"Vaccines are wearing off"

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"Vaccines are wearing off"

Post by lpm » Sat Aug 21, 2021 7:37 am

There's been a spate of comments on this forum taking it as read that vaccines are now wearing off.

And not just from the we're all gonna die dude. It's become an agreed assumption.

It's bollocks. SARS immune response continues today from infection over 15 years ago. Anti body levels naturally decline but the T thing remains. When someone is reinfected it all springs into action.

The vaccines are far better than we hoped for a year ago. Even if they become less effective over the years they still remain better than original hopes. They prevent hospitalizations and deaths which is what we care about.

I think the confusion comes from forgetting the fundamental purpose is to prime the immune system to respond fast to new infections. Vaccines don't repel RNA away from your nose like a force field. RNA has to arrive before a vaccine has any benefit.
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Re: "Vaccines are wearing off"

Post by Herainestold » Sat Aug 21, 2021 2:52 pm

Vaccines are wearing off.
Leaders shared information suggesting that about six months after receiving a second dose, a fully-vaccinated person has a higher chance of catching COVID-19. They said evidence shows after that, it begins to wane even further.

“Reports from our international colleagues including Israel suggest increased risk against severe disease amongst those vaccinated early," Dr. Rochelle Walensky, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said.

She shared three studies that informed leaders to make the decision.

“Vaccine effectiveness against SARS V2 infection is waning, and even though our vaccines are currently working well to prevent hospitalization, we are seeing concerning evidence of waning vaccine effectiveness over time, and against the delta variant," she said.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medica ... ar-AANt60u

As we all know by now, there are other things we can do besides vaccinations that will help protect us from covid, even Delta. We should be doing them.
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Re: "Vaccines are wearing off"

Post by jdc » Sat Aug 21, 2021 7:42 pm

lpm wrote:
Sat Aug 21, 2021 7:37 am
Anti body levels naturally decline but the T thing remains. When someone is reinfected it all springs into action.
Memory B cells and memory T cells are basically life-long aren't they: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK27158/
By one month after immunization, memory B cells are present at their maximal levels. These levels are then maintained with little alteration for the lifetime of the animal.
Because the T-cell receptor does not undergo isotype switching or affinity maturation, memory T cells have been far more difficult to characterize than memory B cells. Furthermore, it has proved hard to distinguish between effector T cells and memory T cells on the basis of their phenotype. After immunization, the number of T cells reactive to a given antigen increases markedly as effector T cells are produced, and then falls back to persist at a level significantly (100- to 1000-fold) above the initial frequency for the rest of the animal's or person's life
Memory B cells allow you to produce antibodies more quickly and at a higher level than the first time you were exposed to an antigen - according to https://askabiologist.asu.edu/memory-b-cell
The first time your body fights a virus, it can take up to 15 days to make enough antibodies to get rid of it. With the help of Memory B-cells, the second time your body sees that virus, it can do the same in thing 5 days. It also makes 100 times more antibodies than it did the first time.

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Re: "Vaccines are wearing off"

Post by Millennie Al » Sun Aug 22, 2021 4:05 am

Herainestold wrote:
Sat Aug 21, 2021 2:52 pm
Vaccines are wearing off.
Leaders shared information suggesting that about six months after receiving a second dose, a fully-vaccinated person has a higher chance of catching COVID-19. They said evidence shows after that, it begins to wane even further.
...
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medica ... ar-AANt60u
From that article:
Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and Chief Medical Advisor to the President, shared findings that showed a third, booster dose delivers at least 10 times the amount of antibodies.
It the same dose delivers ten times the antibodies, this shows that the body is already primed to react. The vaccine has completely worn off when giving a new dose produces the same reaction as the first did.

I'd also like to see the data for the assertion that the people vaccinated over six months ago are more likely to get infected. Surely such people must have been the highest priority group, so cannot be simply compared to the general population. And, of course, we no longer care how likely they are to catch it, as it has got past the point where we can realistically hope to exterminate it. We only care about how sick they are likely to get.

