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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

#871

Post by jariel »

gizmo wrote: post #372
bufferoverflow wrote: post #305

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…

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."

It works 'at scale' in Taiwan/Korea if by 'scale' you mean 'large country' but yes, it does not work when there are many infected, it's best suited for when there only small numbers and the government can keep a lid on that.

But that's entirely possible. Remember that countries have local agencies and national numbers are not everything.

Ontario is only 12M people, British Coloumbia 5M people and they have active contact tracing of literally every patient.

So with 90% effectiveness, the numbers will be brought way down, and in many areas, the threshold of cases will be low enough that contact tracing can be enacted.

So about the 50 people - we have to basically still maintain a degree of isolation, and that's entirely possible.

We don't need to tell the grocery store workers to 'self isolate' because someone came into the store with COVID that's already happening, those are low-risk events.

During social isolation, people should absolutely not be contacting 50 people.

So masks, basic social isolation at very least (no unnecessary contact) can remain in place.

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

#872

Post by JSavageOne »

gizmo wrote: post #372
bufferoverflow wrote: post #305

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…

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.

It's worked in South Korea

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

#873

Post by tempestn »

ksk wrote: post #841
tempestn wrote: post #813

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mechanism of action is known, so potential side effects are largely predictable. I'm not an expert, but I don't see any reason to think there would be unexpected long term side effects from this sort of vaccination. Is there reason to think otherwise?

There is always some effect whenever any foreign molecule is injected in your blood. Simply knowing ONE 'mechanism of action' doesn't tell you the 'mechanism of reaction' or all the other cross reactions that happen. It also doesn't tell you what will happen when some one is already on medication for other health issues. The body is simply too complex to many any definitive statement like that. So there are many reas…

Do you have any examples of a vaccine that's had side effects not show up for years after it went into use? I'm not saying there hasn't been—I really don't know.

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

#874

Post by innomatics »

StavrosK wrote: post #588
innomatics wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Out of 45,000 people, only 86ish people got infected in the trial arm? Isn't that too few? Even for the control arm, that's still only 774 people infected.

I'm thinking that 85/21,750 or 0.4% of the controls developed the disease (vs 0.04% of those who received vaccine).

It does seem low for the US where you have 3% of the population had disease already in 2020. Perhaps more data came from Germany? Or it could be they measure not just PCR +ve results, but antibody levels and/or severe symptoms?

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

#875

Post by frogpelt »

bufferoverflow wrote: post #305
lbeltrame wrote: post #271

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…

Contact tracing might work really well with a submissive populace. We don't have one.

Said another way: I don't think voluntary contact tracing will work in the U.S. And I don't think you can implement involuntary contact tracing in the U.S.

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

#876

Post by johnisgood »

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?

How do we know that there are no significant long-term side-effects? These vaccines seem to be developed so quickly while others take years or even decades... I do not know if this is irrational fear, but I fear that this is rushed and there might be potentially serious side-effects that are missed.

Why am I being down-voted? Is it really of no concern?

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

#877

Post by mancerayder »

feanaro wrote: post #857
mancerayder wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

But in a world of telephone scams and texts, how do you trust who's calling you and why?

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

#878

Post by rossdavidh »

ahoka wrote: post #503
a_humean wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have only done phase 1/2 trials and this one is phase 3. Also, people trust US/EU research more. They have not been very forthcoming with data. The data that has been made available has been lacking in detail or has patterns that indicate either fabrication or sloppiness. Both countries appear to be moivated by domestic and geopolitical political purposes. The US has also being doing that, but the medical establ…

"Also, this is a German result, and people trust Germany more." Like with the diesel emissions?

If it were just the German corporations we were trusting, this would be relevant. But at this point, while we do not necessarily trust the German government to be nimble, agile, or innovative, they are typically relatively by-the-book, as governments go. Certainly compared to China and Russia.

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

#879

Post by topranks »

thehappypm wrote: post #678
ffggvv wrote: post #599

is the vaccine even worth getting or only for high risk groups?

Honestly? I think if you're not sure, you probably don't need it. I'm young, work from home, healthy. I have friends who are nurses -- they yearn for a vaccine. My grandparents and my parents know that they are at risk and would line up for one. I have a friend with diabetes who would feel like his life was back. I'd gladly take a vaccine if it became available -- would love to not worry about giving it to my parents…

Worry about the old, the frail, the immunosuppressed.

Vaccines only work if a high enough proportion of the entire population get them.

Obviously the vulnerable will get it first - but please don’t skip it just because you’re young and strong.

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

#880

Post by coryfklein »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #827
coryfklein wrote: post #632

Earlier quoted context omitted.

s/a decade/in perpetuity We'll almost certainly need an annual covid vaccination for the same reasons we get annual flu vaccinations - with our current medical technology we can neither rid the planet of the virus nor obtain permanent immunity.

We'll almost certainly need an annual covid vaccination In fact we have no idea how long this vaccine or any other [of the experimental covid-19 vaccines] will last for. They've got projections out to at least a year, but uncertainty becomes too great after that. It may last quite a long time, we don't really know. for the same reasons we get annual flu vaccinations No. We get annual flu vaccinations because flu viru…

> projections out to at least a year

You're right - I should have said "periodic vaccination", not annual.

Also yeah, there's a subtle difference between why we'd need periodic covid vaccinations vs flu vaccinations. But in the end the result is the same, we'll probably need to be re-vaccinated against covid over time.

Covid isn't going away because it has a non-human animal reservoir, so it's all about a strategy to prevent it's re-emergence into the sapiens reservoir. It's possible that periodic vaccinations of the population as a whole would be overkill and we could reactively immunize smaller populations as re-infection occurs.

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