Re: Coronavirus
 

Well I needed them to go to Spain to play golf. ( or go through the pain of testing every 5 mins). But not required now. I certainly didn’t let the kids have it.

It was a vaccine that:

Didn’t stop you from catching it
Didn’t stop you from transmitting it
Didn’t stop you from getting sick from it

They say “well you didn’t die from it. Or get seriously ill” But there is no way of telling if I didn’t take the vaccine if I would have died or gotten seriously ill, as it appeared to affect everybody on an individual basis.

There is emerging data on side affects to younger people, that are not conclusive yet, but they are just emerging.

I look forward to the inquiries on how this pandemic was managed, though I fear the outputs will not be transparent.

Re: Coronavirus
 

And I've had three of those. I'm not in an at risk group, my risks are reduced and reduced and reduced. I can still catch COVID, I'll still be able to catch future variants of COVID that will further evade the vaccine, just as further variants are evading therapeutics. Very much in the real world.

Give mine to someone who hasn't had any, or is at risk. In fact you can't, even the behavioural scientists on the JCVI have deemed I'm not eligible, or the benefits don't outweigh the risks, or something.

Re: Coronavirus
 

My partner and l had our fourth jab last week.

A bit of pain in the arm and feeling under the weather for a couple of days but then it settled down.

Re: Coronavirus
 

I'll take everything I'm offered.At 70 I'm not going to be picky.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Personally I think they should at least offer this to under-50s when they have had take up from the more at risk groups.


The first vaccinations might have worked against other variants but they don't protect as well from Omicron, probably only preventing the more severe illness, given how many people have been 3x jabbed and still ended up with covid.


Even though there isn't going to be any massive impact on the NHS from most under 50s (who aren't already in a target group) getting it, with people basically returning to work at least part of the week in most cases now, and with most people largely able to do and behave pre-pandemic, the impact of workplace outbreaks and the like could be prevented by allowing anyone who wants to, to get vaccinated with one of the new bivalent vaccines.


Personally I don't see the point if the vaccine isn't bivalent now but people should have the choice to get that extra protection.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Is there a source that the new vaccines prevent either infection or transmission in workplaces?

Re: Coronavirus
 

The entire household had the flu vaccine a couple of weeks ago. The one that is modified annually to give the best protection against the most prevalent strains.

I suspect the covid jabs are being tweaked too, to give the best protection against the prevalent strains.

The unvaccinated are still in the majority in covid-ICU's. I suspect they will be on the flu-ICUs too.

---------- Post added at 12:53 ---------- Previous post was at 12:51 ----------

Vaccines never prevent infection, but they do reduce transmission.

https://www.bmj.com/content/376/bmj.o298

Re: Coronavirus
 

I must have misread all those big pharma press releases when they announced them.

There’s been a notable shift from efficacy to effectiveness against (insert whatever measure you please).

Re: Coronavirus
 

Care to share one that said that, please?

I remember Pfizer saying their coronavirus vaccine was more than 90% effective in preventing Covid-19 among those without evidence of prior infection, not that it stopped all infection…

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/09/covi...infection.html

Re: Coronavirus
 

I think you’re being slightly pendantic here Hugh. Indeed nobody claimed 100% efficacy against infection but there were many 70%+ to 98% claims that don’t stand up in the real world against current variants. I’ve not seen anything on the bivalent ones, however by the time the JCVI approve me for one chances are they’ll be two or three variants out of date if they aren’t already.

Re: Coronavirus
 

I'd say 98%

Re: Coronavirus
 

I wish I could get the vaccine. I am not that worried about catching COVID in terms of my health and don't take any precautions other than vaccinations but I had it in early August and it was just annoying.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Even without being a nit picker for a minute or two I guess you can see that training the immune system to respond to the spike protein of the original covid has become less effective as the virus has mutated such that omicron variants can get around this much more easily.


So the idea of the bivalent vaccine is that you're injected with the original spike and also the spike of the (original, as it's all they had) omicron. Mutations in the more recent omicrons such as BA.5 are less drastic when compared to this than the previous spike protein is, so the immune system recognises it better.


This will mean that the response the immune system can give to the vaccine is much better (in principle, I doubt there's a great deal of real world data outside clinical trials yet) which usually means it can respond with meaningful antibodies and t-cells quicker. Despite that it's probably not going to be perfect and some people will probably still get covid when they have had it and may be able to transmit it without getting ill but better levels of prevention are clearly more helpful in general.



As for workplaces you're around people all day and if someone's sat at their desk coughing all day because they have covid then if the rest of them aren't vaccinated then they'll probably all get it. If say the original vaccines offer like 20% (hypothetical figure) protection against getting ill from covid then if there's 10 people sat near them all day then 8 of them will get it. If that figure is reduced by bivalent vaccines to 80% then only 2 will get it (again that is just illustrative before you nit pick it). And if only 2 people out of a usual team of 10 were well enough to work then whatever they're doing will be severely impacted for a few days at least whilst they get over covid.

Re: Coronavirus
 

No need for me to nit pick, you've acknowledged yourself it's hypothetical. And the theory is sound, now if someone could develop a vaccine that had efficacy against infection, that'd be nice and I'd be in the queue.

Re: Coronavirus
 

The science about how a vaccine works is pretty well established though.


None of them actually prevent anything, they just reduce the risk of getting it. That's the case for any covid vaccine and indeed the ones against other illnesses.


We're just noticing it more with covid as the virus has changed and the number of infections is high enough for even a 99% successful vaccine to still allow 1 in every 100 infections to break through protection. If 100k people are getting covid a day as was happening last winter then 1. the vaccine is going to prevent a lot of these no matter how effective it is 2. the majority of these are going to be prevented from serious illness by having a better immune response


If you think of other illnesses there isn't a vaccine against norovirus because the virus mutates often enough so it can't really work and also there isn't really much benefit from vaccinating against something which just gives you a bad stomach for a couple of days then stops in most people, flu vaccines are different as they are targeting a predicted strain which they think might go round and if this is wrong a lot will still get it and even some vaccinated people will still get flu.


Think of immune response to a vaccine as meeting someone for the first time. You have a photo of them which was taken last month and have to pick them out from a crowd and take them somewhere. Now if you have a recent photo this won't take long and will be quite easy. Now imagine the photo is 5 years old. It's still that person but they might be a bit fatter, hair might have gone a bit grey, they might need to wear glasses now, this takes longer. Now imagine the building's on fire and you need to recognise them and get them out before too much burns... Or they need to be somewhere quickly to stop the fire. The more recent photo is likely to mean the fire causes less damage. This is why the older vaccines are less useful now.


Quite frankly I don't see the point in offering anyone the vaccines which aren't bivalent now, unless there's a clinical reason why you can't. They need to join masks and lockdowns in the "things which don't work now" pile.