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Re: "Vaccines are wearing off"

Post by Herainestold » Sun Aug 22, 2021 4:29 am

In Israel they are seeing increasing hospitalizations and deaths in fully vaccinated people.
Now, the effects of waning immunity may be beginning to show in Israelis vaccinated in early winter; a preprint published last month by physician Tal Patalon and colleagues at KSM, the research arm of MHS, found that protection from COVID-19 infection during June and July dropped in proportion to the length of time since an individual was vaccinated. People vaccinated in January had a 2.26 times greater risk for a breakthrough infection than those vaccinated in April. (Potential confounders include the fact that the very oldest Israelis, with the weakest immune systems, were vaccinated first.)
What is clear is that “breakthrough” cases are not the rare events the term implies. As of 15 August, 514 Israelis were hospitalized with severe or critical COVID-19, a 31% increase from just 4 days earlier. Of the 514, 59% were fully vaccinated. Of the vaccinated, 87% were 60 or older. “There are so many breakthrough infections that they dominate and most of the hospitalized patients are actually vaccinated,” says Uri Shalit, a bioinformatician at the Israel Institute of Technology (Technion) who has consulted on COVID-19 for the government. “One of the big stories from Israel [is]: ‘Vaccines work, but not well enough.’”
Yet boosters are unlikely to tame a Delta surge on their own, says Dvir Aran, a biomedical data scientist at Technion. In Israel, the current surge is so steep that “even if you get two-thirds of those 60-plus [boosted], it’s just gonna give us another week, maybe 2 weeks until our hospitals are flooded.” He says it’s also critical to vaccinate those who still haven’t received their first or second doses, and to return to the masking and social distancing Israel thought it had left behind—but has begun to reinstate.
Vaccines work very well when newly administered but they wane remarkably quickly. We simply cannot revaccinate fast enough to slow the Delta surge. We are going to have to return to all the NPIs which we recently abandoned.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/08 ... feat-delta
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Re: "Vaccines are wearing off"

Post by bob sterman » Sun Aug 22, 2021 5:54 am

Herainestold wrote:
Sun Aug 22, 2021 4:29 am
Vaccines work very well when newly administered but they wane remarkably quickly. We simply cannot revaccinate fast enough to slow the Delta surge. We are going to have to return to all the NPIs which we recently abandoned.
So what has slowed the Delta surge in the UK and reduced hospitalisations and mortality???

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Re: "Vaccines are wearing off"

Post by Herainestold » Sun Aug 22, 2021 2:27 pm

bob sterman wrote:
Sun Aug 22, 2021 5:54 am
Herainestold wrote:
Sun Aug 22, 2021 4:29 am
Vaccines work very well when newly administered but they wane remarkably quickly. We simply cannot revaccinate fast enough to slow the Delta surge. We are going to have to return to all the NPIs which we recently abandoned.
So what has slowed the Delta surge in the UK and reduced hospitalisations and mortality???
It is about to pick up again as schools re-open. Israel's fate is our fate as well.

Assuming your observations hold, that is a good question to which I have no answer. What do you think is the difference between the Israeli and UK pandemic?
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Re: "Vaccines are wearing off"

Post by Woodchopper » Sun Aug 22, 2021 5:43 pm

Both lpm and Herainestold have points.

lpm is correct that the normal way that the immune system works is that after a few months we stop producing antibodies in our bone marrow. But the immune system is a team effort and the memory T Cells will start up antibody production again as soon as they encounter the infection again. ( I simplify enormously).

With Covid, the T Cell response is working as it should, while antibodies are declining as expected.

For other vaccinations we rely upon the T Cells to protect us once the antibody stop being produced a few months later. This isn’t a problem and in general we don’t care about minor infections which take place before our immune systems ramp up.

