COVID-19: People on the internet are judging me for going outside. It used to be the reverse.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > COVID-19: People on the internet are judging me for going outside. It used to be the reverse.

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Professor Beetus: Apr 12, 2007; They can fight us
But they'll never Beetus

Electric Wrigglies posted:

I thought you could overdo vaccinations, as in your body builds has weird sensitivities/insensitivities develop to being vaccinated repeatedly or contracting covid repeatedly.

Wang Commander is more vaccine than man at this point.

e: what a lovely snipe lol

# ? Aug 19, 2022 23:04

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# ? May 25, 2024 11:10

NoDamage: Dec 2, 2000

Rochallor posted:

If I can piggyback on this, I was also looking to get a 4th shot in a week or two, but I also currently have covid (rip). Does that change anything about the decision for getting boosted? I recall smart people saying that the effect of the vaccines is better than just getting tagged by the virus itself.

The latest antibody numbers show that having 3 shots plus a breakthrough infection results in 3x higher antibody levels against BA.5 compared to 4 shots with no prior infection.

In this case since your antibody levels have already been given a boost from your recent infection, I would personally wait a couple months for the Omicron specific boosters to be approved.

# ? Aug 20, 2022 00:24

Rochallor: Apr 23, 2010; ふっっっっっっっっっっっっｃｋ

NoDamage posted:

The latest antibody numbers show that having 3 shots plus a breakthrough infection results in 3x higher antibody levels against BA.5 compared to 4 shots with no prior infection.

In this case since your antibody levels have already been given a boost from your recent infection, I would personally wait a couple months for the Omicron specific boosters to be approved.

Thanks for the advice everybody, I was excited about getting to lie to the pharmacy but it sounds like waiting for the Omicron booster is the better choice.

# ? Aug 20, 2022 03:18

Mischievous Mink: May 29, 2012

eXXon posted:

I tried answering no to everything on the CVS questionnaire a month ago and they told me to gently caress off for not being eligible for the 2nd booster. Did something change or does this vary by state?

I think it just varies by location or something, as far as I know the rules are the same in every state, but my rite-aid I got my first booster at started calling -me- after six months saying I need to come get my second booster, and I haven't got any qualifying conditions or anything in their system they'd know about. I just filled out the usual allergy listing forms and whatever, no deception or lying.

# ? Aug 20, 2022 03:43

Oracle: Oct 9, 2004

It really does seem random. Like the pharm at CostCo denied me because I don�t turn 50 for a few more months and have no underlying conditions but I went to the county public health dept they took my vaxx card and shot me up no questions asked.

# ? Aug 20, 2022 22:28

Lager: Mar 9, 2004; Give me the secret to the anti-puppet equation!

So the news is that the omicron booster should be coming in potentially 3 weeks or so, and no information about gatekeeping outside of it only being for 12+. If my younger kid wasn't 9 that might make me happier, but as it is I'm getting really tired of them not being able/willing to get the timelines synched up better across age groups for this booster.

# ? Aug 21, 2022 14:20

Gio: Jun 20, 2005

Is everyone here really surprised that an entirely decentralized and privatized healthcare system across 50 separate states with hundreds if not thousands of different providers inconsistently applies contradictory and unenforceable guidance, or is this just a big joke on me?

# ? Aug 22, 2022 12:48

StrugglingHoneybun: Jan 2, 2005; Aint no thing like me, 'cept me.

that sounds like sweet sweet freedom from a tyrannical government

# ? Aug 22, 2022 13:19

I AM GRANDO: Aug 20, 2006

Is it really true that there are millions of doses of the omicron booster ready to go once they�re approved? It seems too good to be true. Are things going right for once on this stupid planet?

# ? Aug 22, 2022 16:25

Saros: Dec 29, 2009; Its almost like we're a Bureaucracy, in space!

I set sail for the Planet of Lab Requisitions!!

Moderna and Pfizer's production bottlenecks have been smoothed out by the two years of billions of dollars funneled to them by basically every western country so there should be plenty of vaccines. The distribution is the hardest part now but theres also a lot more expertise and capacity than there was.

# ? Aug 22, 2022 23:42

NeatHeteroDude: Jan 15, 2017

I'm trying to learn more about Fauci's role as an advisor to the president and someone recommended I ask posters here about it (in addition to people in the forum I mod, cspam).

