The state of the vaccines

Carefully evaluating the evidence and proceeding carefully is not "bashing science". You sound like that ridiculous clown Fauci who says disagreeing with him is disagreeing with science, and then Rand Paul pins his ears back on the lack of evidence for one of his policy pronouncements and he admits that "he goes with his gut". Apparently he is such a monument to science that his very gut impulses are "science". Or, he's a fkn clown. I tend toward the latter, but I hold my hypothesis with all due tentativeness.

 

Go complain to Fauci. I'm not Fauci. I share some of your criticism of Fauci. But what you said was not reasonable, so I used some dramatization to show you why, and I stand behind what I said. In your case, yes, you were bashing science, given that like I said, you lumped us all together with your "they shouldn't have done this, they should have done that," not to forget your repeated and mocking use of the word "experts" between quotes. Last I checked, crystal balls that actually work weren't for sale at Amazon or EBay.

And your predisposition against science is easy to spot. Your complaints about Yale University for example weren't "carefully evaluating the evidence" but were rather a gross misrepresentation of what Yale said, which after I called you out on it, you had to acknowledge; so please don't pretend that you're not making mistakes in this discussion and you're just some concerned person "carefully evaluating the evidence."

After initially being too harsh on you, then apologizing, I've been civil lately, and you are the one being harsh. By the way, even though I don't always agree with Fauci and I lament for example his deliberate lie about masks, he still knows about 1,000 times more Virology and Immunology than you do. Sorry; again, it's just a fact. Fauci is a politician (not the elected kind, but his role is essential political, and politicians lie). But 95% of the time he is right, and that compares very favorable to the percentage of times when you are right (like I said, while acknowledging some good points you're making - e.g., if there is no herd immunity, it weakens the argument for public health mandates - most of what you're saying is not right).

Look, I studied hard for 4 years of pre-med, 4 years of medical school, 4 years of residency training, and 5 years of PhD. That's 17 years of formal education. Then along four decades I spent thousands of hours in a lab, thousands of hours at patients' bedside, thousands of hours in the classroom teaching medical students, residents, and research fellows, thousands of hours writing up grant applications, thousands of hours conducting original research, and thousands of hours writing up papers that got peer-reviewed and published, and writing up textbooks and chapters in textbooks. There's nothing fake that deserves to be mockingly expressed between quotation marks in my expertise. It is as real as it gets. So, yes, when you bash the "experts" you are attacking the real expertise of people who worked hard at acquiring it.

You call us bullies and you accuse us of being unethical. You say we are forcing or tricking people (we did no such thing). You accuse us of greed ("one hell of a lot of money"). You say only fools listen to us and you say we're consistently wrong (no, we're not; just, the virus evolves and new information is acquired so the advice needs to be updated - would you prefer that we stuck with outdated advice???). You say we are always consistent with our political affiliations and financial interests when we often act apolitically and often have no skin in the financial game. See your much maligned Fauci for example; he is completely apolitical and is a civil servant for 50 years who served under all sorts of administrations and advised presidents who were Republicans and Democrats alike, advised presidents Reagan, Bush, and Trump, and got from president Bush the Presidential Medal of Freedom, but I bet you identify him as a Democrat and a liberal, right? You accuse us of a lack of honesty in our "messaging" which you mock by writing it up between quotation marks too...You say I'm singing the company song (when I'm not paid by any vaccine maker; I'm employed by my university and my hospital, two extremely ethical and not-for-profit organizations). You said I contribute to illegitimate power. You called our efforts mindblindness (yay, congratulations, at least you've created a new word). You accused us of falsification. And so on and so forth. All that I've mentioned in this paragraph comes from direct quotes of your posts... but no, you're not bashing science, huh? Who the hell do you think you're fooling???

