Most of the World’s Vaccines Likely Won’t Prevent Infection From Omicron

December 19, 2021 9:41 AM

The consequences of rapidly spreading infection worry many public health experts. “The sheer scale of infection will overwhelm health systems, simply because the denominator will be potentially so big,” he said. “If you have a burst of infection worldwide, a shock, what does the world look like on the other side of it? Is it, ‘The war is over,’ or, ‘The war has just entered another phase’? We haven’t begun thinking about any of that.” People with breakthrough cases may experience only asymptomatic infection or mild illness, but they can pass the virus to unvaccinated people, who could fall more severely ill. As a consequence, dangerous variants will continue to emerge from areas with low vaccination coverage, which will prolong the pandemic.
posted by folklore724 (11 comments total)

From the linked article: "[Vaccines] do seem to offer significant protection against severe illness."
posted by No Robots at 9:55 AM on December 19, 2021

From the linked article: "[Vaccines] do seem to offer significant protection against severe illness."

Also from the linked article: That is not the point of the article.
posted by srboisvert at 10:01 AM on December 19, 2021 [7 favorites]

I guess one isn't supposed to take a position on whether this post should have been made so soon after the last COVID doom post, but, as a person with an anxiety disorder, I'd like to urge my Mefite fellow-sufferers in commenting to consider whether dwelling on apocalyptic speculation will be helpful to them. You all know you should be taking precautions already. Fretting about whether "health systems will be overwhelmed" accomplishes exactly nothing except jamming down the freak-out button in your head.
posted by praemunire at 10:02 AM on December 19, 2021 [23 favorites]

Could this be rolled into the last covid doom post, it's only about ten back?
posted by ominous_paws at 10:15 AM on December 19, 2021 [14 favorites]

I'm going to start linking this page in every covidoom thread. It always calms me to see that very flat line for vaccinated and boosted folks. Not that I'm getting cocky--I'm taking precautions that make sense. But the raw charts I see every day in the WaPo tell a very different story than these do. I'm aware that this particular chart is a month out of date, but the trendlines are what I'm looking at and trying not to panic.
posted by rikschell at 10:19 AM on December 19, 2021 [5 favorites]

I'd like to urge my Mefite fellow-sufferers in commenting to consider whether dwelling on apocalyptic speculation will be helpful to them. You all know you should be taking precautions already.

Yep - just got scheduled for a booster at the CVS near me. Plan on picking up some discount wrapping paper after I'm jabbed.
posted by ryanshepard at 10:21 AM on December 19, 2021 [2 favorites]

... accomplishes exactly nothing except jamming down the freak-out button in your head.

Wait your's is a button? It's not a hardwired circuit?
posted by furnace.heart at 10:23 AM on December 19, 2021 [4 favorites]

I did link this article a few mins before this post in the other thread, though I didn’t put the full text in it just the first three paragraphs.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 10:28 AM on December 19, 2021 [1 favorite]

Can I comment on the article if I read two paragraphs and noped out?

Yes, there's yet another variant.

But I feel like there's fuck all of nothing I can do, aside from what I'm already doing.

Vax, vax, booster, vax and vax and booster for my spouse, keeping my unvaccinated curious toddler away from people while my brain caves in because HEAVEN KNOWS if she'll ever get the vax, masks, trying to stay calm while the town anti-maskers get in our space and hairy eyeball us, scheduling preventive care for everyone so maybe nobody ends up in the ER until shit settles, donate to causes...

*endless housewife hamster wheel a-turning*

I dunno, y'all.

How do we row to shore when the currents keep changing and people keep slapping the oars out of our hands?

And that's just the US. My brain caves in all over again, over and over, thinking of the global scale.
posted by champers at 10:36 AM on December 19, 2021 [4 favorites]

What the articles touches on, but doesn't actually say, is that preliminary evidence from the UKHSA shows that two doses of AZ plus a Pfizer booster is nearly as effective against Omicron as two doses of Pfizer plus a Pfizer booster. So for the billions of people worldwide who have received two doses of AZ or another similar vaccine, a mRNA booster would be incredibly valuable.

Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech have had a year to profit, to the tune of billions, from their vaccines. It's well past time to share the technology and know-how with the rest of the world so we can produce as much of these incredibly valuable mRNA vaccines as possible. Not doing so at this point is just disgusting.

Maybe since this post is not actually about Covid in the rich western world, we could not make it about that? There's still another more general thread to have that discussion in.
posted by ssg at 10:48 AM on December 19, 2021 [6 favorites]

/. - Covid Vaccines Fight Serious Illness, But Only Pfizer and Moderna With a Booster Stop Omicron Infections

"A growing body of preliminary research suggests the COVID vaccines used in most of the world offer almost no defense against becoming infected by the highly contagious omicron variant," reports the New York Times. (Emphasis added, because they stress that "All vaccines still seem to provide a significant degree of protection against serious illness from omicron, which is the most crucial goal.")

"But only the Pfizer and Moderna shots, when reinforced by a booster, appear to have initial success at stopping infections, and these vaccines are unavailable in most of the world."

posted by JoeXIII007 at 10:58 AM on December 19, 2021