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

bbc.co.uk

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

#261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey I got decent aluminum foil hats I can sell you for $500/each. They are the only way to protect against deep state mind control rays :)

I don't think it's totally unbelievable that they waited until after the election to release preliminary results. Waiting a week or two wouldn't hurt the timeline, and would significantly damage Trump's campaign. If I worked at Pfizer that's what I would do.

At the risk of damaging Pfizers bottom-line, if someone manages to produce results before them, and at the risk of getting fired and sued for doing so.

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

#262

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.

Just because the top owners skew the share of ownership so much doesn't mean that "very few people" are invested.

Our pensions might be nothing to the top earners of the country but that doesn't mean they're nothing to each one of us individually.

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

#263

Great news and the markets are reacting very positively to the news as well which indicates to me this could be the beginning of the end!

The markets? Spare me. What are the markets, a handful of rich in banks and large corporations? They are neither wise nor competent, why should every news story be suffixed by how "the markets" (swt) react?

Since you asked, also the pension funds of almost everyone you know.

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

#264
post #77
post #29

Great news, but I think the importance of the -80 degrees centigrade storage requirement is underestimated. Serbia, where I live, has ordered this vaccine. And our medical system is far from world-class, but leaps and bounds from less developed countries, and I honestly think logistics here will not be able to match those requirements. I've seen tetanus vaccines just being kept in regular, commercial, refrigerators.…

> Vehicles equipped for transport are an issue by itself. What about putting it into liquid nitrogen?

They could do that, but it's far more likely to be just dry ice. -80 being a class of freezers is a thing because that's what dry ice can provide.

-80 transport often consists of good insulation and a good chunk of dry ice instead of active measures.

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

#265
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mutations seen so far are minor and don't appear to impact our ability to vaccinate against them.

There are reported cases of people who built up immunity against the Chinese strain and got infected with the European strain while still having antibodies for the first one. Danish are killing 17M minks because of a novel mutation that infected 12 people (reported).

Everybody also produces different antibodies, potentially targeting different aspects of the virus. Having a vaccine means you can make sure everyone gets the 'right' antibodies that generalize the best.

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

#266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what are you insinuating here?

That the timing of the press release is interesting... first business day after the election is called. Massive corporations do have political agendas. I don't think anyone would argue they don't. But maybe it's just coincidence?

First business day after the election was called, but not after the election itself (i.e. people couldn't vote after 11/02). Or are you saying that they were planning on not releasing this at all in case of a Trump win and not just trying to influence the election?

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

#267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you serious?

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.

I just want to make the obligatory point that the way the Trump administration has handled the Covid response in the US goes beyond red and blue ...

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

#268

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.

You should take the markets seriously if you want to make a lot of money. That’s why rich people are rich.

The greatest predictor of wealth is your family background, not your knowledge/interest of the stock market:

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/01/economi...

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

#269

Great news and the markets are reacting very positively to the news as well which indicates to me this could be the beginning of the end!

Yeah, setting aside all the politics and silliness, the science going on around this pandemic is remarkable. Going from nearly zero (yes, there was a bunch of research from SARS-Cov-1, MERS, and similar to build off of but nothing like this) to a functioning, tested, and mass manufactured vaccine in a year is absolutely jaw dropping. Even if it takes two years to distribute widely, three years to stomp out a pandemic…

I don't really understand the underlying science but the nucleic acid based vaccine platforms seem really, really exciting. Getting an effective COVID vaccine is obviously huge, but the ability to rapidly develop vaccines in the future for emerging pandemics is amazing.
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