[dolni]

Studies continue to show vaccines are less effective than we were all lead to believe. It seems like every new study that comes out lowers the bar even further. Pretty soon we'll be hearing "the vaccine doesn't help at all, but at least it didn't give you cancer" (mild sarcasm there, but you get the point).

Each of the big pharma companies were poised to make a boatload of money by being first to produce a vaccine. I'm disappointed, but not surprised.

[adamlgerber]

To me this is the most frustrating and frequent hot take I hear; "continue to show vaccines are less effective than we were all lead to believe"

I was sold a vaccine that limited hospitalization and death and we have three vaccines that all do this, frankly, miraculously.

I wasn't sold a prophylactic sunscreen that prevented infection of coming into my body. I was sold an immune response that made my body more resilient to it. I have not seen any evidence that this is waning over time.

Now, delta is a new variant of the disease that wasn’t the subject of the original vaccine study so why should this now old 2020 vaccine be as effective against this new 2021 variant? It shouldn’t be but considering the vaccines effectiveness at preventing hospitalization and death against the new variation that it wasn’t even built to combat its actually OVERDELIVERING against its goals. Another miracle

So maybe that requires adjustments to the vaccine, perhaps on an annual cadence like the flu vaccine. Frankly I am fine with that.

I am disappointed that the vaccines don’t do more to dampen the spread of the disease but considering how defeatable the worst cases are with now multiple vaccine options I am highly confident that our deservedly well paid scientists and pharma companies can keep the progress flowing here and continue to improve over time.

[dolni]

> I was sold a vaccine that limited hospitalization and death and we have three vaccines that all do this, frankly, miraculously.

Really? What news do you watch? I was sold a vaccine that was 90% effective at preventing COVID infection. [1] Now we're at less than half that.

> I was sold an immune response that made my body more resilient to it. I have not seen any evidence that this is waning over time.

Huh? "Based on our latest assessment, the current protection against severe disease, hospitalization, and death could diminish in the months ahead, especially among those who are at higher risk or were vaccinated during the earlier phases of the vaccination rollout." [2]

> Now, delta is a new variant of the disease that wasn’t the subject of the original vaccine study so why should this now old 2020 vaccine be as effective against this new 2021 variant? It shouldn’t be but considering the vaccines effectiveness at preventing hospitalization and death against the new variation that it wasn’t even built to combat its actually OVERDELIVERING against its goals. Another miracle

It's almost as though vaccination of half the population and no kids wasn't enough. Here we are, having lifted mask mandates and lockdowns because the vaccine was "good enough", only to be treated to a Delta surge. If that doesn't scream "we have no clue how good the vaccine is," I don't know what does.

Everybody knew that a mutation in COVID was likely to happen, which only makes those reckless decisions even more disgusting to me.

Let's be clear: I don't fault Pfizer, Moderna, etc. for not creating a super-vaccine that defeated the pandemic single-handedly. I'm irritated because our government's complete ineptitude around addressing the pandemic is leading us into this surge. We gave up our other mitigations FAR too soon. The effectiveness of vaccines keeps declining, both because of Delta and because it just doesn't last very long.

Everybody I know (me included) thought we would get back to life as normal after getting vaccinated. We got bait and switched.

[1]: https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/29/health/pfizer-and-moderna-cov...

[2]: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/covid-19-booster-shot-for-...

[eachro]

> Each of the big pharma companies were poised to make a boatload of money by being first to produce a vaccine. I'm disappointed, but not surprised.

Considering the massive drop in deaths as various countries, US states got vaccinated, I'd say they haven't been compensated enough.

[nitwit005]

You're acting like this is a surprise result, but everyone expected this. The vaccine was designed to make you resistant to a different virus. We give out new flu shots every year for a reason.

[dolni]

It wasn't a surprise result, you say? Then how could it be that lockdowns were lifted in the US with barely 50% of the population vaccinated AND without approval for children?

[yodon]

They were lifted because voters were angry and made that anger known to politicians, who responded in a political manner rather than a medical manner.

[dolni]

Exactly what I expected to hear.

Let's acknowledge that at least some of the stuff we're seeing is being driven by politics to the detriment of actual science. Some of that might even include (gasp) information about vaccines.

[yodon]

The fact that politicians act primarily based on political input is hardly a novel idea, and is not in itself evidence that scientists act in that manner when publishing scientific results. You're going to need actual data to back that later bit up, because at present you are just casting aspersions based on conjecture.

[adamlgerber]

2020 vaccines were made for 2020 variants. Summer 2021 brought new variants that are more contagious than the 2020 variants. Its not hard.

[dolni]

So... then it was a surprise?

[adamlgerber]

variations in the virus are predictable, but which ones really catch on and how are hard to predict.

I don't know how phizer/moderna/etc balance needs to develop different drugs against all possible variants but I expect that once a strong variant emerges they are well incentivized (financially and culturally) to scale up development against it.

The real surprise is how slowly our social and political institutions respond, not our pharma institutions.

[wbsss4412]

Reduced efficacy against asymptomatic and mild illness but still over 90% efficacy against severe illness and hospitalization hardly seems to warrant your level of ire.