"serological evidence of prior infection with SARS-CoV-2 (potentially making them immune to further infection)."
This looks like Pfizer admitting that natural immunity is potentially vastly superior to the (non-immunity granting) vaccine.
Something that governments, chief health officers and a swathe of epidemiologists, immunologists and professors on Twitter have aggressively denounced since the vaccines were first injected.
If only we had some way of testing that natural immunity in some way, to see if vaccines were even necessary for younger people and healthy people of most age groups who don't appear to suffer ill effects.
Imagine the "potential" immunity the community would be experiencing now, 2 years down the track...
It is the reason I did not get jabbed: it seemed a better path for society to take.
The data supporting the "worry window" concept has always been a little anecdotal - observational discovery of correlations in populations. Yet there seemed to be a lot of examples of the alleged effect.
I wonder if the absence of "worry window" in the Pfizer trial can be explained by the trial selection criteria. The trial population underrepresented the people at highest risk - co-morbidities and the older age groups. If those groups were to show a higher propensity for infections post shot, it could have the effect of artificially boosting the overall effective population transmissibility.
Right, but the comparison is not against background case rates, but placebo. So the selection bias should affect both arms. Of course, there's the potential gaps in the blinding process as detailed by Brook Jackson but blinding is a bit of a song and dance anyway...
I'm not sure I understand your point. What I was trying to say was that it could be that the increase in susceptibility that produces the "worry window" effect only occurs in older or sicker demographics, that were excluded from the trial. The claim of the "worry window" is that the case rates increase in the general population, but I don't think the demographics of *who* is impacted has ever been established (if the effect is in fact real).
Right, I misread your OP as suggesting that exclusion criteria would make the vaxxed group outperform placebo - you mean outperform real life. The trial attempted to include comorbidities, and person-days were ~38% among the over 55.
For post 1st Dose VE by age, see p. 97 - no worrying signal for the elderly. Although this is end-point VE, it should match the worry-window VE age distribution pretty closely since most "cases" were in the first days of the trial.
Well, I don't know. Compare the table page 97 with page 93, for >75yrs.
Post dose 1 - 7 days post dose 2: 1 case for treatment, 0 cases for placebo.
7 days Post dose 2: 1 case for treatment, 26 cases for placebo.
It's not statistically significant but the total numbers are only 850 in each arm and it's over a couple weeks with probably fairly low community transmission. So i'd say it's inconclusive but not positive in strictly numeric terms.
Ah - I just had the same thought of deriving post 1 by subtracting post 2, you beat me to it. Obviously the >75 are going to get beat up with a 1/0 in the window; surprising that the placebo sailed through .7 time units with 0 cases!
I didn't look at the other age groups etc.. but in general I'm not sure this trial has adequate power to answer this question. It's also unclear what kind of size effect is required to produce the "worry window" signature pattern. Even a small increase in susceptibility is multiplied exponentially due to easier transmission and infection of others, when in a mass deployment - whereas that effect is absent in the trial because of the very small number of people receiving treatment as a fraction of population.
There has never been much evidence for a "worry window" on the level of personal protection, but I remain suspicious about the population-level wave of infections that coincided with the peak of the vaccination effort in many countries, begining with Israel in February which was oddly out of phase with other regional/global trends at the time.
Even if the short-term effects of the jab on innate/adaptive immunity do not increase the risk of infection, I wonder if they might increase the rate of *transmission* from infected people.
Of course it could just be coincidence, but I can't escape the idea that the overall effect of the vaccination effort on population-level viral prevalence has been worse than zero, with infection peaks coinciding with peak vaccination and later with waning immunity.
At first, I wrote off that post-1st dose spike of infections as lowered immune response causing increased susceptibility, as seen with influenza vaccinations. Israel started boosting in late July and cases hit record levels by mid-September. If protective antibodies were developed after doses 1 and 2, shouldn't the vaccinated have received a protective benefit as boosters were administered?
I keep replaying all of the lies that the people were told in my head. My stomach turns, considering that too many still believe those lies, even now. "Safe and effective", "Will prevent you from getting infected", "Will keep you from getting severe disease, hospitalization and/or death", "Vaccinated people cannot transmit the virus.", "This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated"... incompetence, greed, power, control, evil- I don't even care what the reasons are anymore. We are beyond any excuse for these companies, public health agencies, government leaders, local health authorities, school board directors, etc.
"serological evidence of prior infection with SARS-CoV-2 (potentially making them immune to further infection)."
This looks like Pfizer admitting that natural immunity is potentially vastly superior to the (non-immunity granting) vaccine.
Something that governments, chief health officers and a swathe of epidemiologists, immunologists and professors on Twitter have aggressively denounced since the vaccines were first injected.
Or am I reading that wrong?
