It seems like this study has two groups of 400, so 800 people total, 1% of which had the South African variant, so 8 people. How can we draw any conclusions from this?
One of the authors explains the result a more clearly than the article[0]. The short version is that the headline makes the result sound much worse than it is, the reduced protection is offset by reduced fitness of the virus variant, and apparently there's significant protection +14 days after 2nd dose.
This is quite a bad mindset of dismissing facts and not investigating bad outcomes because they are categorized as FUD. It's the same mindset that never changes your opinion about something if it's made up etc. Very dangerous for the situation we are in.
- size of study = 800 (infected with covid 19)
- size of control (unvaccinated) = 400
- size of vaccinated (1 or 2 shots) = 400
- size of b.1.351 infected of those fully vaccinated (2 shots) = ? <= 21.6 (5.4%)
- size of b.1.351 infected of those unvaccinated = 2.8 (.7%)
South Africa Study (not much info, group make up is not given):
- size of participants = 800
- participants infected with covid 19 = 9 (.7% of all participants) (all unvaccinated)
- participants infected with b.1.351 = 6 (1.1% of participants)
It's really important to check sources. What Reuters isn't sharing is that they're quoting YNet. No one in this country takes that paper seriously. It's literally a garbage tabloid. They literally publish articles for the sake of publishing article updates. Their Hebrew articles say the exact reverse - that the Pfizer vaccine is very effective against the South African variant, yet still a garbage newspaper.
I'll need to dig up the study but this has been looked at. At the end of the day it doesn't matter if some fraction of people can still get sick what matters is the reduction.
I think that I've seen (again i need to dig good up) is the vaccines reduce likelihood of getting sick substantially. Much more important is the reduction of death and severe illness. Which I think most vaccines do well against.
Also in any case none of the variants have been so different that one would need a substantially different vaccine. So a variant vaccine can be produced much easier now
Hey man just wanted to say don’t give up. It will end but requires resilience to get through.
I’ve found if I focus my mental energy on the things in my life I can control rather than the things I can’t, I am much happier.
I felt suffocated from the lockdowns here in Europe and took a vacation to one of the only country accepting tourists and sunny. I was judged and mocked by my coworkers but I didn’t care it’s none of their business. In planning my trip, there were tons of what if’s and worries about flight cancellations or if the lockdown becomes stricter but I was prepared to accept whatever just to get some sense of normalcy. It helped my mental healthy immensely.
Learning to live with low systematic risk is also a way forward. We have learned to live with the flu and other diseases - and people still die from them.
Unfortunately, the article doesn't tell us how many of the people had to be hospitalised. The vaccine may provide imperfect immunity against a variant, but still prevent the vast majority of serious cases in those people that get the variant despite being vaccinated.
Be that as it may, Covid vaccines have a second line of defense by reducing the severity of the illness.
In other words if someone vaccinated gets a cough from Covid, that person has a very good chance to overcome it in a few days. Just isolate and sit it out.
To know this is extremely comforting, at least for me.
Quote: "The study, released on Saturday, compared almost 400 people who had tested positive for COVID-19, 14 days or more after they received one or two doses of the vaccine, against the same number of unvaccinated patients with the disease"
14 days is too early. Do the study properly, 21 days after the 2nd shot. Now you can claim that indeed the variant pierces through, otherwise I'd file this study under FUD.
Isn't two weeks the CDC's definition of fully vaccinated? However, it definitely was wrong to make a claim based off first shot only and worse to throw the first-only vs full series data together into one statistic.
I get what you're saying but there is a fair bit of context and intent difference between the terms. "China virus" was pretty highly implied to convey blame and fault, but the variant terms are not similarly charged.
Case in point would be that acts of racism or violence are not being incited against races from the variant countries.
I haven't seen much press about this outside of South Africa, but our government just sold something like 1 Million AstraZenica vaccines (the first bulk order of vaccines we received) because of a local study showing they were ineffective here.
