When will you allow yourself to be vaccinated?

Yes but the vaccine vindicators will pay for your bail, in the rare instance you get arrested. :smile:

Paper and discussion of how immunity from vaccines seem to be more robust to mutations / new strains than what you get from actually being infected. This was opposite what I would have expected.

Discussing this paper

https://stm.sciencemag.org/content/13/600/eabi9915?utm_campaign=SciMag&utm_source=JHubbard&utm_medium=Twitter

In this study, we have shown differences in the specificity of polyclonal serum antibodies acquired by infection versus vaccination with [Moderna]. The neutralizing activity of vaccine sera is more targeted to the RBD than for convalescent seraā€¦ This fact is unexpected because the mRNA-1273 vaccine encodes the full spike ectodomain, and one conjectured benefit of full-spike versus RBD-only vaccines was elicitation of neutralizing antibodies targeting non-RBD subdomains.

At first glance, the RBD targeting of the vaccine sera neutralization might seem likely to increase susceptibility to viral mutations, but the rest of our results suggest that this may not be the case. Our comprehensive maps of how RBD mutations reduce serum antibody binding show that vaccine-elicited antibodies are usually less affected by any single RBD mutation than infection-elicited antibodies. Whereas infection-elicited RBD antibodies are often strongly focused on an epitope including site E484, vaccine-elicited antibodies bind more broadly across the RBD, including to the more conserved ā€œcoreā€ regions. This broader binding makes neutralization by vaccine sera more resistant to mutations within the RBD.

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I can see this. It all depends on the mutation - if the core of the virus (the ā€œspike proteinā€) mutates at all, the vaccine will be meaningless (and I donā€™t know if that even happens?). But if that core stays stable, the same response to the vaccine will remain effective against the virus through many mutations. While a natural infection fights the entire virus, not just that one piece, so, after it mutates, the response that worked last time may become partially obsolete.

While I still believe that in general, natural is better than vaccine, I can see how you can never know if your body did actually solve the virus, or just get close enough to get rid of it. When itā€™s reacting to only one piece (in the vaccine), you know itā€™s reacting to and solving that piece.

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How does the vaccine get blamed for this? The vaccine merely triggers an immune response in your body; if your body forgets that response so quickly, isnt it because your own body has deemed it to be not particularly useful to remember?

Which makes it all the more disheartening, or suspicious, that the only acceptable way to satisfy many employment/travel/etc requirements is via proof of vaccination. :upside_down_face:

Did you misread what you quoted? Vaccine works better than infection at protecting against infection. How does this make proof of vaccination requirements more suspicious?

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Your right. I thought this was another article about the infected having better immunity than the vaxxed. My eyes saw it, but my brain didnā€™t register it. :frowning: ā€¦ reclining ā€¦ declining.

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Very ironic obviously ā€¦ https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/566513-texas-republican-leader-dies-of-covid-19-five-days-after-anti

At age 45, I donā€™t know if he had comorbidities but itā€™s still pretty stunning that he could be gone in 4 days basically.

But I wonder if cases like this are not behind the increase in vaccinations. Locally, after being around 700 vaccinations per day maybe a month ago, now itā€™s around 2000 per day. Still pretty slow but I wonder if itā€™s not a case of unvaccinated people seeing declining cases and telling themselves that COVID was going away so why bother with shot thatā€™s not fully approved. But now, they hear about surge in Delta variant cases and rate of infection vaccinated vs. unvaccinated and rethinking that strategy.

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By design? I believe it is an easy and cheap story for the media. Theyā€™ve apparently changed the old mantra of ā€œif it bleeds it leadsā€, to ā€œif it wheezes, it leadsā€. This has the added benefit of knocking the peaceful criminals off the lead.

Iā€™ve noticed that the increased fearmongering has had an impact on me, and I donā€™t think Iā€™m that different than a lot of vaccine-hesitant people.

Somewhat. Fear sells and the story writes itself at this point, especially after the effects of delta variant in India. But I believe some of it is also down to relatives/acquaintances getting it bad after everyone thought this was going away.

Vaccines working well even for those who have recovered:

Shots give COVID-19 survivors big immune boost, studies show

Researchers studied Kentucky residents with a lab-confirmed coronavirus infection in 2020, the vast majority of them between October and December. They compared 246 people who got reinfected in May or June of this year with 492 similar survivors who stayed healthy. The survivors who never got vaccinated had a significantly higher risk of reinfection than those who were fully vaccinated, even though most had their first bout of COVID-19 just six to nine months ago.