I guess I don't really understand enough about how government works to conceptualize what Fauci's job is- I know he's important, but I have no idea what he's tasked with doing day to day, and how his job is linked to the government's response to COVID.

As an example, I know Biden has foreign policy advisors who help guide the U.S. in dealing with other countries, but I don't know how that actually works.

This may sound super trite, but can someone unironically give me a brief summary about what Fauci does day-to-day that impacts how the Biden admin deals with COVID?

I appreciate the responses in advance! I'm trying to be more knowledgeable about governmental procedure and the way people interact at the top to form actual policies

# ? Aug 23, 2022 00:05

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

The below is a reworking of an effortpost I did on this the last time it came up two years ago.

Fauci is director (read: public executive leader) of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIAID. NIAID is one of the National Institutes of Health, or NIH, a set of independent, nonpartisan entities created by federal statute that primarily direct research funding and advise the federal government. The National Institutes do specialized advanced training and build national-scale/global resources to advance public health. NIH is, generally speaking, the organization with the best researchers and much of the best resources in the world when it comes to the health sciences. NIH is a research organization, not a regulatory entity, and it's not part of the CDC or FDA- they issue formal recommendations to other parts of the government on some issues which are often given a lot of weight or indirectly incorporated into policy, but they do not approve drugs or set disease control policy. For example, iirc NIDA is one of the organizations that's formally consulted to give a recommendation on whether a drug gets scheduled.

Here's the downside of the NIH: individual Institutes have often functioned as fiefdoms, and because they are created and funded by congress, they tend to be arranged to chase after public issues, rather than organized to push research forward (for instance, the National Cancer Institute is some ungodly large proportion of all their funding compared to everything else). The Institutes have an internal political dynamic that's very similar to academic research settings; there's even an intramural researcher pipeline with tenure. This includes the "petty sniping" part of academic culture, and as research funding has disappeared over the past few decades, the Institutes have not been immune to internal research quality problems, either. Despite all this, NIH remains what I said: the best core of research on health issues in the world. This includes NIAID, which is at the center of research to treat HIV/AIDS and vaccine development, among other areas.

Institute directors are nominally selected by the President, but in keeping with the nonpartisan nature of NIH, the Institutes select someone internally and the President rubberstamps it. It's theoretically possible for the President to select someone else or to fire an Institute director, but I think that has never happened (in practice if someone were truly about to be fired, they'd likely be given the chance to resign instead). Usually Institute directors run an Institute for a few years while maintaining a separate position at a university, which they then return to; it's highly irregular for someone to hold a director spot for very long, because it means they basically give up on their research career.

Fauci as a director
Fauci has been director since 1984, and has had his basically his entire career as a researcher at NIAID. This is almost unheard of (though I think it's become more popular as science funding has dwindled and it's seen as a safe job). From discussions with other NIH staff, back in the 90s, Fauci had a reputation for being extremely cautious about his statements, and for having particularly strong control over NIAID (which, after his involvement in the response to HIV, became heavily focused in that area for a time, and which has continued to be one of the main sources of innovation in things like vaccine development; pre-COVID he and NIAID had a great reputation).

Fauci and the press
Under all normal circumstances, Institute directors (even including Fauci, who is more practiced than most) should not be directly involved with the press. NIH has a powerful, influential press office (with its own severe problems) that ought to be mediating or at least controlling the scope of his public statements: NIH directors usually give press releases and extremely controlled interviews on relatively unimportant subjects, and in moments of crisis might present to a congressional committee. It's just too easy for the press to exaggerate NIH statements, and Institute directors are scientific authorities, not policy authorities. For some reason when COVID hit, Fauci went into press overdrive and started giving a ton of direct public statements, many of them not remotely well-controlled; the kind of stuff that would cause a director to get quietly asked to resign under other circumstances. This was, iirc, happening even before he was tapped as an administration advisor on COVID (this sort of position generally means the person sits in on meetings at some level of the executive branch and may specifically serve as a press liaison- it's not got formal powers, and specifics vary case to case).

The constant press appearances seems to have largely stopped awhile after Biden took office, either because COVID vaccines were released and things calmed down, or for some other reason. A lot of Fauci's statements were probably intended to counterprogram Trump administration messaging, but it was really chaotic and he made a lot of appearances and statements he shouldn't have (none of it, coincidentally, related to the things he's being attacked for in the thread). I was extremely pissed over some of this stuff, which got used by antivaxxers, during the height of the pandemic.

Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 05:27 on Aug 23, 2022

# ? Aug 23, 2022 01:03

Koos Group: Mar 6, 2013

Discendo Vox posted:

The below is a reworking of an effortpost I did on this the last time it came up two years ago.

Fauci is director (read: public executive leader) of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIAID. NIAID is one of the National Institutes of Health, or NIH, a set of independent, nonpartisan entities created by federal statute that primarily direct research funding and advise the federal government. The National Institutes do specialized advanced training and build national-scale/global resources to advance public health. NIH is, generally speaking, the organization with the best researchers and much of the best resources in the world when it comes to the health sciences. NIH is a research organization, not a regulatory entity, and it's not part of the CDC or FDA- they issue formal recommendations to other parts of the government on some issues which are often given a lot of weight or indirectly incorporated into policy, but they do not approve drugs or set disease control policy. For example, iirc NIDA is one of the organizations that's formally consulted to give a recommendation on whether a drug gets scheduled.

Here's the downside of the NIH: individual Institutes have often functioned as fiefdoms, and because they are created and funded by congress, they tend to be arranged to chase after public issues, rather than organized to push research forward (for instance, the National Cancer Institute is some ungodly large proportion of all their funding compared to everything else). The Institutes have an internal political dynamic that's very similar to academic research settings; there's even an intramural researcher pipeline with tenure. This includes the "petty sniping" part of academic culture, and as research funding has disappeared over the past few decades, the Institutes have not been immune to internal research quality problems, either. Despite all this, NIH remains what I said: the best core of research on health issues in the world. This includes NIAID, which is at the center of research to treat HIV/AIDS and vaccine research, among other areas.

Institute directors are nominally selected by the President, but in keeping with the nonpartisan nature of NIH, the Institutes select someone internally and the President rubberstamps it. It's theoretically possible for the President to select someone else or to fire an Institute director, but I think that has never happened (in practice if someone were truly about to be fired, they'd likely be given the chance to resign instead). Usually Institute directors run an Institute for a few years while maintaining a separate position at a university, which they then return to; it's highly irregular for someone to hold a director spot for very long, because it means they basically give up on their research career.

Fauci as a director
Fauci has been director since 1984, and has had his basically his entire career as a researcher at NIAID. This is almost unheard of (though I think it's become more popular as science funding has dwindled and it's seen as a safe job). From discussions with other NIH staff, back in the 90s, Fauci had a reputation for being extremely cautious about his statements, and for having particularly strong control over NIAID (which, after his involvement in the response to HIV, became heavily focused in that area for a time, and which has continued to be one of the main sources of innovation in things like vaccine development; pre-COVID he and NIAID had a great reputation).

Fauci and the press
Under all normal circumstances, Institute directors (even including Fauci, who is more practiced than most) should not be directly involved with the press. NIH has a powerful, influential press office (with its own severe problems) that ought to be mediating or at least controlling the scope of his public statements: NIH directors usually give press releases and extremely controlled interviews on relatively unimportant subjects, and in moments of crisis might present to a congressional committee. It's just too easy for the press to exaggerate NIH statements, and Institute directors are, at most, scientific authorities, not policy, authorities. For some reason when COVID hit, Fauci went into press overdrive and started giving a ton of direct public statements, many of them not remotely well-controlled; the kind of stuff that would cause a director to get quietly asked to resign under other circumstances. This was, iirc, happening even before he was tapped as an administration advisor on COVID (this sort of position generally means the person sits in on meetings at some level of the executive branch and may specifically serve as a press liaison- it's not got formal powers, and specifics vary case to case).

The constant press appearances seems to have largely stopped awhile after Biden took office, either because COVID vaccines were released and things calmed down, or for some other reason. A lot of Fauci's statements were probably intended to counterprogram Trump administration messaging, but it was really chaotic and he made a lot of appearances and statements he shouldn't have (none of it, coincidentally, related to the things he's being attacked for in the thread).

Thank you for the writeup, very informative.

# ? Aug 23, 2022 01:45

NeatHeteroDude: Jan 15, 2017

Discendo Vox posted:

The below is a reworking of an effortpost I did on this the last time it came up two years ago.

