Can we make the poll results public so I can see who the weirdo anti-vaxxers are?
The vaccines | vaxxed boosted unvaxxed? New poll
- Thread starter Badunk
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I didn’t know that, I thought it just reduced symptoms once caught
It is a vaccine not a paracetamol.
That is the same for all vaccines. Every year when I get the flu vaccine has been the same for the 11 years I've been getting it.
One or more of the vaccine trials reported that of the few who got coved after getting the vaccine nobody got severe symptoms.
Well technically we know that it is highly protective against you catching the disease, not the infection.
Really. I have had the flu vaccine at the GP surgery and it is - in, sleeve up, prick and out.
Pedantry is a way of life for you, isn't it?
However, if you don't get covid you can't pass it on and on average if you get covid and don't have severe symptoms there is a good chance that you will be less infectious (viral load) and for a shorter period of time. As airborne transmission seems to be by far the most common way of transmitting the virus so fewer symptoms such as coughing are also likely to reduce r.
Sorry I thought people in the trials still caught COVID
I haven't had it in the UK but here in Australia every vaccination is meant to be followed by a 15 minute observation period. I've had this at the GP, a workplace flu clinic and at the Chemists this year.
It is primarily monitoring for anaphalaxis I think.
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Clearly it's an important distinction to make because people like @Zlatan 7 see people describing it as being protective of "the virus" as being a denial of what the vaccine actually does. Which was exactly the context of the point I was following on from. So no it's not needless pedantry but a clarification on a specific point that was being directly questioned. I would agree with you that Zlatan's point is pedantic, though, when it's clear what Buster is saying. Thanks for the weirdly personal jibe though.
I had it at a Lloyds Pharmacy this year and they asked me to stay around "somewhere" just in case of anaphylactic shock. As it was in a Sainsburys I just wandered off around the shop. I think people have got blasé about the flu vaccine, particularly if you've had the same version before. The 15 minutes, just in case, remains pretty standard advice for first-timers though.
Incidentally, on the vaccine trial I'm on, they kept us there for half an hour of monitoring after our jabs. Mostly spent eating biscuits, or chatting to the staff, but including a temperature, blood pressure, heart rate, pulse O2 test to see they haven't moved much since you got tested pre-jab.
It’s not unusual for a MAA to be submitted to different authorities on different dates but that’s not because the company decides to prioritise one over another. It tends to be because the content of the submissions vary and some elements can be generated quicker than others. For example, some regulators insist on a cut of data with a minimum number of subjects from their region. Or expert reports from local experts. And all the added complexity takes time.
Apart from anything else, it makes no financial sense for a company to prioritise the UK application over the EU (which is a bigger market) if there was ever any option to do the opposite.
None of which is to say that I think the MHRA cut corners. They have a good reputation and are as rigorous as any of the others. But it does seem as though the UK submission must have been a little less complex than what was required by the FDA/EMEA. And that may well turn out to have been a more sensible approach. Time is of the essence here, after all.
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In the UK its just no driving for 15 minutes post-jab for the flu. Mainly though we just ask if there is a severe allergy to eggs. With the covid vaccine I think there will be a 15 minute clinical observation period post-jab which makes thinks trickier as part of the flu vaccine in primary care here is the quick in-and-out system, we've not got that much trained staff in the UK for primary care vaccine programmes.
AFAIK, they are the only ones who did PCR-testing of their subjects rather than relying on reports of symptoms from them.
We are just asked to sit in the waiting-room for 15 mins in case we keel over. Or if you get it at the chemist hang around at the counter for 15 mins if you lose the fight for the only chair.
Note: 25 mins was a typo - 15 mins it should have read.
Is it strange that there is 5 or 6 different versions of a vaccine for Covid? As in, is this the case for other vaccines/illnesses too?
It just goes to show how much money rules pharmaceutical companies because, given this is a worldwide pandemic, you'd have thought the right thing to do is they all just develop the best version I as many quantities as possible and all charge the same for the vaccine, perhaps giving the creator a cut for allowing them to produce their vaccine.
With their being a few versions, the chance of one having less succes or potential long term effects, why not just have all the companies mass producing the safest one? Or has that not been established? An example of this is the Pfizer vaccine that seems hard to store st the right temperature in certain settings. Why not just develop the vaccines that are going to be easier to distribute? Surely this all comes down to greed.
Can it even be proven if any have long term effects on people?
It just goes to show how much money rules pharmaceutical companies because, given this is a worldwide pandemic, you'd have thought the right thing to do is they all just develop the best version I as many quantities as possible and all charge the same for the vaccine, perhaps giving the creator a cut for allowing them to produce their vaccine.
With their being a few versions, the chance of one having less succes or potential long term effects, why not just have all the companies mass producing the safest one? Or has that not been established? An example of this is the Pfizer vaccine that seems hard to store st the right temperature in certain settings. Why not just develop the vaccines that are going to be easier to distribute? Surely this all comes down to greed.