That’s basically what it says - but “potentially” conveys that they were agnostic about which outcome was most likely, in my reading
If only we had some way of testing that natural immunity in some way, to see if vaccines were even necessary for younger people and healthy people of most age groups who don't appear to suffer ill effects.
Imagine the "potential" immunity the community would be experiencing now, 2 years down the track...
It is the reason I did not get jabbed: it seemed a better path for society to take.
That and my utter abhorrence of having to show my papers to do anything "normal" in social life.
Pfizer without end: https://www.skirsch.com/covid/MoreHarm.pdf
Thank you for this link
The data supporting the "worry window" concept has always been a little anecdotal - observational discovery of correlations in populations. Yet there seemed to be a lot of examples of the alleged effect.
I wonder if the absence of "worry window" in the Pfizer trial can be explained by the trial selection criteria. The trial population underrepresented the people at highest risk - co-morbidities and the older age groups. If those groups were to show a higher propensity for infections post shot, it could have the effect of artificially boosting the overall effective population transmissibility.
Right, but the comparison is not against background case rates, but placebo. So the selection bias should affect both arms. Of course, there's the potential gaps in the blinding process as detailed by Brook Jackson but blinding is a bit of a song and dance anyway...
I'm not sure I understand your point. What I was trying to say was that it could be that the increase in susceptibility that produces the "worry window" effect only occurs in older or sicker demographics, that were excluded from the trial. The claim of the "worry window" is that the case rates increase in the general population, but I don't think the demographics of *who* is impacted has ever been established (if the effect is in fact real).
Right, I misread your OP as suggesting that exclusion criteria would make the vaxxed group outperform placebo - you mean outperform real life. The trial attempted to include comorbidities, and person-days were ~38% among the over 55.
For post 1st Dose VE by age, see p. 97 - no worrying signal for the elderly. Although this is end-point VE, it should match the worry-window VE age distribution pretty closely since most "cases" were in the first days of the trial.
Well, I don't know. Compare the table page 97 with page 93, for >75yrs.
Post dose 1 - 7 days post dose 2: 1 case for treatment, 0 cases for placebo.
7 days Post dose 2: 1 case for treatment, 26 cases for placebo.
It's not statistically significant but the total numbers are only 850 in each arm and it's over a couple weeks with probably fairly low community transmission. So i'd say it's inconclusive but not positive in strictly numeric terms.
Ah - I just had the same thought of deriving post 1 by subtracting post 2, you beat me to it. Obviously the >75 are going to get beat up with a 1/0 in the window; surprising that the placebo sailed through .7 time units with 0 cases!
I didn't look at the other age groups etc.. but in general I'm not sure this trial has adequate power to answer this question. It's also unclear what kind of size effect is required to produce the "worry window" signature pattern. Even a small increase in susceptibility is multiplied exponentially due to easier transmission and infection of others, when in a mass deployment - whereas that effect is absent in the trial because of the very small number of people receiving treatment as a fraction of population.
There has never been much evidence for a "worry window" on the level of personal protection, but I remain suspicious about the population-level wave of infections that coincided with the peak of the vaccination effort in many countries, begining with Israel in February which was oddly out of phase with other regional/global trends at the time.
Even if the short-term effects of the jab on innate/adaptive immunity do not increase the risk of infection, I wonder if they might increase the rate of *transmission* from infected people.
Of course it could just be coincidence, but I can't escape the idea that the overall effect of the vaccination effort on population-level viral prevalence has been worse than zero, with infection peaks coinciding with peak vaccination and later with waning immunity.
At first, I wrote off that post-1st dose spike of infections as lowered immune response causing increased susceptibility, as seen with influenza vaccinations. Israel started boosting in late July and cases hit record levels by mid-September. If protective antibodies were developed after doses 1 and 2, shouldn't the vaccinated have received a protective benefit as boosters were administered?
Protective benefit among the boosted? That appeared to be the case in the early results by Bar-On, et al. (reviewed at https://unglossed.substack.com/p/dashboard-divinations-take-5#footnote-anchor-4) as well as the "waning" study making the rounds this week https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.04.21267114v1
I keep replaying all of the lies that the people were told in my head. My stomach turns, considering that too many still believe those lies, even now. "Safe and effective", "Will prevent you from getting infected", "Will keep you from getting severe disease, hospitalization and/or death", "Vaccinated people cannot transmit the virus.", "This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated"... incompetence, greed, power, control, evil- I don't even care what the reasons are anymore. We are beyond any excuse for these companies, public health agencies, government leaders, local health authorities, school board directors, etc.
Sorry, nausea at the folly of humanity is not a valid adverse event in our trial protocol. We'll put you down for "itchiness".
Or just unenroll you for non-compliance