Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 712 posts

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

#81

Post by marksomnian »

The_rationalist wrote: post #55
hannob wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a surrogate outcome. "Prompts immune response" means "we hope it prevents infections". It doesn't necessarily mean it will. This is still good news. But it should be put in perspective, this does not automatically translate to "this vaccine will work fine in both young and old". It just means we can have some higher hopes that it will. Only RCT results of the real infections will show if it really works. (RCT fo…

What's RCT? You mean voluntarily injecting the covid on vaccined very young humans (so negligible risk of death) ?

Randomised Controlled Trial - essentially, take a population, give half of them the vaccine, and half a placebo, and study the reaction.

What you're referring to (voluntarily infecting people) are challenge trials, which are also being discussed, but are still somewhat ethically dubious.

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

#82

Post by breakfastduck »

input_sh wrote: post #62
calvinv wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if we're back to normalish by spring next year I think that would be a great outcome, if the messaging to the public would be, buckle down until then I think lockdown complaince could go up

I think you're vastly overestimating our capacity to build enough vaccines and distribute them over the world, as well as dealing with those who will refuse to vaccinate. Even if we had a vaccine ready for the roll-out today, I don't see us going back to normalish until late 2021 at earliest. As with any vaccine, you'd need about 80% of the population to vaccinate in order for herd immunity to kick in. I feel like we…

Overly cautious about the herd immunity stuff here.

We're not going to eliminate the virus completely. That's a given, we should stop aiming for that.

If we get to a point where there's a stable number of daily deaths then we're good. (like we have for literally every single fatal illness.)

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

#83

Post by numpad0 »

calvinv wrote: post #32
erikrothoff wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“The programme is progressing well, (but) we’re not there yet,” Hancock said. Looking good, but still months away from rolling out.

if we're back to normalish by spring next year I think that would be a great outcome, if the messaging to the public would be, buckle down until then I think lockdown complaince could go up

Spring of 2022 is still more than a year away

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

#84

Post by cesarb »

The_rationalist wrote: post #55
hannob wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a surrogate outcome. "Prompts immune response" means "we hope it prevents infections". It doesn't necessarily mean it will. This is still good news. But it should be put in perspective, this does not automatically translate to "this vaccine will work fine in both young and old". It just means we can have some higher hopes that it will. Only RCT results of the real infections will show if it really works. (RCT fo…

What's RCT? You mean voluntarily injecting the covid on vaccined very young humans (so negligible risk of death) ?

Wikipedia tells me RCT is "randomized controlled trial", that thing they are doing where half the volunteers receive the experimental vaccine and half receive a placebo, and they wait to see how many get the disease (and how many get side effects) in each group. I don't think there's any "human challenge study" (in which they deliberately infect the volunteer, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_challenge_study) so far.

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

#85

Post by celticninja »

jlokier wrote: post #18
arethuza wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems fair if they are being expected to rush the development of the vaccine?

It's fair if the degree of disclaiming is proportionate to the need and the pace. They shouldn't be off the hook completely. They should still have to show they have conducted a responsible level of testing and checking for the circumstances, that they are continuing to refine that verification even after widespread deployment, and to motivate that to be done all levels requires some degree of moral hazard remains in…

They are still going through clinical trials its just that getting to that stage has been accelerated.

So this isn't like we are relying on AZ to create it, test it and sign it off. National agencies will ultimately sign off on whether it can be used or not. Given the high profile nature of this vaccine you can be sure that results will be widely studied, and the opportunity to hide results they don't like will be limited given we all know the trials are occurring.

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

#86

Post by uxcolumbo »

soulofmischief wrote: post #26
henearkr wrote: 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).

> 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.

How so?

World War Z

Walking Dead

Shawn of the Dead *

28 Days Later

The Last of Us

What's worse than the above?

* (ok maybe not this one)

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

#87

Post by lukevdp »

The_rationalist wrote: post #55
hannob wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a surrogate outcome. "Prompts immune response" means "we hope it prevents infections". It doesn't necessarily mean it will. This is still good news. But it should be put in perspective, this does not automatically translate to "this vaccine will work fine in both young and old". It just means we can have some higher hopes that it will. Only RCT results of the real infections will show if it really works. (RCT fo…

What's RCT? You mean voluntarily injecting the covid on vaccined very young humans (so negligible risk of death) ?

RCT = randomised controlled trial - a trial where some test subjects are given the vaccine and some are given the vaccine, then you follow the subjects and see which ones get COVID and how bad.

There are already a bunch of vaccines going through this process.

Challenge trials is where you purposefully infect subjects. TheY are highlY controversial but according to Oxford, would speed up the research and they are planning to do one.

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

#88

Post by jlokier »

cesarb wrote: post #84
The_rationalist wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's RCT? You mean voluntarily injecting the covid on vaccined very young humans (so negligible risk of death) ?

Wikipedia tells me RCT is "randomized controlled trial", that thing they are doing where half the volunteers receive the experimental vaccine and half receive a placebo, and they wait to see how many get the disease (and how many get side effects) in each group. I don't think there's any "human challenge study" (in which they deliberately infect the volunteer, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_challenge_study ) so…

There was a human challenge trial announced a few days ago. I.e. people are volunteering to be infected with the virus in an RCT.

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

#89

Post by [deleted] »

The_rationalist wrote: post #55
hannob wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a surrogate outcome. "Prompts immune response" means "we hope it prevents infections". It doesn't necessarily mean it will. This is still good news. But it should be put in perspective, this does not automatically translate to "this vaccine will work fine in both young and old". It just means we can have some higher hopes that it will. Only RCT results of the real infections will show if it really works. (RCT fo…

What's RCT? You mean voluntarily injecting the covid on vaccined very young humans (so negligible risk of death) ?

[deleted]

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

#90

Post by impendia »

input_sh wrote: post #62
calvinv wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if we're back to normalish by spring next year I think that would be a great outcome, if the messaging to the public would be, buckle down until then I think lockdown complaince could go up

I think you're vastly overestimating our capacity to build enough vaccines and distribute them over the world, as well as dealing with those who will refuse to vaccinate. Even if we had a vaccine ready for the roll-out today, I don't see us going back to normalish until late 2021 at earliest. As with any vaccine, you'd need about 80% of the population to vaccinate in order for herd immunity to kick in. I feel like we…

Various experts are predicting that the winter will be quite bad. See for example:

https://covid19.healthdata.org/global?view=infections-testin...

https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america?view...

But notice, in the latter chart, that in the US the number of infections is predicted to peak in January and then start going down. It seems plausible that by March, we'll achieve some level of herd immunity, relative to the precautions that are currently being taken. We might have a situation like Europe over this pas summer, with small numbers of cases until a second spike in Fall/Winter 2021. That would buy us the spring and summer to roll out a vaccine.

Of course, I'm far from sure that this is what will happen -- but it certainly seems plausible to me.

Post reply on HN