Can it even be proven if any have long term effects on people?
you read wrong
there is provision within the EU for individual countries to approve medicines individually in times of crisis.
MHRA would have been free to approve the pfizer vaccine had we still been in the EU
How can anyone know what is going to be the best version of a vaccine for some quite unknown disease?
These aren’t only different vaccines, these are also very different technologies. Moderna and Pfizer are using RNA technology, Oxford is using some chimpanzee modified virus I believe, while some company in China is using deactivated covid virus. Very different approaches, all with pros and cons, developed in companies who have different expertise.
The only way to develop the best possible vaccine is to develop many of them, and to test them finding their strengths and weaknesses, and gradually improving the best ones.
The thing is, its about risk assessment. Yes there COULD be some side effects of the vaccine but there’s been a large enough test group to show that’s very unlikely. However, should you not have the vaccine, there’s definitely evidence to suggest you might die of Covid. Covid is the threat currently and the vaccine is the prevention. Not taking the prevention because you think, yet have zero evidence, that it’s the threat is baffling to me.
Genuinely just good news and I can’t believe that there might be something resembling normality coming soon if all goes well. Little bit emotional at the prospect.
It's not strange to have more than one version of a vaccine but it is strange to have so many. Part of the reason we have so many is there was a big pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but mostly it's because it's a novel virus that needed to be responded to in rapid time. There was no reason to believe that Novavax would work any better than AstraZeneca's vaccine before anyone started the trials, and by the time we had results from human trials there were already over a hundred vaccine candidates in the pipeline.
Right now there's 41 vaccines in phase 1, 17 in phase 2, 13 in phase 3 and 7 in the same stage as Pfizer. There will be a question for some the vaccines in phase 1 whether it's worth moving ahead with the more expensive human trials, now that we know highly effective vaccines arlready exist. All 30 of the companies that are currently in phase 2 and 3 currently didn't know that and until the results were collected and published, there was no reason to believe anyone else's vaccine was better than theirs.
So then it gets onto the question of what does it mean to be better? The main thing they're being judged upon is their efficacy in preventing severe symptoms. That's what the regulators instructed them to focus on and that's what the headline figures have been reporting. We know Pfizer and Moderna are really good at that, Astra Zeneca are also good but it's not clear how good just yet.
Next they're being judged upon their ability to prevent all symptoms, and ideally prevent infection. All companies have tested people if they report symptoms, so we should capture the majority of that first part, but few companies (Astra Zeneca being one) have tested people irrespective of symptoms. Doing regular PCR tests is resource-intensive and as it wasn't required by the regulators to secure approval, most companies have went with the approach of testing for antibodies a few months down the line to check how much it prevents infection.
Somewhere in between those two aspects is the most important remaining practical question: how much does it prevent transmission of the virus? If you aren't infected you can't transmit it, but even if you are infected it is known that some people are less infectious than others. Generally it's thought that asymptomatic transmission is lower than symptomatic transmission, so if these vaccines are highly effective at limiting the symptoms then they will limit transmission. But I don't think anyone has reported any figures on that. Just vague, generally positive statements.
Then the final medical assessment is about its safety profile. What side effects do they have, do they particularly effect some groups more than others, etc. Then you move onto practical considerations like: how much does it cost, how easily is it manufactured, what is the current production capacity, what are the storage and distribution requirements, how many doses are required.
In some senses we know more about those practical considerations than the medical ones. Even after huge trials we still don't know which is the "best" vaccine because it depends on how much weight you apply to each of those medical factors, and because we don't have data for some of those medical factors. That's mostly due to the pace of development but generally it's completely normal to have multiple treatments for a particular disease. If you want to avoid getting malaria for example, you're given a few choices and advised on how effective they are, how suitable they are for someone with your demographic and medical profile, what side effects come with them and how much they cost. You can get the doctor to recommend one but ultimately you can choose one of them.
All of that isn't because pharma companies are greedy but because developing medicine is hard. It's very rare you find something that not only prevents disease but prevents infection, comes with no notable side effects, is equally safe for all people, is easily and cheaply manufactured and stored, and can be done in a single dose.
Vaccines are the best method we've ever invented that do fit most of those medical criteria: they're much safer than most medical treatments, and they're much more effective. Primarily that's because they're forced to go through these massive trials to ensure both of those things. However many vaccines that we develop don't do so well on the practical side of things, at least on the first iteration. They can be hard to manufacture, difficult to transport and store, or impossible to do in just one dose. Which is why even for diseases that we have highly effective vaccines for, decade after decade some companies try to develop new ones that are more practical, while some aim for fewer side effects or increased efficacy.