Then, you make blatantly false statements like "Natural immunity is much more effective against the variants because it acts against the entire virus rather than only 10% of it." This must have been recovered from a recent article by a notorious anti-vaxxer venue, posted by one of our anti-vaxxer members here, commenting in a mistaken way on a rather flawed study, saying that natural immunity is better than vaccine immunity... an article full of methodological flaws and manipulated stats - when if the numbers contained in it are actually plotted to the whole population of vaccinated people versus unvaccinated people in the country's overall population (the country that delivered the data that were the basis of this conclusion), the advantage reverses in favor of vaccine immunity (haha! Like I demonstrated by showing the math in this calculation, so not even the article that proposes this point, actually proves the point), not to forget that the article only addressed 3 groups rather than the 7 groups I demonstrated that needed to be considered for a full conclusion, and actually the conclusion of the study is not even that, because the third group (the one with natural infection AND vaccination) is actually the group that fared best (and again, four other possible situations were not considered). See, when I demolish an article like that one, it's because I'm actually a freaking real life peer reviewer... several journals have invited me to be a member of their peer-reviewing panels. So, I can spot methodological flaws. But since the article, although profoundly flawed, goes to support your position, you cling to it, and summarily dismiss the vaccines, huh? Great! This is a good example of how lay people get it wrong. Again, you call it condescending... but what can I say? You never stopped to think of the methodological flaws in this article... (assuming that you got this statement from that article; if not, then you got if from hearsay which is even worse).

By the way, like I've already demonstrated to you, you shouldn't base your assessment of the situation on ONE article (especially a flawed one like that one)... because there are ALSO studies showing the very opposite, that vaccine immunity is better than natural immunity. Here is one (there are more; some of them, listed on the list of references included in this article - second link below):

https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/s0806-vaccination-protection.html

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7032e1.htm?s_cid=mm7032e1_w

Er, oops, huh?... haha.

So, yes, in your lay person's assessment, immunity against "the entire virus" must be better than immunity against "only 10% of it" - sounds like good common sense... but it is not true (science doesn't necessarily follow common sense). Actually focusing immunity on neutralizing antibodies works better than diluting the immune system's efforts against the entire 29 viral proteins with wasteful and useless binding antibodies (you might want to locate through a search of my posting history, a long post in which I explained the differences between neutralizing antibodies and binding antibodies). Why do you suppose that the mRNA vaccines perform way better than Sinovac's CoronaVac vaccine which is made of the whole real SARS-CoV-2 inactivated virus??? Care to explain that???

You say mRNA vaccines are "one trick pony" and can't make adjustments when it's the very opposite; they are the most versatile platform currently in use (the new plant-based one may still be even more flexible; we'll see; but for now the latter is not operational yet).

 

@Zorro OK, big guy, you wanted the latest information, right? Surprise, surprise... a fully peer-reviewed study published on September 1st, 2021... doesn't get any more "latest" than this, huh? Published not in some pre-print but actually by The Lancet Infectious Disease, arguably the best journal in our field. Case-controlled study. Freaking 1.2 million subjects. Very well-done. Supported by the high-quality Kings College London, UK's NHS, the UK Department of Health, and also the French National Research Agency. Some authors also supported by the Massachusetts General Hospital, one of the top 5 American hospitals. So, good people...

Brace for it:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(21)00460-6/fulltext

Here's a lay journalism account of it, if you prefer the digest version:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/vaccines-cut-chances-long-haul-080019124.html

So, come again, big guy? The vaccines are not working, according to you? Well, not according to a study that looked at freaking 1.2 million people, authored by some real experts (no need for quotation marks) and supported by some outstanding organizations.

But I'm sure you'll rather cling to the biased crap that anti-vaxxers publish, right?

 

@Zorro Since you like to quote Israel to bash the vaccines, you may want to see this newly released Israeli study showing astounding recovery of efficacy after a booster shot... And since you asked for updated information, this is a study dated of August 27, 2021.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.27.21262679v1.full.pdf

In the real world, adults who received a third Pfizer shot saw their risk of confirmed infection drop by 11.4-fold after 12 days or more, and their risk of severe disease drop by more than 10-fold. The study included more than a million people who were 60 or older, and the authors argue that it "demonstrates the effectiveness of a third vaccine dose in both reducing transmission and severe disease."

