Live data from Hacker News

Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

reuters.com

21–30 of 712 posts

Re: Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

#21

OK, someone tell me why this isn't the good news it sounds like

It is good news, but it's not earth shattering. This vaccine produced an immune response (the the vaccine antigen), which many of the other candidates have as well. The real question is, will it prevent infection? Those are two different questions.

Re: Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

#22

This article reinforces that herd immunity between young healthy people would have been the best solution. Our old are going to get sick from vaccines, so the young are going to get it anyway. Next year under 50 year olds will line up for their vaccine. Meanwhile 1.5 years worth of old, obese, and sick people will have died from coronavirus. Wouldn't it have been better if healthy kids and adults caught it in q2 2020…

Given that immunity from infection is currently questionable your suggestion doesn't make sense. The reason the findings mentioned in this article are important is because the immune response seems to be stronger than that seen in people that have been infected and recovered. So this vaccine would be better at creating herd immunity than just allowing everyone to get infected. At the same time vaccinations will have a reduced impact on people than actually catching the virus would.

There is a difference between the level of illness experienced by those who are vaccinated Vs those who get infected, so more old people will die as a result of infection than would die as a result of vaccination.

So no, it would not be better for healthy adults and kids to get it in Q2 2020. Also how do you propose that you only infect the healthy adults and kids?

Re: Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

#23
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This IS good news. Now (soon, hopefully) people can acquire immunity through a vaccine, instead of through a virus that leaves long-lasting damage to the body (in particular, but not limited to, the brain).

As well as acquiring immunity without being infectious. However, the efficacy of this vaccine (and all the other candidates) still needs to be clarified - ie is it like a measles vaccination (~90% efficacy) or the flu vaccines (~ 25% - 50% I believe).

For the FDA to even consider an emergency use authorization, they have put the following requirements:

- Efficacy of at least 60%

- Lower bound of efficacy (confidence interval) >= 30%

- Minimum safety data for at least one or two months post vaccination (I don't remember if it's one or two)

- At least five severe cases in the control arm

- Requirements for the trials to go on even if efficacy is found for an additional year after the trial end (for most of the trials, this means two years in total)

Re: Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

#24

This article reinforces that herd immunity between young healthy people would have been the best solution. Our old are going to get sick from vaccines, so the young are going to get it anyway. Next year under 50 year olds will line up for their vaccine. Meanwhile 1.5 years worth of old, obese, and sick people will have died from coronavirus. Wouldn't it have been better if healthy kids and adults caught it in q2 2020…

Why would old people get sick from the vaccine?

If we let everyone get it in Q2 2020, millions would have died when we ran out of ventilators.

Re: Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

#26
post #5

OK, someone tell me why this isn't the good news it sounds like

This IS good news. Now (soon, hopefully) people can acquire immunity through a vaccine, instead of through a virus that leaves long-lasting damage to the body (in particular, but not limited to, the brain).

> in particular, but not limited to, the brain

Judging from our response to Covid-19, if this had actually been the collectively-feared zombie virus, the pandemic would have been far worse than any fictional account has manage to capture so far.

Re: Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

#27

This article reinforces that herd immunity between young healthy people would have been the best solution. Our old are going to get sick from vaccines, so the young are going to get it anyway. Next year under 50 year olds will line up for their vaccine. Meanwhile 1.5 years worth of old, obese, and sick people will have died from coronavirus. Wouldn't it have been better if healthy kids and adults caught it in q2 2020…

It’s super easy to make those decisions as an abstract mathematical problem. It is another when someone puts your family in front of you and asks you to roll the dice.

As an abstract mathematical problem if somehow herd immunity could be achieved without a vaccine then it sounds like a fine idea. The fact is that immunity after infection does not last long enough to achieve significant enough immunity to get to a useful herd immunity. This of course is what all the medical experts understand which is why Europe is going through lockdowns and Putin has been hiding in a bunker. There have been strict lockdowns in China and most other major governments have taken some sort of similar response, even Sweden eventually. There is almost nothing all of these governments have ever agreed on so universally.

Don’t expect a reply justifying my comment on HN with robust data, I have better things to do with my time like play in a park.

Re: Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

#28

This article reinforces that herd immunity between young healthy people would have been the best solution. Our old are going to get sick from vaccines, so the young are going to get it anyway. Next year under 50 year olds will line up for their vaccine. Meanwhile 1.5 years worth of old, obese, and sick people will have died from coronavirus. Wouldn't it have been better if healthy kids and adults caught it in q2 2020…

This is a virus with bad long-term effects on the body. Not a good idea to catch it just to get immune.

Nobody knows its long term effect on the body. Especially if you were asymptomatic.

Re: Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

#29

OK, someone tell me why this isn't the good news it sounds like

It is good news if true, but we are rushing the trials of a new vaccine and then potentially going to give it to a large number of people. What if the vaccine has long term negative effects?

While long-term side effects are theoretically possible with any treatment, this vaccine is based on a platform that's been safety-tested repeatedly in experiment vaccines for prostate cancer, MERS, malaria, tuberculosis, influenza and chikungunya virus, so there's a lot of past safety data. In addition because the main effect of the vaccine is to trigger a strong immune response, you would typically see side effects in the short term related to that initial response (things like Guillain-Barré syndrome or Transverse myelitis), not over the long term as the effect wanes.

Re: Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

#30

This article reinforces that herd immunity between young healthy people would have been the best solution. Our old are going to get sick from vaccines, so the young are going to get it anyway. Next year under 50 year olds will line up for their vaccine. Meanwhile 1.5 years worth of old, obese, and sick people will have died from coronavirus. Wouldn't it have been better if healthy kids and adults caught it in q2 2020…

Given that immunity from infection is currently questionable your suggestion doesn't make sense. The reason the findings mentioned in this article are important is because the immune response seems to be stronger than that seen in people that have been infected and recovered. So this vaccine would be better at creating herd immunity than just allowing everyone to get infected. At the same time vaccinations will have…

How is immunity from infection questionable? We had 43 million cases and about a dozen or so reinfections. Not sure if confirmed reinfections reach the double digits yet.
Post reply on HN