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

reuters.com

621–630 of 712 posts

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

#621
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A disease isn’t something you can solve by pretending really hard that it doesn’t exist. People getting their news from irresponsible politicians get sick like everyone else, and that’s why it won’t get back to normal before there’s a vaccine or very effective treatment: it’ll be the same cycle of open-spike-close and businesses not having enough customers to be viable.

>A disease isn’t something you can solve by pretending really hard that it doesn’t exist. This is demonstrably false. Some places are already back to life as normal, like Florida and Sweden, with no business closures. And in spite of this they still have lower deaths per capita than some places with heavy lockdowns like New York, Peru, Belgium and Spain.

Sweden is not back to normal. Mass gatherings are still banned and people are self isolating en masse.

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

#622
post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That problem will solve itself then.

>That problem will solve itself then. At a considerable cost. There's a large number of people for whom the vaccine won't work when it has been taken correctly or who cannot take the vaccine because it will react very badly with their chemotherapy or whatever. This "let Darwin deal with the anti-vaxers" solution, though initially attractive, ends up being sociopathic when you dig into it.

What percentage of the population needs to be vulnerable for the entire population to be forcibly inconvenienced for their needs? When is it the responsibility of the vulnerable to protect themselves vs forcing society at large to protect the vulnerable? Certainly there is some threshold, considering that we didn't shut down society in the past for the tiny percentage of bubbleboys with no immune system. To call people sociopathic is to close your mind and not see the real gray areas. So to ask again, what percentage of society needs to be vulnerable in order for it to be ethical to coerce everyone to do something?

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

#623
post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That problem will solve itself then.

>That problem will solve itself then. At a considerable cost. There's a large number of people for whom the vaccine won't work when it has been taken correctly or who cannot take the vaccine because it will react very badly with their chemotherapy or whatever. This "let Darwin deal with the anti-vaxers" solution, though initially attractive, ends up being sociopathic when you dig into it.

I'm not saying it is attractive. Just that that will be the consequence, it is not sociopathic on my end, it is on theirs. By not taking the vaccine they are also risking the lives of others who do take it and for whom it isn't effective or who can't take it.

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

#624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP but from the reports I have read, people who have been given placebos will be informed if the actual vaccine is found be really effective. This is for ethical concerns (in the sense that it would be unethical to not vaccinate people who have got a placebo if the real vaccine is really effective)

For some history on the matter of ethics in medical research, the 'Tuskegee Experiments' was among the most infamous biomedical research study in U.S. history [0]. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study

Thank you for the refresher. I originally read it https://www.damninteresting.com/bad-blood-in-tuskegee/ and found it depressing :(. The rest of the site is , well, damn interesting :)

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

#625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mandate it, just like the US does currently for child immunizations.

The US, as a union or the states individually, generally does not mandate child immunizations. Many states make them (usually with fairly broad exemptions, often including belief-based) requirements for public schools, though.

They should mandate it across the board with only exceptions based in medical science.

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

#626

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…

Leave it as a choice, but don’t allow unvaccinated people (without a medical excuse) to go anywhere public where there could be vulnerable people.

No bars, no restaurants, no concerts or sporting events, no public transport, no airports, no religious gatherings, no hospitals, etcetera.

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

#627
post #595

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

> 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. Getting this number for a distribution of people as similar as possible to the people in the experimental group is, in fact, the primary purpose of having a control group. There is no better way to predict this number, as you can't predict h…

Thanks for your answer

I'm not denying there's the need for a baseline to compare to, but the need to have an dedicated designated group to be the 'official control'. I agree it makes things easier statistically.

> So, if you create a reason for people in the control group to behave differently from experimental group

Yes and here lies a minor catch, both those groups might behave differently from the population in general (even though they aren't "supposed to")

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

#628
post #349

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

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?

If the majority gets a vaccin and gets immune the virus dies out. Then there is no need for a vaccin for the rest

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

#629

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…

None of the vaccines currently on the table are even remotely good enough for 'back to normalish.' The attack rate for this virus is so high that a vaccine good enough (i.e. multiple 9s effectiveness) to allow 'back to normal' almost certainly isn't possible. The most we're going to get out of a vaccine is a tool that can be used in conjunction with physical distancing, and masks, to keep the infection rate and hospi…

> None of the vaccines currently on the table are even remotely good enough for 'back to normalish.' The attack rate for this virus is so high that a vaccine good enough (i.e. multiple 9s effectiveness) to allow 'back to normal' almost certainly isn't possible.

Is it? Current studies, AFAIK, give very variable attack rates, from low zeros to around 30%. Only higher if due to close contacts for longer periods of time (carriers, fishing boats, meat packing plants). This preprint on trasmission dynamics and evidence from September[1] has lower figures.

> Everyone who's alive now will almost certainly need to socially distance (and should wear an N95/KN95 mask in public indoor spaces) for the rest of their lives.

I wonder how we're even supposed to build a society that can live without any or very reduced form of contact. I think it's socially unsustainable.

[1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3692807

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

#630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

That phase 3 study for the Oxford vaccine is already underway, and its initial findings are what the article is referring to. It was one of the first (possibly the first, I'm not entirely sure) to enter phase 3.
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