News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on What the Omicron wave is revealing about human immunity. Parent comment

Re:What the Omicron wave is revealing about human immunity by jmckib on Thursday February 03, 2022 @05:03PM (#30199647)
I'm confused. Weren't covid mRNA vaccines very effective at preventing infection, even asymptomatic infection, against delta and earlier variants? Only with omicron has the effectiveness been significantly reduce, but not to zero. And once we come up with a variant-specific vaccine, I would expect the effectiveness to go up again.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:What the Omicron wave is revealing about human immunity by jdrc on Thursday February 03, 2022 @06:32PM (#30200585)
The efficiency of vaccines for infection fell by 50% in 4 monts even for delta and other variants. Their effectiveness with omicron infection is very little.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:What the Omicron wave is revealing about human immunity by jmckib on Friday February 04, 2022 @09:34AM (#30207203)
50% effectiveness against infection is still pretty significant. And note that OP said "essentially no viral vaccine prevents infection." I think we can agree that is not the case.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:What the Omicron wave is revealing about human immunity by r2_pilot on Thursday February 03, 2022 @08:41PM (#30201749)
I've been exposed twice with known-omicron and have not gotten sick yet. YMMV.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:What the Omicron wave is revealing about human immunity by Izkata on Friday February 04, 2022 @09:59AM (#30207530)
No, they were very effective at preventing symptomatic covid. This can mean either preventing infection or not preventing infection but just stopping symptoms. The trials that came up with that 94% efficacy never tested for which of these two outcomes it was, and it turns out it was mostly the second one, which allows for asymptomatic spreading.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:What the Omicron wave is revealing about human immunity by jmckib on Friday February 04, 2022 @02:38PM (#30211842)
No, the vaccines were very effective at preventing any infection, both symptomatic and asymptomatic. There were studies done by giving the participants regular covid tests, usually once a week, so they would catch asympomatic cases as well.

Here are the conclusions from a meta-study from July 2021:

> In fully vaccinated individuals, VE against symptomatic and asymptomatic infections was 80–90% in nearly all studies.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC8284046/

[ Parent | on HN ]