Not stated in the article: this was part of the Trump Administration DHHS's Project Warp Speed, which funded 6 different vaccines concurrently.
https://www.hhs.gov/coronavirus/explaining-operation-warp-sp...
Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% protection
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Re: Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% protection
#202Why are people in the comments so interested in the reactions of stock markets? I don't understand. These are the same markets that cheer when job cuts and redundancies are announced. These are the same markets that cheer when horrible working conditions are enforced (see Tesla, Uber, Deliveroo, etc.) Why should I take the markets seriously? It's just a bunch of rich people in the end.
The stock market is "a graph of rich people feelings" (attributed to someone on TikTok)
Re: Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% protection
#203I wonder if the people scared of permanent damage caused by Covid (for which there is no evidence) will be equally scared of the permanent damage caused by this experimental vaccine (for which there is no evidence either).
There is plenty of evidence and ongoing study of long-term sequelae.
Denying such is wildly irresponsible and hostile to the community.
Stop trolling.
Re: Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% protection
#204I am blown away at how quickly the world/science/this company produced this. Clearly this is not the end of it but this is something positive.
They produced it within months; it's the clinical trials to prove its efficiency and safety that took a while. I wonder if this experience has led to developments to speed up the development process (without compromising on safety); I hope so, because this is not the first and will not be the last time we see a worldwide pandemic like this.
I'm not sure it's fully possible to not compromise on safety one way or another when doing something like this quickly. Let's say a side effect is that 1% of women become sterile half a year after getting the vaccine - how would we possibly know that after testing for 3 months? All we can do is say it's very unlikely based on other vaccines with similar approaches, and monitor for effects on the reproductive system (or anything else unusual in the body) that is know to potentially lead to something like that down the line. In the end, we can (and probably must) decide that taking the time to disprove there being any long term negative effects, is more likely to cause more harm (because more covid-infections will happen in the meantime) than the good it is likely to do us. But it is still a higher risk than the usual approach where we test for longer.
Re: Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% protection
#205At the time of writing (2020-11-09 12:04 UTC) the article uses "90% of people" and "90% protection" interchangeably. I assume it means "90% of individuals achieve immunity", rather than "individuals achieve 90% immunity". EDIT: See child comment re: Pfizer press release. EDIT 2: See [1] for said press release, which has more detailed information than the BBC article. [1] https://investors.pfizer.com/investor-news/pre…
First phrasing makes more sense than the second one to me -- what would it even mean for somebody to be "90% immune" to a disease?
No, it's probabilistic, about the 'amount of protection' from or 'decrease in likelihood' of contracting it, which is why generally people are happy / would have been happy even for a much lower percentage - protecting ~everyone a bit is higher impact than protecting a few people a lot.
It's the same as 'herd immunity', where each member is '90% immune' and as a result the herd is 'more immune' than if only 10% of its members were 100% immune.
Re: Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% protection
#206Why are people in the comments so interested in the reactions of stock markets? I don't understand. These are the same markets that cheer when job cuts and redundancies are announced. These are the same markets that cheer when horrible working conditions are enforced (see Tesla, Uber, Deliveroo, etc.) Why should I take the markets seriously? It's just a bunch of rich people in the end.
It means that people who research this think that the news is correct. And unlike pundits, these people have skin in the game and win or lose based on the correctness of their assumptions. If the market were down today, it would be an indication that the news is hyping something that's doubtful.
Re: Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% protection
#207Why are people in the comments so interested in the reactions of stock markets? I don't understand. These are the same markets that cheer when job cuts and redundancies are announced. These are the same markets that cheer when horrible working conditions are enforced (see Tesla, Uber, Deliveroo, etc.) Why should I take the markets seriously? It's just a bunch of rich people in the end.
A lot of people are invested in the stock market, not just rich people. Essentially anyone with a professional-class job has a retirement fund invested in stocks, at least in the US.
Re: Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% protection
#208Why are people in the comments so interested in the reactions of stock markets? I don't understand. These are the same markets that cheer when job cuts and redundancies are announced. These are the same markets that cheer when horrible working conditions are enforced (see Tesla, Uber, Deliveroo, etc.) Why should I take the markets seriously? It's just a bunch of rich people in the end.
[deleted]
Re: Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% protection
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
From Pfizer's press release, they use "vaccine efficacy" which has a very specific definition. "Vaccine efficacy is the percentage reduction of disease in a vaccinated group of people compared to an unvaccinated group" So basically a 90% reduction in Covid infection.
This CDC page defines it in terms of cases: https://www.cdc.gov/csels/dsepd/ss1978/lesson3/section6.html So "disease" is probably an infection there, not relatively milder infection. 90% still crushes the transmission rate.
> 90% still crushes the transmission rate.
Unfortunately, there's yet another property of vaccine performance: some prevent the virus from reaching any level of footing in the host, others only make the body's eventual response stronger, preventing initial footing to cause heavy illness. SARS2-COV is rather peculiar in how its transmission performance is particularly strong in early, mostly presymptomatic stages, so it's perfectly possible to end up with a vaccine that reliably protects carriers from disease, but does not remove them from the spread equations at all, or only very little.
Re: Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% protection
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
+1 Thanks for putting it so succinctly. I really hope someone who knows a thing or two about the efficient market hypothesis can elighten us a bit.
Just going to plug a book here that was an awesome read in my undergrad on that topic, and the history of quant finance over the 20th / early 21st centuries: https://byjustinfox.com/myth-of-the-rational-market/
Thanks ... (it seems I can't find your username, how odd)
I really appreciate the guidance as I'm quite new to it. Especially so because you're enthusiastic about this book :D