However, it’ll usually take a few days after infection before the T Cells actually get the bone marrow to ramp up antibody production. This has two implications. Firstly that vaccinated people who are infected with Covid will be contagious for longer. That’ll affect R. Secondly that Covid infections will be worse. It probably won’t make a major difference to young people without co-morbidities. But the extra days of delay before the T Cells start production of antibodies may result in much more severe infections in the old and frail. In addition I’m concerned about the extent to which relying upon a T Cell response will affect post viral syndrome (and long Covid is a problem for younger and fitter people as well). For this reason some governments are planning or implementing booster shots.

So, yes, the vaccines and immune response are working as they should. But in we’ll have to see what the long term effects of that normal operation will be. It may be that to keep illness at an acceptable level we need boosters and long term NPIs.

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Re: "Vaccines are wearing off"

Post by Herainestold » Sun Aug 22, 2021 10:21 pm

Woodchopper wrote:
Sun Aug 22, 2021 5:43 pm
So, yes, the vaccines and immune response are working as they should. But in we’ll have to see what the long term effects of that normal operation will be. It may be that to keep illness at an acceptable level we need boosters and long term NPIs.
The Israeli data is quite frightening. By the end of this year it will be as if we had never vaccinated.

We will likely need boosters every six months. Certain NPIs will become permanent and others will be recurring.
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Re: "Vaccines are wearing off"

Post by Woodchopper » Mon Aug 23, 2021 9:16 am

Herainestold wrote:
Sun Aug 22, 2021 10:21 pm
Woodchopper wrote:
Sun Aug 22, 2021 5:43 pm
So, yes, the vaccines and immune response are working as they should. But in we’ll have to see what the long term effects of that normal operation will be. It may be that to keep illness at an acceptable level we need boosters and long term NPIs.
The Israeli data is quite frightening. By the end of this year it will be as if we had never vaccinated.

We will likely need boosters every six months. Certain NPIs will become permanent and others will be recurring.
Yes, hospital admissions, ICU admissions and deaths are all going up sharply.
https://ourworldindata.org/vaccination- ... alizations

According to this report:
Around half of the country's 600 patients presently hospitalized with severe illness have received two doses of the Pfizer Inc (PFE.N) shot, a rare occurrence out of 5.4 million fully vaccinated people.

The majority of these patients received two vaccine doses at least five months ago, are over the age of 60 and also have chronic illnesses known to exacerbate a coronavirus infection. They range from diabetes to heart disease and lung ailments, as well as cancers and inflammatory diseases that are treated with immune-system suppressing drugs, according to Reuters interviews with 11 doctors, health specialists and officials.

[...]

"The vaccinated patients are older, unhealthy, often they were bedridden before infection, immobile and already requiring nursing care," said Noa Eliakim-Raz, head of the coronavirus ward at Rabin Medical Centre in Petach Tikva.

In contrast, "the unvaccinated COVID patients we see are young, healthy, working people and their condition deteriorates rapidly," she said. "Suddenly they're being put on oxygen or on a respirator."

Israel's Health Ministry raised new alarm this week with a report showing the effectiveness against severe disease of the Pfizer vaccine, developed with Germany's BioNTech, appeared to have dropped from more than 90% to 55% in people age 65 and up who received their second jab in January.

Disease experts say it is not clear how representative the figures are, but agree it is concerning given evidence that overall vaccine protection against infection is waning.

They cannot say whether that is due to the amount of time that has passed since inoculation, the ability of the highly contagious Delta variant to evade protection, the age and underlying health of the people vaccinated, or a combination of all of these factors.

[...]

In Israel, daily new cases have increased from the single digits in June to around 8,000 since the arrival of Delta. Approximately half of the cases - the majority of them mild to moderate - are in vaccinated people.

Those vaccinated first in Israel were at high-risk, including people age 60 and up. The immune response of some may have weakened by the time Delta hit Israel. But for others with underlying health conditions, the vaccine may have not kicked in at all.

