I'll get it as soon as it's available for my age group, which will be next summer at best.
If for some reason the government turned around and said my age group was first to go and I could get it next week, I'd wait a few months.
The vaccines | vaxxed boosted unvaxxed? New poll
- Thread starter Badunk
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I'll get it as soon as it's available for my age group, which will be next summer at best.
If for some reason the government turned around and said my age group was first to go and I could get it next week, I'd wait a few months.
I can understand that view. That's actually why I framed the answers the way I did.
I'm assuming that the rollout will be based on risk assessment. Those at less risk from covid (both catching it and death/serious illness) will be getting a vaccine with a better understood risk profile, and more medium-term efficacy data.
I'm also very conscious of the fact that more or less as soon as we start rolling out this year's vaccine shots, they'll need to start planning boosters for next year. It might turn out we don't need them - but I doubt that. We certainly need to know if this winter's Astra Zeneca group can take Novavax next time, or vice versa - and one jab or two. Etc, etc.
Of course, by next winter maybe we'll also have confidence that one or more of the vaccines can stop onwards transmission. Which will change the picture again.
My wife and I are both mid 50s.
I’d expect we’d be 4th or 5th in line to receive a vaccine; after health care workers and other front liners, sick people, healthy 75-90s, 65-75s, then us.
That’s just pure speculation on my part but it sounds reasonable, right?
I’d expect we’d be 4th or 5th in line to receive a vaccine; after health care workers and other front liners, sick people, healthy 75-90s, 65-75s, then us.
That’s just pure speculation on my part but it sounds reasonable, right?
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You're not far off, though there are a few more layers in the priority list as drawn. The real rollout is already expected to look a bit different. They'll start using Pfizer (if approved) as soon as it arrives, which is the first half of December. But the logistics are such that initially they'll probably only be able to ship it to hospitals and it will have to be used in the hospital - which probably means hospital healthcare workers first, and care home staff/residents later.
The principles though are that they want to vaccinate:
- older adults’ resident in a care home and care home workers
- all those 80 years of age and over and health and social care workers
- all those 75 years of age and over
- all those 70 years of age and over
- all those 65 years of age and over
- high-risk adults under 65 years of age
- moderate-risk adults under 65 years of age
- all those 60 years of age and over
- all those 55 years of age and over
- all those 50 years of age and over
- rest of the population (priority to be determined)
https://www.gov.uk/government/publi...e-on-priority-groups-for-covid-19-vaccination
Thanks.
We're in the US so not sure how different it'd be here but the list you provided looks fairly good alright.
We're in the US so not sure how different it'd be here but the list you provided looks fairly good alright.
Sorry abut that - I should have noticed your location setting!
I don't think the US has published an equivalent list as yet. I know from the CDC planning briefing that they put more emphasis on key workers (which will cover other "public facing" groups like teachers, police as well as health/care workers). They've also identified some high risk key workers (like people in meat packing plants) that they want to prioritise. I guess the individual States will have some options about priorities. Maybe the election has delayed the release of updated plans as well.
The broad policy suggested was:
Which doesn't go into a lot of detail as that's a big chunk of people in Phase 2!
I think the details may get left to the States - certainly I've seen Cuomo talking about NY are going to do.
Thanks, that all makes sense. You can understand concerns about the speed with which the vaccines were developed, even if they prove unfounded. Say some side effect did manifest itself- could this potentially be weeks, months, years or even decades down the line? What level of prevalence of a serious side effect is allowable in an authorised vaccine?
Nothing is impossible but from what I have read side effects of vaccines almost always reveal themselves withing 2 months of being given a shot. So long term side-effects aren't really long-term but rather so rare that they are only found when huge numbers of people get the vaccine e.g. something that occurs only once in 1,000,000 times the vaccine is given won't necessarily occur if phase 3 trials of e.g. 40,000 people. What happens when this sort of side-effect is found I'm assuming how serious the illness/disease the vaccine protects us from is a major consideration e.g. you would accept more serious side-effects for an Ebola vaccine than you would for a flu vaccine (or cold vaccines if we ever develop them).