Not yet peer-reviewed, but that hasn't stopped you from invoking data contrary to the vaccines before, right?

People need to realize that peer review takes time, and not always the temporary absence of it is proof that a study is bad.

 

Moderna has initiated its request for FDA approval for booster shots.

 

Fake News. Noting information that does not conform with expectations isn't "bashing". It's weird that folks supposedly evaluating this dispassionately respond like cult members in the face with questions about emerging evidence. You may want to remain on guard to excessive allegiance to an approach that results in mind-blindness.

I love effective vaccines, I hope this approach proves effective, but, it's struggling with every recalibration of expectations a downgrade.

That's great news and impressive results. I thought what was occurring was that the original message was deteriorating in performance because changes in the virus were making the virus more resistant to the instructions, but, this appears to be a fresh dose of the same instructions. How should we understand that? Are our bodily processes degrading the instructions so that they fade over time? This would seem to be safer as since it's the same shot, rather than a new shot that needs a fresh safety evaluation.

It just means that it hasn't been peer-reviewed. Accuracy of information isn't changed because someone puts a stamp of approval on it.

Thank you for sharing this and your first hand observations, it sounds like you do good work and that you are in the midst of a peaking challenge. I'm sure your patients are thankful for your clear-headed endurance.

 

It's just that your quote about the natural immunity being better than the vaccine-induced immunity is actually the fake news. The study that is going around trying to indicate that, is actually profoundly methodologically flawed as it compares a theoretical second encounter with the virus for the unvaccinated with a first encounter for a breakthrough in vaccinated people and fails to consider 4 other situations that should have had their own arms; and also, if you then go and look at the GLOBAL numbers for the country, that is, you look at the overall denominator, the advantage reverses and vaccine immunity is actually better. This can be added to the other and recent evidence of better immunity for the vaccinated, I posted for you. No, I don't have excessive allegiance to an approach. If you follow this very thread we're using to engage in this discussion, you'll see earlier on multiple posts authored by me, reporting concerns about the mRNA platform and others. I've always looked at this in unbiased and scientific ways. It's just that the mRNA indeed have been the best performing ones so far, both in terms of safety and efficacy. Sorry, but that's where the scientific facts lead me, and until they change (e.g., the Medicago plant-based approach proves to be superior, which it hasn't done yet), you can rest assured that I'll be allegiant to them; that is, I plead allegiance to facts, not to a specific platform or a specific maker.

Not really. Like I've amply demonstrated, the approach is working; it's just a matter of boosting it and/or updating it.

The current thinking about Delta is that it simply requires bigger titers of neutralizing antibodies, but it is still susceptible to the vaccines when the titers are high enough. So the booster pushing up the titers again, the mRNA vaccines seem to be able to recover their previous efficacy to also include Delta. That is, the antigenic drift hasn't been that complete yet. Like you said yourself, Delta may just be A' instead of B. Yes, it drifted, but not enough to enable it to escape the vaccines when the vaccines have the opportunity to foster really big neutralizing antibody titers.

The instructions, that is, the mRNA itself, gets degraded in merely hours. The spike proteins made by the mRNA endure longer; they get presented to the T-cells, which then activate the B cells, etc. Neutralizing antibodies get made and circulate (and then clear the artificially made spike protein, but T cells do teach the B cells how to recognize future encounters with the spike protein). With time, the neutralizing antibodies fade. Still, memory cells may exist and restart antibody production, that's what I've been telling you about cellular immunity. It accounts for someone (vaccinated) getting clinically infected (due to the waning neutralizing antibodies) but then having a mild case and clearing the virus rapidly once cellular memory triggers fresh antibody production, as well as cytotoxic killer T-cells.

Absolutely. No need to apply for another authorization, no need to run long and complex phase I, II, and III trials. So, much faster. I told you, the mRNA vaccines aren't done yet simply because a variant was more aggressive.

