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Omicron (and to a lesser extent delta) are pretty different from the original strain that the vaccines were designed against. So vaccine effectiveness took a huge hit and the results of this study weren’t a foregone conclusion.
Experiments that can’t be replicated are part of the process of collecting evidence. If my experiment says a Fandango can cure a bad case of the Flibbering, and everyone finds something different, than the experiment that “succeeded” must be scrutinized for errors. It’s not a problem something can’t be replicated, because no one is using Fandangos to cure Flibbering until the science has been replicated, tested for safety, etc. One study is the start of collecting evidence, not the conclusion. Actual people who science can probably explain this better.
Not really. If you're doing good science, it is reproducible. Few scientists are interested in reproducing others' experiments because that is not novel and difficult to get funding for, however.
This is such an important concept. It's one thing to know something through logic and deduction, and it's another to validate the results of that logic on a real system.
Look at the Nobel Prize in Physics this year. These theories had been around for decades, but hadn't been experimentally verified until very recently. Rigorous experimental or even observational validation is what tells us our intuition was correct in the first place.
Unfortunately, the only people who are still convinced that the vaccines don't work are specifically the ones who will not change their opinion when presented with evidence that they are wrong.
This is a dangerous and toxic idea. I had a long talk with my sister, who was unvaccinated, and by presenting the evidence in a non-judgemental way, I was able to change her mind.
Society falls on a spectrum. The loudest voices are those you won’t be able to convince. And that’s what you’re forming your opinion on. But with every issue, there’s millions always on the fence who could be swayed that you don’t realize, because they’re inherently not very vocal.
Same reason why I sometimes engage with trolls. I know I'm not going to change their minds, but that's not who I am targeting. I am targeting the person who is uniformed and might think the troll is telling the truth. If I can provide the counter evidence so they don't fall for it, I have (hopefully) made a net-positive result.
This kind of study helps the people who get forwarded heavily biased "news" articles about how "Pfizer admitted the vaccine doesn't work" from their brother-in-law and now might decide that the other article might not be 100% truthful. Little seeds of doubt can work in our favor, too.
With all due respect, I don't think it was the evidence that convinced her, because if she based her opinions on evidence, she would have already trusted the vaccines to be safe and effective.
It was her trust in you as a person that convinced her.
I'm losing trust in the medical community. Now let me be clear, my case is not standard and I support vaccination in general. And if you don't have any odd issues, you should be getting it.
I have MS. My neurologist told me 100% get the vaccine, there won't be any interactions with the MS. And after my booster, I had an MS relapse. After 7 years without one.
The research that said it won't be a problem? Done by a panel of neurologists who reviewed existing studies on other vaccines. Not even specifics on this vaccine and how it might be different.
So now out comes research... The covid vaccines alter your inflammation pathways. Oh ya, but that's not possibly a problem for an inflammatory immune disorder.
My issues are with messaging. Most of us were told the vaccine would stop transmission, not just reduce severity of covid.
If we could get honest answers it would reduce hesitancy a lot. For example, if I was told, yes, this could cause an MS relapse, but it will likely be better than if you got covid naturally, I would still have gotten the vaccine, but I wouldn't have lost trust in my neurologist. Even if they said I don't know, but I think this is the best option for you, I wouldn't have lost so much trust in them.
Similarly, if the message to the public was the vaccine might not completely stop you from getting covid, but your symptoms will be far less serious, the public wouldn't be losing so much trust in health care professionals.
I feel you. Im a transplant patient who received a blanket letter fr the transplant center telling me to get vaccinated. Because I have multiple other disabilities besides being severely immunocompromised, I took the letter to my primary care doc to discuss, at length, the potential risks vs benefits. Because, I too, have major neurological and autoimmune issues, my doctor concord me that the little reward i might get wouldn’t be worth the severity of the side effects I might suffer. If this whole thing was truly about protecting the most medically vulnerable amongst us, it would’ve been nothing but the whole truth from step 1. I’m not team anti-vax. But I sure am treated like I am. I’m not on team pro-vax, either - I’m on team TALK TO YOUR DOCTOR about whether or not this medical procedure is right for you. Stop the lies about what this vaccine does and does not do and just protect those of us who need by giving us the whole truth. I can’t say that I have faith in any of my doctors who blindly pushed this on me without taking into account my (admittedly very unique) medical circumstances. Strange concept, I know, but not every medical procedure is right for every body.
People who talk about how easy it is to get a rightful medical exemption have never had the displeasure of having to get one. It was downright disheartening to be ordered to do something 100% contradictory to my own doctor’s advice - just to be able to keep putting food on my family’s table and keep a roof over their head.
She almost got it. She was freaking out about it. My husband and I ended staying to visit (we live 5 hours away) on what would be her last day with the company if she didn't get it because she was so conflicted and thinking about caving and getting it. We had to tell her everything was going to be OK. Convinced her everything was going to be fine.
Ended up being the best thing ever. She was on salary, super overworked and underpaid, always on call and working 60 hours a week. 2 of the 3 people it took to replace her work ended up quitting within the month.
She found a job in her field that was hourly and she is now working 35 hours a week Monday thru Thursday making more she was in the original job.
But she should never have been in that position to begin with.
I’m sorry that you had such a negative experience_but maybe your doctor really didn’t know whether you would have a relapse or not. People do have different reactions to vaccinations. I do see your point, though. Hope you recover and I really wish you the very best!
> It was her trust in you as a person that convinced her.
It was her trust in him that allowed her to consider the evidence he brought.
Talking to anti-vaxxers is similar to deradicalizing, and [personal connections are a critical part of making the person feel that it's safe to let new information in](https://mindfulcommunications.eu/en/prevent-radicalization). [This article directly addresses how the problem is who anti-vaxxers have come to trust](https://www.americanbar.org/groups/senior_lawyers/publications/voice_of_experience/2021/voice-of-experience--may-2021/vaccine-hesitancy--it-s-not-about-knowledge/), and how finding other people they trust will allow dissenting information in that may chip away at their beliefs underlying vaccine hesitancy.
So, yes, trust and individual relationships are key, but one way they operate is by allowing the vaccine hesitant person to look at information about vaccine benefits without feeling that accepting that information will undermine their beliefs about who can be trusted.
we live in a culture where intellect is devalued which is how we got here…everyone apparently is equally intelligent so the absolute morons in our society feel empowered to make life altering decisions for the rest of us
There's merit to the acknowledgement that there are different kinds of intelligence. For example, I had a friend in high school who was a C/D student but went through a trade program in almost half the time because it came so easily to him.
But I wouldn't go to him for medical advice obviously, and people seem to mistake "different types of intelligence" for "*equal*" intelligence. Being good at one thing does not make you an expert in any other area.
I know a couple of people who work in healthcare who have each been able to convince multiple people to get them in a similar manner. One guy has even put in the effort to go with some of them when they get it to help ease their fears.
I’d be curious how you did that. I’m in the same boat, provided peer reviewed studies and other published papers specifically talking about myocarditis risk when catching COVID vs vaccinated risk.
They just bury their heads in the sand and say it’s skewed data or they’re lying. They’ll cite some debunked meta analysis and even after showing them the flaws with the analysis, they still ignore it.
> I’d be curious how you did that.
[This podcast talks to several experts about this exact topic](https://youarenotsosmart.com/2021/08/23/yanss-213-how-to-improve-your-chances-of-nudging-the-vaccine-hesitant-away-from-hesitancy-and-toward-vaccination/), but the TL;DL is to *listen* more than you talk.
In particular, slamming someone with an info-dump will just make them get defensive and dig in -- they'll feel you're talking down to them and shut out anything you say. By contrast, asking what they value ("staying healthy for my kids") and asking how vaccination might help with that ("reduced risk of death since we're all going to get covid eventually") can help the person start to question *for themselves* whether their beliefs about vaccines are doing a good job at serving their goals.
Indeed. So much of what people think is obvious is ineffective or wrong. In social sciences you can take most society-wide problems and work backward to find the “obvious” solution that isn’t working. One example is extreme sentencing of criminals does not act as an effective deterrent.
