Live data from Hacker News

Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% protection

bbc.co.uk

241–250 of 1001 posts

Re: Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% protection

#241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly the point of preregistered hypotheses. Odds of conspiracy, with a clear hypothesis and confirmation of that hypothesis, go up drastically. That happened here. It wasn't a super-unlikely hypothesis either. We're talking about announcing a result a few weeks earlier versus later. That's not an unreasonable decision for a blue-leaning businessperson or scientist to make. What reduces odds are the number…

> That's not an unreasonable decision for a blue-leaning businessperson or scientist to make. Intentionally murdering possibly thousands of people (or tens of thousands? or what, who knows?!) for some assumed political gain is absolutely, 100% an unreasonable decision for any human to make. Intentionally delaying a vaccine would certainly be a crime, no? Not to mention absolutely abhorrent and completely evil. That i…

> Intentionally murdering possibly thousands of people (or tens of thousands? or what, who knows?!) for some assumed political gain is absolutely, 100% an unreasonable decision for any human to make. Intentionally delaying a vaccine would certainly be a crime, no? Not to mention absolutely abhorrent and completely evil.

You mean delaying the announcement of a vaccine. They didn't delay the process.

Re: Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% protection

#243

Why 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.

Just because you don't find layoffs as ideologically palpable as shedding (some or all) the inefficiency incurred by covid doesn't make the markets wrong. There's potential for a huge gain in efficiency here. The stock market is fundamentally a long bet (if you want to short the entire market you invest in things outside it). Of course the market is exited at the long term prospects of that. Also, you're being a litt…

> There's potential for a huge gain in efficiency here ... Of course the market is exited at the long term prospects of that.

IMHO this supports the OPs point, which is that the stock market in its current incarnation does not care about the lives of human beings.

Which is unacceptable. We collectively have enough creativity and intelligence figure out how to have a stock which can not only reflect corporate profit but also human well-being.

I think it begins by acknowledging market externalities - pollution being one of them - which allow for activities which are profitable within the shared fiction of the market, but which are, in our broader shared reality, ultimately destructive.

The Happinese/Well-being GDP also seems like an interesting idea.

Re: Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% protection

#244

Why 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.

Because an effective vaccine would be really good for the economy so a positive market reaction indicates that people researching this stuff think the likelihood of an effective vaccine being ready in the near future is higher. So it's not cheering the market reaction, it's cheering the potential for an effective vaccine and the market reaction is just a signal that the vaccine is legit.

Re: Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% protection

#245

Why 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's just a bunch of rich people in the end. The election is over. You can stop peddling bs. Thus far in 2020, Gallup finds 55% of Americans reporting that they own stock, based on polls conducted in March and April. This is identical to the average 55% recorded in 2019 and similar to the average of 54% Gallup has measured since 2010.

55% of Americans may report that they own stock, but the top 10% own 88% of all stocks

https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distr...

Re: Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% protection

#246

Why 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's just a bunch of rich people in the end. The election is over. You can stop peddling bs. Thus far in 2020, Gallup finds 55% of Americans reporting that they own stock, based on polls conducted in March and April. This is identical to the average 55% recorded in 2019 and similar to the average of 54% Gallup has measured since 2010.

It is probably much higher as well. Many people probably do not know that their retirement plans are invested in the stock market

Re: Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% protection

#247
post #69

"However, there are logistical challenges as the vaccine has to be kept in ultra-cold storage at below minus 80C." Does anyone know how many of the other vaccine candidates have this limitation? It seems to me that a vaccine with easier logistics might still end up having a bigger impact overall, despite not being the first - although that of course needs to be combined with the ease of production too (I don't know h…

low temp storage was also required for the ebola vaccine and yet it was successfully administered to more than quarter of a million people in equatorial Africa

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kivu_Ebola_epidemic#Vaccinatio...

should be quite doable

Re: Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% protection

#248

Why 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.

Why shouldn't companies lay off people they no longer need? You hire N people, you lay off X% of the least performing ones, you end up with a stronger company, and you can hire again.

Is your position to never lay off anyone ever?

Re: Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% protection

#249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The top 1% own over 50% of equity in the country. The following 9% own about 30% of equity. All in all, that's the top 10% owning more than 80% of the equity in the country. I disagree that a lot of people are invested in the stock market. Statistically, it's very few people.

A similar distribution holds for income, but I don’t think it would be wrong to say that a lot of people have an income in the US.

Re: Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% protection

#250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly the point of preregistered hypotheses. Odds of conspiracy, with a clear hypothesis and confirmation of that hypothesis, go up drastically. That happened here. It wasn't a super-unlikely hypothesis either. We're talking about announcing a result a few weeks earlier versus later. That's not an unreasonable decision for a blue-leaning businessperson or scientist to make. What reduces odds are the number…

> That's not an unreasonable decision for a blue-leaning businessperson or scientist to make. Intentionally murdering possibly thousands of people (or tens of thousands? or what, who knows?!) for some assumed political gain is absolutely, 100% an unreasonable decision for any human to make. Intentionally delaying a vaccine would certainly be a crime, no? Not to mention absolutely abhorrent and completely evil. That i…

You seem to be jumping to an awful lot of conclusions without really explaining what you understand is happening here.

(I note that I don't understand at all what you're asserting.)

Post reply on HN