so you picked up on this bit but not the explanation from Pogue?
The vaccines | vaxxed boosted unvaxxed? New poll
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so you picked up on this bit but not the explanation from Pogue?
I skimmed through but didn’t see either a direct reply nor a quote, only opinions, and you’re only allowed one of those in here.
Another opinion then, as you've chosen not to give one.
My interpretation of available data is that covid has already killed about 60k people in the UK (about 1:1000 of the population) and has led to longterm illness in many more. That's despite massive efforts at mitigation - which has ruined business and education, damaged health and social care, hurt families, friends, and our ability to make new relationships and has made big chunks of normal life impossible. Furthermore I think there's no reason to believe that the death rate will decline without a successful vaccine (or until we reach herd immunity - ie: kill a lot more people) .
It's my opinion that no vaccine will be approved that kills 1:1000 of the people who takes it. That's based on my knowledge of the clinical trial process and past data from vaccination campaigns.
Do you have a different opinion? Or are we supposed to just guess what ideas/evidence you've got?
If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family Anatidae on our hands.
correct me if I'm wrong but I thought modern and Pfizer used a Pfizer meningitis vax as the placebo?
Astra Zeneca initially used a meningitis vaccine as the placebo in their UK trial, but switched to saline later.
As far as I know: Pfizer, Moderna and Novavax have used saline as the placebo in all their Phase 3 trials.
Lots of assumptions you make from one question of hesitation don’t you think
I’m not fussed anyway, I’ll be taking the vaccine, I just won’t be calling people selfish for showing a little bit of doubt and hesitation while news of the vaccines is still coming out and not everything is known.
Dear Admins,
May I recommend having a pinned post like a FAQ specifically for the vaccines at the top in this vaccine thread that has all the relevant details answered and links to data for convenience? Of course then there is concern of liability that it needs to be updated regularly. I think we can just state "This is accurate as at xxx date. Please check in case of newer updates". I feel the pros outweigh the cons, for the sake of properly educating the public.
You can refer the twitter thread below for more details. Basically govs and organizations like GAVI have subsidised the economic risks of vaccines. E.g. starting mass production of the vaccine, before phase 3 has completed. Which is risky if the phase 3 fails. Total loss on the mass production.
Both Moderna and Pfizer are very extremely effective at preventing disease (up to 95%) and very safe with tolerable side effects like minor pain in the injection area which is common in vaccines.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2034577?query=featured_home
https://www.fda.gov/advisory-commit...mmittee-december-10-2020-meeting-announcement
The only concerns left are
1) Allergies - this is common with vaccines. IINM, FDA is recommending epi pens are available and UK is recommending to focus on those with non severe allergies due to supply constraints.
2) How long will immunity last? We don't know. This is being continuously monitored but booster shots can be administered if required.
3) Will it prevent infection? This is being continuously monitored. We will know by Jan, apparently but preliminary data suggests there may be some benefits to preventing infection.
4) Any long term side effects? Highly unlikely. Side effects normally appear within 6 weeks of injection. This is because vaccines are not like medicines that need to be taken regularly for long periods of time. Vaccines are typically taken in one or two doses. Nothing after that. So if something is going to go wrong, it will go wrong up front. Not after a few years. Also, people have been taking the vaccines since June. By the time you get the vaccine, it will probably be Q2 - Q3 next year. There will have already been a year of data by then. So you can rest assured it will be safe (as far as we know at that point in time) if it is still being offered by then.
Everyone, please correct me if I have made any errors or omissions. Or you can just delete my post if it is totally wrong.
May I recommend having a pinned post like a FAQ specifically for the vaccines at the top in this vaccine thread that has all the relevant details answered and links to data for convenience? Of course then there is concern of liability that it needs to be updated regularly. I think we can just state "This is accurate as at xxx date. Please check in case of newer updates". I feel the pros outweigh the cons, for the sake of properly educating the public.
It's already been mentioned in previous pages. The risks taken to speed up the vaccine are economic risks. Not health/safety risks.
You can refer the twitter thread below for more details. Basically govs and organizations like GAVI have subsidised the economic risks of vaccines. E.g. starting mass production of the vaccine, before phase 3 has completed. Which is risky if the phase 3 fails. Total loss on the mass production.