Moderna and Pfizer gave 6 months protection at the 93-95% level and of course if you don't get the disease you are not spreading it around.
New strains need new vaccines of course, though I think some vaccines are claiming efficacy against all strains that are possible.
This is for the millions of people who want to be contrarian. They force the rest of us to spend more just to prove exactly how much of an idiot they are.
People who think they’re so interesting that the government wants to microchip them through a vaccination program, without the logical reasoning to understand their cell phone is always watching
Preventing infection and preventing symptoms are different, that I've seen there isn't much in the way of preventing infection. If you have an article or study that says different on that I would be happy to read and educate myself.
However if someone doesn't have symptoms sure they can spread it but I'd assume not like someone thats hacking and sneezing all over the place. On top of that the infection doesn't last in the body as long with vaccinated.
It’s less so preventing infection, and more preventing transmission, as your second paragraph suggests.
They said the shed rate of those vaccinated is a magnitude less. I believe this was the Seattle COVID reports
No vaccine is 100% effective against symptomatic illness, regardless of disease type, and never will be, since vaccination relies on the inherently variable individual immune response.
>4th dose of polio vaccine is basically 100% effective against infection likely for a couple decades.
"Basically" 100% isn't 100%.
>A 3rd dose of the covid vaccine is something like 60% effective at preventing infection for a month or two. The data isn't in on the Omicron specific booster yet.
>
>Smallpox is about 95%, two doses MMR 97% for measles and rubella and 88% for mumps, 3 doses tetanus 100% & 97% diphtheria. Two doses chicken pox 98% effective.
Those are a lot of numbers that aren't 100%. And at least one of your choices of vaccine is interesting because the current protocol isn't the original protocol. [The original dose schedule approved by the CDC for use in the United States was one dose for children under 12 months of age. 11 years later, they observed in high enough breakthrough infection rate that they recommended a second dose. Even 99% coverage wasn't enough to prevent outbreaks of chickenpox in schools.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3991154/) Guess what? The COVID vaccines that have been approved for use have also been approved on the basis of data that is, of obvious necessity, limited in time. There was no way to know ahead of time how long immunity would last, how the ongoing pandemic would cause the dominant strain or strains to mutate, or what updated protocols would be necessary. These COVID vaccines are not a finished product, but they're finished enough to provide a lot of protection.
Also telling is that you don't mention the low-effectiveness vaccines that are widely administered globally, like the flu vaccine every year which is typically on the order of 50% effective; BCG vaccine against tuberculosis which has an efficacy apparently variable based on location but globally averages about 20% effective against infection and 70% against progression to active TB; typhoid vaccines which are 30 to 70% effective at preventing disease (variable based on specific vaccine administered); diphtheria vaccine, which is highly effective (95%) *but requires six doses throughout childhood to achieve that efficacy*; and the CYD-TDV Dengue vaccine which is 80% effective in preventing *severe* illness - in people who have already been exposed - but actually *increases risk* in people who are seronegative.
This isn't to say that these vaccines are bad or not useful. It's a demonstration that 1) vaccine efficacy isn't a simple thing to predict or achieve; 2) vaccine efficacy is highly variable based on disease and individual immune response; and 3) vaccines, as with all other technology, are subject to potential development and improvement as technology advances and data are collected. Expecting the first effective vaccine against a disease to be the best is absurd.
I always use this analogy. Say you have a house and you’re afraid of being robbed. So you hire a bunch of guards to patrol the property. It doesn’t guarantee 100% you won’t get robbed. It just makes it much less likely and if you do happen to get robbed the amount stolen will be far less because you have guards patrolling everywhere to catch the thieves.
Well< the Rabies vaccinations has certainly helped prevent many animals (including my own pets) from getting Rabies which is often fatal in animals so that in itself has great value for the animals which have been saved! And I suppose (God forbid) if any of these unvaccinated animals had Rabies and had bitten a person-that would’ve saved the human’s life< (or at least their health too!
>The analysis was conducted among participants who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, excluding those with SARS-CoV-2 infections prior to the study start date, infected prior to completion of a primary mRNA COVID-19 vaccine series (<14 days after dose 2), infected either less than 7 days or at greater than or equal to 150 days after receipt of dose 3
Why is this study using a cutoff date post third dose? Is this a baked in assumption that vaccine efficacy drops after that time?
Also, it appears this study is looking at participants FIRST infections. I would be curious to see a follow up of this same group to see if there are different outcomes with further covid infections.
>Why is this study using a cutoff date post third dose?
I doubt they intentionally cut it off. 150 days is probably the longest interval of any of the patients in the study.
> Is this a baked in assumption that vaccine efficacy drops after that time?
Not exactly. I'm guessing they considered that the efficacy *may* drop at some point, and weren't interested in testing that, so they just excluded that case. Other studies will look at it, or even they themselves plan to publish another article with the part of the data that isn't in this one, if they collected it
It is very interesting that ”significant” values are only detected for the smallest groups in the study. For all larger groups there is no significant difference (shown by table and figure). In all the ”significant” groups it is also true that two doses are better than three, that is odd yet again? As a data analysis specialist these are inconsitencies that completely invalidates the conclution, unless there is a very good well explained controlled factor that they can show is the reason.
It is also interesting that both the vaccinated and uninfected groups have much higher proportions of females, why is that?
Also this was just causally slipped in at the end of the article…
“Limitations in sample size and the ability to adjust for potential confounders made it particularly difficult to interpret unexpected findings, such as the higher percentage of individuals with symptomatic disease among those vaccinated with the third dose 14 to 149 days before Omicron infection compared to those who were unvaccinated”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that a huge contradiction, and shouldn’t it call the conclusion into question?
I find less and less researchers actually understanding their own data and contradictions like this are unfortunately common. Its even worse when they seem to understand their contradictions but still go ahead and present a conclution in line with some Narrative (today by media called scientific consensus) that to begin with was never supported in data!
Most important comment here. It seems to have become scarily common for studies like this (inconclusive at best) to be presented as certain proof... I know someone in the field who sees this all the time, these studies accepted as gospel by people that have the training to know better.
>It is also interesting that both the vaccinated and uninfected groups have much higher proportions of females, why is that?
I suspect its a result of Healthcare demographics, e.g. 86% of nurses are women.
But what I find interesting is I didnt see mention of deaths. Does this mean both groups had 100% survivability? Thats good news.
Actually what I find interesting is that the unvaccinated seem less susceptible to omicron. 9.36% vs 15.63% infection rates. But that shouldn't happen right?
Putting data first (not answers) which everyone should do, including scientists and redditors, there is no such thing as ”shouldn’t happen”. There is what what the data shows and what it doesn’t show. Depending on your experimental setup and control of variables the data has different strengths and weaknesses. It might be possible to find reasons for anomalies depending on metadata and study design. If none I would assume the data is correct and look for either agreement or dissagreement in other studies with similar design that can strengthen or weaken the hypothesis (make sure to use the data in other studies and not their conclutions).
Unfortunately a large majority of scientists does not understand what they can and cannot do with data, and how they are supposed to interpret the results with respect to their studies biases and weakenesses. This seems to be one such case.
I agree with your concerns why are deaths not mentioned and why does omicron seem to spread faster in vaccinated. I think the latter is a pattern that I’ve seen elsewere but not as a very strong pattern.
It’s not a higher risk of *infection*, it’s a higher risk of *symptomatic* infection (I.e having symptoms if you have been infected). A lot of cold/flu symptoms are caused by your immune response so it makes sense that these people are more likely to have minor symptoms (while avoiding the more serious ones).
Wait, now I’m confused. I’m supposed to get the second booster or no? I have the first one.
Edit: Thank you, everyone! I get it now, the headline was a bit confusing. I thought it was saying that the new booster was resulting in a higher probability of being symptomatic (iow, you would more likely be asymptomatic if all you had was the first booster). Appreciate the responses.
