[Shared404]

I don't see anything about severity reduction in the article. The argument it has lies in >As the World Health Organization puts it, “if mandatory vaccination is considered necessary to interrupt transmission chains and prevent harm to others, there should be sufficient evidence that the vaccine is efficacious in preventing serious infection and/or transmission.” For Omicron, there is as yet no such evidence.

And

> The little data we have suggest the opposite. One preprint study found that after 30 days the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines no longer had any statistically significant positive effect against Omicron infection, and after 90 days, their effect went negative—i.e., vaccinated people were more susceptible to Omicron infection.

That's the most relevant quote from the article. The study mentioned is here [0].

Fwiw, one of the authors discovered HIV[1], so they presumably know what they're talking about.

[0] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.20.21267966v...

[1] The end of the article mentions "Dr. Montagnier was a winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering the human immunodeficiency virus."

Edit: For the record, I'm most definitely not anti-vax, just summarizing the article as best I could. Thanks to everyone who dig deeper than I did.

[sixtram]

The last two paragraphs of the medrxiv article is the following:

"Our study contributes to emerging evidence that BNT162b2 or mRNA-1273 primary vaccine protection against Omicron decreases quickly over time with booster vaccination offering a significant increase in protection.

In light of the exponential rise in Omicron cases, these findings highlight the need for massive rollout of vaccinations and booster vaccinations."

Compare this to the suggestion of WSJ's word choice of "obsolete"

[eesmith]

I know too much about the bad ideas of Nobel Prize winners to trust your presumption (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_disease ), so I went to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luc_Montagnier

] During the COVID-19 pandemic, Montagnier was criticised for using his Nobel prize status to "spread dangerous health messages outside his field of knowledge"[6] for promoting the conspiracy theory that SARS-CoV-2 was deliberately created in a laboratory. Such a claim has been refuted by other virologists.[7][8][9][10]

Of course there's no reason to trust Wikipedia. My point is to challenge the idea that because someone got a Nobel Prize on one topic, that makes them a credible source on even related topics.

RationalWiki has a much lower threshold than Wikipedia and at https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Nobel_disease writes of Montagnier support for "[h]omeopathy, water memory, autism quackery, AIDS cured by nutrition and vaccine hysteria", linking to https://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2011/01/14/the-nobel-dise... for support.

It was easy to find L Montagnier et al 2011 J. Phys.: Conf. Ser.306 012007, "DNA waves and water" https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/306/1/0... which, if true, would indeed overthrow science, and deserve another Nobel Prize.

Yet it's almost only cited by homeopaths, and more broadly "alt. medicine" sources. The setup doesn't look complicated, so should be easily reproducible. Almost as if it wasn't correct - just like we would expect.

[Shared404]

Thanks for digging deeper. I went in too hard in the "give argument I disagree with a fair perspective", and didn't do the further research I should've.

[mint2]

That’s what I was afraid of. I think it’s quite important to re-evaluate policies now that the virus has changed, and it might be the cases that vaccine mandates are not logical but at the same time of if someone tries to have that debate without bringing up one of the most important goals of the vaccine at which it’s so far been wildly successful, then I don’t think the person is trying to have an honest discussion.

[alexvoda]

> [1] The end of the article mentions "Dr. Montagnier was a winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering the human immunodeficiency virus."

This f*** again. That is all I need to know about that article. He popped up at the start of the pandemic claiming it was a bioweapon based on HIV. Because of course he would.

He is also in support of "the memory of water" and "hexagonal water" and other homeopathic related bullshit.

A prime example of someone suffering from Nobelitis. F** this guy. Please do not give this grifter any more attention than he already has. He may have made important discoveries a long time ago, but is completely divorced from reality today.

This is one of the people on a growing list of people with whom any association leads to instant discrediting.

[alexvoda]

TFA is actually written by him.

This discredits WSJ Oppinon as a valid source of information. If as a journalism agency you do not bother to ban obvious quacks, you do not deserve to be listened to.