Both Moderna and Pfizer are very extremely effective at preventing disease (up to 95%) and very safe with tolerable side effects like minor pain in the injection area which is common in vaccines.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2034577?query=featured_home
https://www.fda.gov/advisory-commit...mmittee-december-10-2020-meeting-announcement
The only concerns left are
1) Allergies - this is common with vaccines. IINM, FDA is recommending epi pens are available and UK is recommending to focus on those with non severe allergies due to supply constraints.
2) How long will immunity last? We don't know. This is being continuously monitored but booster shots can be administered if required.
3) Will it prevent infection? This is being continuously monitored. We will know by Jan, apparently but preliminary data suggests there may be some benefits to preventing infection.
4) Any long term side effects? Highly unlikely. Side effects normally appear within 6 weeks of injection. This is because vaccines are not like medicines that need to be taken regularly for long periods of time. Vaccines are typically taken in one or two doses. Nothing after that. So if something is going to go wrong, it will go wrong up front. Not after a few years. Also, people have been taking the vaccines since June. By the time you get the vaccine, it will probably be Q2 - Q3 next year. There will have already been a year of data by then. So you can rest assured it will be safe (as far as we know at that point in time) if it is still being offered by then.
Everyone, please correct me if I have made any errors or omissions. Or you can just delete my post if it is totally wrong.
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It is now being suggested that not only was the UQ vaccine safe but also that the HIV false positive issue wasn't a total show stopper. The risk of decreasing confidence in vaccines is now the stated reason for cancellation. I'm sure it was a consideration but I wonder if it is mainly trying to spin the failure.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-12...accine-uq-trial-cancellation-setback/12973724
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-12...accine-uq-trial-cancellation-setback/12973724
Pretty sure Trump's rejection of the vaccine is going to put literally millions of people off taking it in the US, including some of the older people lined up to get it within weeks.
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Good summary! I think one of the biggest things to add about why a vaccine has been developed so quickly is the contribution of the MERS and SARS vaccination development. That's the bit that made the most sense to my more sceptical friends. They understood that companies were taking on more financial risk because the potential rewards are great, and they understood the government were happy to throw money and scientific support at it, but none of that seemed to explain how it went from a 10 year process to a 1 year process.
The fact that we already had identified the spike protein as the antigenic target from the preclinical trials of these two coronaviruses meant they were almost ready to start phase 1 as soon as they identified the virus. Most of these companies had already developed the vaccine platform that could be easily adapted to incorporate the spike protein / RNA. The fact we were able to move through trials so quickly was because we could make use of unparalleled resources made available, but the fact we were able to start the trials so early was a mixture of good fortune, foresight and a lot of great scientific work done behind the scenes pre-covid.
Then if you come back to this 10-year average, you have obvious exceptions like the Mumps vaccination developed and licensed in just 4 years, by 1 man and a small team, with half of that time taken up by those preclinical trials to develop and validate the vaccine construct. So if you can go from vaccine construct to vaccine licensing in just 2 years when it has only one team applied to the problem, it doesn't seem so crazy to cut that peak trial time in half with so many more teams working on it and volunteers available. What is kind of incredible is that 1 month after identifying it we had sequenced the genome, and 2 months after that multiple companies had already developed multiple vaccine constructs ready to go.
I've found a fascinating (ok, it's only fascinating if you're a geek) description of how these vaccines reduced that initial research phase from a couple of years (minimum) to a couple of weeks. It helps explain why the Moderna/Pfizer vaccines came in with such high efficacy numbers and why people have high hopes of vaccines like Novavax and J&J doing the same.
This video that describes how to quickly make a good spike for the body to learn to attack is excellent
More of the story with links at:
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Thanks both. The Florian Krammer tweets were first shared by Pogue.
I do agree, Brwned, that prior development of vaccines with MERS and SARS did help speed things up as we had already become familiar with the coronavirus as well. Knowing what to look out for and target really helps.
Thank you for sharing!!
New variant in the U.K. according to health secretary. Hopefully vaccines still work
Isn't it very odd for Hancock to be the first to announce this new variant? Can't see anything about it until now.
Really hope this new variant doesn’t affect the effectiveness of the vaccines. Also, makes the decision to open up over Xmas even more stupid.
So is the vaccine going to work still?
Especially without mentioning anything about vaccinations given the obvious panic it's causing.