Then we ordered something like 10 million of the Pfizer to start again... Now this.
And you can guess which variant of the virus is doing the rounds here!
I am curious why you (your health authorities) don't run a trial first? Why would you not expect the Pfizer vaccine to have the same variant troubles as the AZ?
The study shows that the Pfizer vaccine given in Israel is having similar lower efficacy for the South Africa and Brazil variants as has been the case with other vaccines.
Unfortunate but kind of expected. Why would Pfizer be special?
well if there's still evolution skeptics I give up because people will now get to experience it in real-time. Any given strain that is even moderately resistant against vaccines will quickly become the dominant variant, and with enough new hosts evolve further, and so on and so forth.
If there was ever actually any hope of quelling the disease distancing measures would have been needed to be sustained throughout the vaccination campaign as to avoid having to roll to many dice.
That is why we need to push for widespread vaccination. Even vaccines that are not fully effective against all variants can reduce the population available to infection and reduce the ability of the virus to develop new variants.
Funny to see how the goalposts move. At first it was flattening the curve, then it was waiting for the vaccine, and now it turns out we need it even with a vaccine.
"The study, released on Saturday, compared almost 400 people who had tested positive for COVID-19, 14 days or more after they received one or two doses of the vaccine"
and
"The companies said on April 1 that their vaccine was around 91% effective at preventing COVID-19"
COVID-19 is the disease whereas testing checks for presence of portions of the virus. The Phase III clinical trials looked for symptomatic infection. Without details on the clinical progression of the vaccinated who tested positive, there's nothing to see here.
Also,
"But among patients who had received two doses of the vaccine, the variant’s prevalence rate was eight times higher than those unvaccinated - 5.4% versus 0.7%."
This indicates that if the immune system is primed to identify a certain variant, its performance is hindered as opposed to a naive immune system.
The actual paper is at https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.06.21254882v...
From what I can tell, the median age of the fully vaccinated is 61 and 46 for the unvaccinated. (table 1). And the comparison for the SA variant is between 8 in the former vs 1 in the latter. Sensationalist reporting.
> This indicates that if the immune system is primed to identify a certain variant, its performance is hindered as opposed to a naive immune system.
This does not mean that the performance is hindered. It just means that there is a larger immune system performance differential.
Here is how it might work.
The regular COVID-19 is highly prevalent, the variant has much less prevalent. The vaccine is highly effective against regular COVID-19. Let's also say that it is somewhat effective against the variant so the performance of the vaccinated immune system is actually better than the naive immune system.
Because of the selection effect, you could have a higher variant prevalence compared to regular COVID-19 in the vaccinated population, even though the vaccine actually improves the peformance of the immune system with regards to the variant.
[+] [-] b3n|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TeeMassive|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yyyk|4 years ago|reply
[0] https://twitter.com/SternLab/status/1380922920734711811
[+] [-] underdeserver|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arisAlexis|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] akmarinov|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikeiz404|4 years ago|reply
Israel Study (not peer reviewed yet):
South Africa Study (not much info, group make up is not given):[+] [-] cik|4 years ago|reply
Original ynet English Article: https://www.ynetnews.com/health_science/article/HJMpKyeLO
[+] [-] throwaway4good|4 years ago|reply
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.06.21254882v...
[+] [-] joegelman|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] richzad|4 years ago|reply
Several Israeli news sources have an article with almost the same title.
Which Israeli news source would you recommend instead?
[+] [-] dmarchand90|4 years ago|reply
I think that I've seen (again i need to dig good up) is the vaccines reduce likelihood of getting sick substantially. Much more important is the reduction of death and severe illness. Which I think most vaccines do well against.
Also in any case none of the variants have been so different that one would need a substantially different vaccine. So a variant vaccine can be produced much easier now
[+] [-] winocm|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] georgeplusplus|4 years ago|reply
I’ve found if I focus my mental energy on the things in my life I can control rather than the things I can’t, I am much happier.