Agreed, but I'll add that we've seen some low quality studies going to these pre-print platforms without peer-review, and later never making it into a reputable publisher once peer-reviewers pick them apart. But not having peer review initially is not a problem, because of course ALL studies lack peer-review once they are completed, until they are submitted for print publication and the peer-reviewers have the time to get to them, read them, analyze them, and issue an opinion to the journal's editorial body. So, one might say "this study has not YET been peer-reviewed but it will be." In the past, we didn't use to read that many fresh non-peer-reviewed papers. These pre-print online platforms were created exactly because of the emergency. The scientific community felt that the virus was raging so much worldwide, that it would be useful to share information faster, without waiting a couple of months for a full peer review. While there is an advantage in doing so, it's not all rosy and sometimes bad studies get quoted as if they were good ones.

Thank you. But as a matter of fact I'm moving away from the frontline. I got too burnt out. Unfortunately a lot of my colleagues feel the same way, and shortage in healthcare workers is getting worse thanks to the pandemic. I'm even considering retirement by the end of 2021 or early 2022. We'll see.

P.S. - The various offenses and accusations you issued in two previous posts, which I recovered in a paragraph directly from your words (not to forget your Yale blunder) did indeed constitute science bashing; sorry. You've recovered nicely, though. You are listening and you're acknowledging good points issued by the person with whom you're debating, and this is more than what usually happens here. Actually debating this with you has been a pleasure.

 

Fake News. Disagreement is not "bashing science" to repeat false claims like this is beneath you. Please stick to facts and evidence rather than false charges based on frustration.

I routinely mock small minded clowns (no one in this discussion, of course) who assert that they are above questioning and I'll continue to do so.

Fake news. I love science, and mock scientism mercilessly.

I promptly owned and corrected my error and posted it to you. You seem a little hot at the moment, maybe we should contine this discussion when circumstances are more favorable.

He has repeatedly been wrong and dishonest throughout this crisis even while he was concealing his role in this deadly pandemic. He testified before Congress in 2015 that the "risk was well worth it" and that we should continue to fund this dangerous research. It's too bad that no one in the Fake News Media has the guts to ask him if after 5 million dead and continuing to 6 million dead if he has changed his stance.

That's an area where information is still developing, but, that is a likely enough scenario that I wouldn't support mandates at the moment. Further, watching the mandater-clowns promptly violate their own mandates at their convenience is a powerful argument that just as they make their own choices, so shall we all. We have no nobility in this country, all are subject to the law. If they really thought that mandates were critical, they would follow them rather than violating them at will.

I've never mocked your expertise.

Fake News. I mock authoritarianism and credentialing posing as expertise. We have no authority in this nation of Free People other than what we consent to. Of course I stand against the illegitimate arrogation of power, it's my duty as a Free Citizen to do so.

First, I have accused you of no such thing, but should you violate on those counts I would not hesitate to do so. Frankly you are too exercised at the moment for this conversation, and you may be taking a break while treating patients, and I do not want to increase your frustration. I know how important your work is, and I appreciate you posting. I'll skim through the rest of your note and see if there is something that can be responded to in a positive manner.

The delivered shot makes adjustments in the body, or,
New instructions are delivered with a following shot?

 

Thank you.

Got it.

If vaccinated immunity doesn't compromise natural immunity this would seem to be a safer route to natural immunity than contracting the virus while unvaccinated.

I'm benefitting as well.

 

Good points and I apologize for being too frustrated. No, you're not robbing me of patient time, I'm on "staycation" this week and next.
Yes, you did own your error, that's commendable and rare, here.
Got it, you have a point about authoritarianism and mandates. They've always existed, though. If you went to college, your college asked you for proof of vaccination before they agreed to enroll you, no? Both public and private colleges do so. It's effectively a mandate. Sure, the student has the option of not enrolling if the student doesn't want any vaccines, but who would do that?
What I meant by flexible platform is that the mRNA vaccines can be remade to better fit the mutated strains. This hasn't been done yet but is easy to do, if need be. For now, a booster is doing the job so because of the constraints of new trials, new authorization request, etc., these new instructions (a new mRNA with instructions to make an updated spike protein) haven't been done yet.

