Covid 19 CRISIS

albeit at a higher price of human life.
Well… most of the dead will have chosen to “let nature run its course”, so I’m sure they will gladly pay that price.
 
 
Additionally, a "vaccines stop working" level immune escape, as per Drosten, is highly unlikely, if not impossible. Again, the BioNTech vaccine has 75% efficacy against OG SARS...
I looked up this number real quick to reassure myself. This is basically what we can expect as the Omicron worst case for freshly vaccinated or freshly boostered people. Beta, which is probably the closest we've seen to Omicron so far, was measured at 85% efficacy (Delta: 88%). So probably Omicron comes in somewhere in the middle, maybe 78 or so percent.
The biggest impact in Omicron of course is that it carries the dreaded E484K ("eek") immune escape mutation, which we already saw in Beta and that alone probably is as much of a worry as all other mutations combined. This also means that in an unlikely case in which Omicron really impacts vaccine efficacy brutally, we can cover most of the loss with the already-developed and tested Beta variant vaccine that is (almost) ready to roll from both Moderna and BioNTech.

On the other hand, we have to keep in mind that AstraZeneca was an almost complete washout against Beta already and probably will not fare better against Omicron. Also, Omicron makes the third doses/boosters all the more important since without those we will probably look pretty shit against symptomatic disease even with the mRNA vaccines.

Also, as a fun fact, the WHO did not follow virology twitter in naming the thing Nu, but went with Omicron.
 
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Also, as a fun fact, the WHO did not follow virology twitter in naming the thing Nu, but went with Omicron.
Extremely disappointing as the potential for nu-metal jokes was high.
 
Kinda sad ... all GPs are reporting overloaded covid shot waiting lists, appointment-less places have hours-long queues ... but the official vax appointment booking system has literally 10k open slots for the next 7 days in my home state alone :dunno: didn't anyone advertise this? ?‍♂️
 
I learned today that I cannot just book an appointment or walk in and get a booster shot, despite empty pharmacies here. I have to give the pharmacy an activation code related to my vaccine batch. Im confident that’s not coming around any time soon. Bad enough being an “essential worker” and getting to wait and see when I checked the CDC website early on this year.

Wealthiest nation on earth, reports of overstock of vaccines across the country, and we make it difficult to even protect ourselves. Fuck you.
 
Found another pharmacy. Apparently Walgreens are just dicks.
 
If we didn't have pointless bureaucracy what ever would we do?

Scotland is still in mandatory mask, social distance, etc mode. Cross the border into England and apparently COVID is finished, Boris must have beaten it without telling...

One of my mates went down there for a training course and, in a shocking turn of events, now has COVID. He's double vaxxed so should be fine.

Girlfriend_70s had her booster on Saturday morning and is thusly SUPERIMMUNE. I may have her start licking door handles to impress passers-by.

No talk of more lockdown atm, not that it's enforceable at this point. Nobody was following the rules by the end of the last one.

I don't like the idea of mandatory vaccination, but I feel that shuffling the willingly un-vaxinated to the bottom of the treatment list is fair. Live by your choices and all that...
 
I don't like the idea of mandatory vaccination, but I feel that shuffling the willingly un-vaxinated to the bottom of the treatment list is fair. Live by your choices and all that...

“See how we treat our foster care children? Maybe we should fix that.” At least in the US, foster care kids get medicare, but unlike old people, there is a multi-decade future for the person receiving the care, and they don’t give two shits
 
Found another pharmacy. Apparently Walgreens are just dicks.
Yeah, that's good. I didn't even have my card on me when I asked my neighborhood pharmacy here. Walked in, asked about it, and they started getting the shot ready.
 
work just posted new rules - and the company vaccination centre will re-open early december for first, second and third shots open to all employees.
Booster appointment secured for saturday :mouse:

in a shocking display of spinelessness, the cologne health office chief yesterday told the TV, that he doesn't see the possibility for full soccer stadiums any time soon. literally two. fucking. days. (!) after 50.000 people were in the cologne stadium. without masks (mandate announced 3h before, yeah right). approved by his office. how does that idiot still have a job?
 
For those of you who suffer from "Omicron panic" as much as I do, some much-needed reassurance from Pfizer's head of R&D:

tl;dr: Worst case is an Omicron-specific booster ready to roll on a billions of doses per quarter scale by March.
 
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Worst case is an Omicron-specific booster ready to roll on a billions of doses per quarter scale by March.
IIRC, it was you who praised that advantage of “printed” mRNA vaccines a long while ago. Once the genome of the virus/variant is known, the printing can be adjusted very quickly. Which is one main reason why I am not in any kind of panic over the Ohmygod! omicron variant; the other being that it doesn’t seem to lead to particularly serious illness.
 
Also, what we must not forget (beside 9/11) is that if we assume that Omicron reduces the vaccine efficacy to the 75-ish percent level we saw against the OG SARS, then on the one hand that's still better than AstraZeneca ever was (60-ish% against Wuhan-style covid). BUT on the other hand it also means a 20 percentage point / 22% drop in efficacy (down from 95%). That's over a fifth of the efficacy wiped out. So even if we are still in "outcompeting other vaccines" territory, it makes sense to talk about "vaccine escape" and a need for updates.
This means panic has to be put into context here as well.
 
I think the last paragraph is the main point - as Drosten pointed out as well, our immune response gets broader with every exposure to the virus. We know that recovery plus vaccination give you almost full immunity against anything from the same coronavirus family tree (so-called "hyper immunity"). Three vax doses should have a similar effect, but to be honest I would not mind spending the run-up to Christmas in bed with a breakthrough infection and be done with the shit at this point.
 
For those of you who suffer from "Omicron panic" as much as I do, some much-needed reassurance from Pfizer's head of R&D:

tl;dr: Worst case is an Omicron-specific booster ready to roll on a billions of doses per quarter scale by March.

Comirnaty Plus MAX​

I think we will see four or five updates to the 'vaccine' before it becomes annualized. Like you said it's about broadening the immune response system. However; there are a number of people who haven't gotten their booster and may be wavering saying why bother. As those people with only the initial two vaccine doses delay efficacy wanes. As a result the risk pool grows; it's as though the unvaccinated grows. It's going to be challenge this winter with the flu as well.

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