Effectiveness of Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine Falls Below 50 Percent After 5 Months: Study

[Matt]

Pfizer vaccine 90% effective against sever Covid after 6 months:

https://nypost.com/2021/10/05/pfizer-va ... -variants/

Fortunately I have my password issues resolved AND the Pfizer vaccine... Hope you've all been doing ok.

Welcome back!

[Matt]

I really don't get why this has to be broken down for certain people with smooth brains that populate this forum, it seems pretty straightforward.

Some people are more concerned with being right initially that they are unwilling to process new information. I consider myself to be relatively stubborn, but I don't think I'm irrational. The level of stubbornness by some on here in regards to covid is truly astounding, whether they think they know more than actual experts or they think Jebus is going to save them...

https://youtu.be/XxWkcAUykUo

[Matt]

Well, I'm getting my booster tomorrow. I'll make sure to post if I grow a third arm or my dick falls off.

How'd it go?

[Robert Faygo]

One of the more interesting reads I've been following the last year + has been from an epidemiologist based in Texas. Her opinions have seemed to me to be pretty fair as she tries to look at things from more than just one angle - even to overcome her own biases / background.

Anywho - I thought her newsletter from a couple days ago was worthy of a share as it touches on many of the things that have been hashed and re-hashed on this board.

https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substac ... d-was-this

[Honeyman]

Well, I'm getting my booster tomorrow. I'll make sure to post if I grow a third arm or my dick falls off.

How'd it go?

I woke up this morning rather fatigued and have a headache. Just like I felt after #2....like I'm running at 75%. Weird feeling, but I know it'll be gone soon.

Thanks for asking.

[bmw]

One of the more interesting reads I've been following the last year + has been from an epidemiologist based in Texas. Her opinions have seemed to me to be pretty fair as she tries to look at things from more than just one angle - even to overcome her own biases / background.

Anywho - I thought her newsletter from a couple days ago was worthy of a share as it touches on many of the things that have been hashed and re-hashed on this board.

https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substac ... d-was-this

Thanks for the post. This is the first time I've seen ANYBODY suggest what I've been suggesting about natural immunity and its relationship to the severity of each wave of Coivd - and she said EXACTLY what I said about Michigan months ago: that we acquired more natural immunity in the winter wave than anybody else, hence, why our numbers were slower to climb during Delta. I do agree with her assessment that the recent slow uptick here while most other states fall needs to be closely monitored. Her logic applies to countries like Australia as well - a place that IMO will be dealing with Covid for at least an additional year compared to most of the rest of the world.

Oh, and her pointing out that natural immunity may have a median 16-month durability was interesting. If true, that is more than double the vaccine.

[Deleted User 9015]

One of the more interesting reads I've been following the last year + has been from an epidemiologist based in Texas. Her opinions have seemed to me to be pretty fair as she tries to look at things from more than just one angle - even to overcome her own biases / background.

Anywho - I thought her newsletter from a couple days ago was worthy of a share as it touches on many of the things that have been hashed and re-hashed on this board.

https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substac ... d-was-this

Thanks for the post. This is the first time I've seen ANYBODY suggest what I've been suggesting about natural immunity and its relationship to the severity of each wave of Coivd - and she said EXACTLY what I said about Michigan months ago: that we acquired more natural immunity in the winter wave than anybody else, hence, why our numbers were slower to climb during Delta. I do agree with her assessment that the recent slow uptick here while most other states fall needs to be closely monitored. Her logic applies to countries like Australia as well - a place that IMO will be dealing with Covid for at least an additional year compared to most of the rest of the world.

Oh, and her pointing out that natural immunity may have a median 16-month durability was interesting. If true, that is more than double the vaccine.

thats not true but lets assume it is because youre an argumentative gasbag.

wouldnt it be easier to get the vaccine than to get a condition that does all sorts of damage?

ill hang up and listen to your nonsense.

[bmw]

I don't think you've read at all into the nuances of my position on the vaccine.

First off, I've never once said I'm against people getting vaccinated against Covid. If you want to get vaccinated, get vaccinated. If you don't want to, then I don't think the government has any business forcing it, through mandates or otherwise.

