561–570 of 1001 posts
Seems like a good time to buy shares in whoever manufactures industrial sized extra cold freezers.
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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…
If you get the vaccine then get infected I wonder for how long you will be spreading it to others while you don't show any signs of virus.
The injectable vaccine for polio stops the symptoms, but it doesn't stop the propagation of the virus from person to person.
The oral vaccine for polio also stops the propagation (that is better) but it is a live virus that can escape and produce polio in other unvaccinated persons (that is bad).
[So the current recommendation is to use oral version when polio is endemic, the injectable version when there has been no cases for a few years, and a mix of them in between.]
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>I remember that in March somebody posted here an entry saying that mutation of the virus will make vaccinations only useful in the short term. Were these concerns already addressed at this stage? Regardless of whether the mutations are significant enough to affect vaccine efficacy, it won't likely be a problem. These new mRNA vaccines have a development/production time measured in weeks and months, not years. It cha…
Fascinating--do you have any links to further reading/watching about this?
https://www.nature.com/articles/nrd.2017.243
The basic idea is that now rather than needing to culture live viruses in chicken eggs, we can literally just encode the RNA for a specific antigen into a synthetic substrate and produce vaccines through a chemical process like any other drug. The RNA is then absorbed into your cells, and your own body creates the proteins which stimulate an immune response.
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If new pfizer's vaccine has similar numbers, e.g. 90% after two shots and 80% after one shot, can it be more efficient to just use one shot, considering current race with time since we need to deliver vaccine to billions of people? Are there numbers for protection level after one shot somewhere? I couldn't find it at first glance.
The phase 3 only did two shots. Afaik the only one shot vaccine in phase 3 trials is the J&J one. Looking at the phase 1/2 results, the booster shot seems to help a lot in getting the antibody levels up. See Figure 4 of their paper, https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2027906
For those wondering how their vaccines will be distributed among countries during the next year when supply is constrained... it seems complicated. Pfizer is a US company, but has at least one key ingredient from Austria, is made with technology from Germany, has manufacturing in US+Europe, etc. Pfizer's CEO answered this question this morning on CNBC. Pfizer has two separate manufacturing divisions- one in the US (M…
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?
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?
There are numerous companies which specialize in -80C transport and shipping. These containers can be used as temporary (3-7 day) storage at destinations where they do not have infrastructure.
So this vaccine can be distributed to regions with the infrastructure to store it and we can preserve vaccines with less stringent requirement for developing countries, etc.
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?