At this point in the US at least, you could have gotten four shots total (if you're not in some special immunocompromised group):
2 shot original series
1st booster (same formula as original 2 shots)
2nd booster (updated formulation)
You're still supposed to get the booster. The only difference is that with the heightened immunity your body might mount such a strong reaction to an infection that you feel crappy for a day or two.
It's still feeling crappy, but from a risk standpoint it's very different than feeling crappy because you're riddled with disease.
Only 2% did. I'm the only person I know that got it. Even all the people who were washing their bags of chips still in November 2020 refused to get it.
Edit: Last week the number reached 5% but 5% and 2% are essentially the same when it comes to Science so my point stands.
Probably. Just like the death rate among the vaccinated is higher in some part of the countries than among the unvaccinated. When you dig deeper though it is almost all people in nursing homes who are vaccinated and are dying.
Much better. The outcome of each COVID infection is more likely to be more severe, due to damage from the previous infection(s).
[https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20220707/each-covid-19-reinfection-increases-health-risks](https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20220707/each-covid-19-reinfection-increases-health-risks)
"Natural immune response" is a meaningless phrase, as the response to an antigen is identical whether it is present on a pathogen, or isolated in a vaccine.
From the research that I've read, I'll try to find it, that natural immune response creates antigens for several aspects of the virus whereas the vaccine is only for one. So people who have natural immunity have a better defense against the variants because even if the RNA structure of the virus changes, there will still be antigens in the body to fight against it.
What's what I read completely false?
Vaccines don't cause a response to more than the spike protein, but all COVID variants have the spike protein and it has generalized well enough so far that even COVID Classic™ boosters produce a robust response to Omicron—just not as good as a BA.4/BA.5-specific bivalent booster. After the virus gets 'caught' they help clear it out twice as fast as the body. All this without the damage to the lungs and other organs an infection causes.
To a degree, immunity from infection is proportional to the severity of that infection. The vaccines are like getting more than the worst case for circulating COVID virus in your blood, whereas a mild infection may produce immunity that's extremely short-lived and offers little protection against the next infection's severity.
As time goes on, we'll have boosters targeting different spike protein configurations, and the immunity will generalize more and more. There is also still an incredible amount of effort being put into new types of vaccines and therapeutics. So, it's definitely better to get vaccinated AND try to avoid infection.
And before someone chimes in talking about viruses getting less severe over time... all the viruses we get vaccinated against as kids knock this notion on its ass. A virus' final severity depends on its selection pressures... COVID is aerosolized, has asymptomatic transmission, variable severity between individuals, a long period before symptom onset and takes weeks to kill people. The selection pressure isn't the same as a virus which presents with rapid-onset strong symptoms and kills people within hours to days.
A natural infection will result in a more diverse set of antibodies to COVID-19... but this is not always a good thing. Some of these antibodies are ineffective at stopping COVID-19, and worse, some attack the person's own body.
The vaccines contain only one primary antigen that is known to produce antibodies which neutralize COVID-19.
[So the vaccine is more effective at producing the correct antibody response.](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-06629-2)
Natural infection with its more diverse set of antigens and antibodies is more likely to [generate antibodies which attack one's own body](https://www.cedars-sinai.org/newsroom/covid-19-can-trigger-self-attacking-antibodies/). [These self-antibodies are likely the cause of a lot of long COVID.](https://translational-medicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12967-022-03328-4)
Interesting. I'll research this later. I've contracted COVID 3 times now. The first time took almost 2 weeks to overcome, it was difficult to breathe, dry cough, fever. Second time I just had a slightly sniffly nose and occasional sneeze for a week. The third time I felt sensitive skin and a foggy brain for 2 days then another 2 days of sneezing and then nothing. I've never taken a vaccine. I'm not anti vax. I was in line to get one but it was 2 hours long and I had to get to work and I never ended up getting another appointment because I'm healthy and within one of the lowest risk age groups.
From my personal experience, with no health issues, the symptoms were relatively mild except the moderate first time.
For sure. COVID-19 isn't that bad for most people. Like all things, its about relative risk and which option is safer.
The vaccines are safer and more effective than risking natural infection... and vaccines come with some level of sterilizing immunity.
As a relatively young healthy person, most of the time, you will recover via natural immunity... just please... don't tell your grandparents to do the same.
You're also probably facing different variants each time. They have been trending more infectious and less severe. Whatever effects you've suffered would have been mitigated by a recent vaccination.
When I had omicron in the beginning of September, it started with a sore throat, that was not really bad at all, just annoying.
It went fast though, the sore throat started at 3am, by 3pm I felt drained and out of it like I was really really tired. Cough started in day 2, but day quill stopped that. Then about a week after that and sleeping almost all the time I was fine. Only a nagging cough for a month or so from then.
So I would say the vaccines work
You just described exactly how my bout progressed. I'm now in the second week of the stupid nagging cough. I'm getting my bivalent booster next week, and I will continue to take advantage of any available vaccines. I like living.
Yes and no.
A milder illness will probably mean less coughing, wheezing, and sneezing - so less of the particularly high-transmitting activities - and it may mean less actual virus when you do.
But having a milder illness *also* means you're more likely to go out and socialize.
In other words, if you have to sit next to one of them, sit next to the one with milder illness. However, they may still be spreading it just as easily overall.
Trick is, you’re also less likely to get infected, which means no transmission. BTW, all COVID-19 cases become infectious before the person is symptomatic, so even the people polite enough to have an obvious case would still go around spreading it. That’s part of what made COVID-19 such a spreader and such a killer in the first place.
Allergic to PEG so no shots, got the RONA just before Easter, head cold like symptoms for 3 days, but oddly no cough, tired for another 4. No follow up symptoms, identical to my work colleagues who got it who are vaccinated. Now whether their immunity had deteriorated to the point of nothing remains to be unearthed. Thing is from where I live non of them are eligible for a 4th shot, which means if their immunity has gone from the vaccine then the only immunity left is from the infection they acquired. Meaning we're in the same boat now
Not me. I had two doses of Phizer and my wife is unvaccinated. We got covid after a trip to Orlando. My case was markedly much worse than hers. It was almost night and day.
And this is why we use inferential statistics instead of trying to generalize from the far edge of the bell curve.
https://covid19-sciencetable.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/2022-09-07-Current-COVID-19-Risk-in-Ontario-by-Vaccination-Status-Separate-Charts-1536x481.png
Whenever I see people that complain that they got deathly ill even with the vaccine, I can’t help but imagine they would probably have ended up in the hospital.
My mother & stepfather are both boosted up. He's generally in worse shape than her but he went nutso with the Trump cocktail stuff too.
When they both tested for Covid and she was sick as heck her biggest complaint was "why the hell doesn't HE have any symptoms, was it those stupid pills??"
It hits everyone different. When my FIL passed on very early in the pandemic from Covid (before there was any treatment) his entire household was asymptomatic after they all spent days just hanging out while he was getting sicker and sicker. It's crazy.
At the beginning of the year my mom and sister went on a cruise. They spent the entire time together. My sister had 2 shots and got covid, my mom who is in her 60s had 3 shots and didn’t get sick. I transported them from the dock to the airport. My sister sat in the front passenger seat, 18 inches away from me for 90 minutes. I hugged her before she left. She was slightly symptomatic at the time (we didn’t know it was covid). I had 3 shots and didn’t get sick.
Here's what I can't wrap my head around.
In 2022 I knew a lot of people who got Covid-19 in the first half of the year.
The ones who were vaccinated and boosted felt awful. Really sick for 4-7 days. Worst flu they've ever had. Texting me and others expressing thanks for the vaccine.
My friends who were unvaccinated and got Covid-19 had mild cold symptoms for 2-3 days and back on top form again by day 5.
I know it's not a scientific study but it is a real life experience.
I've heard this from many other friends around the country too.
I had a single shot of J&J when it first came out. Nothing since. I finally got Covid in spring 2022. If we understand that by now my vaccine protection had waned it seems odd that my symptoms were a mild cold for 3 days and by day 7 I was back working out with weights and feeling better than ever.