My position has been that when it comes to actually ENDING this pandemic, that all other consequences set aside, that natural immunity not only lasts longer, but does a better job at preventing the SPREAD than does the vaccine, because as we're learning as we speak, breakthrough infections are becoming more and more common, to the point of being worrisome. The question I've asked several times, is whether the vaccine interferes with the immune system's ability, in a breakthrough case, to develop the same level of natural immunity that would be developed if you were unvaccinated and got the virus? I still can't find an answer to this question; I've come across one lone doctor who says that getting a breakthrough infection produces the equivalent of a booster shot, but that was without reference to any studies or science to support the claim. I want more studies of re-infection rates of people who get breakthrough cases - what is THEIR re-infection rate after a breakthrough case compared to an unvaccinated person's re-infection rate? What I ultimately want to know is whether we risk ending up in an endless cycle of breakthrough cases among vaccinated people because they never actually develop the natural immune response needed to prevent re-infection.

As such, what I HAVE said is that I don't think the vaccine is for everyone, and that it is perfectly rational for young, healthy people to not get the vaccine and instead take their chances with a natural infection, and I base this largely on the raw statistical data that comes straight from the CDC. Let's start with children age 0-17 who comprise roughly 22% of the total population. I posted a thread in here several weeks ago that nobody tried to refute - that children age 0-17 were hospitalized at a rate 20x higher for the 2018-2019 flu than they were in 2021 for Covid. I've also pointed out that children age 0-17 are 300x less likely to die from Covid than adults. I've also pointed out that since Covid started, only 0.7% of all deaths in children were from Covid; that 99.3% were from other causes.

Because the risk of getting Covid and dying (or for that matter, even ending up in the hospital) is pretty close to negligible, this is the first group that I think, for the purpose of ending this pandemic, would better assist society as a whole if they largely had natural immunity as opposed to vaccinated immunity. Not to mention how much this would ease the still-largely-unknown damage we're doing to children's social skills development by keeping them in masks and constantly in and out of school, back and forth between in-person and remote learning. I predict those consequences could be devastating long-term if these policies go on another year.

While risks climb as you get into your 20s and 30s, they're still quite low compared to older people, and as such, I think a majority of people in this age group need not get vaccinated either. As I also pointed out several times previously, 95% of all Covid deaths have occurred in the 1/3 of the population that is over the age of 50. Only 5% are in the under-50 crowd, which composes 2/3 of the population. The math here works out to 38:1 - that being, a random person with Covid under the age of 50 is 38x less likely to die from Covid than a random person over the age of 50.

The people who actually ARE dying - that being the elderly - nobody seems to give much of a damn about. Public discourse rarely focuses on this group; rather, focuses on working Americans (who are largely under the age of 65) and children.

[Robert Faygo]

This whole pandemic has been the ultimate science experiment. Nearly every prediction / prognostication has had to be adjusted. Everyone has been wrong on something, to a certain extent.

bmw's stance on naturally-acquired immunity is backed by science, even if it's not politically correct. We are an impatient society. High rates of vaccination is (correctly) viewed as the express lane to getting over this thing as quickly as possible. Natural immunity does get us there too, albeit it over a much longer timeframe.

The disagreement lies with the true / real world risk of getting COVID ... and everything that comes with it. Hospitalizations, deaths, long-term symptoms that need treatment, etc, etc vs. the proven method of reducing these things with vaccine. The evidence that vaccines have helped stemmed the tide on this thing is overwhelming -- but like everything else, they are not perfect.

bmw is not the bad guy here. I appreciate his opinions, even if I don't agree entirely. He brings valid points to the discussion, and kudos to him for sticking to his guns on this.

[jadednihilist]

I don't think you've read at all into the nuances of my position on the vaccine.

First off, I've never once said I'm against people getting vaccinated against Covid. If you want to get vaccinated, get vaccinated. If you don't want to, then I don't think the government has any business forcing it, through mandates or otherwise.

My position has been that when it comes to actually ENDING this pandemic, that all other consequences set aside, that natural immunity not only lasts longer, but does a better job at preventing the SPREAD than does the vaccine, because as we're learning as we speak, breakthrough infections are becoming more and more common, to the point of being worrisome. The question I've asked several times, is whether the vaccine interferes with the immune system's ability, in a breakthrough case, to develop the same level of natural immunity that would be developed if you were unvaccinated and got the virus? I still can't find an answer to this question; I've come across one lone doctor who says that getting a breakthrough infection produces the equivalent of a booster shot, but that was without reference to any studies or science to support the claim. I want more studies of re-infection rates of people who get breakthrough cases - what is THEIR re-infection rate after a breakthrough case compared to an unvaccinated person's re-infection rate? What I ultimately want to know is whether we risk ending up in an endless cycle of breakthrough cases among vaccinated people because they never actually develop the natural immune response needed to prevent re-infection.

