pouët.net

Yes, I am fully endorsing vaccination of all kind and am thankful to live in this day and age where we can build upon hundred years of science that brought us medical progress (and not only on the vaccination front). Science fuck yeah. (End of promotion, you may carry on)

German safety.

State regulations, though. Which might change a couple of times until the party rolls by, and likely in the stricter direction.

I'd not be entirely surprised if by that point, both vaccination and frequent tests will have become mandatory.

That is, from a technical standpoint in the face of new findings rolling in.

Most of the surprise would be because politically, such a move would run counter the current efforts to convince people to vaccinate by promising/implementing more freedom (compared to not being vaccinated, but still less compared to before Corona was a thing) while disposing of things like free-of-charge testing.

It may surprise some, but you probably have already taken medicine, that had one of its rare side effects listed in the information leaflet as "death". I know I did.

The most common risk is an allergic shock. That's why after vaccination you stay for 15 minutes to await such shock in the presence of personal knowing how to deal with that.

But the risk of an allergic shock is permanent. People have suddenly died from eating a piece of strawberry cake.

And if you are so scared of death, one might wonder why you even travel to a demoscene party, since there is always the risk of a deadly accident during the travel from and to the party place. And that is even a risk you take that does not has the slightest change to protect your health and the health of others, unlike a vaccination.

"... slightest chance ... "

So...we´re party of a technology driven community and a deadyl pandemic hit us.
Then a technology driven solution to defeat it came up - and we have ppl arguing against it with uneducated arguments.

Sad.

I´d say all parties should only be for ppl who are vaccinated, until the pandemic is officially over.

To people worried about the safety of the vaccines (biontech, in particular):

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2034577

Some highlights about safety:
- "The incidence of serious adverse events was similar in the vaccine and placebo groups (0.6% and 0.5%, respectively)."
- "Two BNT162b2 recipients died (one from arteriosclerosis, one from cardiac arrest), as did four placebo recipients (two from unknown causes, one from hemorrhagic stroke, and one from myocardial infarction). No deaths were considered by the investigators to be related to the vaccine or placebo. No Covid-19–associated deaths were observed."
- "The most commonly reported systemic events were fatigue and headache (59% and 52%, respectively, after the second dose, among younger vaccine recipients; 51% and 39% among older recipients), although fatigue and headache were also reported by many placebo recipients (23% and 24%, respectively, after the second dose, among younger vaccine recipients; 17% and 14% among older recipients)."

And the limitations of the study / how long they followed the participants:
- With approximately 19,000 participants per group in the subset of participants with a median follow-up time of 2 months after the second dose, the study has more than 83% probability of detecting at least one adverse event, if the true incidence is 0.01%, but it is not large enough to detect less common adverse events reliably. This report includes 2 months of follow-up after the second dose of vaccine for half the trial participants and up to 14 weeks’ maximum follow-up for a smaller subset.

My own take: given that vaccine side-effects that would suddenly start over 2 months after receiving a dose are extremely rare for any existing vaccines (do not make sense in the light how the immune system works), I'm quite happy with the 0.01% and 2 months level of confidence.

Fast-forward to 2021, I think the problem is that it will be nearly impossible to make placebo-controlled studies, as most people in western countries have been vaccinated / have already had covid-19. As is evident in the study above, people receiving placebo reported plenty of side-effects, so just looking at the reported side-effects from the vaccinated is does not tell you a comprehensive story. In any case, conducting placebo-controlled studies would not be accepted by the ethics committee, as it would be immoral to expose the placebo group to a potentially deadly virus, given that we know already that the vaccine works.

Now, regarding allergic shocks: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7808711/
"after administration of 1,893,360 first doses of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine [...] 21 of these reports met the Brighton Collaboration case definition criteria for anaphylaxis, corresponding to an initial estimated rate of 11.1 cases per million doses administered [...] our (19%) patients were hospitalized (including three in intensive care), and 17 (81%) were treated in an emergency department; 20 (95%) are known to have been discharged home or had recovered at the time of report to VAERS. No deaths from anaphylaxis were reported after receipt of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine." I've got many things to worry in my life and this ain't one.

What pestis said. Everybody in doubt make an informed decision and who still wants them get their vaccines. And then we keep calm and carry on.

To put some of those numbers into a context:

Using the number 11.1 cases per million, even if the whole demoscene* got vaccinated, we would be unlikely to see a single case of anaphylaxis.

* Even if we liberally estimate demoscene to be 20,000 people globally; the number of people visiting parties this year must be far lower, maybe more like a few thousand?

Just to throw a few more numbers into the mix:
Based on the numbers from the german federal institute for vaccines and biomedicines(Source), we have the following (rounded) numbers for severe side-effects classified as "requiring hospital stay or other medically significant reactions" from the german health-care system:

Comments:
1) Janssen looks superior here, especially with its "one-shot" regime, however afaik it's also regarded as the least effective of the bunch
2) Less than 50% of all reported adverse effects (severe and non-severe) have reported recovery
3) This doesn't account for prevalent under- and delayed reporting

"vaccinations" being shots-dealt in the formula

German federal institutes numbers for the severe side-effects are far lower than in the original placebo controlled study, where 0.6% who got the vaccine got a serious adverse side-effect (= 6000 per million) vs. 0.5% who got the placebo got a serious adverse side-effect (= 5000 per million).

Also, if we take the two deaths from the original study, that would equal to 105 deaths per million.

So overall, german federal institutes numbers are very reassuring; they are far lower than what could have been expected in 2020. As painfully pointed out by the placebo-controlled study, none of this shows that the vaccine is the cause. You need to account for the baseline.

