Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% protection • Hacker News Board

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

#401

Post by AQXt » Mon, Nov 09, 2020, 2:27 PM UTC

hairytrog wrote: post #371

jakozaur wrote: post #214

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?

Developing countries have youth immunity. When you convolve covid hospitalization / IFR as function of age with age distribution, developing countries have no risk whatsoever from COVID. that's why Brazil and India are nearing herd immunity with basically no serious medical infrastructure saturation. Median age in Africa is 19... No fks given. Covid vaccine is just for old people/developing countries.

> that's why Brazil and India are nearing herd immunity with basically no serious medical infrastructure saturation.

[citation needed]

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

#402

Post by barumi » Mon, Nov 09, 2020, 2:27 PM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #308

studius wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The world didn't mobilized for ww2. One country mobilized and started to threaten the existence of all.its neighboring states, and those who managed to leverage geographical and climate barriers managed to prepare themselves to intervene.

This is by far not the challenge covid19 poses to the world. It wasn't when it was China's local and regional problem, and it is not after it spread out of China and became a pandemic.

Objectively, at most Covid19 causes a slight increase in the global death rate, and this is only observed during the initial spread before herd immunity kicks in. Ww2 killed about 90 million people in 6 years, while covid is bound to have killed about 1.3 million in one year.

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

#403

Post by jillesvangurp » Mon, Nov 09, 2020, 2:28 PM UTC

The_rationalist wrote: post #278

So why shouldn't I buy stock??

If you rely on other people telling you what to do; don't.

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

#404

Post by untog » Mon, Nov 09, 2020, 2:28 PM UTC

TomGullen wrote: post #289

untog wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The markets seem to wildly yo-yo with every piece of negative and positive news. Case in point: Zoom is currently down 10% but I’ll bet it will have rallied by the end of the day.

I don't think it's worth looking at individual stocks in this instance, and I think you're not understanding why Zoom would drop on good vaccine news.

I am absolutely understanding why Zoom would drop on good vaccine news. It’s not a complicated connection!

My point is that the market overreacts to every piece of good or bad news, then settles down as the full implications become clear. There are still a lot of unanswered questions about the vaccine, how we handle rollout, etc etc etc. That’s not really considered in immediate reactions like this, it’s all gut feeling.

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

#405

Post by TulliusCicero » Mon, Nov 09, 2020, 2:28 PM UTC

k__ wrote: post #392

A friend of mine (who is a nutjob), said a few months ago that even if the vaccine doesn't work, they can say it would work 80-90%, because that's the amount of people who don't show symptoms anyway. I don't know anything about this, but now it happened in a way he said, so what do professional here think about this?

> because that's the amount of people who don't show symptoms anyway.

I don't think this is accurate. A large majority of people show no or relatively mild symptoms comparable to a seasonal flu or cold, yes, but that's not the same thing as no symptoms at all for a large majority.

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

#406

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Nov 09, 2020, 2:28 PM UTC

andrepd wrote: post #155

TomGullen wrote: post #2

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?

[deleted]

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

#407

Post by Devils-Avocado » Mon, Nov 09, 2020, 2:29 PM UTC

mquirion wrote: post #195

headmelted wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty confident it's the former, which if the case, essentially ends the pandemic in a month after it's distributed, given that the R0 would drop precipitously. The challenge will be reconciling this with the antivax crowd given that as the vaccine rolls out the rate of infection will come down correspondingly among the whole population (including the unvaccinated). They'll immediately claim that the virus is "going…

It's a 2-dose regimen, needs to be stored at -70C, and Pfizer already said they'll only have 1.5B doses over the course of the next year. It's going to be a very slow roll out.

Which is completely sufficient to vaccinate the elderly, teachers, immunocompromised, and healthcare workers in the Western world, and probably anyone else who really wants it.

There's no need to completely eliminate COVID - we don't aim for the same for regular influenza. We should aim to reopen economies as soon as possible instead.

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

#408

Post by rsynnott » Mon, Nov 09, 2020, 2:29 PM UTC

dragonsh wrote: post #44

Hopefully there is more better scientific data on this vaccine before rushing it to top of HN and judgement. I am not sure how to explain 90% immunity from a disease in scientific language, because there are only two states a person get infected with COVID-19 or does not get infected with COVID-19. Not sure how this vaccine will make a person 10% infected and 90% not infected with COVID-19. This is one of the vaccine…

This was developed by a German company and will be widely distributed in the EU if approved, so will have to be approved by both the FDA and EMA. Now, if the FDA passes it and the EMA says 'no', that would be reason for concern, potentially, but assuming both bodies pass it that should be good enough for most people.

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

#409

Post by dbbk » Mon, Nov 09, 2020, 2:29 PM UTC

danpalmer wrote: post #178

anoncake wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to deliver the vaccine into every community. People can travel to nearest next place that has it.

This may be true for urban/suburban US/Europe/China/India, but this is not true for large parts of the world. There are parts of rural US/Australia for example where despite people having cars, they may need to take a plane to get to a vaccine treatment centre with enough density to get stock. They may not be able to afford that travel even if the vaccine is free. Much of the African population is spread over small c…

There are still other vaccines in testing that will be more suitable for those parts of the world.

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

#410

Post by bluGill » Mon, Nov 09, 2020, 2:30 PM UTC

TulliusCicero wrote: post #385

charlesdm wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is great and all, and I'm not against vaccinations, but is this safe long term? Am I the only one here who doesn't want to get inoculated in basically the first batch?

Have there historically been issues with vaccines causing problems for the long term that didn't show initially? I've never heard of such a thing, but then again I have only a surface understanding of vaccines.

There have been a few cases. However we think we understand why they happened and so it won't. Anything is possible.

If you are a doctor/nurse working in a covid ward we know for sure that the risk whatever happens long term is a lot less than the risk of getting covid. For someone like me who has no reason to go anywhere (I'm not even allowed in the office until this pandemic passes) I can afford to wait until there is more data - and I also have to because I'm low on the list of those who will be vaccinated because I'm relatively low risk of getting it.