The vaccines | vaxxed boosted unvaxxed? New poll

How's your immunity looking? Had covid - vote twice - vax status and then again for infection status

  • Vaxxed but no booster

  • Boostered

  • Still waiting in queue for first vaccine dose

  • Won't get vaxxed (unless I have to for travel/work etc)

  • Past infection with covid + I've been vaccinated

  • Past infection with covid - I've not been vaccinated

Results are only viewable after voting.
Wibble said:
None of the vaccines are sterilising (totally prevent infection). The effectiveness stats aren't always very comparable because some trials only tested for covid infection when a trial participant presents symptoms which means asymptomtic infections wouldn't be found so it is a measure of how well the vaccine prevents symptomatic and serious disease. If a study tests everyone in the trial for covid then the effectiveness figure is a representation of how well the vaccine reduces any infection.

@Pogue Mahone @Tony Babangida @Volumiza @africanspur - is that right? I also have a recollection (quite possibly wrong) that Moderna and Pfisher were in the former group (didn't test for asymptomatic infections) and AZ/Oxford were in the later group (tested all participants). If this is the case then that might explain some of the gap in effectiveness between AZ and the mRNA vaccines. No idea about the other vaccine's trial methods.
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The vaccine trials concentrated on symptomatic infection, and those are the results you see quoted. Some also had sub-trials with repeat testing of the same people or randomised testing of a subset each week. They all looked at bloodwork to get antibody data (for vaccine and for infection) but I've not seen those results published.

AZ did the biggest of those weekly retest trials but the initial data was erratic, and covered multiple dosing patterns, averaging out at about 20% efficacy against asymptomatic infection.
AZ https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-per...how-astrazeneca-covid-vaccine-has-90-efficacy

The great unknown with the vaccines is whether the ones who catch covid with/without symptoms are less infectious than the uncaccinated who catch it. Early suggestions from the Israel and UK mass rollouts are that cases are milder and the infected less likely to spread the virus - but that's all about averages and big statistical models, so it's a wait and see.
 
Wednesday at Stoke said:
The infrastructure was never in doubt but the ability to get vaccines was a bit frustrating as it is reliant on the EU.
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All of which came down to the spectacular failure of AZ to meet their Q1 commitments to the EU. Further complicated by the pause to investigate those clotting events. Are they back to using AZ again in Denmark now?

Speaking of which, the roll-out in Ireland just got slightly complicated by AZ being restricted to over 60s only. 15000 appointments cancelled today. Another fecking speed bump. Hopefully the last.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
All of which came down to the spectacular failure of AZ to meet their Q1 commitments to the EU. Further complicated by the pause to investigate those clotting events. Are they back to using AZ again in Denmark now?

Speaking of which, the roll-out in Ireland just got slightly complicated by AZ being restricted to over 60s only. 15000 appointments cancelled today. Another fecking speed bump. Hopefully the last.
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Just Pfizer and Moderna for now. The projected end date for vaccination of the entire population has come closer to the middle of July.
 
jojojo said:
The vaccine trials concentrated on symptomatic infection, and those are the results you see quoted. Some also had sub-trials with repeat testing of the same people or randomised testing of a subset each week. They all looked at bloodwork to get antibody data (for vaccine and for infection) but I've not seen those results published.

AZ did the biggest of those weekly retest trials but the initial data was erratic, and covered multiple dosing patterns, averaging out at about 20% efficacy against asymptomatic infection.
AZ https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-per...how-astrazeneca-covid-vaccine-has-90-efficacy

The great unknown with the vaccines is whether the ones who catch covid with/without symptoms are less infectious than the uncaccinated who catch it. Early suggestions from the Israel and UK mass rollouts are that cases are milder and the infected less likely to spread the virus - but that's all about averages and big statistical models, so it's a wait and see.
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Thanks @jojojo I knew I'd forgotten to tag someone who I should have - sorry
 
Wednesday at Stoke said:
Just Pfizer and Moderna for now. The projected end date for vaccination of the entire population has come closer to the middle of July.
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That’s fantastic news. I’m really hoping the US and EU (including UK) are basically fully vaccinated by end of Q2/mid-Q3. Selfishly that means the rest of us should be getting vaccinated Q3/Q4.
 
Wednesday at Stoke said:
The infrastructure was never in doubt but the ability to get vaccines was a bit frustrating as it is reliant on the EU.
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A lot have just been freed up. Ireland has said it’s going to only use AZ for over 60s now. The rest of the programme is on pause. Just as it got to my cohort. FML
 
A female friend of mine was wondering if the AZ vaccine was in some way interacting with birth control medication in the young women who developed blood clots. Has there been any other hypotheses towards that? Its weird that it would show side effects in such a small segment of the population.
 
Wednesday at Stoke said:
A female friend of mine was wondering if the AZ vaccine was in some way interacting with birth control medication in the young women who developed blood clots. Has there been any other hypotheses towards that? Its weird that it would show side effects in such a small segment of the population.
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According to the health service here there is no link between the AZ blood clots and women taking birth control pills.
 
Rajma said:
J&J is adenovirus based vaccine not too dissimilar to AZ, right? On the surface and without the underlying data it does come across as if there’s some sort of casual link there.
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Clearly. The US hasn't approved the AZ vaccine so they haven't been through this whole review process over blood clotting yet. Hopefully in Europe it will be less of an issue, our first delivery arrives today.
 
Do we know if the current UK plan is that your 2nd dose should be from the same provider? My first was Pfizer and I'm waiting to hear about the 2nd, wondering if the J&J news will delay it at all(aside from the fact one less provider may see queues generally grow)
 
For some reason, my area (Maryland, USA) has loads of Pfeizer ones. We were really slow to roll out then all of a sudden in the last week, it seems like everyone can get one. My kids with no underlying conditions (17 and 19) are getting their first shots this week (I got my 1st Pfeizer shot last week through work).
 
