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

reuters.com

581–590 of 712 posts

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

#581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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

Because (a) we want to understand. and (b) reasonable experts differ on what constitutes proper methodology which is constantly being improved.

Surely the effect size of a useful vaccine is large enough that modified behaviour of the vaccinated does not matter at all. We're not looking for a small incremental improvement in contraction rate of the virus here, we're looking for a very large percentage of those who have been administered the vaccine not getting covid. Yeah it could change behaviour but so what? How is that going to bias the result to suggest it isn't working if it is? (or vice-versa)

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

#582

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.

We're talking about a vaccine here, not a cure.

This is preventative medecine, as far as I know, most vaccines cannot be given to someone who already has the disease.

So it makes sense to target healthy people first, to test out the vaccine side effects, make sure there aren't many or bad ones, and then test out if the vaccine works. And then once you know it has low side effects and works, you can risk testing it on more compromised individuals.

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

#583
post #537
post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised they don't seem to do frequent and regular COVID testing of participants to catch asymptomatic infections. Naively, it would seem worthwhile in order to predict how well the vaccine would slow down the spread. I guess the reason is that the study is narrowly tailored to vaccine approval requirements?

It’s a pipe dream. We don’t have enough capacity. People won’t get tested either. This issue would be mute if people wore masks and stayed apart.

*moot

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

#584

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

Thank you for volunteering - an indubitably priceless service to humanity.

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

#585
post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally speaking, experimental drug trials are run first on healthy groups and then in at-risk groups (old, young, those with co-morbidities). From the article, my guess is that they are expediting the sensitive groups trials, but unfortunately there's a lack of technical detail. Source: My partner is an infectious disease specialist and we talk about this pretty much daily because I'm so curious.

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.

As far as I know, they don't inject people in the trial with Covid, instead they wait long enough and use statistics to asses how many should have gotten Covid by now and if they didn't attribute it to the vaccine working.

Since healthy young people are more likely to get Covid, it might be this is the fastest avenue to knowing how effective the vaccine is.

But I am not a doctor or infectious disease expert or vaccine researcher.

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

#586
post #320

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Well, it's still good news, but an injected vaccine may not lead to sterilizing immunity - i.e. vaccinated persons might still be able to transmit the disease: > Without a strong mucosal response, injected vaccines may be less likely to produce so-called sterilizing immunity, a phenomenon in which a pathogen is purged from the body before it’s able to infect cells, Dr. Durbin said. Vaccinated people might be protecte…

Even so, reducing the severity would be great. Even if a patient doesn't die, Covid-19 can have devastating and long-lasting effects. If a vaccine could reduce it to just a mild flu, I think that's good enough. You just have to inject everyone and probably add it to the standard child vaccination set.

Why would you vaccinate children for something which is less deadly than the flu? This is the case even up to 60 years old.

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

#587

This is only one of 11 vaccines now in phase III efficacy tests.[1] Six vaccines already have "partial approval", but those are the ones in Russia and China, which may or may not be working, and the governments decided to try anyway. All of those provoke an immune response. Whether it's enough of the right immune response is found out in phase III testing. Something is probably going to work. The big question is how…

Not happening, recent polls suggest that in Germany, 55% percent of the population is willing to get the vaccine. That isn't enough for herd immunity (at around 60%) and real vaccination rate will be even lower. There is also no chance in hell that Germans will allow a government-mandated vaccine. It's unconstitutional and there is heavy opposition to government-mandated anything throughout all of society. So we will…

[deleted]

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

#588
post #45
post #18

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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…

I think they're mostly producing this on a break even/no profit basis for at least the initial roll out? If there is some sharing of risk, but no profit to be had (and ultimately profit is what buffers you against risk) then why would you be involved at all? Let some other company take the risk?

You can nationalize companies.

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

#589
post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even so, reducing the severity would be great. Even if a patient doesn't die, Covid-19 can have devastating and long-lasting effects. If a vaccine could reduce it to just a mild flu, I think that's good enough. You just have to inject everyone and probably add it to the standard child vaccination set.

Why would you vaccinate children for something which is less deadly than the flu? This is the case even up to 60 years old.

Because it's substantially more deadly than the flu. (That's not counting the survivors who suffer permanent organ damage.) Please update your facts before posting in public on this topic again. I suggest sources other than Fox News.

If you're about repost right-wing canards about how it's less deadly for children, please review salient facts about infectious diseases, such as the fact that they are infectious. The goal of vaccinating younger people is to protect those whom they might infect.

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

#590
post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even so, reducing the severity would be great. Even if a patient doesn't die, Covid-19 can have devastating and long-lasting effects. If a vaccine could reduce it to just a mild flu, I think that's good enough. You just have to inject everyone and probably add it to the standard child vaccination set.

Why would you vaccinate children for something which is less deadly than the flu? This is the case even up to 60 years old.

Articles like this: https://www.news-medical.net/news/20201026/COVID-19-now-like... make me think that's seriously unlikely. I mean unless, you are talking about one of the historical flu pandemics. Yes, this is less deadly then the 1918 flu was in 1918. Then again, I think the 1918 flu would also be less deadly then it was in 1918 if it occurred for the first time today because of other medical advancements.
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