I don't know the specifics (maybe others will know more) but from what I've read responses to rare side effects seem to be one of 4 things i) withdraw the vaccine, ii) accept the risk if the risk of getting the same side effect is great from the illness that the vaccine (e.g. some attenuated flu vaccines slightly increase the risk of GBS but catching flu causes a far higher chance of getting GBS) or iii) you accept the risk of someone getting a serious side effect (e.g. anaphylaxis) when the consequences of controlling the illness are far higher (covid would be an example of this), or iv) don't give the vaccine to at risk groups (elderly, children, immune compromised, people who have had a certain illness e.g. GBS that relates to the side effect within the last 6 months etc).
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What do folks make of the human challenge trials in the UK?
Good discussion on them in the British Medical Journal here.
Good discussion on them in the British Medical Journal here.
While I sympathise with no arguments I think that when necessary I side with the yes argument, with suitable safeguards. If nothing else we might need it to test the 2nd/3rd wave of covid vaccines as (hopefully) natural infection wanes, thus slowing down testing.
Only if I have to for me
Yeah, I have to say I hadn't fully understood the need for the 2nd / 3rd wave vaccines. I understood that not everyone will be able to get a vaccine in 2021 even if all three of the vaccine providers get approval, but I didn't understand quite how much. If you combine together Pfizer's 1.3bn, Moderna's 500m - 1bn and Astra Zeneca's 3bn, best case scenario you'll have 5.3bn manufactured, with 5-20% of that potentially spoiling and double doses bringing you to around possible vaccination for 2.2-2.5bn people. So a little over a third of the adult population, and Fauci confirmed child vaccination is part of the plan, so a quarter of the total population.
The thing I'm not clear on is whether the time and resources we invest in creating these new vaccines couldn't just be reallocated to improving manufacturing and distribution for the three current vaccines. Moderna have said they can do 500m, up to 1bn. Clearly there's room to improve capacity with their current plans. Lonza said they can produce 400m from 4 production plants in the US and Switzerland, and while they could set up another plant or two in Switzerland and Singapore, they aren't planning to.
It's an expensive business but surely the 100s of vaccine trials come with significant expenses too, and much of the expertise being applied there could be better used trying to solve the production challenges for vaccines that we already know work?
The other part of it is that the human challenge trials are happening in the UK in January, when they're aiming for 90 people. Giving the expected spike in infection post-Christmas, and the fact that your chances of getting covid right now are about 1 in 80, it's not clear to me that they wouldn't just be better off doing a normal trial of 7,000 people? I get that there are additional benefits to the intense monitoring but it just seems like the cost / benefit ratio has shifted a lot since they first planned it.
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I will take a vaccine as soon as its approved.
If they get it to the old and vulnerable then it doesn't really matter when the rest of us get it because the death rate will be so insignificant. I suspect sometime towards the end of next year will be when I'm offered it, and that's fine as long as I can take a fecking holiday in the summer.
The three frontrunners all have significant issues. The mRNA products (especially the Pfizer) aren't practical logistically for most of the world - and even in Europe/the US they'll be tough. They have significant short-term side-effects (fever, aches) with lots of people talking about needing the next day off work. Uptake will tumble massively if that turns out to be a common (or even a well publicised!) problem.
Astra Zeneca have a lot of work to do, to convince people that the vaccine is safe and effective. If nothing else, they've got a massive PR issue right now - and any incidents during rollout (related or not, real or not) will again get massive coverage. There's also a potential technical issue with the AZ - if it doesn't give you long-term immunity (3 years plus) it may not be possible to use it as a booster.
We don't know how long any of them protect for. These efficacy reports are talking about the first couple of months or so post vaccination. The results may relate to how good the vaccine is at producing antibodies itself, not to how good it is at training the body to make antibodies next time. Not do we know if they stop transmission.
The world needs a Novavax or a J&J or something to come in. Something easier to distribute. Ideally a single shot.
Do we need challenge trials? To be honest I doubt it at the moment. I'm not sure what their value would be. They have to be done on low risk volunteers - which is no guarantee that their results are transferable.
That said, there's no doubt in my mind that we'll have to ask some of this year's volunteers to try next year's booster before this year's trials are complete. There will be mix and match experiments to do I think - if you take Pfizer this year, what do you take next year etc.