What would be the cause for the lowest and highest numbers differing by a factor of about 5, assuming the placebo baseline would be the same across all types of vaccine?

Even if the 14 fatalities per million shots were all down to vaccines (doubtful, but let's go with the assumption), and vaccines were only 80% effective in preventing deaths (they are likely better, but let's lowball), you should still take the vaccine, even if you're young. Using the numbers from Sweden as they have modern medicine and enough data (sadly):

Let's assume you're 20-29 years old. Sweden has had 22 deaths due to corona in this age group, out of 194390 total cases. That comes down to 113 per million. It's pretty easy to see that you won't get this number down to 14, even if vaccines were only 80% effective.

But! I wasn't really making a fair comparison here; I used 14 per million which was for the whole population according to the German numbers, whereas I picked the death rate for 20-29 olds. Overall, Sweden has had 14,658 deaths (as of August 11, 2021), with 1,109,112 cases, coming down to a whopping 13215 deaths per million. 14, even if all down to vaccines, does not even register here.

Long covid is also a thing; reports of its incidence varying and depending how it's counted, but typically reported to be somewhere around tens of percents (e.g. 13.3% https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01292-y; that's 133000 per million).

With the delta variant, there's likely no chance of herd immunity anymore. Your likely options are corona or vaccine (and perhaps corona). Freeriding is unlikely to work this time, so choose wisely.

Thanks for the numers pestis + LJ!

That would be the conclusion with relying on vaccination only, lacking non-pharmaceutical measures to hamper transmission in the first place. Another would be asking for vaccine-resistant strains.

Interesting wordage there.

Vaccine-resistance emerges when there's a lot of virus around. The more of virus around, the more likely some of them are to mutate and the more likely there is to be a vaccine-resistant strain among the mutants. Delta variant emerged in late 2020 from India (https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-637724/v1), when the vaccination rate was 0.

I would take a modeling paper, with lots of assumptions about the mutation rate, about vaccine effectiveness and with assumptions about how antibodies against current strains work against hypothetical future strains... well, I'd take all that with a grain of a salt. Evolution is jumpy here: delta variant has only three amino acids changed in its spike protein, yet that makes all the difference. For all we know, a new variant might emerge, even more contagious than delta yet practically never mortal and granting immunity free to the whole planet.

I do agree that vaccine that is 0% effective against current strains is obviously not worth taking (sorry for being captain obvious...). When that happens, it's time to go back to square one; that is, redesign the vaccine to work against this hypothetical new strain.

This post by Dr. Geert van den Bossche is well worth a read. He argues that mass vaccination will lead to "immune escape variants" because the virus can still circulate within the vaccinated population. And because the vaccines do not kill the virus, it will naturally evolve to evade the protection offered by the vaccines.

https://correctiv.org/faktencheck/2021/04/21/beguenstigen-impfungen-corona-mutationen-wissenschaftler-widersprechen-den-behauptungen-von-geert-vanden-bossche/

And this article is by a german page, that proofreads and checks on essays, information and whatnot. Apparently this statement was spread a lot by german conspiracy-leaning and rather right-winged media, also by people repeatingly making false claims regarding covid. It has not been acknowledged by anyone, apparently all disagree.

I shall leave you with a quote by Hannah Arendt, hence proving i am very wise:
"Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core."

Ah, I finally realized what numbers you were referring to here: the rate of adverse effects for different vaccines, as posted by LJ.

Firstly, at least for AstraZeneca, the rate is probably real. AstraZeneca carries a real risk of thrombosis, and that's why e.g. Finland has stopped using it altogether, in favor of Pfizer. That doesn't mean you should not take AstraZeneca, as it's still a good deal over corona. One of the first, shocking discoveries about Covid-19 was how it produced thrombosis in lungs. Once the doctors learned to administer blood thinners routinely to severe corona cases, the mortality dropped significantly.

Now, regarding the numbers for the different vaccines in general, an immediate problem here is that, at least in Finland, the vaccines are used in different demographic groups. You can only get Pfizer if you go to mass vaccination centers (at least in my home town). Moderna is given only at the healthcare centers. AstraZeneca is allowed only for people over 65 (if they want it; they can opt to wait to get pfizer instead).

I stuck to discussing Pfizer only, as I acknowledge that it's a bit shoddy practice to speak of the vaccines as a single homogeneous group, if you want to be pedantic. Some work better, some work worse, but they all go through the same strict tests before they are accepted for use.

When i come to finland once again for whatever reasons, we can hang out and drink salmiakki. I think i like you.

@bitch

You are hitting all the check boxes, "fact checked", "conspiracy" and "right-wing", well done. Also I'm getting a 404 page.

I'm happy to look at any information you might have on why van den Bossche is wrong because he paints a pretty grim picture. To me his argument sounds plausible, "what doesn't kill it makes it stronger".

There was a space in the URL. Here you go.

Also yeah I like pestis too.

There might, or might not, emerge a vaccine-resistant strain, for sure. However, the main difference here is that do we avoid the current generation of viruses with vaccines or by having covid-19. Anything that reduces the numbers of viruses around reduces the possibility of a mutation, so we should vaccinate as much as possible.

The reason for long covid is that the immune system of some people seems be unable to mount a sufficient response to remove the virus completely. In terms of number of viruses on the planet, that's far worse than having occasional breakthrough through vaccines. Breakthrough cases seem to clear quite fast.

Anyway, hypothesizing about potential, so far non-existent, strains of viruses, when we have lives to save, is scaremongering to me. Fittingly, the link above was someone's personal blog post, not a scientific publication.