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

541–550 of 712 posts

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

#541

Post by DennisP »

dragonwriter wrote: post #536
davidhowlett wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the 1918 flu also had the unusual property of killing people in their 20s at a higher rate than the middle aged and old. https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/12/1/05-0979-f3

For much of 1918, a lot of people in their 20s getting the flu were also experiencing trench warfare, which can't be an optimal situation, both in terms of immediate self-care and co-occurring health conditions.

Older people were less vulnerable in the U.S. as well. The problem was that young healthy people were more likely to have an immune system overreaction. This applied to both genders.

(Source: John Barry's The Great Influenza)

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

#542

Post by russholmes »

krona wrote: post #337
wbl wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a credible source? I've heard these claims multiple times and they done seem to be borne out by events or supported by repudiable epidemiologist.

Here is a summary of at least 6 articles on pre existing t-cell immunity. https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3563 Furthermore, I know of at least 3 leading statisticians that hypothesized (very early on) that the variance of infection trends pointed to pre-existing immunity in various populations. The evidence supporting this is mounting.

The BMJ is not a credible source, it is the Daily Mail of medical journals. The author of that article, Peter Doshi, has form:

"I think the first thing we to review is who is Peter Doshi? And why is he so insistent on getting this data?

Peter Doshi received his BA in anthropology from Brown University, MA in East Asian studies from Harvard University, and Ph.D. in history, anthropology, and science, technology and society from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Those would be fine credentials for someone who is going to teach history or anthropology."

https://www.skepticalraptor.com/skepticalraptorblog.php/pete...

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

#543

Post by raverbashing »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #504
cwhiz wrote: post #418

Can someone explain to me why double blind is necessary or useful for a vaccine trial such as this? It seems obvious to me on something like a pain medicine, but on a vaccine it seem a pointless. Is placebo an actual issue with a vaccine? It honestly seems borderline unethical to give people a placebo vaccine.

If you tell people whether they're now vaccinated, they're going to take a lot more risks. You may still have increased risk taking behavior if you don't tell them whether they got the real vaccine or placebo, but it will be equally increased across the experiment and control groups.

And?

Having them expose themselves more to the virus is a "good thing" (though tell them how long should they wait for the immunity to set in)

Yes, with the control group you would have a base for how many people you would have expected to be infected, so there's that, but you "could" get that from other observations

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

#544

Post by macromagnon »

lostlogin wrote: post #452
EpicEng wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But for this disease that's particularly bad because... Doesn't change the fact that, when you're developing a new drug, you want to test it in a way which will cause the least harm. You don't begin trials with those most at risk for obvious reasons. The primary goal of this phase it to asses the safety of the vaccine candidate. I'm also unaware of any disease that isn't more threatening to people in relatively poor…

> I'm also unaware of any disease that isn't more threatening to people in relatively poor health. I had to think a while - sickle cell anaemia and malaria. I’m sure there will be others.

Totally anecdotal but Prodigy of mobb deep had sickle cell and he said many times eating healthier, working out, etc. had a positive impact.

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

#545

Post by samatman »

EpicEng wrote: post #391
ponker wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But for this disease that's particularly bad because Covid has shown to be worst in 55+, obese, comorbidities, etc... which means that the trials on healthy groups are proving very little, since the virus itself is so much weaker on healthy groups.

>But for this disease that's particularly bad because... Doesn't change the fact that, when you're developing a new drug, you want to test it in a way which will cause the least harm. You don't begin trials with those most at risk for obvious reasons. The primary goal of this phase it to asses the safety of the vaccine candidate. I'm also unaware of any disease that isn't more threatening to people in relatively poor…

It's not unheard of.

"Spanish" flu was a notorious example: older people are believed to have had some amount of immunity from old strains, and the cytokine storms which made that strain so deadly are actually a consequence of having an active, robust immune system.

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

#546

Post by michaelmrose »

cookingrobot wrote: post #402
EpicEng wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But for this disease that's particularly bad because... Doesn't change the fact that, when you're developing a new drug, you want to test it in a way which will cause the least harm. You don't begin trials with those most at risk for obvious reasons. The primary goal of this phase it to asses the safety of the vaccine candidate. I'm also unaware of any disease that isn't more threatening to people in relatively poor…

You say it’s “obvious” but it’s the opposite of my intuition. Can you explain the logic a bit more? I would have thought you’d give a risky new drug to the least healthy, most likely to die without it population, to raise the chance of survival from low to unknown.