I felt suffocated from the lockdowns here in Europe and took a vacation to one of the only country accepting tourists and sunny. I was judged and mocked by my coworkers but I didn’t care it’s none of their business. In planning my trip, there were tons of what if’s and worries about flight cancellations or if the lockdown becomes stricter but I was prepared to accept whatever just to get some sense of normalcy. It helped my mental healthy immensely.
[+] [-] ReptileMan|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cblconfederate|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] morsch|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kolinko|4 years ago|reply
But yeah, the article is missing many details - how many people were infected at all for example...
[+] [-] londons_explore|4 years ago|reply
Now instead of reaching herd immunity rates, you need to vaccinate everyone.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] tape_measure|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] djaychela|4 years ago|reply
[1] - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55924433
[+] [-] _nalply|4 years ago|reply
In other words if someone vaccinated gets a cough from Covid, that person has a very good chance to overcome it in a few days. Just isolate and sit it out.
To know this is extremely comforting, at least for me.
[+] [-] unnouinceput|4 years ago|reply
14 days is too early. Do the study properly, 21 days after the 2nd shot. Now you can claim that indeed the variant pierces through, otherwise I'd file this study under FUD.
[+] [-] morpheuskafka|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 6nf|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] the_mitsuhiko|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] breitling|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CodeShmode|4 years ago|reply
Case in point would be that acts of racism or violence are not being incited against races from the variant countries.
[+] [-] WalterGR|4 years ago|reply
What’s your personal preference?
[+] [-] fukmbas|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ericbarrett|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomjuggler|4 years ago|reply
Then we ordered something like 10 million of the Pfizer to start again... Now this.
And you can guess which variant of the virus is doing the rounds here!
[+] [-] tomjuggler|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway4good|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway4good|4 years ago|reply
Unfortunate but kind of expected. Why would Pfizer be special?
[+] [-] Barrin92|4 years ago|reply
If there was ever actually any hope of quelling the disease distancing measures would have been needed to be sustained throughout the vaccination campaign as to avoid having to roll to many dice.
[+] [-] Tagbert|4 years ago|reply
That is why we need to push for widespread vaccination. Even vaccines that are not fully effective against all variants can reduce the population available to infection and reduce the ability of the virus to develop new variants.
[+] [-] LudwigNagasena|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mulvya|4 years ago|reply
It says,
"The study, released on Saturday, compared almost 400 people who had tested positive for COVID-19, 14 days or more after they received one or two doses of the vaccine"
and
"The companies said on April 1 that their vaccine was around 91% effective at preventing COVID-19"
COVID-19 is the disease whereas testing checks for presence of portions of the virus. The Phase III clinical trials looked for symptomatic infection. Without details on the clinical progression of the vaccinated who tested positive, there's nothing to see here.
Also,
"But among patients who had received two doses of the vaccine, the variant’s prevalence rate was eight times higher than those unvaccinated - 5.4% versus 0.7%."
This indicates that if the immune system is primed to identify a certain variant, its performance is hindered as opposed to a naive immune system.
The actual paper is at https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.06.21254882v... From what I can tell, the median age of the fully vaccinated is 61 and 46 for the unvaccinated. (table 1). And the comparison for the SA variant is between 8 in the former vs 1 in the latter. Sensationalist reporting.
[+] [-] RcouF1uZ4gsC|4 years ago|reply
This does not mean that the performance is hindered. It just means that there is a larger immune system performance differential.
Here is how it might work.
The regular COVID-19 is highly prevalent, the variant has much less prevalent. The vaccine is highly effective against regular COVID-19. Let's also say that it is somewhat effective against the variant so the performance of the vaccinated immune system is actually better than the naive immune system.
Because of the selection effect, you could have a higher variant prevalence compared to regular COVID-19 in the vaccinated population, even though the vaccine actually improves the peformance of the immune system with regards to the variant.