Oldyella said:
Do we know if the current UK plan is that your 2nd dose should be from the same provider? My first was Pfizer and I'm waiting to hear about the 2nd, wondering if the J&J news will delay it at all(aside from the fact one less provider may see queues generally grow)
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There’s provisions to mix I think but it was more a contingency rather than something you’d expect to see as routine. The plan is definitely to give a second dose of the same
 
Snowjoe said:
There’s provisions to mix I think but it was more a contingency rather than something you’d expect to see as routine. The plan is definitely to give a second dose of the same
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OK cheers. Fingers crossed I get the same again. Never mix drinks, not starting with vaccines.
 
Is there an increased risk of blood clot problems if you have Thalassemia or Thalassemia trait?
 
sullydnl said:
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So far, there have been 6 reported incidents of blood clots that are under investigation out of 7 million who've received the vaccine. Overall, the risk appears to be miniscule. The pause may be made easier by the fact that J&J production issues delayed millions of doses so the US was already expecting a much smaller amount of the vaccine over the next few weeks.
 
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Just a glimpse of what's been going on behind the scenes in the past three weeks on the thrombocytopenia + thrombosis front:
https://www.theguardian.com/society...-covid-jab-university-college-london-hospital
And why it's now both a little easier for hospital haemotologists to spot and why we now have the starting points for treatment.

Still a lot that we don't know, but it's good to see that the right kind of people are on the case.
 
jojojo said:
Just a glimpse of what's been going on behind the scenes in the past three weeks on the thrombocytopenia + thrombosis front:
https://www.theguardian.com/society...-covid-jab-university-college-london-hospital
And why it's now both a little easier for hospital haemotologists to spot and why we now have the starting points for treatment.

Still a lot that we don't know, but it's good to see that the right kind of people are on the case.
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Am I being a bit over-sensitive in finding it odd the way the Guardian seems to want to give UK medical excellence all the credit for a discovery that was made/shared by German medics several weeks ago?

To be fair to Prof Scully she gives credit where it’s due but the headline/tone of the article is arguably a bit misleading. And it’s particularly ironic when you consider that the UK should have been well ahead of the curve on this, due to much earlier/heavier use of the AZ vaccine, yet somehow missed the safety signal until after a number of other countries had already raised the red flag.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Am I being a bit over-sensitive in finding it odd the way the Guardian seems to want to give UK medical excellence all the credit for a discovery that was made/shared by German medics several weeks ago?

To be fair to Prof Scully she gives credit where it’s due but the headline/tone of the article is arguably a bit misleading. And it’s particularly ironic when you consider that the UK should have been well ahead of the curve on this, due to much earlier/heavier use of the AZ vaccine, yet somehow missed the safety signal until after a number of other countries had already raised the red flag.
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I agree, the construction/emphasis is a bit weird. We know that there were trigger reports/warnings coming in from Norway with very fast follow-ups/confirmation from the German team, right at the start. Personally, I'd guess flags were going up in specialist haemotologists groups across Europe more or less simultaneously and there were just different approaches to publication, but I don't know that.

I've no idea if the repurposed HIT/PF4 analysis idea was also happening simultaneously across the investigations - though I know that it is one of Prof Scully's specialist subjects.

I just liked that it looks at the world behind the press conferences and interviews, and offers the collaborative back story of why the first version of the BSH treatment guide could already talk about exactly which test/assay method to use, and talk about treatment strategies - even though it initially got published when the MHRA were still collating/requesting the case numbers.
 
jojojo said:
I agree, the construction/emphasis is a bit weird. We know that there were trigger reports/warnings coming in from Norway with very fast follow-ups/confirmation from the German team, right at the start. Personally, I'd guess flags were going up in specialist haemotologists groups across Europe more or less simultaneously and there were just different approaches to publication, but I don't know that.

I've no idea if the repurposed HIT/PF4 analysis idea was also happening simultaneously across the investigations - though I know that it is one of Prof Scully's specialist subjects.

I just liked that it looks at the world behind the press conferences and interviews, and offers the collaborative back story of why the first version of the BSH treatment guide could already talk about exactly which test/assay method to use, and talk about treatment strategies - even though it initially got published when the MHRA were still collating/requesting the case numbers.
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Bit of a side note but this pandemic has seen networking amongst medical specialists around the world kick into a whole new gear. They mention a haematology whatsapp group in that article but that’s just one of many similar examples I’ve come across in the last year. It’s been a quiet revolution going on in the background of this whole horrible saga.
 
J&J rollout also paused here in South Africa. We're only planning on vaccinating using Pfizer and J&J, so it'll be particularly bad for us if this doesn't come back online.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
All of which came down to the spectacular failure of AZ to meet their Q1 commitments to the EU. Further complicated by the pause to investigate those clotting events. Are they back to using AZ again in Denmark now?

Speaking of which, the roll-out in Ireland just got slightly complicated by AZ being restricted to over 60s only. 15000 appointments cancelled today. Another fecking speed bump. Hopefully the last.
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[Narrator] It wasn't the last.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Am I being a bit over-sensitive in finding it odd the way the Guardian seems to want to give UK medical excellence all the credit for a discovery that was made/shared by German medics several weeks ago?

To be fair to Prof Scully she gives credit where it’s due but the headline/tone of the article is arguably a bit misleading. And it’s particularly ironic when you consider that the UK should have been well ahead of the curve on this, due to much earlier/heavier use of the AZ vaccine, yet somehow missed the safety signal until after a number of other countries had already raised the red flag.
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Or turned a blind eye to it. Am I too skeptical?
 
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