Fauci is director (read: public executive leader) of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIAID. NIAID is one of the National Institutes of Health, or NIH, a set of independent, nonpartisan entities created by federal statute that primarily direct research funding and advise the federal government. The National Institutes do specialized advanced training and build national-scale/global resources to advance public health. NIH is, generally speaking, the organization with the best researchers and much of the best resources in the world when it comes to the health sciences. NIH is a research organization, not a regulatory entity, and it's not part of the CDC or FDA- they issue formal recommendations to other parts of the government on some issues which are often given a lot of weight or indirectly incorporated into policy, but they do not approve drugs or set disease control policy. For example, iirc NIDA is one of the organizations that's formally consulted to give a recommendation on whether a drug gets scheduled.

Here's the downside of the NIH: individual Institutes have often functioned as fiefdoms, and because they are created and funded by congress, they tend to be arranged to chase after public issues, rather than organized to push research forward (for instance, the National Cancer Institute is some ungodly large proportion of all their funding compared to everything else). The Institutes have an internal political dynamic that's very similar to academic research settings; there's even an intramural researcher pipeline with tenure. This includes the "petty sniping" part of academic culture, and as research funding has disappeared over the past few decades, the Institutes have not been immune to internal research quality problems, either. Despite all this, NIH remains what I said: the best core of research on health issues in the world. This includes NIAID, which is at the center of research to treat HIV/AIDS and vaccine research, among other areas.

Institute directors are nominally selected by the President, but in keeping with the nonpartisan nature of NIH, the Institutes select someone internally and the President rubberstamps it. It's theoretically possible for the President to select someone else or to fire an Institute director, but I think that has never happened (in practice if someone were truly about to be fired, they'd likely be given the chance to resign instead). Usually Institute directors run an Institute for a few years while maintaining a separate position at a university, which they then return to; it's highly irregular for someone to hold a director spot for very long, because it means they basically give up on their research career.

Fauci as a director
Fauci has been director since 1984, and has had his basically his entire career as a researcher at NIAID. This is almost unheard of (though I think it's become more popular as science funding has dwindled and it's seen as a safe job). From discussions with other NIH staff, back in the 90s, Fauci had a reputation for being extremely cautious about his statements, and for having particularly strong control over NIAID (which, after his involvement in the response to HIV, became heavily focused in that area for a time, and which has continued to be one of the main sources of innovation in things like vaccine development; pre-COVID he and NIAID had a great reputation).

Fauci and the press
Under all normal circumstances, Institute directors (even including Fauci, who is more practiced than most) should not be directly involved with the press. NIH has a powerful, influential press office (with its own severe problems) that ought to be mediating or at least controlling the scope of his public statements: NIH directors usually give press releases and extremely controlled interviews on relatively unimportant subjects, and in moments of crisis might present to a congressional committee. It's just too easy for the press to exaggerate NIH statements, and Institute directors are, at most, scientific authorities, not policy, authorities. For some reason when COVID hit, Fauci went into press overdrive and started giving a ton of direct public statements, many of them not remotely well-controlled; the kind of stuff that would cause a director to get quietly asked to resign under other circumstances. This was, iirc, happening even before he was tapped as an administration advisor on COVID (this sort of position generally means the person sits in on meetings at some level of the executive branch and may specifically serve as a press liaison- it's not got formal powers, and specifics vary case to case).

The constant press appearances seems to have largely stopped awhile after Biden took office, either because COVID vaccines were released and things calmed down, or for some other reason. A lot of Fauci's statements were probably intended to counterprogram Trump administration messaging, but it was really chaotic and he made a lot of appearances and statements he shouldn't have (none of it, coincidentally, related to the things he's being attacked for in the thread).

Thank you! I was hoping you'd respond to the post. I'm reading through it in line right now but if I have any questions I'll quote your OP and post them here

# ? Aug 23, 2022 03:05

Saros: Dec 29, 2009; Its almost like we're a Bureaucracy, in space!

I set sail for the Planet of Lab Requisitions!!

whoops got my facts mixed up

Saros fucked around with this message at 05:21 on Aug 23, 2022

# ? Aug 23, 2022 04:25

Fritz the Horse: Dec 26, 2019; ... of course!

Saros posted:

https://twitter.com/ElBartoArmy/status/1561849578613252101?s=20&t=qloqlFuvgBASdJFKGRPJDQ

This says about all you need to know about how Fauci is considered by the HIV community.

