"How to predict the future"
Here's a well written paper about an anti-coronavirus vaccine that absolutely convinces me that this vaccine is safe, effective, fit for purpose, has positive risk/benefit, and should definitely be used. I have no criticisms to make about its methods or conclusions:
- Chicken were split into various groups, notably vaccinated and unvaccinated
- These groups were then further split, with some of the vaccinated and unvaccinated chicken receiving virus challenge from several strains, and others not receiving virus and serving as control
- All chicken that received virus were closely monitored for symptoms, their fluids swabbed at regular intervals regardless of symptoms then tested and titrated for virus to check if they're infected and if so how bad, and if they're contagious and if so how much.
Summary of findings:
- The vaccine is safe. Chicken fatten normally, produce enough eggs, and live long enough to get cooked.
- The vaccine is effective. Antivax chicken get IBV and die (serves'en right!). Vaccinated chicken mostly don't get it, some still get it but show little symptoms, they clear it up quickly and are maybe 80%less contagious The numbers are great, 80-90% effective! Prevents severe disease!
- Very positive risk/benefit (for the farmer)
No issues.
Safety and efficacy are assessed over an appropriate length of time. If the vaccine gives chicken cancer, or sterilizes them, or immunity disappears after six months, or they lose some IQ points, or anything else, we don't care.
All chicken that received virus were tested periodically and virus is titrated precisely, so there is no possibility of the vaccine turning symptomatic infected into undetected asymptomatic contagious carriers. The effect of the vaccine on transmission is precisely measured.
Great!
The problem
I'd like to see a study about COVID vaccines that meets or exceeds the quality standards set by the Poultry Diseases Department, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Beni-Suef University, Egypt.
Assessing safety and efficacy over a length of time appropriate for humans is obviously why it usually takes ten years. Not possible to do in a hurry.
However, they should have tested all the participants twice a week regardless of symptoms. Not doing so is unforgivable. They swabbed the fucking chicken, why not people? Thus none of these studies can say whether the vaccinated were really protected and didn't get it, or just got so little symptoms they passed under the radar, didn't get tested, weren't counted, but were still contagious. There is an important difference, because Darwin.
From the Israeli study you linked:
"Lack of active laboratory surveillance in the cohort might have resulted in an underestimation of asymptomatic cases. Data on vaccine efficacy in preventing asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection are scarce, and our results of rate reductions in SARS-CoV-2 infections, which include asymptomatic HCWs, need further validation through active surveillance and sampling of vaccinated people and unvaccinated controls to ascertain the actual reduction of asymptomatic infection in vaccinated individuals."
I spotted 4,8 that used periodic testing in one meta analysis you posted. Better than nothing!
The Null Hypothesis
When the vaccines were announced, I decided to take the side of the null hypothesis: "These new anti coronavirus vaccines will work about the same as the previous ones". So I read all the trials.
Forgetting about FIV, the charitable version of this null hypothesis is exactly the behavior of the above IBV vaccine. I didn't have to invent anything, the script was already written, published and peer reviewed. Predictions from 2020:
- It will kinda work against severe disease for maybe a year (check)
- It will be very leaky with lots of breakthroughs. But it will reduce symptoms, which means a lot of undetected vaccinated spreaders (check)
- Thus it will select for resistant variants. It's a coronavirus, they do that. Every 6 months it'll pop a new variant that defeats the vaccine. (check). This also happens with IBV and the other veterinary coronavirus vaccines, but that's not a problem: you just eat the chicken, start with a new batch of chickens, and give them an updated vaccine. This can be done indefinitely as long as you start with new new chickens every time. It can't be done with humans.
- When vaccine efficacy drops due to new variants (check) there will be a new updated dose every 6 months (check). It will not work (check), because it's not possible to easily update an immune system, you're stuck with the first batch. They will do it anyway (check) until everyone gets bored and it gets swept under the rug and replaced with something more exciting. Check.
All the studies you posted more or less confirm this, so I see no reason to comment on them further.
I tested Grok on this and it predicted how the entire pandemic went from first principles. It's not hard.
If the virus comes out from where it came in, it will evolve to do so as efficiently as possible. Covid Classic Wuhan wasted its time infecting lungs and killing people. Omicron got smart and infected the upper airways instead while keeping the carrier healthy enough to get out and spread it.
Thus Omicron got Darwin's blessing and won. The predicted trajectory was towards progressively milder variants, and with each new variant roll a dice and get a small chance of "keeps the carrier healthy long enough to get out and spread it, then two weeks later you drop dead, or it kills half your brain cells, but you already spread it so your death has no fitness cost to the virus."
Thus I still had to get immunized somehow, at the lowest possible cost.
It's called "serial passage". You cultivate virus in a very specific organism repeatedly, so it evolves to adapt to that organism, at the cost of losing fitness and virulence in other organisms it has not adapted to.
As expected, the variant specially adapted to infect the vaccinated lost its ability to make me really sick.
Thus, mid 2022 I opted to get BA2. Three days of the sniffles, done.
Few months later I had dinner with friends. In front of me at the table: 3 people, 8 doses, 9 COVIDs (3 each). They coughed and snotted abundantly. There was so much virus floating I got hay fever. Next day I woke up in great shape and rode 100km on the bike. They took 3 weeks to somehow crawl out of bed.
Engineering is applied science. It's not complicated.