Pfizer actually started a two-pronged study, to see if simply giving a third identical shot is better than giving an update shot.

I hope that you do realize that if gain of function research did exist to the degree the right wing supposes, it wasn't done with coronaviruses. The right wing seems to skip this essential step... to give the impression that gain of function research was responsible for the SARS-CoV-2 which actually looks much more like a natural virus.

When the Wuhan Institute of Virology was working in gain of function research with some NIH funds, it WASN'T on coronaviruses.

This reminds me of the justification for the war on Iraq, when some right wingers kept giving the impression that Iraq had something to do with 9/11.

A fundamental step was missing there.

One is missing here, too. GOF research at the time had nothing to do with coronaviruses.

GOF research is made to be this monster... when it's actually very well-intentioned research. You get a virus, you equip it with some gene editing to make it more infectious or something, so that in a controlled environment of cell culture, you study ways to counter it. GOF research is meant to anticipate ways to counter dangerous viruses.

Sure, of course, if a genetically engineered virus then escapes the lab, it's bad. But there is NO indication whatsoever that this happened to the viruses being studied in Wuhan a few years back... and they weren't coronaviruses.

 

Actually, I have a good friend that had exactly this experience, long haulers that cleared after vaccination.

As I told you previously, I'm constantly in a state of vaccinated immunity: Smallpox, polio, regular updates for Tetanus (usually within a combo shot) and annual flu shots. But no, I don't rush right out and roll my sleeve up for newly developed ones. I'm a big fan of balancing of risks and very respectful of unforeseen consequences of actions.

I also don't promptly upgrade my computer operating systems with the .0 version, I wait for the flaws to be revealed the patches added and upgrade when the .1 version is released that fixes the unforeseen issues in the .0 version.

 

If you have read my post #810, I upgraded it, so read again please.

Yes, that's prudent... except when there is a very dangerous virus circulating and the vaccines look safe and protective. It's always an issue of risks versus benefits. I'm thoroughly and entirely convinced that the current mRNA vaccines have a vastly favorable benefit/risks ratio. In this case it's more prudent to get vaccinated sooner rather than later.

Are there risks associated with the vaccines? Sure. What medication or vaccine known to men doesn't have risks? Even Tylenol does (liver toxicity). But when the risks are fairly statistically negligible and the benefits are many, it's prudent to incur the tiny risks in order to earn the great benefits.

 

Yes, that's a point I made in my comments about that article. EVEN if the numbers held (they don't), one would think, OK, if I go unvaccinated and catch the virus, I'm slightly less likely to catch it a second time than a vaccinated person would be (for catching it a first time). But if I catch it unvaccinated the first time I risk death or damaged organs. While if I'm vaccinated I have a slightly higher odds of having a breakthrough infection than a previously infected person would have of catching it again, but if I catch it, it will be a case that will happen in a vaccinated person and most likely will be milder and brief. Give me the latter any day. I'd rather risk one encounter with the virus, mildly, than two, being the first one possibly severe.

Basically the article is trying to compare groups with a situation in which catching the natural virus would be that group's "vaccine"... LOL. That's not a wise strategy. I mean, the study is a retrospective cohort survey so the authors did not TRY to achieve this; I'm just talking about how dangerous it is to interpret it this way.

People shouldn't try to catch the natural disease in order to be protected against a second bout... given that the very first bout may very well kill them or damage their heart, lungs, kidneys, brains, coagulation system, etc.

Some people are too romantic around "natural immunity" and say what doesn't kill you makes you stronger... but well, this one may very well kill ya.

Of course we don't want to keep kids in a bubble and preven them from attending kindergarten or frequenting a playground, so that they don't catch any viruses... we'd produce a child with a weak immune system. But on the other hand, when a pathogen is very dangerous, we don't go exposing the child to it, in purpose. We don't expose kids to meningitis or polio or tuberculosis to make them stronger... we rather give them vaccines. We're OK with exposing them to some mild common cold viruses, mild stomach bugs, etc., so that their immune system learns how to deal with viruses... but when there's a very dangerous virus we keep them away and vaccinate them. This romantic idea of natural immunity only works to a certain degree, and exaggerating on it is not wise.