"For some of them the vaccine did not trigger an immune response, they had no antibodies, because of the illness itself or because they are treated with medication that suppresses the immune system," said Dror Mevorach, who heads the coronavirus ward at Hadassah hospital in Jerusalem. He cited examples such as chronic lymphocytic leukemia and lymphoma.

Among 3 million vaccinated Israelis covered by Clalit, the country's largest healthcare provider, 600 have suffered severe breakthrough cases since June. Around 75% of them were above the age of 70 and were at least 5 months after their second dose, according to Ran Balicer, Clalit's chief innovation officer. Nearly all of them have chronic illnesses.

"We are hardly seeing young vaccinated people in severe condition," said Balicer.

[...]

Initial data in Israel suggests the booster shots administered in the last few weeks are reducing the risk of infection in older people compared with those who have received only two doses. read more .

Even without boosters, Israeli doctors say that vaccinated patients tend to recover more quickly.

"The vaccinated patients I've treated usually left the ICU in about three days. The unvaccinated patients took a week or two until they stabilized," said Yael Haviv-Yadid, head of the critical care ward at Sheba Medical Centre near Tel Aviv.

Even if the vaccine did not stop them getting ill, it may have mitigated their illness, said Alex Rozov, head of the coronavirus ward at Barzilai Medical Centre in Ashkelon.

"Our cautious impression is that the vaccinated patients suffer an easier course of illness - the treatment is more effective among those who have antibodies."
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-ea ... 021-08-20/

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Re: "Vaccines are wearing off"

Post by Sciolus » Mon Aug 23, 2021 10:16 am

Woodchopper wrote:
Mon Aug 23, 2021 9:16 am
According to this report:
Around half of the country's 600 patients presently hospitalized with severe illness have received two doses of the Pfizer Inc (PFE.N) shot, a rare occurrence out of 5.4 million fully vaccinated people.
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-ea ... 021-08-20/
I haven't delved into the numbers in detail, but that sounds like exactly what you'd expect if vaccines are working. Insert seatbelt analogy here. I don't see anything in that article that suggests vaccines are wearing off. The only lesson is that they aren't sufficiently sterilising to achieve a sufficient level of herd immunity to reduce cases quickly.

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Re: "Vaccines are wearing off"

Post by Woodchopper » Mon Aug 23, 2021 10:24 am

Sciolus wrote:
Mon Aug 23, 2021 10:16 am
Woodchopper wrote:
Mon Aug 23, 2021 9:16 am
According to this report:
Around half of the country's 600 patients presently hospitalized with severe illness have received two doses of the Pfizer Inc (PFE.N) shot, a rare occurrence out of 5.4 million fully vaccinated people.
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-ea ... 021-08-20/
I haven't delved into the numbers in detail, but that sounds like exactly what you'd expect if vaccines are working. Insert seatbelt analogy here. I don't see anything in that article that suggests vaccines are wearing off. The only lesson is that they aren't sufficiently sterilising to achieve a sufficient level of herd immunity to reduce cases quickly.
Depends what is meant by 'wearing off', but I agree that the vaccines are working as expected and as they do normally.

What they aren't is a barrier that prevents in all cases serious illness and death. Many people are old, immunocompromised or have co-morbidities. It looks like we may have to continue to choose whether or how to protect them from Covid infections (eg regular boosters for the vulnerable, shielding the especially vulnerable, general NPIs like mask wearing).

That said, we should still wait before drawing conclusions. Israel is in many respects quite different from the UK or other European countries. We'll have to see whether the Israeli experience is also found elsewhere.

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Re: "Vaccines are wearing off"

Post by Herainestold » Mon Aug 23, 2021 2:49 pm

Every time there is light at the end of the tunnel it ends up being dimmed.
Israel was held up as the shining example, now it is the thing to be avoided.