A post from Reddit
think it's important to note that countries have been reporting new variants for months now
So far there hasn't been any evidence that any of the variants have different symptoms or mortality rates. They all appear to be the same. But some variants do appear to be more contagious
Experts currently don't see any reason why they wouldn't respond to the vaccine, either - It seems like they're similar enough to the main variant to still respond to the vaccine perfectly fine
Edit: Wait, why the downvotes? I'm not trying to downplay to the virus at all. I'm just saying that this specifically is not as big as it first sounds. This new variant likely isn't even brand new - It's just new to the UK
Course they got downvoted
It’s very weird. He seems to want to blame this variant for the rates taking off in London, with zero evidence that this is the case. Presumably to try and take the heat off their own tardiness in treating Dublin like the rest of the UK. At the very least this is disingenuous as feck. At worst, it’s utterly reckless, considering he’s supposed to be encouraging the Uk population to have faith in this new vaccine.
My bad. London. Lived there for 12 years. Born and raised in Dublin (where I live now) Easy mistake for me to make!
Is there any speculation yet on how long the protection from the vaccine may last? Any solid theories?
I've read a couple of studies showing antibodies from natural infection detectable many months later, particularly when the symptoms were at least moderate, and memory cells usually last much longer.. Infection with other coronaviruses give protection for years. The vaccines are likely to provide protection at least as long as natural infection.
So although we can't know for sure until we conduct mass vaccination, while continuing to monitor those who got vaccines in trials, I think there is reason to hope that annual booster shots is the worst case scenario, with medium or long term protection quite possible.
Another unknown is how much each vaccine reduces transmission of the virus. We think it isn't sterilising, but many very successful vaccines aren't. However as, as it seems to hugely reduce symptoms, as an immune reaction builds, it is likely to make vaccinated people much less infectious either through reducing the symptoms like coughing that help transmission or reducing the infectious period or reducing the viral load of infected individuals. Long term monitoring as we mass vaccinate will be required to answer this.
Which all leads to the need for mass vaccination ASAP in the hope of reaching herd immunity (HIT).
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Dublin/London cockup; that’s unforgivable!
In other less important news the moderna vaccine looks to be approved by the FDA this week. The US, where I’m at, has also just ordered a 100m extra doses bringing total orders to 200m. Not sure if that means enough for 100m people or 200m?
Also, the latest I read on the timeline of full vaccine rollout is the end of the Q2 in 2021.
It might be time to look into flights if that’s the case.
edit: added this WaPo article on Moderna vaccine.
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Good Moderna news today, including this bit
Something a bit different from the normal science/statistics. From one of the UK GP sites who are starting to distribute the virus:
Something a bit different from the normal science/statistics. From one of the UK GP sites who are starting to distribute the virus:
If you reach or even get close to HIT it helps a great deal. A sterilising vaccine would be great but there are many highly successful vaccines that aren't sterilising i.e. they don't bind to the pathogen before they infect the cell.
Even if a non-sterilising vaccine doesn't reduce the length of time someone is infectious (and that has been found with other non-sterilising vaccines) or the viral load when infectious (also quite possible) then the reported reduction in symptoms still means transmission will be reduce as coughing and the like is a major driver of transmission of viruses that are primarily transmitted by droplet and aerosol.
Although it appears the front running vaccines aren’t sterilising, the small amount of data available suggests they may still reduce asymptomatic infections and transmission to some degree. I think people have taken the lack of sterilising immunity to mean they have no impact whatsoever on transmission, which seems unlikely to me.
Yeah fair point with the viral load if you’re in contact with someone who has it.
None of that is certain but there are likely to be benefits as there usually are.
Agreed. Fewer infected people coughing will surely make a large difference if nothing else.
Are you bored with your freedom yet?
If we already had it we should be exempt until the very end
It’s strangely normal here now. I was maskless at work, in coffee shops, and at a bar for this first time in months this week. Weird at first but starting to get used to normality again.Agreed. Fewer infected people coughing will surely make a large difference if nothing else.
Are you bored with your freedom yet?
What's the approx timeframe for full vaccinations in Ireland?
I figure I won't travel there until it's been rolled out all over, including even Cork
I figure I won't travel there until it's been rolled out all over, including even Cork
Still not used to the whole country being covid free for over a month, with the single "community transmisson" not really being that as the cleaner caught it from flight crews in quarantine hotels due to the crews not being as strictly quarantined as returning travelers (now sorted allegedly). Luckily the cleaner didn't infect anyone.
I still watch the daily fully expecting community transmission to appear again especially when testing of sewage detects covid even though that could be from previous infections.
Edit: Bollocks - another one today. A driver transporting aircrew. Hopefully it is contained.