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

reuters.com

631–640 of 712 posts

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

#631
post #598
post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the lazy (cited 556 times as of now): https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(20)30610-3.pdf

That paper looks at 40 people and has no idea what the clinical correlates of the non-spike responses are because no one has any idea. You cannot take that paper and say that a substantial factor of people are protected due to preexisting responses.

There's at least another paper detailing this phenomenon[1] so for sure it warrants further investigation.

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41590-020-00808-x

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

#632
post #495

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

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?

The study is tailored to the standards of vaccine approval, of course it is. They need to prove safety and efficacy, so they design a trial which will allow those factors to be measured.

Kind of difficult to prove efficacy if you don't know how many people in your trial were infected with the disease you're trying to vaccinate against though. But do bear in mind as mentioned in other comments this participant was not in the phase 3 trial, and phase 3 is where the immunity given by a vaccine is tested. Phase 1 and phase 2 are much more constrained studies intended to determine if it's safe to give the vaccine to enough people to evaluate immunity.

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

#633
post #354
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?

Extrapolation. Is there a scientific rationale as to why the vaccine would NOT be safe and effective in a new population? If not, approve it for that population. If there is rationale why it wouldn’t be, ask for more data.

[deleted]

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

#634

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I think you might be surprised. The government knows that this is the silver bullet they need to rescue the economy from oblivion. I’m expecting that once this thing is ready there’ll be a logistical effort for the history books to roll it out. See what they can do with the military involved, like the nightingales.

Sad to say, given how testing, lockdown, etc. has proceeded, I'm losing confidence that most western governments are capable of any "logistical efforts for the history books" at this point. I heard a lot of bluster about testing here in Ontario in the spring, but here we are in the fall with rationing of tests again.

Oh well it could very well be for the history books.

History isn't always happy and positive, you know.

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

#635

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.

And yet there's a price on it. ;)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24897311

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

#636
post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 peop…

> 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.

Well, thankfully we haven't done this today either. This virus appears to affect more than just those that die from it, and that group of victims already includes more than a "tiny percentage of bubbleboys."

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

#637
post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 peop…

The virus kills on the order of 1% of people who contract it, and can cause serious illness or death even for healthy people, so anyone who is able to get the vaccine should get the vaccine. It's not like you're being asked to give up an organ or something; you're being asked to protect yourself, and protect those unfortunate enough not to be able to get the vaccine themselves as well. Rather than quibbling over percentages, why not ask yourself what ethical foundation a healthy person could have to not get the vaccine once it's been proven safe and effective.

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

#638

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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.

That's clearly no choice at all. It either is a choice or it is not, and restrictions that severe clearly indicate that no, it would not be a choice. You realise how transparent that is, right?

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

#639

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…

No offense, but this is one of the worst comments I've ever read on hackernews. You have not a single piece of evidence for any of your claims, and they fly directly in the face of all reasoning about how a disease like this is most likely to work once it becomes long-term endemic.

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

#640

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?

You talk about knowledge-creation and answer with a dogmatic tautology.

Then people wonder why anti-scientific sentiment is at high levels...

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