I can also see general trials having to switch to a vaccine 1 v vaccine 2 pattern (rather than using a placebo) soon, and their emphasis shifting to examine transmission etc. That's not just about ethics though, trials needed thousands of volunteers and you have to be realistic about what people will volunteer to do.
Spoke to a microbiologist at work who described one of the vaccines as working thus:
If the virus generic code is analagous to as solid as a filing cabinet, then the "strands" it uses to infect people are like the bits of paper in an open filing cabinet - the little strands of code it sends out. What some vaccines do is mimic the strands of paper, causing an autoimmune response which hopefully protects us when the big old cabinets come through our noses.
Somehow that made me feel more comfortable about taking the vaccines so yea sign me up as soon as possible
The secondary effects (fever etc) to me would be COMFORTING, knowing that your immune system is working correctly - a fever indicates your body telling itself to go into overdrive and produce antibodies in short.
If the virus generic code is analagous to as solid as a filing cabinet, then the "strands" it uses to infect people are like the bits of paper in an open filing cabinet - the little strands of code it sends out. What some vaccines do is mimic the strands of paper, causing an autoimmune response which hopefully protects us when the big old cabinets come through our noses.
Somehow that made me feel more comfortable about taking the vaccines so yea sign me up as soon as possible
The secondary effects (fever etc) to me would be COMFORTING, knowing that your immune system is working correctly - a fever indicates your body telling itself to go into overdrive and produce antibodies in short.
I'm sure it's a small proportion, but I've heard some horror stories about long COVID in otherwise extremely fit and healthy young individuals i.e. even though the death rate will be low, there is still a risk of life changing effects of getting the virus. That's why I'd rather just get the vaccine as soon as I possibly can.
Hmmm, they won't be able to get it to all the vulnerable though. That's not just people with auto-immune diseases and those undergoing cancer treatment etc, it will include pregnant women. We don't know yet if the vaccines will reduce transmission, but they might.
That's when the question comes in - if it was your wife or sister who was pregnant (or your brother having cancer treatment) and taking the vaccine reduced the odds of him/her catching it, would you take the vaccine? What about if it's a woman you work with? What about if it's the man sat next to you on that holiday flight?
Then there's the question of pure bad luck. Some young people have died of it, many others have had after effects, including organ damage, that so far have gone on for months.
I'll do it once I won't have any concerns about the verification process. Looking at the way Russia skipped the whole stage in order to be able to say that they were the first I decided not to partake in the trial. Chances are, it probably won't have any significant side-effects, but when the medical side gets sidelined in order to serve a political one in such a fashion...
I swear, people are more worried about vaccines than they are about inducing copious amounts of hard drugs.
One of my mates used to buy drugs from strangers at parties, yet now is worried the vaccine isn't tested well enough. Get the feck out of here..
One of my mates used to buy drugs from strangers at parties, yet now is worried the vaccine isn't tested well enough. Get the feck out of here..
It will be a very small proportion of course. There's danger in everything, you could die from a whole host of things young, but you probably won't.
I wouldn't worry about when you get it if you're young and healthy, just as long as the old fat and sickly get it first.
From their recent press releases the Moderna vaccine requires -20C (well within the capability of even a home freezer) and will remain stable for 30 days in a 2-8C refrigerator. That's not a big logistical challenge.
Much different to the Pfizer vaccine which requires -80C and ships with it's own self contained freezer. I don't know of any aircraft freezer unit which can go below -70C.
On the side effect side, i have not seen anything to suggest either of them are that bad? It's the AstraZeneca vaccine that needed to change the placebo because of aches and pains risking the blinding process.
Yeah I guess you'd settle for a couple or a few days of feeling rough to be vaccinated. You can see coverage of any rare side effects being magnified given the sheer volume of people set to be taking the vaccines. Just looking at some old meds I was on and it warns of certain side effects experienced by 1 in 10 people, then 1 in 100...Even a 1in 10,000 side effect will be quite a chunk of people with these vaccines. Maybe it's just like the risk of getting run over when you cross the road though I suppose.