"HIV community" is a weird way of putting it tbh. The preferred term is a "people living with HIV" or PLWHIV.

No, it really doesn't. Kramer later went on to praise Fauci effusively. This was discussed in the main US politics thread here in D&D and I did an effortpost on HIV treatment and how Kramer ended up being incorrect in all of his criticisms of Fauci (based on my work in HIV testing/counseling/preventin/treatment and knowledge in that area) in that letter: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4005023&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=200#post525727053

I wouldn't say Kramer is "wrong," his anger and mistrust of the government at that time are absolutely justified and his criticisms of Fauci at the time of writing are reasonable. Kramer levies several accusations that Fauci is peddling antiretroviral drugs and CD4/viral load purely for profit and those things are of no use and even harmful to the PLHWIV community. A decade later it would turn out that antiretrovirals and CD4/viral load testing are the cornerstone of modern HIV treatment that allows PLWHIV to live healthy, normal lives for the most part.

That's not to defend Fauci's entire track record responding to the HIV epidemic and he certainly has made plenty of errors responding to COVID, but literally all the criticisms Kramer makes in that letter turned out to be factually incorrect later. And Kramer himself would later change his mind and endorse Fauci's efforts.

edit:

that screenshot is also extremely misleading and does not contain the actual body of the letter, just the preamble. The actual body of the letter where he goes through specific accusations is where Kramer ends up being dead wrong in hindsight; Kramer's criticisms are no longer valid. Here's the full letter: https://aep.lib.rochester.edu/node/49111

Fritz the Horse fucked around with this message at 04:59 on Aug 23, 2022

# ? Aug 23, 2022 04:56

Jaxyon: Mar 7, 2016; I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

Saros posted:

https://twitter.com/ElBartoArmy/status/1561849578613252101?s=20&t=qloqlFuvgBASdJFKGRPJDQ

This says about all you need to know about how Fauci is considered by the HIV community.

Their relationship(Kramer and Fauci) was a tad more complex that that, but it's understandable from Kramer at the time.

Also as the horse said, saying "HIV community" sounds a lot more like trying to score a dunk than trying to inform.

# ? Aug 23, 2022 04:57

Fritz the Horse: Dec 26, 2019; ... of course!

Specifically, here is what Kramer accuses Fauci of being a murderer over:

-Fauci is overseeing testing of antiretroviral drugs. Kramer thinks that trying to fight the virus itself is pointless and the drugs do more harm than good and Fauci is a murderer for pushing them. Kramer instead wants the focus to be on boosting the immune system and treating opportunistic infections.
-Fauci and gov't health orgs are using CD4 and viral load tests to assess disease progression and measure how effective drugs are. Kramer thinks these are worthless and merely Fauci and pharma companies looking to make money off these pointless tests. Kramer instead thinks we should focus on CD8 counts.

Again, these are all pretty reasonable for Kramer to argue at the time when we didn't know much about HIV treatment. He just turned out to be dead loving wrong on both points a decade later, so the reasons Kramer is calling Fauci a murderer in the letter are... not valid, because Fauci ended up being right. Antiretroviral drugs are the cornerstone of modern HIV treatment and CD4/viral load testing is how you assess disease progression and give clinical advice on treatment and lifestyle for PLWHIV. See my effort post.

# ? Aug 23, 2022 05:05

Saros: Dec 29, 2009; Its almost like we're a Bureaucracy, in space!

I set sail for the Planet of Lab Requisitions!!

Yeah apologies the community wording was bad, my brain got stuck and couldnt remember the proper terminology. I actually had their historical positions reversed as well so just all round a terrible post.

# ? Aug 23, 2022 05:20

Electric Wrigglies: Feb 6, 2015

I think a lot of parallels with the Kramer criticism of Fauci then and some stuff about Covid response now. People feel happy to use extremely strong (I don't think I am being hyperbolic when Kramer used "murderer") language even though they don't really know any better than the person they are criticizing and events may prove them to be completely incorrect. I'm not sure if Kramer ever publicly apologizes in open letter form for being so confidently incorrect in such an hyperbolic manner.

The hyperbolic language is then meant to be excused because the person thought they were right and they meant well and double excuse points if you can angle that you were punching up. Yes, sometimes criticism is warranted but including such hyperbolic language and overstating the confidence that one is correct is not actually helping.