I'll do so much better than this!
Here's a well written paper about an anti-coronavirus vaccine that absolutely convinces me that this vaccine is safe, effective, fit for purpose, has positive risk/benefit, and should definitely be used. I have no criticisms to make about its methods or conclusions:
- Chicken were split into various groups, notably vaccinated and unvaccinated
- These groups were then further split, with some of the vaccinated and unvaccinated chicken receiving virus challenge from several strains, and others not receiving virus and serving as control
- All chicken that received virus were closely monitored for symptoms, their fluids swabbed at regular intervals regardless of symptoms then tested and titrated for virus to check if they're infected and if so how bad, and if they're contagious and if so how much.
Summary of findings:
- The vaccine is safe. Chicken fatten normally, produce enough eggs, and live long enough to get cooked.
- The vaccine is effective. Antivax chicken get IBV and die (serves'en right!). Vaccinated chicken mostly don't get it, some still get it but show little symptoms, they clear it up quickly and are maybe 80%less contagious The numbers are great, 80-90% effective! Prevents severe disease!
- Very positive risk/benefit (for the farmer)
No issues.
Safety and efficacy are assessed over an appropriate length of time. If the vaccine gives chicken cancer, or sterilizes them, or immunity disappears after six months, or they lose some IQ points, or anything else, we don't care.
All chicken that received virus were tested periodically and virus is titrated precisely, so there is no possibility of the vaccine turning symptomatic infected into undetected asymptomatic contagious carriers. The effect of the vaccine on transmission is precisely measured.
Great!
The problem
I'd like to see a study about COVID vaccines that meets or exceeds the quality standards set by the Poultry Diseases Department, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Beni-Suef University, Egypt.
Assessing safety and efficacy over a length of time appropriate for humans is obviously why it usually takes ten years. Not possible to do in a hurry.
However, they should have tested all the participants twice a week regardless of symptoms. Not doing so is unforgivable. They swabbed the fucking chicken, why not people? Thus none of these studies can say whether the vaccinated were really protected and didn't get it, or just got so little symptoms they passed under the radar, didn't get tested, weren't counted, but were still contagious. There is an important difference, because Darwin.
From the Israeli study you linked:
"Lack of active laboratory surveillance in the cohort might have resulted in an underestimation of asymptomatic cases. Data on vaccine efficacy in preventing asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection are scarce, and our results of rate reductions in SARS-CoV-2 infections, which include asymptomatic HCWs, need further validation through active surveillance and sampling of vaccinated people and unvaccinated controls to ascertain the actual reduction of asymptomatic infection in vaccinated individuals."
I spotted 4,8 that used periodic testing in one meta analysis you posted. Better than nothing!
The Null Hypothesis
When the vaccines were announced, I decided to take the side of the null hypothesis: "These new anti coronavirus vaccines will work about the same as the previous ones". So I read all the trials.
Forgetting about FIV, the charitable version of this null hypothesis is exactly the behavior of the above IBV vaccine. I didn't have to invent anything, the script was already written, published and peer reviewed. Predictions from 2020:
- It will kinda work against severe disease for maybe a year (check)
- It will be very leaky with lots of breakthroughs. But it will reduce symptoms, which means a lot of undetected vaccinated spreaders (check)
- Thus it will select for resistant variants. It's a coronavirus, they do that. Every 6 months it'll pop a new variant that defeats the vaccine. (check). This also happens with IBV and the other veterinary coronavirus vaccines, but that's not a problem: you just eat the chicken, start with a new batch of chickens, and give them an updated vaccine. This can be done indefinitely as long as you start with new new chickens every time. It can't be done with humans.
- When vaccine efficacy drops due to new variants (check) there will be a new updated dose every 6 months (check). It will not work (check), because it's not possible to easily update an immune system, you're stuck with the first batch. They will do it anyway (check) until everyone gets bored and it gets swept under the rug and replaced with something more exciting. Check.
All the studies you posted more or less confirm this, so I see no reason to comment on them further.
I tested Grok on this and it predicted how the entire pandemic went from first principles. It's not hard.
If the virus comes out from where it came in, it will evolve to do so as efficiently as possible. Covid Classic Wuhan wasted its time infecting lungs and killing people. Omicron got smart and infected the upper airways instead while keeping the carrier healthy enough to get out and spread it.
Thus Omicron got Darwin's blessing and won. The predicted trajectory was towards progressively milder variants, and with each new variant roll a dice and get a small chance of "keeps the carrier healthy long enough to get out and spread it, then two weeks later you drop dead, or it kills half your brain cells, but you already spread it so your death has no fitness cost to the virus."
Thus I still had to get immunized somehow, at the lowest possible cost.
It's called "serial passage". You cultivate virus in a very specific organism repeatedly, so it evolves to adapt to that organism, at the cost of losing fitness and virulence in other organisms it has not adapted to.
As expected, the variant specially adapted to infect the vaccinated lost its ability to make me really sick.
Thus, mid 2022 I opted to get BA2. Three days of the sniffles, done.
Few months later I had dinner with friends. In front of me at the table: 3 people, 8 doses, 9 COVIDs (3 each). They coughed and snotted abundantly. There was so much virus floating I got hay fever. Next day I woke up in great shape and rode 100km on the bike. They took 3 weeks to somehow crawl out of bed.
Engineering is applied science. It's not complicated.