Even among the 65+ survival is liable to be 90% even if infected and stand a good chance of avoiding the virus entirely even if they must wait a a few more months. Thus the probability of survival waiting isn't low to start with.

The proper calculation would be probability of infection * probability of death in the intervening months before we collect data on the efficacy of various options vs expected outcome if they just take the oxford vaccine now.

The users chance of survival is already quite high in the intervening period and while the benefits of the oxford vaccine are highly hypothetical they are also largely contingent on vaccinating everyone. People are liable to only see IF it works a 30% - 60% effectiveness, lower for some with worse immune systems. The real benefit is decreasing the spread of the virus until it dies out not merely the individuals benefit which will never happen if it turns out it doesn't work.

Worse it may be most apt to kill or harm those who are also most vulnerable to covid.

At worst the patient trades a very good chance of survival for a substantial downside with no upside and a future vaccination with a different vaccine they ought to have waited for.

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

#547

Post by whimsicalism »

raverbashing wrote: post #543
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you tell people whether they're now vaccinated, they're going to take a lot more risks. You may still have increased risk taking behavior if you don't tell them whether they got the real vaccine or placebo, but it will be equally increased across the experiment and control groups.

And? Having them expose themselves more to the virus is a "good thing" (though tell them how long should they wait for the immunity to set in) Yes, with the control group you would have a base for how many people you would have expected to be infected, so there's that, but you "could" get that from other observations

> you "could" get that from other observations

No, if they change their behavior, you couldn't.

Why are so many people commenting when they clearly don't understand knowledge-creation/statistics/methodology?

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

#548

Post by NoodleIncident »

iamatworknow wrote: post #491
Contax wrote: post #475

TIL about the "jab" word in this context (English is not my first language). I thought the author had misspelled "lab".

I'm a native English speaker (American) and have thought it was odd for a few weeks that Reuters in particular likes to use the word "jab" for "vaccination". It's not commonly used that way in the US.

It's a holdover from print news media to use uncommon-but-short synonyms in headlines. There might be some benefit online as well, but since it's an established jargon/vernacular/dialect/etc of English, they probably just continue to use it out of habit.

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

#549

Post by Retric »

kortilla wrote: post #469
Retric wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is not if it’s valuable, the question is if it’s subsided. Farmers producing corn add some value to the process, but in western countries ~100% of their profits are from government subsidies. This does incentivize them to be more efficient, but it also means their constantly looking for a larger handout. In the case of farm subsidies it’s grown to the point of being actively unhealthy both in economic te…

> Without sufficient calories you can’t have an obese population due to physics. Sure you can, you just have starving poor people too.

You don’t get a significant percentage of the population to obese in a famine. Simply maintaining obesity across over 40% of the population takes a lot of energy, let alone morbid obesity numbers.

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

#550

Post by Retric »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #493
Retric wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citation for what? On average your looking at ~90B in net profits from farming, the subsidies however are much harder to track down. Ethanol subsides for example are often excluded as are insurance, tariffs etc.

So, just talking thru the hat were we? As you say, you can't point to support for that statement about '100% of profits'.

Ahh, no it simply wasn’t clear what you where asking about.

There are a lot of ways to slice this up. “Overall agricultural subsidies in 2010 were estimated at $172 billion by a European agricultural industry association; however, the majority of this estimate consists of food stamps and other consumer subsidies, so it is not comparable to the 2005 estimate.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_subsidy#United_St...

One example of this is Americans for example pay 3 billion dollars more for sugar than international market rates. But, only a fraction of that directly ends up in farmers pockets. You can either take the full 3 billion as a government subsidy or exclude most of it. Similarly, propaganda and what’s allowed in food lunch programs gets tricky.

So, I am not endorsing any specific estimate, just saying the total industry profits are approximately the same as the total subsidy. Add up just direct federal subsidies gets you lower numbers especially if you try an exclude state, ethanol, R&D, loans, Education, tax breaks, and other less obvious handouts.

PS: Silly me, I forgot about all the little exceptions in environmental, immigration, labor laws, use of federal lands, etc.

Post reply on HN