# ? Aug 23, 2022 08:35

Fritz the Horse: Dec 26, 2019; ... of course!

I don't think Kramer or other HIV/AIDS advocates need an excuse to be angry in 1988 or that they should feel obligated to apologize later. I'd be careful about trying to compare the COVID-19 and HIV/AIDS pandemics too much, there are some similarities but being a queer HIV advocate in 1988 is a hell of a lot different emotional and factual circumstance than being a COVID survivor (or whatever) in 2022.

I'm not going to insist that the comparison stop here but I'd suggest we not go too far down the rabbit hole when there's plenty of news about COVID-19 and monkeypox to discuss.

# ? Aug 23, 2022 13:46

AndreTheGiantBoned: Oct 28, 2010

quote:

when there's plenty of news about COVID-19

Is there though? Both this thread and GBS' thread struggle to stay in the first page. It suggests that the topic is not so interesting or dynamic at the moment.

# ? Aug 24, 2022 02:06

Saros: Dec 29, 2009; Its almost like we're a Bureaucracy, in space!

I set sail for the Planet of Lab Requisitions!!

It's a combination of apathy as it's been going on for a good while and that no single Omicron subvariant is dominating the race to become the BA.5 successor.

Basically we are likely in a bit of a lull for Covid 'stuff' in a lot of the western world due to a combination of summer, BA.5/4/2 having at least some cross-protectivity from each other post-infection and a lot of other stuff dominating the news.

# ? Aug 24, 2022 04:18

I AM GRANDO: Aug 20, 2006

I�m hungry for that loving omicron booster. I know nothing will change, but for me that�s the threshold where I just accept covid as endemic and as permanent as the yearly flu.

# ? Aug 24, 2022 04:23

killer_robot: Aug 26, 2006; Grimey Drawer

Been hearing stories that we've no idea of the efficacy of this booster. Significant chunk of the country thinks it's poison; shoving it into people's arms when we don't even know it works or not seems bad PR.

# ? Aug 24, 2022 06:35

spankmeister: Jun 15, 2008

Everybody is hollering for updated boosters and being exasperated about them being late all the time, but it takes too long to run the efficacy trials in humans each time. Can't have it both ways.

They did a process called immunobridging where you extrapolate expected efficacy in humans out from animal testing data in a known animal model. (Being mice).

Of course the vaccines are still evaluated for safety in humans, those tests take less time.

The problem really is that it's double bridged. First of all you're measuring efficacy in mice, not humans, that's the first bridge. Secondly you're not measuring real efficacy against infection or disease, you're measuring antibodies. That's the second bridge.

So it's understandable that there is some hesitation because we won't know for sure if it works until people are getting shots in arms. But based on our experiences with the original vaccines and the Beta, Ba.1 and Ba.2 booster trials we can make a pretty reasonable guess.

spankmeister fucked around with this message at 06:56 on Aug 24, 2022

# ? Aug 24, 2022 06:52

Fritz the Horse: Dec 26, 2019; ... of course!

killer_robot posted:

Been hearing stories that we've no idea of the efficacy of this booster. Significant chunk of the country thinks it's poison; shoving it into people's arms when we don't even know it works or not seems bad PR.

"Been hearing stories" where and from who? Unsourced rumors are not very useful or interesting.

# ? Aug 24, 2022 06:59

A big flaming stink: Apr 26, 2010

the only stories ive been hearing about the booster is its protection from infection is of questionable efficacy

# ? Aug 24, 2022 07:53

killer_robot: Aug 26, 2006; Grimey Drawer

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/08/22/1118788439/vaccine-maker-asks-fda-to-greenlight-updated-omicron-booster-shot

'Pfizer and BioNTech said they have submitted pre-clinical data on vaccine efficacy to the FDA, but did not share the data publicly.'

'Pfizer and BioNTech also report that they expect to start a human study on the safety and immunogenicity of the BA4/BA5 bivalent vaccine this month.'

'Earlier this year, vaccine makers presented U.S. and European regulatory authorities with an option for a bivalent vaccine that targeted an earlier version of the omicron variant, BA.1. While the plan was accepted in the U.K., U.S. regulators instead asked the companies to update the vaccines to target the newer subvariants.'

This is all very reassuring.

killer_robot fucked around with this message at 08:25 on Aug 24, 2022

# ? Aug 24, 2022 08:22

Saros: Dec 29, 2009; Its almost like we're a Bureaucracy, in space!