That's the stage that Novavax and others are at right now. Just because one exists already that does exceptionally well on at least one of those dimensions doesn't mean that it will be better than theirs on all dimensions, and on at least one dimension Novavax is theoretically better: it is adminstered as a single dose. Other vaccines coming down the pipeline might be far better at reducing transmission than any of the current ones. Some existing manufacturing plants are able to create some kinds of vaccines and not others, so even if we re-focused all of our efforts on just Pfizer, we wouldn't be using the maximum production capacity overall and the growth in Pfizer production wouldn't balance that out. Lots of other reasons too.
So essentially no, it's not all driven by greed. They've worked exceptionally quickly and effectively so far and criticising them for how they've gone about things is a bit unfair at this point. Profit motivated them to develop the vaccines but there are many legitimate reasons to continue developing the vaccines.
There are different vaccines sure but most of them work through the basic principle of using the spike S protein of the virus as the immunogen.
So surely they're more similar than people think, just different ways of accomplishing it.
So surely they're more similar than people think, just different ways of accomplishing it.
Thanks for the informative post, saves people like me, as you put it so nicely earlier asking questions bringing it out the caf comedians who already know everything
Yet very different in many ways too. Which means we’re going to see variable efficacy, side effects and issues around storage and distribution. Not to mention at least a few of them that will end up simply not being good enough. So, obviously, deciding to put all our eggs in one basket, a few months ago, would have been absolute lunacy.
Having said all that, we could end up with one vaccine that is head and shoulders better than all the others that becomes first choice all over the world. That was never going to happen this quickly though.
If a vaccine was given to NHS workers and carers that stops you becoming really ill from the virus but you can still become infected and transmit , even to a much lesser degree than being unvaccinated then surely masks , ppe, social distancing and other measures would have to remain in place . Whereas if a vaccine is developed that prevents transmission as well as preventing serious illness we will see the end of such measures.
I saw an interview with the CEO of Novavax who said their vaccine targeted covid in the lungs and the sinuses that in animal was sterilising.
Hope he is right and it translates to humans.
Hope he is right and it translates to humans.
Just to correct the detail there. Novavax is a two dose 3-weeks-apart vaccine. I think the only single shot vaccine in Phase 3 is the Johnson and Johnson.
Novavax currently has excellent Phase 1/2 data - better than the mRNA vaccines at producing antibodies. It also has the best animal "challenge test" data, with a test in macaque monkeys that showed it blocked transmission as well as disease. It's a fridge stored vaccine.
Phase 3 is underway, but until it reports no one will know how good it is. Anecdotally, the people running Phase 3 in the UK are pleased with how few side-effects and issues they're seeing, despite it including lots of 60+ and people on other medications. If it works, they may be able to convert it into a combined flu/covid jab - and they're trialling it in some people, with both being given in the same session at the moment.
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Absolutely. The only time a vaccine can cause us to change our behaviour will be after the elderly have been vaccinated. Assuming the vaccine is as effective as hoped, that could bring the overall mortality down to a level that is not far off flu. Which would kick off some very interesting public health discussions.
This is what I was trying to get at but was told it’s a vaccine not a paracetamol so I guess people will be dropping their guard a lot with regards to social distancing and other measures
As much as I want to see care workers and NHS protected I also want to see them vaccinated so they can`t transmit so hospitals and care homes become easier environments to control . I hope that they aren`t vaccinated with an unproven, rushed vaccine then unable to be then given a far more efficient one that may be only months away . It could be just the way the UK have bumbled through this that makes me wary of us being the first and only ones to approve so far. Fingers crossed we get it right, time will tell.
I know where you are coming from and I am in agreement . I am all for vaccination and getting life back on track but I am also wary of our leaders decisions. Don`t trust Hancock one bit.
Whatever they get won’t be “unproven “. Even allowing for the way this has been fast-tracked I would be 100% confident that the MHRA made certain that the vaccine has been proven to be safe and effective.
Sorry, badly worded, I don`t doubt for a minute it will be proven but meant to try and say not the best it could be.
Ok thanks for the explanation. So, theoretically, if one vaccine turns out to be everything we need it to be, but we needed far quicker production, would rival companies ditch their vaccine to help develop greater quantities of the better vaccine to meet demand? Or are you effectively saying that they are so far down the line in their vaccine that they simply need to recoup money now?
I understand what you're saying that they all acted in everybody's best interest in developing a vaccine quickly. But would they/ could they help develop a better vaccine if it was practically the perfect vaccine and greater quantities were needed? In such an instance, would the company that created the vaccine give others access to help out?
Another question is, say five years down the line it is shown that this will need and annual vaccine like the flu, is it likely by that point we would then only be using the vaccine that proves to be the best and the others will then be redundant?
I don't have any strong feeling either way, I'm just asking this more out of interest and I'm just relieved there are vaccines on the way.