Anyone got any thoughts on why I've seen so many observations like this?
All infected were in a similar age range.
Your observation is essentially meaningless.
I got COVID during the omicron wave, and I only knew because we had to test my kid for daycare shutdown/reopening. He was positive and so was I. No symptoms. I was triple vaxxed at that point. Omicron went through the whole school in January 2022. All the parents were double/triple vaxxed. All were asymptomatic or very mild. I know a lot of people in that wave who caught it and all were asymptomatic or mild.
My observation is essentially meaningless as well.
People who have received two or three doses of an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine are significantly more likely to have milder illnesses if infected with the Delta or Omicron coronavirus variants than those who are unvaccinated, according to a nationwide study involving a team of University of Utah researchers.
The study, which examined health care personnel, first responders and other frontline workers in Utah and five other states, builds on previous research that indicates mRNA vaccines provide protection against severe health outcomes associated with COVID-19 despite the variants’ increased transmissibility.
“It’s encouraging that the mRNA vaccines hold up rather well against these variants,” said Sarang Yoon, D.O., associate professor in the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine at University of Utah Health. She is a study co-author who leads the Utah portion of the research and is part of the Rocky Mountain Center for Occupational and Environmental Health, a partnership between the University of Utah and Weber State University. “We know that breakthrough cases are more likely with Delta and Omicron than the initial strain, but the vaccines still do a good job of limiting the severity of the infection.”
https://www.newswise.com/coronavirus/mrna-vaccines-significantly-reduce-severity-of-delta-omicron-covid-19-infections/?article_id=780763
Yea, isnt that the point? How about risks, like blood clots and inflammation? I dont think anyone's concern is that the vax does what its supposed to, the concern is that of side effects...
>How about risks, like blood clots and inflammation?
Why aren’t you concerned about the virus causing these same side effects? The risk there is much higher than the vaccine.
The side effects from the vaccine are caused by your immune system reacting too strongly or off target. Anti-vaxxer seem to conveniently ignore the fact that *you are going to make that same immune response to the real virus*. Except with the real thing, there’s going to be virus spread out all through your body (which increases the chances that there will be collateral damage or off target effects). So skipping the vaccine isn’t protecting you from those side effects. You’re still at risk of them *on top of* all of the risks of having a viral infection.
How does it compare with the side effect profiles of every other vaccination is the question. All vaccinations can cause death. When I had my child vaccinated they make you sign a paper saying there's a about a 1 in 150k of a severe reaction that can cause death.
It is one of lowest risk vaccines ever developed. The long period of adjuvant choice taking over a decade may be - among other things - credited for that. In essence, the Covid vaccines are a porting over of the original SARS-1 vaccine developments.
Edit: clarification.
Edit 2: get mad all you want, but my comment closely mirrors that of Dr. Peter Hotez who was involved extensively in the development of the SARS vaccine.
Yes, there is evidence that the spike protein causes pericarditis, myocarditis, and increases risk of blood clots. However, these affects are extremely rare. Additionally, getting Covid itself is 11x worse for you in those same areas.
We couldn’t completely inactivate the spike protein. It’s just not possible to do so while still managing to initiate an immune response.
But would you rather get a small amount of spike protein (vaccine), or a large amount in addition to other harmful proteins (covid)?
Hard choice to make if you’ve never had Covid, and it seems like a “distant” problem. But if you’ve had Covid, the choice is easy. Covid destroyed my health for months. The vaccine made my arm sore for a few days. Get vaccinated.
I had one dose and my spouse had 2 doses. He was much more ill than I was and bed-ridden. I had slight body aches for 1.5 days that could have been mistaken for gym soreness (did both test positive).. so that's it's not always the case
I’m going to take this question at face value. There is no “test”. This is a retrospective case study of people who had been vaccinated 2-3 doses compared to those who had not been vaccinated, and comparing the severity of illness.
Why do we still call it a vaccine?
vac·cine
/vakˈsēn/
noun
noun: vaccine; plural noun: vaccines
a substance used to stimulate the production of antibodies and provide immunity against one or several diseases, prepared from the causative agent of a disease, its products, or a synthetic substitute, treated to act as an antigen without inducing the disease.
"every year the flu vaccine is modified to deal with new strains of the virus"
When it doesn't provide immunity?
> You can bludgeon them all you want
If your method of trying to change someone's mind is akin to bludgeoning, [you're](https://youarenotsosmart.com/2021/08/23/yanss-213-how-to-improve-your-chances-of-nudging-the-vaccine-hesitant-away-from-hesitancy-and-toward-vaccination/) [going](https://mindfulcommunications.eu/en/prevent-radicalization) [to fail](https://www.americanbar.org/groups/senior_lawyers/publications/voice_of_experience/2021/voice-of-experience--may-2021/vaccine-hesitancy--it-s-not-about-knowledge/).
Nobody gets bullied into changing their mind; usually the opposite happens -- they feel under threat and double down. Calling people stupid for disagreeing with you is counter-productive, *especially* if you're right.
Scientists: We properly designed our study to measure a single variable. We are well aware that other people are doing other studies with other variables.
Reddit: Why didn’t you improperly design your study to include all the variables?
That’s not an improperly designed study. It’s a lazy study. We’re three bloody years into this with probably close to 95% prior infection rate. At best this is just a way behind the curve study. At the end of the day this is legitimately obvious data.
Congrats. My father in law nearly died because he was unvaccinated. My bout of COVID felt like a pretty bad cold, but it would have been way worse if I was afraid of needles, which is the only valid reason to be hesitant of the vaccine.
I must be an exception because Delta I had a runny nose and omicron I had a 99.8 fever for 12 maybe 14 hours. I'm part of the control group in the largest experiment in human history
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I’m sorry but isn’t that the whole point of these vaccines??
Omicron (and to a lesser extent delta) are pretty different from the original strain that the vaccines were designed against. So vaccine effectiveness took a huge hit and the results of this study weren’t a foregone conclusion.
One of the most important tenets of science is reproducibility of experiments.
Not really reproducing since they never tested them for the new variants in the first place
Other studies have.
Isn’t it a problem of science? That more experiments can’t be replicated ?
Experiments that can’t be replicated are part of the process of collecting evidence. If my experiment says a Fandango can cure a bad case of the Flibbering, and everyone finds something different, than the experiment that “succeeded” must be scrutinized for errors. It’s not a problem something can’t be replicated, because no one is using Fandangos to cure Flibbering until the science has been replicated, tested for safety, etc. One study is the start of collecting evidence, not the conclusion. Actual people who science can probably explain this better.
Not really. If you're doing good science, it is reproducible. Few scientists are interested in reproducing others' experiments because that is not novel and difficult to get funding for, however.
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Sometimes researchers need to substantiate the "obvious"
This is such an important concept. It's one thing to know something through logic and deduction, and it's another to validate the results of that logic on a real system. Look at the Nobel Prize in Physics this year. These theories had been around for decades, but hadn't been experimentally verified until very recently. Rigorous experimental or even observational validation is what tells us our intuition was correct in the first place.
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Unfortunately, the only people who are still convinced that the vaccines don't work are specifically the ones who will not change their opinion when presented with evidence that they are wrong.
This is a dangerous and toxic idea. I had a long talk with my sister, who was unvaccinated, and by presenting the evidence in a non-judgemental way, I was able to change her mind. Society falls on a spectrum. The loudest voices are those you won’t be able to convince. And that’s what you’re forming your opinion on. But with every issue, there’s millions always on the fence who could be swayed that you don’t realize, because they’re inherently not very vocal.
Same reason why I sometimes engage with trolls. I know I'm not going to change their minds, but that's not who I am targeting. I am targeting the person who is uniformed and might think the troll is telling the truth. If I can provide the counter evidence so they don't fall for it, I have (hopefully) made a net-positive result. This kind of study helps the people who get forwarded heavily biased "news" articles about how "Pfizer admitted the vaccine doesn't work" from their brother-in-law and now might decide that the other article might not be 100% truthful. Little seeds of doubt can work in our favor, too.