COVID-19 is the virus from hell. But the delta variant is the virus from hell on steroids.

With the delta variantā€™s super infectiousness, getting vaccinated despite a prior infection is more important now than it was before to be sure. The breadth of your antibodies and potency against variants is going to be far better than what you have right now.

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What kind of significance can be attributed to a sample size of 246? Apparent proportional significance can just be a rounding error in absolute terms.

Isnt this simply a case of more exposure yields a better response? From natural infections, to one shot vaccines to two shot vaccines, the results seem to be all the same - the more your exposed, the better your response is going forward.

Anyone want to bet that getting a second J&J shot would boost the efficacy to the same range as the Pfizer/Moderna two-shot vaccine?

You call it the virus from hell, I tend to think the opposite - when you need multiple exposures for your body to start taking it seriously, itā€™s an indication that for most people the virus is little more than a nuisance.

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I heard Moderna third shot are available in some pharmacies like CVS. Not interested personally, but I guess some more concerned, vulnerable people might consider this.

In particular, the monoclonal antibody treatments are showing very good results for at-risk people who end up in the hospital with covid and can often prevent progression to needing more serious care. Basically, those involve injecting you with artificial antibodies that last several months, which essentially mimic your bodyā€™s natural, high level of immune defense which you have for about 3 months after your last exposure / vaccination.

So if you were at high risk for a bad covid outcome, a booster would probably help keep up your defenses in the same way these monoclonals work. And, although the risks of serious outcomes and death are much much reduced with vaccination, those risks are still something like 5% of what they would have been but you wouldnā€™t want to be an unlucky one of that 5% who then has serious health issues.

Iā€™m debating it. Our September is currently chock full of higher risk activities. Weā€™re in a wedding in Vegas and weā€™ll also be traveling to see an NFL game.

A third Moderna shot to supplement my 2 PFEs is tempting if the case counts donā€™t drop by next month.

Shin, I have no doubt that you believe that statement. I cannot prove that itā€™s not true, although there will undoubtedly be reams of supposed data supporting it. Regardless, I would give that idea a lot more credence if there had not been so much bs (both pro and con) about the virus/mask/shutdown/vaccine/vaccinebooster/vaccineviagra/vaccineetcetera.

I also believe there is an understandable, inherent pro-vax bias amongst everyone who has already shot up. That isnā€™t to imply anything negative about the current addicts. :yum:

:start_sarcasm_socialist_mode
Uh, isnā€™t that just being selfish? You should hibernate/hermitate instead. Youā€™re risking the health of millions of Americans. You are also taking the vaccine away from millions of poor, underprivileged, <[othervictimdescriptorhere]> people/poor countries.
:increment
:repeat
:never_end_sarcasm_socialst_mode

I could add a HAL quote here, but Iā€™ve overdone it already. :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

We are in full agreement here. I have zero confidence in the American mainstream media and the BS they spew 24/7/365. They are a bunch of ***holes in my view.

However:

I have to concede there could exist very rare occasions when they tell the truth or get something right. The number of such instances may be vanishingly small, and likely is. But with illness or even my life on the line, I have to evaluate whether or not I can risk dismissal of these infrequent instances. Following that evaluation there are sporatic occasions when I end up swallowing their propaganda. Where the inept and untrustworthy American mainstream media is concerned, even the blind squirrel on very rare occasions finds an acorn.

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Moderna looking slightly better than PFE against the current variants, older vaccination patients more likely to get a symptomatic case than more recent ones.

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Moderna > Pfizer

An unanticipated outcome for me. But then what do I know!:

Axios: Moderna whips Pfizer against Delta in Minnesota

Dosing amount said to be factor.

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hmm
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Yes, but: There has been no data so far that has found either vaccineā€™s protection against severe disease and death is significantly less against Delta, and the study notes that there doesnā€™t appear to be much of a difference in complications stemming from breakthrough infections based on which vaccine someone got.

  • And experts cautioned against rushing to conclusions.
  • ā€œThis is the kind of surprising finding that needs confirmation before we should accept its validity," said Cornell virologist John Moore.

Between the lines: The two shots both use mRNA, but there are significant differences between them.

  • For example, Moderna is given in a stronger dose than Pfizer, and there is a slightly different time interval between shots.
  • ā€œThere are a few differences between what are known to be similar vaccines ā€¦ None of these variables is an obvious smoking gun, although the dosing amount seems the most likely to be a factor,ā€ Moore said.

My parents are due for 2nd PFE this week. (after 2 AZN) I wonder if they should get MRNA insteadā€¦