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

reuters.com

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

#111
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…

Pfizer is already mass producing their vaccine and are saying they’ll have 100 million doses available this year and are targeting 1.3 billion next year.

The US has five million people who tested positive and have recovered. Likely also another 30-50 million who were never tested because their symptoms were to minor. And another 66-165 million who have cross reactive T-cells.

Some researchers have concluded that the herd immunity threshold for sars-cov-2 could be as low as 10% or as high as 50%. I don’t think anyone sees it as high as 80%.

https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3563

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

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Those charts are already inaccurate. I wouldn't rely on them.

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

#113
post #63
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So studies of other coronaviruses show immunity lasted 6-12 months. We’re a but early to see mass reinfections. That said, my guess would be normal reinfections would be less severe, more like a cold. There have been some severe reinfections but any reinfection under six months suggests something atypical in the immune response. Also SARS-Cov-1 produced a longer immune response so that may happen here. But lifelong s…

Studies also show that the immunity for original SARS (the close relative) lasts many years.

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

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Given the low fatality rate for COVID, wouldn't you just want to concentrate vaccination on those most at risk? i.e. the elderly, people with underlying conditions etc. You don't need to eradicate the virus, just stop it affecting the most vulnerable. Everybody else can then carry on as normal (albeit with a slight chance of getting a nasty flu-like illness).

Vaccination is not 100% (more like 50%) effective and will really only help if we achieve herd immunity.

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

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The statistics are in the making, and researchers discover more illness mechanisms each day. As I said, we are in the presence of a huge risk and there is no "reassuring numbers" anywhere to counterbalance that. As one reference on the risks I'm speaking of, here is an article about the action of the virus on the nerve cells: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-we-know-so-f... By the way, between "relying…

Suicide, abuse/trauma, avoided medical treatments, drug and alcohol addictions, and depression have all been seen to increase since we first had lockdowns. There is no safe solution, it's a decision between protecting the 0.5% old, obese, and sick or the 99.5%

The fact that catching the COVID should be avoided instead of looked for is really obvious.

How to avoid it is the real discussion.

I could avoid it easily until now because everybody wears a mask here.

In some cases or in some countries, this is not possible, or too much people are infected already, and lockdown becomes the best solution.

Nobody is saying that lockdown is the only solution in every case, and absolutely nobody is even thinking that lockdown is making people happy.

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

#118
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

8 weeks certainly shouldn't be classified as 'long term'. Long term health effect claims are being made all over the show - if this is the measure that is outrageous reporting. Most people would worry about 'long term health effects' as they'd usually assume that it's going to go on for years.

Yeah, last time I was sick I had the flu. I had lingering effects for around 8-10 weeks after. Eventually I had to go to hospital to get checked. I feel a lot of Covid effects are being massively overblown because people aren't aware that other more common viruses that we don't worry about can have these "long term" effects as well.

People aren't worried about 8-10 weeks of lingering effects.

Those 4 week and 8 week statistics are part of an attempt to understand what's going on. It doesn't mean 8 weeks is considered long covid.

They are worried about effects where people got it months ago and are still disabled from it. Things like still struggling to walk upstairs 6 months after getting covid.

And that young, fit people are reporting it, not just "old".

The worry is that it doesn't appear to be getting better for them yet. The greatest worry is that people who get it might never recover, or might take years to recover. We can't know yet.

Flu and other viruses affect some people that way, but it's a small number of unlucky people. The worry is that the number affected by long covid in this way are a much larger number of people.

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

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

> (like we have for literally every single fatal illness)

Smallpox. And if you consider within the borders of a given country, a dozen others (polio, measles, mumps, rubella, chickenpox).

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

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Given the low fatality rate for COVID, wouldn't you just want to concentrate vaccination on those most at risk? i.e. the elderly, people with underlying conditions etc. You don't need to eradicate the virus, just stop it affecting the most vulnerable. Everybody else can then carry on as normal (albeit with a slight chance of getting a nasty flu-like illness).

There some risk of permanent or long lasting damage even if you do not die from the virus. (So it is more risky than just a nasty flu).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Covid

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