581–590 of 1001 posts
I'm feeling a deep-seated wave of relief that I never thought possible. Like waking up from a year-long nightmare. Thank God.
No significant side effects so far tested. I'm always curious what the long term side effects will be, and we won't know that for years.
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>We'll be seeing the first EUA's by December, and shots in the arm before the end of the year What makes you say that? That's quite fast, no?
They're already manufacturing millions of doses of the drug and have been for months. The military already has an action plan for distributing it nation wide. Realistically they're ready to go right now they are just waiting for FDA approval.
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?
What did they use to stabilize the mRNA?
If they’re managing to do it with just temperature and maybe glycerol, that’s great.
If it’s RNAlater, then that’s going to have safety issues. If it’s something else, how was the additive tested for long term safety? (Vaccines like this have been in the works for a long time. There has been time for safety studies.)
Edit: RNAlater MSDS sheet: https://tools.thermofisher.com/content/sfs/msds/2012/AM7020_...
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Sure it is. Any small city (> 50,000 people) has someone who can get you liquid nitrogen in far larger quantities than will ever be needed (thus stuff is used for a lot of industrial processes). Put it in a cooler from wal-mart and you have a week. Any you get a week after thawing it to use is anyway, so you don't need the cold storage where the end user is. I don't know what the thawing protocols are of course.
i'm involved in some state government COVID vaccine projects. The issue is you can't just knock together cold storage like this, there's (naturally) a long process to get "approved" and "certified" for vaccine administration. Storage is one of these criteria, they're not going to hand over a batch of vaccine to some doc with a cooler of dry ice.
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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…
Contract tracing hasn't worked at scale anywhere. It's a nice idea conceptually, but the problem is psychological. People stop caring about tracing when 98% of all trace connections are false positives. If a person is infectious for a week and the r0 is around 1 then only 1 person of all the people they've been in contact with will actually contract the virus on average. The other 50+ people, assuming they can even b…
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Also not so good: this is a corporate press release. The data will come later.
At least this one has a decent looking 'n' value. The BBC also address this in part > There are still questions - how long does immunity last, does the vaccine work as well in high-risk elderly people, does it stop you spreading the virus or just from developing symptoms? I'd rate the news as "vibing" on a scale of clickbait to party for the world
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Excellent news it's so high. For comparison, MMR is 88% effective on Mumps "One dose of MMR vaccine is 93% effective against measles, 78% effective against mumps, and 97% effective against rubella. Two doses of MMR vaccine are 97% effective against measles and 88% effective against mumps." https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/mmr/public/index.html#:~:te... .
It is great news. I didn't see the case numbers but I've inferred to arrive at 90% that there were 9 cases in vaccinated group vs 85 in controls. (95% C.I. 80-99%) Very interested to see forthcoming results from competitors that don't face the -80 degrees issue.
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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.
I have no idea, that's why I am asking. I'm hoping someone could clarify with decent knowledge on the matter. I vaguely remember this story (from years ago) about a drug or vaccine during the 70s, where apparently everything was fine but then kids (or kids of kids, can't remember) ended up with birth defects.
A more relevant example is Pandemrix, a flu vaccine launched in the EU in 2009. A year later it was discovered that it seems to increase the risk of narcolepsy in teenagers sixfold. The vaccine was produced and licensed in an expedited fashion because of a "pandemic" (of swine flu), which used a then-new and slightly experimental technique (adjuvants) which interestingly, German doctors flagged up as a risk and suggested the German government use a different H1N1 vaccine that was less experimental.
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It will still take a long time before a sufficient number of people have been vaccinated that life can return back to normal.
One of the lead doctors in the UK is saying life will start to look normal in Spring 2021 (albeit, I assume he was referring to the UK alone). There's good reason for cautious optimism & patience. Science has done its job; now we need to push for coordination between infrastructure, government, and business to finish it.
I'm sure they have no incentives to say that right. The reality is that the UK and many others are in the middle of a massive surge of cases. The idea that life will be "normal" a few months from now in Spring seems farcical.