Live data from Hacker News

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

reuters.com

511–520 of 712 posts

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

#511
post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would tabloid glamour models be excluded?

Vaccines often cause a minor cosmetic bump. If you see people with a triangle of bumps on their shoulder for example they have received a common vaccine for healthcare workers. And the smallpox one can leave an even bigger scar. I suppose they don't want the liability for that which could impact the model's income

Tabloid glamour models obviously aren't excluded, the posters joke was a reference to this

> excluded groups on the trial (page 3,

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

#512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yeah, that's for sure. The idea that there's a pretty decent chance that I've been vaccinated already which means I don't have to wait for a vaccine is great. My life can begin to go back to normal potentially months before it otherwise would.

>My life can begin to go back to normal potentially months before it otherwise would. Howso? Socialization is a multi-party dynamic. Folks might not care/believe you if you state 'I'm vaccinated' until it's widely accepted.

I'd assume that one would be socializing with the same groups of friends/family that they had pre-COVID. With that in mind, wouldn't OP have already established a foundation of trust within those groups? Maybe this sounds naive, but why have friends if they're not capable of trusting you?

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

#513
post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering all the excluded groups on the trial (page 3, kids, 55+, obese, weak immune system, a lot more), it's a lot of exclusions, how does one get from results on a study like this to declaring the vaccine safe for general use?

Maybe a stupid question, but do we need to vaccinate everyone? I remember reading that heard immunity is 70% or something - so could we get away with leaving the people out that it wasn’t tested on?

Depends what you mean by "need". Need for what?

Each extra person getting vaccinated adds protection, both for that person and the larger society.

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

#514
post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you please stop posting flamebait to HN and not use the site primarily for ideological battle? We ban accounts that do those things and have already had to ask you a few times. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I’m genuinely surprised.. Does this comment really read as flamebait? The article is about vaccines. A vaccine has to be administered to everyone to work. But I’m very skeptical that it’s actually going to happen given the way our medical system works here. So, I predict that there’s a good chance we won’t get herd immunity. I just don’t see how that’s flamebait. It’s more, known facts and extrapolation.

Sure it does. This may be a case of "objects in the rear view mirror are larger than they appear", i.e. people underestimate how provocative their posts are by at least 10x.

US healthcare differences are a classic flamewar topic and nationalistic flamewar is particularly ugly and pointless. Your comment wasn't thoughtful/substantive, it was snarky/hyperbolic. Ergo flamebait.

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

#515
post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering all the excluded groups on the trial (page 3, kids, 55+, obese, weak immune system, a lot more), it's a lot of exclusions, how does one get from results on a study like this to declaring the vaccine safe for general use?

"The purpose of this study is to text a new vaccine against COVID-19 in healthy volunteers. So I am assuming this is the control group.

This is a combined phase 1/2 trial. It tests that the vaccine doesn't hurt or kill people too much, and that it has some immune system effect.

After that a phase 3 study is done on tens of thousands of people from all possible demographics.

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

#516

I'm in the trial. Here's the participant information sheet, in case anyone's curious: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WB5QPmECchlThnem9wcX0PDaKQW...

I think this is the apex of the HN effect - usually it's finding a world expert answering your question ... but we can beat that :-) And thank you for volunteering.

It's really a special place in the internet.

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

#517

I'm in the trial. It's really exciting, not least because form a purely selfish point of view, I might be immune already! ...or not. But it's exciting either way! AMA?

Do you get to know, at the end of trial, in which group you were?

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

#518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is also how criminal mobs operate, in terms of protection money, extortion, ransom, etc. The underlying economic principle is the same ("gee, sure would be a shame if this expensive thing X were to break..."). Beware of relying on this as the only reason to justify the cost. Hopefully there is some other significant differentiating characteristic or attribute to justify this state of affairs between society and…

This is not a good argument. We are talking about a company providing a service. They might not have invented the vaccine but they are providing the means to bring it from proof of concept into mass production. The commenter seemed to think that this isn't worth money. I argue that you get quite a bang for the buck.

It's not an "argument" per se, as in whether we should or shouldn't pay the pharma companies. Of course we should pay pharma for this for COVID, and of course it is "worth it." There is no argument (from me at least) about that tactical decision.

My larger point is that for-profit pharma/healthcare is not a healthy marketplace (... or at best, it's an immature one). In the not-so-distant past (in America, up until the Civil War or thereabouts), firefighting was mostly privatized (meaning not government-run) [0], and brigades would compete (literally sometimes fighting in the streets, covering the hydrant to impede rival brigades, etc.) to claim the prize of the insurance payout for saving a building [1], which doesn't really serve the interests of the victims of fires.

I think the incentives of for-profit firefighters are not all that dissimilar from the incentives of modern pharma companies today (i.e. pay us to save your building from this fire, vs pay us to research this vaccine), and I would hope to evolve this pharma industry and this marketplace (of "demand" for life/health, vs "supply" of pharma research and resources) into something more mature and with fewer perverse incentives in the long-run.

---

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_firefighting#United...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_firefighting#Modern...

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

#519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they can and it will make them a ton of money. The laws need to change.

But, for instance - public money is used to build roads, yet companies that build them make money in the process. There is no state-owned road building company. What's the difference here?

My village has their own road building and repairing department--mostly used for repairing. It's called the department of public works. We have our own utility company too. Both of those end up being cheaper than the having private companies do it.
Post reply on HN