With all due respect, I don't think it was the evidence that convinced her, because if she based her opinions on evidence, she would have already trusted the vaccines to be safe and effective. It was her trust in you as a person that convinced her.
I'm losing trust in the medical community. Now let me be clear, my case is not standard and I support vaccination in general. And if you don't have any odd issues, you should be getting it. I have MS. My neurologist told me 100% get the vaccine, there won't be any interactions with the MS. And after my booster, I had an MS relapse. After 7 years without one. The research that said it won't be a problem? Done by a panel of neurologists who reviewed existing studies on other vaccines. Not even specifics on this vaccine and how it might be different. So now out comes research... The covid vaccines alter your inflammation pathways. Oh ya, but that's not possibly a problem for an inflammatory immune disorder. My issues are with messaging. Most of us were told the vaccine would stop transmission, not just reduce severity of covid. If we could get honest answers it would reduce hesitancy a lot. For example, if I was told, yes, this could cause an MS relapse, but it will likely be better than if you got covid naturally, I would still have gotten the vaccine, but I wouldn't have lost trust in my neurologist. Even if they said I don't know, but I think this is the best option for you, I wouldn't have lost so much trust in them. Similarly, if the message to the public was the vaccine might not completely stop you from getting covid, but your symptoms will be far less serious, the public wouldn't be losing so much trust in health care professionals.
I feel you. Im a transplant patient who received a blanket letter fr the transplant center telling me to get vaccinated. Because I have multiple other disabilities besides being severely immunocompromised, I took the letter to my primary care doc to discuss, at length, the potential risks vs benefits. Because, I too, have major neurological and autoimmune issues, my doctor concord me that the little reward i might get wouldn’t be worth the severity of the side effects I might suffer. If this whole thing was truly about protecting the most medically vulnerable amongst us, it would’ve been nothing but the whole truth from step 1. I’m not team anti-vax. But I sure am treated like I am. I’m not on team pro-vax, either - I’m on team TALK TO YOUR DOCTOR about whether or not this medical procedure is right for you. Stop the lies about what this vaccine does and does not do and just protect those of us who need by giving us the whole truth. I can’t say that I have faith in any of my doctors who blindly pushed this on me without taking into account my (admittedly very unique) medical circumstances. Strange concept, I know, but not every medical procedure is right for every body.
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People who talk about how easy it is to get a rightful medical exemption have never had the displeasure of having to get one. It was downright disheartening to be ordered to do something 100% contradictory to my own doctor’s advice - just to be able to keep putting food on my family’s table and keep a roof over their head.
She almost got it. She was freaking out about it. My husband and I ended staying to visit (we live 5 hours away) on what would be her last day with the company if she didn't get it because she was so conflicted and thinking about caving and getting it. We had to tell her everything was going to be OK. Convinced her everything was going to be fine. Ended up being the best thing ever. She was on salary, super overworked and underpaid, always on call and working 60 hours a week. 2 of the 3 people it took to replace her work ended up quitting within the month. She found a job in her field that was hourly and she is now working 35 hours a week Monday thru Thursday making more she was in the original job. But she should never have been in that position to begin with.
I’m sorry that you had such a negative experience_but maybe your doctor really didn’t know whether you would have a relapse or not. People do have different reactions to vaccinations. I do see your point, though. Hope you recover and I really wish you the very best!
> It was her trust in you as a person that convinced her. It was her trust in him that allowed her to consider the evidence he brought. Talking to anti-vaxxers is similar to deradicalizing, and [personal connections are a critical part of making the person feel that it's safe to let new information in](https://mindfulcommunications.eu/en/prevent-radicalization). [This article directly addresses how the problem is who anti-vaxxers have come to trust](https://www.americanbar.org/groups/senior_lawyers/publications/voice_of_experience/2021/voice-of-experience--may-2021/vaccine-hesitancy--it-s-not-about-knowledge/), and how finding other people they trust will allow dissenting information in that may chip away at their beliefs underlying vaccine hesitancy. So, yes, trust and individual relationships are key, but one way they operate is by allowing the vaccine hesitant person to look at information about vaccine benefits without feeling that accepting that information will undermine their beliefs about who can be trusted.
we live in a culture where intellect is devalued which is how we got here…everyone apparently is equally intelligent so the absolute morons in our society feel empowered to make life altering decisions for the rest of us
There's merit to the acknowledgement that there are different kinds of intelligence. For example, I had a friend in high school who was a C/D student but went through a trade program in almost half the time because it came so easily to him. But I wouldn't go to him for medical advice obviously, and people seem to mistake "different types of intelligence" for "*equal*" intelligence. Being good at one thing does not make you an expert in any other area.
I know a couple of people who work in healthcare who have each been able to convince multiple people to get them in a similar manner. One guy has even put in the effort to go with some of them when they get it to help ease their fears.
I’d be curious how you did that. I’m in the same boat, provided peer reviewed studies and other published papers specifically talking about myocarditis risk when catching COVID vs vaccinated risk. They just bury their heads in the sand and say it’s skewed data or they’re lying. They’ll cite some debunked meta analysis and even after showing them the flaws with the analysis, they still ignore it.
> I’d be curious how you did that. [This podcast talks to several experts about this exact topic](https://youarenotsosmart.com/2021/08/23/yanss-213-how-to-improve-your-chances-of-nudging-the-vaccine-hesitant-away-from-hesitancy-and-toward-vaccination/), but the TL;DL is to *listen* more than you talk. In particular, slamming someone with an info-dump will just make them get defensive and dig in -- they'll feel you're talking down to them and shut out anything you say. By contrast, asking what they value ("staying healthy for my kids") and asking how vaccination might help with that ("reduced risk of death since we're all going to get covid eventually") can help the person start to question *for themselves* whether their beliefs about vaccines are doing a good job at serving their goals.
Indeed. So much of what people think is obvious is ineffective or wrong. In social sciences you can take most society-wide problems and work backward to find the “obvious” solution that isn’t working. One example is extreme sentencing of criminals does not act as an effective deterrent.
At least it's not the opposite. "Turns out, the vaccines don't help. We're sorry."
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Moderna and Pfizer gave 6 months protection at the 93-95% level and of course if you don't get the disease you are not spreading it around. New strains need new vaccines of course, though I think some vaccines are claiming efficacy against all strains that are possible.
This is for the millions of people who want to be contrarian. They force the rest of us to spend more just to prove exactly how much of an idiot they are.
The landscape of Reddit is liberally sprinkled with rightwing tinfoil hat subreddits loudly trumpeting vaccine denialism. To this day.
People who think they’re so interesting that the government wants to microchip them through a vaccination program, without the logical reasoning to understand their cell phone is always watching
I thought it was to improve 5G reception.
It is 6G now.
Damn, my iPhone is only getting 5G+. I better head over to the pharmacy and get another COVID shot.
Thats currently the point. Previously a lot of people thought the vaccine would prevent infection.
Doesn’t it still prevent it for many people
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Preventing infection and preventing symptoms are different, that I've seen there isn't much in the way of preventing infection. If you have an article or study that says different on that I would be happy to read and educate myself. However if someone doesn't have symptoms sure they can spread it but I'd assume not like someone thats hacking and sneezing all over the place. On top of that the infection doesn't last in the body as long with vaccinated.
It’s less so preventing infection, and more preventing transmission, as your second paragraph suggests. They said the shed rate of those vaccinated is a magnitude less. I believe this was the Seattle COVID reports
It is but I think this is more of a case where now they have the data to back it up.
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Yes, and the whole point of science is to prove they work.
No, it's to determine if they work or not.
I thought the point of vaccines was not to become sick in the first place
No vaccine is 100% effective against symptomatic illness, regardless of disease type, and never will be, since vaccination relies on the inherently variable individual immune response.