The future looks miserable despite vaccines. Just imagine what it would be like without them.
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Re: "Vaccines are wearing off"

Post by Stupidosaurus » Mon Aug 23, 2021 6:46 pm

Woodchopper wrote:
Sun Aug 22, 2021 5:43 pm
...the immune system is a team effort and the memory T Cells will start up antibody production again as soon as they encounter the infection again...
With all respect to Woodchopper, I'm not an immunologist but I'm fairly sure that B cells produce antibodies, not T cells, and (slightly less sure) that memory B cells hang out in lymph nodes rather than bone marrow. Lymph nodes effectively act as immunological monitoring stations for whatever is floating round in the blood.

Killer T cells directly recognise antigens presented on the surface of all other cells by the Major Histocompatibility Complex, if the cell contains non-self proteins (viral proteins or proteins formed by cancer cells) then the T cells fry the target cell. If memory serves, they receive their self/non-self 'training' in the thymus gland, hence 'T'. I'm not sure where the 'memory' equivalent of the T cell hides but again it's probably not the bone marrow, because that's not a great place to detect incoming threats.

In terms of 'waning immunity', is it really possible to disentangle the time factor from the change in Sars-CoV-2 variants since the vaccines dropped? Maybe this was mentioned in earlier posts (which I will now have a better look at).

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Re: "Vaccines are wearing off"

Post by jdc » Mon Aug 23, 2021 7:16 pm

Stupidosaurus wrote:
Mon Aug 23, 2021 6:46 pm
Woodchopper wrote:
Sun Aug 22, 2021 5:43 pm
...the immune system is a team effort and the memory T Cells will start up antibody production again as soon as they encounter the infection again...
With all respect to Woodchopper, I'm not an immunologist but I'm fairly sure that B cells produce antibodies, not T cells, and (slightly less sure) that memory B cells hang out in lymph nodes rather than bone marrow. Lymph nodes effectively act as immunological monitoring stations for whatever is floating round in the blood.

Killer T cells directly recognise antigens presented on the surface of all other cells by the Major Histocompatibility Complex, if the cell contains non-self proteins (viral proteins or proteins formed by cancer cells) then the T cells fry the target cell. If memory serves, they receive their self/non-self 'training' in the thymus gland, hence 'T'. I'm not sure where the 'memory' equivalent of the T cell hides but again it's probably not the bone marrow, because that's not a great place to detect incoming threats.

In terms of 'waning immunity', is it really possible to disentangle the time factor from the change in Sars-CoV-2 variants since the vaccines dropped? Maybe this was mentioned in earlier posts (which I will now have a better look at).
B cells produce antibodies, but I believe memory B cells need to be activated by T cells when some infections are reencountered. If the antigen in the covid vaccines is a protein I assume that comes under the T cell-dependent category.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B_cell#T_ ... activation
Antigens that activate B cells with the help of T-cell are known as T cell-dependent (TD) antigens and include foreign proteins.
Antigens that activate B cells without T cell help are known as T cell-independent (TI) antigens[1] and include foreign polysaccharides and unmethylated CpG DNA.
I did also find this https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2211828/ "Memory B cells could not be activated by a soluble viral protein without T cell help."

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Re: "Vaccines are wearing off"

Post by jdc » Mon Aug 23, 2021 7:24 pm

location location location
After differentiation, memory B cells relocate to the periphery of the body where they will be more likely to encounter antigen in the event of a future exposure.[6][2][3] Many of the circulating B cells become concentrated in areas of the body that have a high likelihood of coming into contact with antigen, such as the Peyer's patch.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_B_cell
The antigen-specific memory T-cell pool includes memory T cells that preferentially reside in peripheral tissues, such as the skin, gut and lungs, where they provide a first line of defence against secondary pathogen infection.
https://www.nature.com/articles/nri2496 ... 0infection.

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Re: "Vaccines are wearing off"

Post by Woodchopper » Mon Aug 23, 2021 7:41 pm

Stupidosaurus wrote:
Mon Aug 23, 2021 6:46 pm
Woodchopper wrote:
Sun Aug 22, 2021 5:43 pm
...the immune system is a team effort and the memory T Cells will start up antibody production again as soon as they encounter the infection again...
With all respect to Woodchopper, I'm not an immunologist but I'm fairly sure that B cells produce antibodies, not T cells, and (slightly less sure) that memory B cells hang out in lymph nodes rather than bone marrow. Lymph nodes effectively act as immunological monitoring stations for whatever is floating round in the blood.