 

Agreed. Sometimes the most dangerous risk is not taking a risk. I'm still thinking this one over.

Take care, Zorro.

 

Thanks. Well, if my arguments contribute to you accepting this vaccine sooner rather than latter, especially in view of the dangerous Delta surge, I'll be very happy for your sake and for the sake of your loved ones. You take care, too.

 

The AstraZeneca shot got a warning about Guillain-Barré Syndrome. 833 documented cases. Of course, this is out of 592 million doses, so it remains rare.

 

But then we always knew that GB happens after vaccination in rare cases

 

Yes. We should also notice how the mRNA vaccines remain even safer. Most of the problems we're seeing affect the adenovirus vector vaccines.

 

Isn’t that about the rate from the flu vaccine that was associated with higher rates of GBS in the ‘70’s?

 

While I haven't bothered looking up exactly the rates for this occurrence and the 70's, sounds right in absolute numbers. I seem to remember something like 600 cases. But I think the 70's GBS fiasco was out of a much smaller number of vaccine doses, wasn't it out of 60 million doses or something like it?

I've look it up in the past. I don't feel like looking it up now. I'm watching the NFL game.

 

The CDC says 45 million doses and an increased rate of 1 per 100,000 for the 1976 flu vaccine. So this is nowhere close to the 1976 flu vaccine. This Covid vaccine is right in line with the average vaccine increase of 1-2 per million doses.

 

Good.

 

Three studies showing that the vaccines are still working and vaccinated people fare much better. This is good to counter the nonsense we've heard lately from anti-vaxxers.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/vaccines...main-low-despite-delta-variant-203801730.html

While the percentage of break-through infections went up (now at 8%) it is still much smaller than the number of infections among the non-vaccinated. One of the studies shows that people have 5 times the risk of infection if they are not vaccinated, and 10-11 times the risk of being hospitalized or dying. Also, the people who are failing the vaccines

Yes, the vaccines are working less well with Delta, but are still working fairly well, and the studies haven't even considered boosters, which in Israel have pretty much restored the vaccine's efficacy against Delta, bumping up the titers of neutralizing antibodies by a factor of ten.

Also, this article makes another point I've been making: while initial viral loads are similar among the vaccinated and the unvaccinated, the former clear the virus much faster so this viral load drops quickly and then is no longer similar to the one the unvaccinated suffer from.

 

Pfizer vaccine side effects: my father (82 years old) had no memory problems at the beginning of the year and could recall appointment dates and events with no problem at all. He remembered faces and could recall conversation details. He was very switched on and working 7 days a week. He thrived on his work. He then had the vaccine in February with second dose 3 weeks later. Within weeks his memory was noticeably deteriorating rapidly. We all noticed his memory problems. Now he may make a phone call an hour ago and not remember who he phoned and any details of the call and is constantly confused. He is too proud to seek medical help.

I've always been an advocate of vaccines. The case is anecdotal and many would say that it is old age dementia. I'm not so sure. His memory loss has been very rapid

Have there been other cases like this? I would really appreciate any info. Can normal dementia happen this fast? I've spoken to my father several times about his memory problems hoping he would let me go with him to a doctor but he just won't and will also forget the conversation.

Basically, are memory problems a rare side effect of the Pfizer vaccine?

 

My mother's memory seemed to worsen after she got osteoporosis and started taking lots of strong painkillers.
I thought it was the drugs effecting her memory but when I spoke to her partner about it he said her memory had been fading for a while.
I just hadn't noticed at the time but he had plenty of examples.
It could just be that you missed a few pointers. Maybe your mother has a few examples of his memory fading that you never noticed.
Anyway, sorry for your father. It's been horrid watching my mother's memory deteriorate. It has been a fairly slow progression over 5 years to the point where her partner is now her full time carer.
She had zero side effects after taking her vaccine jabs though.