to another victim loses; a clearly diseased human will be shunned by others, and one that is dead cannot interact with anyone else.  Thus, by pure mathematics, viruses as they mutate tend to favor less-virulent but more easily-transmitted mutations; those are more-successful in getting passed on to others before their more-virulent cousin manages to infect the same person and, as the population gains antibodies so long as the immunity has cross-reaction capacity those particular mutations are the ones most-likely to get passed on and the more-virulent ones are selected against.

A vaccine that mimics natural infection does not tamper with this process because from the virus' point of view a person vaccinated is someone already infected.  There is no difference in regard to how the virus behaves when it encounters someone who was either previously sick or vaccinated with such a formulation.

This is not true for vaccines that do not produce sterilizing immunity or worse, do not mimic natural infections at all.

Specifically it is very possible for such a vaccine to actually make it more-likely that a deadlier form of the virus will survive and in fact thrive!  If the vaccine prevents you from getting seriously ill or dying but not from developing a viral titer and being able to pass the infection to others then it erases the natural disadvantage that mutations making a virus more deadly would otherwise have.

That raises the risk of stopping or even reversing the natural mutation processes by which easily-communicable viruses decrease in their capacity to kill people.

Remember that the CDC and other "authorities" are telling you point-blank that they do not believe these vaccines produce sterilizing immunity.  That is, you cannot take off your mask, stop distancing and resume your normal life after being vaccinated.  Why not?  There is only one reasonable explanation: They do not believe the vaccines prevent you from being infected and producing a titer of virus sufficient to infect others -- the vaccines only decrease the rate of severe disease and death.

Such "vaccines" must NEVER be given on a widespread basis to the public when a particular virus is circulating in the population as doing so risks a catastrophic mutation cascade that will kill tens or even hundreds of millions of people.  While numerically the risk of this occurring is likely quite small the consequence if it does happen is catastrophic and thus that course of action should never be undertaken.  A vaccine that behaves this way is simply never safe in the general population; the only rational use is in very high-risk individuals who make up a too-small and non-concentrated portion of the population to form a disease chain vector for a more-virulent mutation.

Without a link to the document this comes from, it's not possible to assess this person's credentials, but the fact that he puts "authorities" in quotes is a bit of a red flag, as is the fact that he seems to purposely misrepresent what those "authorities" say. The fact that vaccine manufacturers did not originally test for asymptomatic disease does NOT mean that vaccines do not block transmission, it just means that we didn't initially have data on that. But we now have very good data, from 600,000 vaccinated people in Israel, showing that at least the mRNA vaccines seem to be extremely effective in blocking transmission, which refutes his entire argument. 

 

[Masers]

15 minutes ago, kand said:

Some of the new variants do look to be more dangerous. The UK one appears more transmissible AND more deadly. Fortunately, the vaccines are protecting against that one pretty well. But also, they do appear to be drastically reducing transmission. Vanden Bocche is working on making a vaccine using NK cells, which is what he is arguing is needed in order to stop variants. There is no data to back this up, but a significant conflict of interest in him wanting all other vaccination to stop and for people to instead get the kind of vaccine he is working on. 
 

eta: if what he says is true, why have all the years of mass flu vaccination campaigns not resulted in catastrophic flu mutation?

Yeah, good to keep in mind. It just made sense to me. 
 

I guess because it wasn’t in the midst of a flu pandemic? And a lot of people don’t get the flu shot? Idk!
 

[Masers]

2 hours ago, Corraleno said:

All three of the bolded assumptions are false. (1) The UK variant appears to be significantly more deadly. (2) The Pfizer vaccine is 94% effective in preventing infection, not just symptomatic disease. (3) We have already seen that infection with the original strain neither prevents the development of variants nor provides full protection against reinfection with those variants — and this seems to be particularly true with exactly the sort of mild/asymptomatic cases that the author sees as a goal when he advocates allowing younger/healthier people to get the disease —  in fact, these people are far more likely to actually spread the disease and therefore increase the opportunities for mutation. 

 

Without a link to the document this comes from, it's not possible to assess this person's credentials, but the fact that he puts "authorities" in quotes is a bit of a red flag, as is the fact that he seems to purposely misrepresent what those "authorities" say. The fact that vaccine manufacturers did not originally test for asymptomatic disease does NOT mean that vaccines do not block transmission, it just means that we didn't initially have data on that. But we now have very good data, from 600,000 vaccinated people in Israel, showing that at least the mRNA vaccines seem to be extremely effective in blocking transmission, which refutes his entire argument. 

 

Thanks! I’m calming down now. 😅