Killer T cells directly recognise antigens presented on the surface of all other cells by the Major Histocompatibility Complex, if the cell contains non-self proteins (viral proteins or proteins formed by cancer cells) then the T cells fry the target cell. If memory serves, they receive their self/non-self 'training' in the thymus gland, hence 'T'. I'm not sure where the 'memory' equivalent of the T cell hides but again it's probably not the bone marrow, because that's not a great place to detect incoming threats.

In terms of 'waning immunity', is it really possible to disentangle the time factor from the change in Sars-CoV-2 variants since the vaccines dropped? Maybe this was mentioned in earlier posts (which I will now have a better look at).
I did say I was simplifying enormously :-)

All elaborations are of course very welcome.

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Re: "Vaccines are wearing off"

Post by OffTheRock » Tue Aug 24, 2021 9:02 am

https://mobile.twitter.com/jburnmurdoch ... 9011111936

Worth a read. TL:DR - There does seem to be some evidence suggesting immunity against getting covid does wane, which seems to be what was expected. What’s less clear at the moment is whether or not the chances of getting severe disease are affected by the change in probability of you getting covid or whether it holds up despite you being more likely to catch covid.

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Re: "Vaccines are wearing off"

Post by Woodchopper » Wed Aug 25, 2021 6:47 am

Some more sophisticated analysis of the data from Israel.
https://twitter.com/ofraam/status/14301 ... 13089?s=20
TL/DR: infection rate and severe disease rates both significantly increase with vaccine age (thread)

The study analyzed data on all PCR positive test results between July 11-31 in Israel, a period of a major covid (Delta variant) outbreak and compared infection rates and severe outcomes between individuals who were vaccinated in different time periods.

The rates of infection show a significant decrease in protection with vaccine age. Results hold when controlling for the different age groups and high-risk populations who vaccinated earlier (white bars - periods at which only people at higher risk were eligible for vaccination.

A similar trend is observed for severe outcomes. E.g., 60+ y/o who received their 2nd dose in March were 1.6 (CI: [1.3, 2]) times more protected against infection and 1.7 (CI: [1.0, 2.7]) times more protected against severe COVID-19 compared to those who received it in January

One of the major sources for this new outbreak were people who traveled abroad and returned infected to Israel. This is important because this group is not representative of the general Israeli population and might be biased to vaccinate early (higher socio-economic status, etc.)

To control for this, these people were removed from the analysis (results still hold if they are added). It is also still unknown what happens to the protection of people who recovered from COVID, therefore people who are known to have had COVID previously were also removed

Another potential bias is that some people are more likely to follow recommendations and get tested (possibly those who also vaccinated early). To account for this, the analysis was adjusted for the # of PCR tests taken before the vaccination campaign (no past PCR, 1 test, >2).

Yet another potential bias might be demographic groups that differ in their compliance with medical recommendations and vaccination rates, therefore the analysis also took into account the major demographic groups

Finally, during the analyzed period, infections grew exponentially, further affecting the likelihood of getting infected. The analysis was also adjusted to account for the rate of infection on each particular day
Link to the preprint:

https://technionmail-my.sharepoint.com/ ... 0ZaUm4yVWc

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Re: "Vaccines are wearing off"

Post by Woodchopper » Wed Aug 25, 2021 11:35 am

COVID vaccine protection wanes within six months - UK researchers

Protection against COVID-19 offered by two doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech and the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccines begins to fade within six months, underscoring the need for booster shots, according to researchers in Britain.

After five to six months, the effectiveness of the Pfizer jab at preventing COVID-19 infection in the month after the second dose fell from 88% to 74%, an analysis of data collected in Britain's ZOE COVID study showed.