I hadn't looked at it that way, but fair point. Although saying that, if you got ripped off on a gramme of coke it was usually glucose or talc or something non-harmful.I might've sold someone a bag of speed for the price of coke back when I went to parties. Huge profit and he came back for more of it.Yeah I guess you'd settle for a couple or a few days of feeling rough to be vaccinated. You can see coverage of any rare side effects being magnified given the sheer volume of people set to be taking the vaccines. Just looking at some old meds I was on and it warns of certain side effects experienced by 1 in 10 people, then 1 in 100...Even a 1in 10,000 side effect will be quite a chunk of people with these vaccines. Maybe it's just like the risk of getting run over when you cross the road though I suppose.
I'm not a drugdealer, mind you
One of a our neighbors (university educated by the way) told me on Saturday that she will wait a decade before getting vaccinated, if at all. She swore to me that laser and shockwave therapy that encourages blood flow around the body, and gargles with a bit of ginger and lemon is enough to keep the virus at bay.
I just nodded politely and walked away when she was done. No point arguing with people like that.
Moderna release their second batch of trial numbers and they are great. 94.1% efficacy and so far no severe covid cases amongst the vaccinated group.
https://investors.modernatx.com/new...primary-efficacy-analysis-phase-3-cove-study/
196 cases - of which 185 were in the placebo group and only 11 in the vaccinated. 31 server cases (including one death) in the placebo, and none in the vaccinated group.
Also working across demographics. From the press release:
Efficacy was consistent across age, race and ethnicity, and gender demographics. The 196 COVID-19 cases included 33 older adults (ages 65+) and 42 participants identifying as being from diverse communities (including 29 Hispanic or LatinX, 6 Black or African Americans, 4 Asian Americans and 3 multiracial participants).
They'll now go to the FDA for emergency approval.
https://investors.modernatx.com/new...primary-efficacy-analysis-phase-3-cove-study/
196 cases - of which 185 were in the placebo group and only 11 in the vaccinated. 31 server cases (including one death) in the placebo, and none in the vaccinated group.
Also working across demographics. From the press release:
Efficacy was consistent across age, race and ethnicity, and gender demographics. The 196 COVID-19 cases included 33 older adults (ages 65+) and 42 participants identifying as being from diverse communities (including 29 Hispanic or LatinX, 6 Black or African Americans, 4 Asian Americans and 3 multiracial participants).
They'll now go to the FDA for emergency approval.
I think I'll be getting vaccinated imminently, probably within 2-4 weeks I'd imagine. Will be pfizer I'd guess, looking at the options.
Will keep you guys updated as I begin my descent into an acute demyelinating disease.
Will keep you guys updated as I begin my descent into an acute demyelinating disease.
But what makes you think you know better? A few headlines you read of scientists you didn't know existed?
I think I'll be getting vaccinated imminently, probably within 2-4 weeks I'd imagine. Will be pfizer I'd guess, looking at the options.
Will keep you guys updated as I begin my descent into an acute demyelinating disease.
“Hi Guys. It’s been a while. I’ll keep this brief because I’m typing with my tongue...”
Again, we need to see the details to interpret properly but that all seems very good indeed.
Don't you think science generally helps us find good answers to difficult questions, or at least better than the ones we tend to invent in our own heads or hear from the man down the street?
Here we go?
vis-a-vis Moderna that is
vis-a-vis Moderna that is
It's quite amazing how all of these vaccines are going to be ready for release at virtually the same time. Science is amazing.
What's also very encouraging is Moderna has 12 other mRNA based vaccines in testing. If this is approved it bodes well for the platform the rest, and others in the future, are being built on.
Sorry, I was being sarcastic.
For the poll, I chose the third option just to be extra secure that I'm getting a safe vaccine. I'm certainly not anti-vax but I would like to be certain of any side effects.
Go on, you first
Go on, you first
If they started at roughly the same time wouldn't you expect them to be ready at roughly the same time?
I hope so from a selfish viewpoint.
I guess they should balance vaccinating those most at risk of bad symptoms against vaccinating age groups where it spreads faster.
Always assuming the follow the scientific advice of course.
Jesus christ
How do you know you shouldn't gargle toilet-water daily to improve dental health?