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

bbc.co.uk

301–310 of 1001 posts

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

#301
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trust. Russia and China lie through their teeth on everything and anything. It's irrelevant whether or not they are lying in this particular instance: they cannot be trusted.

As if "the West" and the US in particular don't lie left and right if it helps to promote their agenda. It's a simple matter of who aligns with whom.

"The West" is a bit more restricted in how much they can lie to their own citizens (even with the recent efforts from Mr Trump and Mr Johnson to change that for the worse).

Of course, in Mother Russia it is widely believed that everyone lies more or less, and those looking to expose "the truth" generally live dangerously, often with tragic results.

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

#302
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it's a minor logistical challenge, it's simple enough to ship this in a liquid nitrogen dewar. Even very small cities will have liquid nitrogen facilities. Shipping from the nearest city to most of the population sounds very doable in 24 hours. Remember you only need to get most of the population to halt the spread. If there's some tiny village 3 days hike away in the rainforest, you can skip them.

Shipping hundreds of thousands of doses of vaccine at -80C is more than a “minor logistical challenge”. First, you’d never ship in a liquid nitrogen dewar. It would be a massive logistics bottleneck considering the weight of dewars and the volume you'd be shipping (Pfizer already has deals secured for hundreds of millions of doses). And plus, these are packaged vaccines - a glass vial with a label, in a paper box, wi…

All of your concerns are real. However it is important to remember that this is also routine. The amount of vaccine to ship this way is not that large compared to all the other things shipping in this way. Shipping companies already know how to handle this type of thing and have systems in place. They have the monitoring in place and systems to watch it because this is already done on a large scale.

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

#303

Good: + ~90% of individuals achieve immunity. + no significant side-effects. Not so good: - two doses needed, 3 weeks apart, immunity after one month from first dose. Slow rollout. - -80C storage and transport needed. Challenging, but doable in developed countries, but still may slow down mass rollout. Not feasible in many developing countries. I still wonder about long-term immunity. Anyone can share any insight?

The latest data (preprint, not peer reviewed etc etc) mention memory B and T cells up to 8 months after recovery from the illness. This means that an immunity of one year is probably likely. This would be probably enough to quench the spread, but not to eradicate the virus.

[deleted]

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

#304
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously because of the geopolitical concerns and pride. Truth is the first victim as usual. The Russian vaccine was indeed registered just after the 2nd phase trials, but according to its website the 3rd phase trial has started on August 25 (one month later than for BNT162b2) and involved more than 40k people (effectively the same number). So those who claim that Russian vaccine is only on the 1/2 phase spread an o…

> So those who claim that Russian vaccine is only on the 1/2 phase spread an outright lie. Russian vaccine was announced back in August, when it was only on phase 1/2. In contrast phase 3 Pfizer/biontech had been well under way at that time. Russia announced a not fully tested vaccine, proudly called it "Sputnik V". The exact words Putin used when announced it was: "As far as I know, a vaccine against a new coronavir…

Does anyone know if the Russian vaccine is “live,” “deactivated,” or his new RNA type?

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

#305

Good: + ~90% of individuals achieve immunity. + no significant side-effects. Not so good: - two doses needed, 3 weeks apart, immunity after one month from first dose. Slow rollout. - -80C storage and transport needed. Challenging, but doable in developed countries, but still may slow down mass rollout. Not feasible in many developing countries. I still wonder about long-term immunity. Anyone can share any insight?

The latest data (preprint, not peer reviewed etc etc) mention memory B and T cells up to 8 months after recovery from the illness. This means that an immunity of one year is probably likely. This would be probably enough to quench the spread, but not to eradicate the virus.

I think we can eradicate it by contact tracing. With 90% efficiency it will be extremely tough for the virus to spread. For any new cases you simply test everyone in the vicinity of the infected person.

But I don't think even that will be necessary. 90% efficiency reduces R so much, it will probably die out on its own.

The real problem is mutations that are not covered by the vaccine. If it mutates as efficiently as flu, it will be a challenge.

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

#306
Usually comments on BBC articles are pretty horrible. However, I'm very pleased to see that the top comment on that article is:

"This is the power of science. Step aside celebrities- these people are who should be famous."

Edit: I should also point out that I am, of course, in complete agreement

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

#307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Ebola vaccine required -80 C storage as well and they got it into literal war zones. It’s a difficult problem, but a solved one.

Ebola was localized. COVID-19 is not. I like your optimism, and what you said isn't incorrect about Ebola at the time, but I don't think it's correct about our current situation. How many locations globally have this level of refrigeration? Given that there would be high demand for it, wouldn't prices on any available refrigerators exceed what even the most altruistic companies and organizations could pay? This still…

> Ebola was localized. COVID-19 is not

You could easily localize COVID-19, just make a vaccination passport. No entry to a country if you're not vaccinated.

> How many locations globally have this level of refrigeration

Almost all developer countries, urban centres, where majority of people live anyway.

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

#308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Ebola vaccine required -80 C storage as well and they got it into literal war zones. It’s a difficult problem, but a solved one.

Ebola was localized. COVID-19 is not. I like your optimism, and what you said isn't incorrect about Ebola at the time, but I don't think it's correct about our current situation. How many locations globally have this level of refrigeration? Given that there would be high demand for it, wouldn't prices on any available refrigerators exceed what even the most altruistic companies and organizations could pay? This still…

We manage to get $1M cruise missiles anywhere on the globe quite quickly. If the world can mobilize for WWII - the US alone built 1,200 warships in a four year period, 2,700 Liberty ships, 300k aircraft, etc. - we can mobilize for a global pandemic... if we choose to.

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

#309
post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the markets react that means it is probably significant news, since the people who have millions at stake think this is enough to increase the future outlook of the top companies. You should take them seriously because the markets reflect the thoughts of hundreds of thousands of people who's salary depends on trying to find out what the future looks like. Not sure what would be a better indicator of whether news i…

But there are also people with millions at stake who are metagaming that other people will think this is important enough to increase the future outlook of top companies and thus changing their strategies to profit off them. The market is a weighted function of an insane number of variables, and we know none of the weights. Any attempt at reading the market to understand those variables is going to be about as useful…

The meta-strategies help market prices be accurate, faster, by beginning to move prices towards the “right” number in advance of information that would do the same thing. In the long run they don’t misinform.

This obviously excludes strategies based on fraud, misinforming the public, etc.

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

#310
> show 90% protection is achieved seven days after the second dose.

What is 90% 'protection'? Need to see the data, I don't think the hospitalization rate is above 10% of positive tests, vaccines often conflate 'reduction in symptoms/duration' with 'immunity'.

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