For the AstraZeneca vaccine, effectiveness fell from 77% to 67% after four to five months.

The study was based on data from more than a million app users, comparing self-reported infections in vaccinated participants with cases in an unvaccinated control group.

More data is needed in younger people because participants who had their shots up to six months ago tended to be elderly as that age group was prioritised when the shots were first approved, the study authors said.

ZOE Ltd was founded three years ago to offer customised nutritional advice based on test kits. The company's ZOE COVID Symptom Study app is a not-for-profit initiative in collaboration with King’s College London and funded by the Department of Health and Social Care.

Under a worst-case future scenario, protection could fall below 50% for older people and healthcare workers by the winter, Tim Spector, ZOE Ltd co-founder and principal investigator for the study, said.

"It's bringing into focus this need for some action. We can't just sit by and see the protectiveness slowly waning whilst cases are still high and the chance of infection still high as well," Spector told BBC television.
https://www.reuters.com/business/health ... 021-08-25/

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Re: "Vaccines are wearing off"

Post by Bird on a Fire » Wed Aug 25, 2021 1:10 pm

So if I'm understanding correctly, they are indeed, in common parlance, "wearing off"?
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Re: "Vaccines are wearing off"

Post by lpm » Wed Aug 25, 2021 2:54 pm

I'm finding it odd that these researchers are looking at infections. Obviously defenses wane against infections. But that's not the right metric for an endemic disease.

Protection is about protection from illness.

I'm expecting a young, healthy, vaccinated person like our dear BOAF to catch Covid a dozen times, possibly dying of a variant aged 94 on Lunar Base Alpha-4.

The point of the vaccines, and the subsequent re-priming of the immune system with each encounter with the strands of RNA, is to stop people being ill. What does it matter to you if you don't notice 6 of the infections, feel like you have a bit of a cold for 4, and feel feverish and flu like for 2? We live in a world of hostile viruses and illness is part of life and not dying early from any of them is the objective.

Everyone seems to be instinctively searching for the world of 2019. There's confusion about herd immunity, thinking of it in terms of making cases fizzle instead of making illness rarer and rarer. There's a huge over-ambition, futile hopes based on implicit scenarios of driving the virus to extinction, instead of realistic assessment of what coronaviruses, influenza viruses, noroviruses and all the rest are actually about.

The Israel study is more interesting because it looks at chance of illness. The results we want to see are hospitalisations per infection for people vaccinated in Jan vs people vaccinated in May - but obviously rollout per age cohorts will screw up easy analysis.
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Re: "Vaccines are wearing off"

Post by Bird on a Fire » Wed Aug 25, 2021 3:02 pm

Infections do matter for breeding new variants, which as we've already seen this year is a major risk, especially if we end up with a vaccine-defeating one. Then we'd be back to square one. Large numbers of virus circulating in huge numbers of individuals in partially-vaccinated populations are exactly what we don't want.

Beyond that I'm not enormously worried about myself, no. I'd rather not get long covid (I'm knackered enough as it is), and I'd rather my older and iller friends and relatives get the chance to live long and healthy lives.

Controlling for age and demographics is pretty easy analysis, by the way. The Israel study did that, and the results hold after accounting for the details of the rollout.
We have the right to a clean, healthy, sustainable environment.

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Bird on a Fire
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Re: "Vaccines are wearing off"

Post by Bird on a Fire » Wed Aug 25, 2021 3:06 pm

I'm not sure I'd want to move to a moonbase, though. I bet the birdwatching there is rubbish.

I guess I could take up clanger-spotting.
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Re: "Vaccines are wearing off"

Post by Woodchopper » Wed Aug 25, 2021 3:36 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Wed Aug 25, 2021 1:10 pm
So if I'm understanding correctly, they are indeed, in common parlance, "wearing off"?
Good thread here: https://twitter.com/mugecevik/status/14 ... 78860?s=21

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