I set sail for the Planet of Lab Requisitions!!

Unfortunately it's likely going to have to be the future for covid variant-specific vaccines unless the virus is nice enough to slow down its rate of mutation for us.

It's *probably* okay, depends on your risk tolerance for something you're gonna give to millions of people lol.

# ? Aug 24, 2022 08:57

killer_robot: Aug 26, 2006; Grimey Drawer

We have a sizeable population who thinks the original vaccine was 'hasty' by a matter of decades, if not outright an insidious cancer that leaves 5g trackers in your blood stream. Pushing new vaccine out without human trials is new ammo for them.

Not that they'd likely to accept this jab anyways.

# ? Aug 24, 2022 09:07

Platystemon: Feb 13, 2012; BREADS

There�s no sense in fretting over whether or not a move supplies them with ammo.

They are quite capable of synthesizing ammo out of nothing.

Here are a couple of special examples that I�ve come across in the past few weeks on Twitter.

https://twitter.com/ThunderousAppl4/status/1554219957134626816

This is a particularly absurd suggestion.

The Aventis Pasteur smallpox vaccine, colloquially �Wetvax�*. was manufactured in 1956 and 1957 and has been kept frozen continuously since. The U.S. took control of it during the War on Terror. It is no longer Sanofi�s to sell, nor do they have the slightest interest in making more�the production process used live cows and is thoroughly obsolete.

*In contrast to the freeze‐dried Dryvax manufactured by Wyeth, which was widely used in the eradication campaign but whose remaining stocks were withdrawn and destroyed in 2008.

https://twitter.com/czar_light/status/1561426621718036480

This is essentially the convulsions of a poorly designed and misconfigured machine.

It�s like describing the human body as having ingredient �dihydrogen monoxide� and suggesting that as a consequence, humans decrease the effectiveness of automobile brakes.

One of the more widespread lies is the idea that because these are �live virus smallpox vaccines�, that they could themselves spark a smallpox pandemic. Nevermind that they�re two different viruses that differ in IFR by greater than five orders of magnitude.

We cannot reason with such people. So don�t. Whether or not human trials are prudent is a question for medical science, not political science.

Platystemon fucked around with this message at 10:11 on Aug 24, 2022

# ? Aug 24, 2022 10:02

Saros: Dec 29, 2009; Its almost like we're a Bureaucracy, in space!

I set sail for the Planet of Lab Requisitions!!

Sometimes reality is as odd as the fictions antivaxers make up tho. Case in point, smallpox vaccines.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220725-the-mystery-virus-that-protects-against-monkeypox

Nobody actually knows what the virus used to make them actually was (it's not cowpox like everyone thought for ages).

# ? Aug 24, 2022 10:45

Platystemon: Feb 13, 2012; BREADS

It�s probably horsepox, but horsepox has become rare as hen�s teeth in the past few decades, so a definitive analysis may not be forthcoming.

# ? Aug 24, 2022 10:48

Platystemon: Feb 13, 2012; BREADS

The article is overall a good treatment of the subject.

It does get some details wrong.

quote:

The monkeypox virus was first discovered in 1970

It was discovered in macaques in 1958. 1970 was when the virus was first recognized in humans. People were coming down with what very much looked like smallpox in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This caused some consternation, because smallpox was supposed to have been (and indeed had been) eliminated there.

quote:

irst up, there's the JYNNEOS vaccine, developed by biotechnology company Bavarian Nordic. This new, safer version of the old smallpox vaccine was developed by accident in the 1960s, when a scientist noticed that his stock of a Turkish strain of vaccinia � which he had been growing in chicken embryos for years � had mutated.

Modified Vaccinia virus Ankara (MVA), which was later developed into the JYNNEOS vaccine, had became so altered that though it could still make more copies of itself in chicken embryos, it had lost the ability to replicate in humans. Researchers quickly realised that this would make it safer to use for immunisations

This is at best half of the story. The strain we know as MVA was developed by hundreds of intentional serial passages in chicken embryo fibroblasts. Scientists knew that they were attenuating it.

The article also has a stupid correction.

quote:

* This article has been edited on 16 August 2022 to remove a claim that stated the ACAM2000 and JYNNEOS vaccines were "thought to be highly effective against monkeypox". The effectiveness of these vaccines against the current monkeypox outbreak is still under investigation. They were made available for use against monkeypox using data from previous studies and trials involving earlier versions of these vaccines.