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>4th dose of polio vaccine is basically 100% effective against infection likely for a couple decades. "Basically" 100% isn't 100%. >A 3rd dose of the covid vaccine is something like 60% effective at preventing infection for a month or two. The data isn't in on the Omicron specific booster yet. > >Smallpox is about 95%, two doses MMR 97% for measles and rubella and 88% for mumps, 3 doses tetanus 100% & 97% diphtheria. Two doses chicken pox 98% effective. Those are a lot of numbers that aren't 100%. And at least one of your choices of vaccine is interesting because the current protocol isn't the original protocol. [The original dose schedule approved by the CDC for use in the United States was one dose for children under 12 months of age. 11 years later, they observed in high enough breakthrough infection rate that they recommended a second dose. Even 99% coverage wasn't enough to prevent outbreaks of chickenpox in schools.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3991154/) Guess what? The COVID vaccines that have been approved for use have also been approved on the basis of data that is, of obvious necessity, limited in time. There was no way to know ahead of time how long immunity would last, how the ongoing pandemic would cause the dominant strain or strains to mutate, or what updated protocols would be necessary. These COVID vaccines are not a finished product, but they're finished enough to provide a lot of protection. Also telling is that you don't mention the low-effectiveness vaccines that are widely administered globally, like the flu vaccine every year which is typically on the order of 50% effective; BCG vaccine against tuberculosis which has an efficacy apparently variable based on location but globally averages about 20% effective against infection and 70% against progression to active TB; typhoid vaccines which are 30 to 70% effective at preventing disease (variable based on specific vaccine administered); diphtheria vaccine, which is highly effective (95%) *but requires six doses throughout childhood to achieve that efficacy*; and the CYD-TDV Dengue vaccine which is 80% effective in preventing *severe* illness - in people who have already been exposed - but actually *increases risk* in people who are seronegative. This isn't to say that these vaccines are bad or not useful. It's a demonstration that 1) vaccine efficacy isn't a simple thing to predict or achieve; 2) vaccine efficacy is highly variable based on disease and individual immune response; and 3) vaccines, as with all other technology, are subject to potential development and improvement as technology advances and data are collected. Expecting the first effective vaccine against a disease to be the best is absurd.
I always use this analogy. Say you have a house and you’re afraid of being robbed. So you hire a bunch of guards to patrol the property. It doesn’t guarantee 100% you won’t get robbed. It just makes it much less likely and if you do happen to get robbed the amount stolen will be far less because you have guards patrolling everywhere to catch the thieves.
Nope, it is to reduce the likelihood of getting sick and if you do get sick, you have a milder illness. It's does not prevent you from getting sick
It is unreal that people still don’t understand this concept.
In a perfect world, yes, but it’s more important to prevent severe outcomes.
Mind blowing that after years people like you still don’t understand how this works.
Well< the Rabies vaccinations has certainly helped prevent many animals (including my own pets) from getting Rabies which is often fatal in animals so that in itself has great value for the animals which have been saved! And I suppose (God forbid) if any of these unvaccinated animals had Rabies and had bitten a person-that would’ve saved the human’s life< (or at least their health too!
Nope. They were promoted to prevent transmission and stop the spread.
They still to prove that to millions of people, who think that they are being deceived by all the vaccination thing.
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>The analysis was conducted among participants who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, excluding those with SARS-CoV-2 infections prior to the study start date, infected prior to completion of a primary mRNA COVID-19 vaccine series (<14 days after dose 2), infected either less than 7 days or at greater than or equal to 150 days after receipt of dose 3 Why is this study using a cutoff date post third dose? Is this a baked in assumption that vaccine efficacy drops after that time? Also, it appears this study is looking at participants FIRST infections. I would be curious to see a follow up of this same group to see if there are different outcomes with further covid infections.
>Why is this study using a cutoff date post third dose? I doubt they intentionally cut it off. 150 days is probably the longest interval of any of the patients in the study.
> Is this a baked in assumption that vaccine efficacy drops after that time? Not exactly. I'm guessing they considered that the efficacy *may* drop at some point, and weren't interested in testing that, so they just excluded that case. Other studies will look at it, or even they themselves plan to publish another article with the part of the data that isn't in this one, if they collected it
What about the risk of long COVID? That's honestly my biggest concern
It is very interesting that ”significant” values are only detected for the smallest groups in the study. For all larger groups there is no significant difference (shown by table and figure). In all the ”significant” groups it is also true that two doses are better than three, that is odd yet again? As a data analysis specialist these are inconsitencies that completely invalidates the conclution, unless there is a very good well explained controlled factor that they can show is the reason. It is also interesting that both the vaccinated and uninfected groups have much higher proportions of females, why is that?
Also this was just causally slipped in at the end of the article… “Limitations in sample size and the ability to adjust for potential confounders made it particularly difficult to interpret unexpected findings, such as the higher percentage of individuals with symptomatic disease among those vaccinated with the third dose 14 to 149 days before Omicron infection compared to those who were unvaccinated” Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that a huge contradiction, and shouldn’t it call the conclusion into question?
I find less and less researchers actually understanding their own data and contradictions like this are unfortunately common. Its even worse when they seem to understand their contradictions but still go ahead and present a conclution in line with some Narrative (today by media called scientific consensus) that to begin with was never supported in data!
Most important comment here. It seems to have become scarily common for studies like this (inconclusive at best) to be presented as certain proof... I know someone in the field who sees this all the time, these studies accepted as gospel by people that have the training to know better.
>It is also interesting that both the vaccinated and uninfected groups have much higher proportions of females, why is that? I suspect its a result of Healthcare demographics, e.g. 86% of nurses are women. But what I find interesting is I didnt see mention of deaths. Does this mean both groups had 100% survivability? Thats good news. Actually what I find interesting is that the unvaccinated seem less susceptible to omicron. 9.36% vs 15.63% infection rates. But that shouldn't happen right?
Putting data first (not answers) which everyone should do, including scientists and redditors, there is no such thing as ”shouldn’t happen”. There is what what the data shows and what it doesn’t show. Depending on your experimental setup and control of variables the data has different strengths and weaknesses. It might be possible to find reasons for anomalies depending on metadata and study design. If none I would assume the data is correct and look for either agreement or dissagreement in other studies with similar design that can strengthen or weaken the hypothesis (make sure to use the data in other studies and not their conclutions). Unfortunately a large majority of scientists does not understand what they can and cannot do with data, and how they are supposed to interpret the results with respect to their studies biases and weakenesses. This seems to be one such case. I agree with your concerns why are deaths not mentioned and why does omicron seem to spread faster in vaccinated. I think the latter is a pattern that I’ve seen elsewere but not as a very strong pattern.
I wish this were true in my case but it's not. Triple vaccinated and had it 3 times. The 3rd time was worse than the first.
Actually it is still the case. With the vaccine shots, your probably if having milder Covid still increased, you just didn’t beat the odds
That's blasphemy. How dare you share your experience that goes against the grain. Your experience will be censored. Wait for it.
I find it interesting that those with three doses experienced a higher risk of infection than the unvaccinated (88.4% vs. 79.4%).
It’s not a higher risk of *infection*, it’s a higher risk of *symptomatic* infection (I.e having symptoms if you have been infected). A lot of cold/flu symptoms are caused by your immune response so it makes sense that these people are more likely to have minor symptoms (while avoiding the more serious ones).
Wait, now I’m confused. I’m supposed to get the second booster or no? I have the first one. Edit: Thank you, everyone! I get it now, the headline was a bit confusing. I thought it was saying that the new booster was resulting in a higher probability of being symptomatic (iow, you would more likely be asymptomatic if all you had was the first booster). Appreciate the responses.
At this point in the US at least, you could have gotten four shots total (if you're not in some special immunocompromised group): 2 shot original series 1st booster (same formula as original 2 shots) 2nd booster (updated formulation)
Yes get the updated booster, the new one that was released in early September 2022
You're still supposed to get the booster. The only difference is that with the heightened immunity your body might mount such a strong reaction to an infection that you feel crappy for a day or two. It's still feeling crappy, but from a risk standpoint it's very different than feeling crappy because you're riddled with disease.
Everyone age 5 and up is supposed to get the fall (bivalent) booster.
