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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

#851

Does anyone have data on how many Moderna vaccines will be produced by the end of the year with Operation Warp Speed? I've read somewhere that the vaccine uses similar tech to Pfizer, so I'm wondering how many vaccines will actually be available by end of year if both are this effective.

I have running notes that said 20M doses by end of year, so 10M people.

Oxford/Astrazeneca are the only ones who have alluded to 100M doses in 2020.

Everyone else won't get phase III results until 2021: johnson and johnson, merck, novavax, sanofi

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

#852
post #787
post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Covid would be over if everybody used a properly fitted respirator. I stayed at home even before symptoms, I infected 3 adults and my daughter in my house. It was only luck that the adults showed symptoms like myself on day 3 and day 3 was a Sunday and my test results came back that day. Otherwise, they woul have infected others just like I infected them, before I showed any symptoms.

> Covid would be over if everybody used a properly fitted respirator.

AND gave up all human interaction. It is absurd to suggest that we should sacrifice civilisation for a virus

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

#853

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corona viruses cannot mutate as efficiently as flu. They are very different beasts.

17 million mink culled in Denmark for mutated Covid which was passed on to humans. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-denmar...

That doesn't make it a rational act. Welcome to the zero risk society.

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

#854
post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This disease will never be "eradicated" and it is not helpful to use that word to discuss policy decisions. Sars CoV-2 has numerous animal reservoirs and an incredible transmission rate. It will never be gone from this Earth. We will get vaccines and we will come up with better treatments negating its effects, but this coronavirus is here to stay. It will be a fifth endemic human coronavirus.

Only time will tell. At the beginning of the pandemic the strategy was to simple hold out until a vaccine is found (Which is the strategy developed for influenza). Doing lockdowns reducing the infection rates to almost nothing or even eradicating it in some countries was seen as impossible. Yet that’s exactly what we did. I think eradication is possible.

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

#855

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> If it mutates as efficiently as flu, it will be a challenge.

It doesn't. Coronaviruses have a proofreading protein which prevents significant RNA changes: https://www.cell.com/molecular-cell/fulltext/S1097-2765(20)3...

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

#856
post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Contract tracing hasn't worked at scale anywhere. Could you go a little deeper in this? It seems to have worked in Australia, South Korea and NZ as far as I’m aware, what am I missing?

The claim becomes conveniently tautological when you equate "at scale" with "tracers getting overwhelmed". GP might argue that all successful tracing never reached scale. That would make it a completely worthless claim, but, well "truth" (big sarcasm quotes).

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

#857

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I think we can eradicate it by contact tracing. People (rightly, or wrongly) don't trust technology enough, after the reputation Silicon Valley has built and can't shed, around privacy. I'm on an Android phone, and sure, Citizen and a local State app can do the contact tracing. But what's Citizen doing with that data? It also requires interactivity (another Silicon Valley favorite thing to do - call out for people…

Luckily, contact tracing can be done efficiently the traditional way, by gathering the contacts of an infected person that tested positive and contacting them manually.

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

#858

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It can’t die out on its own. Animals are getting infected by it, meaning it will be around forever. But as long as we can tolerate it, that’s all that matters.

Animal reservoirs make it harder but not all animal reservoirs have as big of an effect. Birds don’t seem to be able to get infected which already is a very good sign.

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

#859

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Except people like me refuse to participate in contact tracing and will actively evade it.

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

#860

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's see how this comment ages. I give it 50-50

I’m not saying anything with certainty. However, a lot of work has been expended in trying to contain this cluster and currently this is how it looks with the data we currently have.

It's not just this cluster though. If it happens once it could happen again and we may not notice the next until it's too late. So here's hoping the vaccine catches all likely mutations too...
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