Perhaps they should have been more careful in the initial wording, but this is an overcorrection. They ought to have left it alone.

Anyway, poxviruses are truly an exceptional family, and I don�t mean that in a vague �they�re cool� way. They break a lot of rules, and there is a lot we don�t know about them despite having studied them for longer than any other pathogen.

From Frank Fenner�s 2000 �Adventures with poxviruses of vertebrates�,

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0168-6445(00)00027-9 posted:

Smallpox, caused by an orthopoxvirus, was once the most serious disease of humankind. Unlike malaria, it was not limited by climate, and unlike plague, it was always present. The agent that caused it was the first virus to be seen with a microscope [4], it provided the first example of inoculation with a virus as a preventative measure against the disease caused by that agent [5], it was the first disease against which an effective vaccine was used [6], the group to which it belonged was the first to be correctly classified as what came to be known as a family [7] and it was the first human disease to be eradicated globally [5].

Fenner was the lead author of Smallpox and its Eradication (�the Red Book�), chairman of the Global Commission for the Certification of Smallpox Eradication, and a veteran poxvirus researcher. It�s an interesting article well beyond its introduction.

Fun fact: the closest known relative of variola virus is taterapox virus, the sole example of which was isolated from an apparently healthy gerbil (formerly Tatera kempi, now Gerbilliscus kempi ) in Benin in April of 1968. Precious little is known about it.

# ? Aug 24, 2022 11:58

spankmeister: Jun 15, 2008

Saros posted:

Unfortunately it's likely going to have to be the future for covid variant-specific vaccines unless the virus is nice enough to slow down its rate of mutation for us.

It's *probably* okay, depends on your risk tolerance for something you're gonna give to millions of people lol.

It's how we do flu vaccines. We don't do a whole rear end efficacy study each year either. They just look at neutralizing antibody titers.

# ? Aug 24, 2022 12:16

I AM GRANDO: Aug 20, 2006

killer_robot posted:

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/08/22/1118788439/vaccine-maker-asks-fda-to-greenlight-updated-omicron-booster-shot

'Pfizer and BioNTech said they have submitted pre-clinical data on vaccine efficacy to the FDA, but did not share the data publicly.'

'Pfizer and BioNTech also report that they expect to start a human study on the safety and immunogenicity of the BA4/BA5 bivalent vaccine this month.'

'Earlier this year, vaccine makers presented U.S. and European regulatory authorities with an option for a bivalent vaccine that targeted an earlier version of the omicron variant, BA.1. While the plan was accepted in the U.K., U.S. regulators instead asked the companies to update the vaccines to target the newer subvariants.'

This is all very reassuring.

I fail to see how these boosters could produce a worse outcome that either doing nothing or sticking with the wild type boosters from last year. The worst case is that we are where we are right now.

You can�t reason with antivax because their choices have nothing to do with reason.

# ? Aug 24, 2022 14:44

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

killer_robot posted:

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/08/22/1118788439/vaccine-maker-asks-fda-to-greenlight-updated-omicron-booster-shot

'Pfizer and BioNTech said they have submitted pre-clinical data on vaccine efficacy to the FDA, but did not share the data publicly.'

'Pfizer and BioNTech also report that they expect to start a human study on the safety and immunogenicity of the BA4/BA5 bivalent vaccine this month.'

'Earlier this year, vaccine makers presented U.S. and European regulatory authorities with an option for a bivalent vaccine that targeted an earlier version of the omicron variant, BA.1. While the plan was accepted in the U.K., U.S. regulators instead asked the companies to update the vaccines to target the newer subvariants.'

This is all very reassuring.

You've still not provided any sources for your original claim.

# ? Aug 24, 2022 14:52

mom and dad fight a lot: Sep 21, 2006; If you count them all, this sentence has exactly seventy-two characters.

I AM GRANDO posted:

I�m horny for that loving omicron booster.

# ? Aug 24, 2022 16:19

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# ? May 25, 2024 11:10

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

I suggest we turn this into the covid/monkeypox/other infectious disease outbreak thread.

# ? Aug 24, 2022 18:30

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > COVID-19: People on the internet are judging me for going outside. It used to be the reverse.

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