As such, what I HAVE said is that I don't think the vaccine is for everyone, and that it is perfectly rational for young, healthy people to not get the vaccine and instead take their chances with a natural infection, and I base this largely on the raw statistical data that comes straight from the CDC. Let's start with children age 0-17 who comprise roughly 22% of the total population. I posted a thread in here several weeks ago that nobody tried to refute - that children age 0-17 were hospitalized at a rate 20x higher for the 2018-2019 flu than they were in 2021 for Covid. I've also pointed out that children age 0-17 are 300x less likely to die from Covid than adults. I've also pointed out that since Covid started, only 0.7% of all deaths in children were from Covid; that 99.3% were from other causes.

Because the risk of getting Covid and dying (or for that matter, even ending up in the hospital) is pretty close to negligible, this is the first group that I think, for the purpose of ending this pandemic, would better assist society as a whole if they largely had natural immunity as opposed to vaccinated immunity. Not to mention how much this would ease the still-largely-unknown damage we're doing to children's social skills development by keeping them in masks and constantly in and out of school, back and forth between in-person and remote learning. I predict those consequences could be devastating long-term if these policies go on another year.

While risks climb as you get into your 20s and 30s, they're still quite low compared to older people, and as such, I think a majority of people in this age group need not get vaccinated either. As I also pointed out several times previously, 95% of all Covid deaths have occurred in the 1/3 of the population that is over the age of 50. Only 5% are in the under-50 crowd, which composes 2/3 of the population. The math here works out to 38:1 - that being, a random person with Covid under the age of 50 is 38x less likely to die from Covid than a random person over the age of 50.

The people who actually ARE dying - that being the elderly - nobody seems to give much of a damn about. Public discourse rarely focuses on this group; rather, focuses on working Americans (who are largely under the age of 65) and children.

I think zooming out to the bigger picture, though, when it comes to societal costs - reaching immunity through natural means is reckless. I've stated numerous times previously that there are multiple roads to immunity.

For someone who is both unvaccinated and has yet to be infected (i.e. lacks natural immunity), it's much much safer to get vaccinated than to get infected with COVID. Getting infected by a completely novel and foreign is a gamble for any immune system (and a much bigger one if you're in the higher risk groups). And severe complications besides death also need to be included into the overall calculus when it comes to societal costs, which is something we're still trying to understand. Vaccines + monoclonal antibodies + masking (reducing viral load) all minimize the risks posed by an initial infection.

Once you have been infected, then it's a different ballgame altogether. The risk of death from a reinfection is much lower, and its comparison to vaccinations is debatable (the reduced effectiveness with vaccinations seems to be a Pfizer problem; Moderna seems to still be >90% effective after 6 months).

It's unlikely that COVID-19 is going to go away (although there are some experts who argue otherwise), so that means we'll all be infected at some point and have some component of natural variability. I just want that to happen without the carnage and chaos we've seen thrown at the hospital systems across the country.

[kager]

the reduced effectiveness with vaccinations seems to be a Pfizer problem; Moderna seems to still be >90% effective after 6 months

OK.

My brother got the Moderna vax in April.

He just tested + for COVID on Monday.

[Turkeytop]

the reduced effectiveness with vaccinations seems to be a Pfizer problem; Moderna seems to still be >90% effective after 6 months

OK.

My brother got the Moderna vax in April.

He just tested + for COVID on Monday.

So, he shouldn't have gotten vaccinated?

[kager]

So, he shouldn't have gotten vaccinated?

I didn't say or mean to imply that. We encouraged him to get jabbed, and he did.

His wife, who tested positive days earlier, should have done the same, but did not.

One thing is for certain:

Moderna vax + being full of piss & vinegar (and Bud Light) does not = 100% efficacy.

[Matt]

Well, I'm getting my booster tomorrow. I'll make sure to post if I grow a third arm or my dick falls off.

How'd it go?

I woke up this morning rather fatigued and have a headache. Just like I felt after #2....like I'm running at 75%. Weird feeling, but I know it'll be gone soon.

Thanks for asking.

I've got my flu shot on Monday, and I'll be at the six month mark on 10/21. I'm thinking later this month or early in November.

[Matt]

the reduced effectiveness with vaccinations seems to be a Pfizer problem; Moderna seems to still be >90% effective after 6 months

OK.

My brother got the Moderna vax in April.

He just tested + for COVID on Monday.

Symptoms?