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Reaction to COVID-19 Vaccine (or what to be prepared for)
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[QUOTE="Laroxe, post: 6538392, member: 555853"] The problem with the studies suggesting that vaccinated and unvaccinated shed virus at the same rate is in the use of PCR as the measure. PCR measures viral DNA rather than virions capable of causing infection, they may in fact simply be measuring DNA from virus's that have already been inactivated by antibodies. Really its difficult to know how important this is, early in the pandemic, it was realized that this virus did not spread in a simple person to person way, individual differences in people infected seem to play a much bigger role. Rather than seeing the disease sweep across countries in waves, what we see are clusters of infections occurring across a wide area, these clusters often being associated with events that cause people to gather together. In these situations, it seems that the majority of infections can be traced back to one or a very few individuals. The majority of those infected, don't infect anyone, it seems that 80% of all infections are caused by 10 - 20% of infected individuals. This pattern of spread is called overdispersion, but I don't know if It's still the pattern with the delta variant. Most of the real world studies on transmission have occurred over a period in which vaccination was introduced, usually to specific high risks groups first, these are in fact the very groups that are experiencing significant falls in their antibody levels, but this again isn't really representative. I think its fairly clear that vaccination does affect the likelihood of infection, but this will be a time critical effect, in Israel they found that people vaccinated in January had a 2.26 times greater risk for a breakthrough infection in July compared to those vaccinated in April. In mid-August over 500 people had been hospitalised with severe disease, of these 59% were fully vaccinated, this sounds worrying until you consider that around 80% of the population is vaccinated. Close to 90% of the vaccinated in hospital were over 60 years of age, while the age range of the unvaccinated was much more widely spread. There is good evidence that vaccination does reduce the risk of infection and the risk of early infection becoming symptomatic, but this is strongly dependent on the time since vaccination and the effect is short-lived. However, the reduced risk of serious disease and death remains significant over a prolonged period of time. My own view is that for the people at highest risk a booster dose of vaccine might provide a useful immediate risk reduction, there are indications that this should be offered after at least 6 months after the 2nd dose as this causes the greatest antibody response. It's also suggested that there may be advantages in using a vaccine produced using a different technology, which might broaden the range of antibodies. As vaccination does significantly reduce the severity of an infection, the advantages of a booster dose for most people is debatable. Even at a self-serving level, the advantages of improving global control may ultimately be greater than using the available vaccine for booster doses in which the effects will be minimal and short-lived. [/QUOTE]
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Reaction to COVID-19 Vaccine (or what to be prepared for)
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