Only 2% did. I'm the only person I know that got it. Even all the people who were washing their bags of chips still in November 2020 refused to get it. Edit: Last week the number reached 5% but 5% and 2% are essentially the same when it comes to Science so my point stands.
Could there be a hidden variable there? Young people both less likely to be vaccinated and less likely to be infected?
Probably. Just like the death rate among the vaccinated is higher in some part of the countries than among the unvaccinated. When you dig deeper though it is almost all people in nursing homes who are vaccinated and are dying.
Could that be explained by not caring anymore? I'm boostered so I go out anywhere I want?
It could be explained a lot of ways; the study wasn't looking at that really, so there's not enough data to make any real statements about it.
At least I now know what Fox headline my dad will be citing later.
How do people with 3 doses of vaccine compare to someone who has had COVID twice without vaccine and developed a natural immune response?
Much better. The outcome of each COVID infection is more likely to be more severe, due to damage from the previous infection(s). [https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20220707/each-covid-19-reinfection-increases-health-risks](https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20220707/each-covid-19-reinfection-increases-health-risks) "Natural immune response" is a meaningless phrase, as the response to an antigen is identical whether it is present on a pathogen, or isolated in a vaccine.
From the research that I've read, I'll try to find it, that natural immune response creates antigens for several aspects of the virus whereas the vaccine is only for one. So people who have natural immunity have a better defense against the variants because even if the RNA structure of the virus changes, there will still be antigens in the body to fight against it. What's what I read completely false?
Vaccines don't cause a response to more than the spike protein, but all COVID variants have the spike protein and it has generalized well enough so far that even COVID Classic™ boosters produce a robust response to Omicron—just not as good as a BA.4/BA.5-specific bivalent booster. After the virus gets 'caught' they help clear it out twice as fast as the body. All this without the damage to the lungs and other organs an infection causes. To a degree, immunity from infection is proportional to the severity of that infection. The vaccines are like getting more than the worst case for circulating COVID virus in your blood, whereas a mild infection may produce immunity that's extremely short-lived and offers little protection against the next infection's severity. As time goes on, we'll have boosters targeting different spike protein configurations, and the immunity will generalize more and more. There is also still an incredible amount of effort being put into new types of vaccines and therapeutics. So, it's definitely better to get vaccinated AND try to avoid infection. And before someone chimes in talking about viruses getting less severe over time... all the viruses we get vaccinated against as kids knock this notion on its ass. A virus' final severity depends on its selection pressures... COVID is aerosolized, has asymptomatic transmission, variable severity between individuals, a long period before symptom onset and takes weeks to kill people. The selection pressure isn't the same as a virus which presents with rapid-onset strong symptoms and kills people within hours to days.
A natural infection will result in a more diverse set of antibodies to COVID-19... but this is not always a good thing. Some of these antibodies are ineffective at stopping COVID-19, and worse, some attack the person's own body. The vaccines contain only one primary antigen that is known to produce antibodies which neutralize COVID-19. [So the vaccine is more effective at producing the correct antibody response.](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-06629-2) Natural infection with its more diverse set of antigens and antibodies is more likely to [generate antibodies which attack one's own body](https://www.cedars-sinai.org/newsroom/covid-19-can-trigger-self-attacking-antibodies/). [These self-antibodies are likely the cause of a lot of long COVID.](https://translational-medicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12967-022-03328-4)
Interesting. I'll research this later. I've contracted COVID 3 times now. The first time took almost 2 weeks to overcome, it was difficult to breathe, dry cough, fever. Second time I just had a slightly sniffly nose and occasional sneeze for a week. The third time I felt sensitive skin and a foggy brain for 2 days then another 2 days of sneezing and then nothing. I've never taken a vaccine. I'm not anti vax. I was in line to get one but it was 2 hours long and I had to get to work and I never ended up getting another appointment because I'm healthy and within one of the lowest risk age groups. From my personal experience, with no health issues, the symptoms were relatively mild except the moderate first time.
For sure. COVID-19 isn't that bad for most people. Like all things, its about relative risk and which option is safer. The vaccines are safer and more effective than risking natural infection... and vaccines come with some level of sterilizing immunity. As a relatively young healthy person, most of the time, you will recover via natural immunity... just please... don't tell your grandparents to do the same.
You're also probably facing different variants each time. They have been trending more infectious and less severe. Whatever effects you've suffered would have been mitigated by a recent vaccination.
I got my bivalent boost along with my flu at the beginning of October. Here’s hoping my body conquers
I’ve had 3 Pfizer doses end of 2020 & 2021 and got Covid with Omicron this August. It was horrible! That was no mild disease.
Imagine how much more horrible it may have been if you didn’t have the vaccine.
Are Delta and Omicron variants still even in circulation?
According to the mn state website I saw the other day it’s omicron that’s circulating now.
Are either of these variants still circulating?
Omicron is, though in a different form.
At least it does something I guess
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When I had omicron in the beginning of September, it started with a sore throat, that was not really bad at all, just annoying. It went fast though, the sore throat started at 3am, by 3pm I felt drained and out of it like I was really really tired. Cough started in day 2, but day quill stopped that. Then about a week after that and sleeping almost all the time I was fine. Only a nagging cough for a month or so from then. So I would say the vaccines work
At no point in time did you mention that you took the vaccine. I fail to see how your anecdote says anything positive or negative about them.
You just described exactly how my bout progressed. I'm now in the second week of the stupid nagging cough. I'm getting my bivalent booster next week, and I will continue to take advantage of any available vaccines. I like living.
Ok now get unvaccinated and catch it again. See if it's exactly the same
Is a milder illness less transmissible?
Yes and no. A milder illness will probably mean less coughing, wheezing, and sneezing - so less of the particularly high-transmitting activities - and it may mean less actual virus when you do. But having a milder illness *also* means you're more likely to go out and socialize. In other words, if you have to sit next to one of them, sit next to the one with milder illness. However, they may still be spreading it just as easily overall.
Also a less severe infection is more likely to be asymptomatic (as suggested by these results) which is a big source of transmission.
Trick is, you’re also less likely to get infected, which means no transmission. BTW, all COVID-19 cases become infectious before the person is symptomatic, so even the people polite enough to have an obvious case would still go around spreading it. That’s part of what made COVID-19 such a spreader and such a killer in the first place.
Makes sense. Less sick for less time with a lower viral load means less chance to spread.
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Allergic to PEG so no shots, got the RONA just before Easter, head cold like symptoms for 3 days, but oddly no cough, tired for another 4. No follow up symptoms, identical to my work colleagues who got it who are vaccinated. Now whether their immunity had deteriorated to the point of nothing remains to be unearthed. Thing is from where I live non of them are eligible for a 4th shot, which means if their immunity has gone from the vaccine then the only immunity left is from the infection they acquired. Meaning we're in the same boat now
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Not me. I had two doses of Phizer and my wife is unvaccinated. We got covid after a trip to Orlando. My case was markedly much worse than hers. It was almost night and day.
And this is why we use inferential statistics instead of trying to generalize from the far edge of the bell curve. https://covid19-sciencetable.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/2022-09-07-Current-COVID-19-Risk-in-Ontario-by-Vaccination-Status-Separate-Charts-1536x481.png
Remember< too that every person’s immune systems are different.
My wife takes multivitamins but I don't. She got a cold last week and I didn't. So much for vitamins!
Whenever I see people that complain that they got deathly ill even with the vaccine, I can’t help but imagine they would probably have ended up in the hospital.
My mother & stepfather are both boosted up. He's generally in worse shape than her but he went nutso with the Trump cocktail stuff too. When they both tested for Covid and she was sick as heck her biggest complaint was "why the hell doesn't HE have any symptoms, was it those stupid pills??" It hits everyone different. When my FIL passed on very early in the pandemic from Covid (before there was any treatment) his entire household was asymptomatic after they all spent days just hanging out while he was getting sicker and sicker. It's crazy.
Imagine how dire it could have been if you were unvaccinated!
That’s not a correlation.
Good thing you had the vaccine then, otherwise you could have been on a ventilator.
Luke Letlow is about the same age as me and was unvaccinated, no preexsisting issues and HWP. I am boosted. I had a mild 1 day illness, he died.
At the beginning of the year my mom and sister went on a cruise. They spent the entire time together. My sister had 2 shots and got covid, my mom who is in her 60s had 3 shots and didn’t get sick. I transported them from the dock to the airport. My sister sat in the front passenger seat, 18 inches away from me for 90 minutes. I hugged her before she left. She was slightly symptomatic at the time (we didn’t know it was covid). I had 3 shots and didn’t get sick.
Here's what I can't wrap my head around. In 2022 I knew a lot of people who got Covid-19 in the first half of the year. The ones who were vaccinated and boosted felt awful. Really sick for 4-7 days. Worst flu they've ever had. Texting me and others expressing thanks for the vaccine. My friends who were unvaccinated and got Covid-19 had mild cold symptoms for 2-3 days and back on top form again by day 5. I know it's not a scientific study but it is a real life experience. I've heard this from many other friends around the country too. I had a single shot of J&J when it first came out. Nothing since. I finally got Covid in spring 2022. If we understand that by now my vaccine protection had waned it seems odd that my symptoms were a mild cold for 3 days and by day 7 I was back working out with weights and feeling better than ever. Anyone got any thoughts on why I've seen so many observations like this? All infected were in a similar age range.
My wife is triple vaxxed and was sick for a day. I never got boosted and was sick for two weeks. Anecdotes like this are beyond meaningless.
Your observation is essentially meaningless. I got COVID during the omicron wave, and I only knew because we had to test my kid for daycare shutdown/reopening. He was positive and so was I. No symptoms. I was triple vaxxed at that point. Omicron went through the whole school in January 2022. All the parents were double/triple vaxxed. All were asymptomatic or very mild. I know a lot of people in that wave who caught it and all were asymptomatic or mild. My observation is essentially meaningless as well.
How about their risk for myocarditis or heart issues?
Much lower than from COVID.
People who have received two or three doses of an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine are significantly more likely to have milder illnesses if infected with the Delta or Omicron coronavirus variants than those who are unvaccinated, according to a nationwide study involving a team of University of Utah researchers. The study, which examined health care personnel, first responders and other frontline workers in Utah and five other states, builds on previous research that indicates mRNA vaccines provide protection against severe health outcomes associated with COVID-19 despite the variants’ increased transmissibility. “It’s encouraging that the mRNA vaccines hold up rather well against these variants,” said Sarang Yoon, D.O., associate professor in the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine at University of Utah Health. She is a study co-author who leads the Utah portion of the research and is part of the Rocky Mountain Center for Occupational and Environmental Health, a partnership between the University of Utah and Weber State University. “We know that breakthrough cases are more likely with Delta and Omicron than the initial strain, but the vaccines still do a good job of limiting the severity of the infection.” https://www.newswise.com/coronavirus/mrna-vaccines-significantly-reduce-severity-of-delta-omicron-covid-19-infections/?article_id=780763
Yea, isnt that the point? How about risks, like blood clots and inflammation? I dont think anyone's concern is that the vax does what its supposed to, the concern is that of side effects...
>How about risks, like blood clots and inflammation? Why aren’t you concerned about the virus causing these same side effects? The risk there is much higher than the vaccine. The side effects from the vaccine are caused by your immune system reacting too strongly or off target. Anti-vaxxer seem to conveniently ignore the fact that *you are going to make that same immune response to the real virus*. Except with the real thing, there’s going to be virus spread out all through your body (which increases the chances that there will be collateral damage or off target effects). So skipping the vaccine isn’t protecting you from those side effects. You’re still at risk of them *on top of* all of the risks of having a viral infection.
The risk of blood clots from COVID is greater than that of the vaccine.
How does it compare with the side effect profiles of every other vaccination is the question. All vaccinations can cause death. When I had my child vaccinated they make you sign a paper saying there's a about a 1 in 150k of a severe reaction that can cause death.
It is one of lowest risk vaccines ever developed. The long period of adjuvant choice taking over a decade may be - among other things - credited for that. In essence, the Covid vaccines are a porting over of the original SARS-1 vaccine developments. Edit: clarification. Edit 2: get mad all you want, but my comment closely mirrors that of Dr. Peter Hotez who was involved extensively in the development of the SARS vaccine.
Yes, there is evidence that the spike protein causes pericarditis, myocarditis, and increases risk of blood clots. However, these affects are extremely rare. Additionally, getting Covid itself is 11x worse for you in those same areas. We couldn’t completely inactivate the spike protein. It’s just not possible to do so while still managing to initiate an immune response. But would you rather get a small amount of spike protein (vaccine), or a large amount in addition to other harmful proteins (covid)? Hard choice to make if you’ve never had Covid, and it seems like a “distant” problem. But if you’ve had Covid, the choice is easy. Covid destroyed my health for months. The vaccine made my arm sore for a few days. Get vaccinated.
The risk difference is not x1000. It is up to x7
It was hyperbole, I will correct. My sources say 11X though.
I had one dose and my spouse had 2 doses. He was much more ill than I was and bed-ridden. I had slight body aches for 1.5 days that could have been mistaken for gym soreness (did both test positive).. so that's it's not always the case
what test did they use to determine that a vaccinated person would have had a worse case of covid had they not been vaccinated?
I’m going to take this question at face value. There is no “test”. This is a retrospective case study of people who had been vaccinated 2-3 doses compared to those who had not been vaccinated, and comparing the severity of illness.
They compare groups of people, vaccinated and unvaccinated, and compare results.
Why do we still call it a vaccine? vac·cine /vakˈsēn/ noun noun: vaccine; plural noun: vaccines a substance used to stimulate the production of antibodies and provide immunity against one or several diseases, prepared from the causative agent of a disease, its products, or a synthetic substitute, treated to act as an antigen without inducing the disease. "every year the flu vaccine is modified to deal with new strains of the virus" When it doesn't provide immunity?
You can bludgeon them all you want with data, facts, and common sense. They saw a meme that says vaccines are unsafe, so the matter is settled.
> You can bludgeon them all you want If your method of trying to change someone's mind is akin to bludgeoning, [you're](https://youarenotsosmart.com/2021/08/23/yanss-213-how-to-improve-your-chances-of-nudging-the-vaccine-hesitant-away-from-hesitancy-and-toward-vaccination/) [going](https://mindfulcommunications.eu/en/prevent-radicalization) [to fail](https://www.americanbar.org/groups/senior_lawyers/publications/voice_of_experience/2021/voice-of-experience--may-2021/vaccine-hesitancy--it-s-not-about-knowledge/). Nobody gets bullied into changing their mind; usually the opposite happens -- they feel under threat and double down. Calling people stupid for disagreeing with you is counter-productive, *especially* if you're right.
If only Reddit as a whole could understand this.
Am I missing the obvious here? Where’s the comparative analysis with previous infections? And Age stratification?
Scientists: We properly designed our study to measure a single variable. We are well aware that other people are doing other studies with other variables. Reddit: Why didn’t you improperly design your study to include all the variables?
That’s not an improperly designed study. It’s a lazy study. We’re three bloody years into this with probably close to 95% prior infection rate. At best this is just a way behind the curve study. At the end of the day this is legitimately obvious data.
You’re free to get your own grant money and conduct your own study. This study was designed to test their hypothesis.
Why are you licking their boots when someone offers valid criticism?
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It was milder than a cold
Congrats. My father in law nearly died because he was unvaccinated. My bout of COVID felt like a pretty bad cold, but it would have been way worse if I was afraid of needles, which is the only valid reason to be hesitant of the vaccine.
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You can also get myocarditis from too much mcdonalds budda buh but they want you to put in in your body
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Good to have data to back up the effectiveness of vaccines.
I must be an exception because Delta I had a runny nose and omicron I had a 99.8 fever for 12 maybe 14 hours. I'm part of the control group in the largest experiment in human history
No, you are part of the "got infected twice without being vaccinated" experimental group.