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No one who got Moderna's vaccine in trial developed severe Covid-19

sciencemag.org

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Re: No one who got Moderna's vaccine in trial developed severe Covid-19

#101

Post by jaywalk »

officialjunk wrote: post #63

note there is not a claim this vaccine prevents infection, only lessens symptoms, meaning you are still contagious. "We all expect an effective vaccine to prevent serious illness if infected. Three of the vaccine protocols—Moderna, Pfizer, and AstraZeneca—do not require that their vaccine prevent serious disease only that they prevent moderate symptoms which may be as mild as cough, or headache." "Prevention of infec…

With this being the case, how does it even make sense for companies like Ticketmaster and Quantas to announce that they'll require their customers to be vaccinated?

Yeah, 90-95% of your customers won't have symptoms if they get infected. But they'll still have the ability to pass on that infection to someone who wasn't vaccinated, or falls into the 5-10% of people who the vaccine isn't effective for.

Obviously the vaccines have benefits, especially for high risk populations. But I see very little benefit to these corporations requiring their customers to have it, since their customers can still be infected and spread the virus.

Re: No one who got Moderna's vaccine in trial developed severe Covid-19

#102

Post by MacsHeadroom »

jimbob45 wrote: post #80
CyberRabbi wrote: post #74

Why is AstraZeneca asking for exemption from liability claims stemming from their COVID-19 vaccine? https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-astrazeneca-results-vaccin...

> “This is a unique situation where we as a company simply cannot take the risk if in ... four years the vaccine is showing side effects,” Ruud Dobber, a member of Astra’s senior executive team, told Reuters. Seems pretty straightforward to me. It’s an unproven method of vaccine creation and hasn’t been tested by anyone. I really can’t imagine this holding up in courts though.

In the US it's not possible to sue for damages caused by vaccines. I'm sure the courts will find a way to make it work. The concern seems to be that stifling vaccine development for the benefit of a few just isn't worth the risk of future plagues.

Re: No one who got Moderna's vaccine in trial developed severe Covid-19

#103

Post by amurale »

toast0 wrote: post #78
amurale wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's see... it's a calculus of death vs potential long term adverse effect: P(death) I'd take the vaccine in a heartbeat, long term effects and all, if P(death) was 10% or higher.

If you get covid, there's a P(unknown) of long term harm as well. It's an unknown vs an unknown. Novel virus, novel immunization (first mRNA or maybe first widespread modified adenovirus)

You're correct about long term harm, I lumped them together. A better formula would be:

  P(covid death or long term harm)
since my estimate is they're about the same order of magnitude, I prefer to take the devil-I-know vs. the small-scale-tested vaccine.

I model the potential harm based on a similarly rushed vaccine of 1976 which caused a large increase in cases of Guillain-Barré Syndrome [0]. Longer trials and phase IV monitoring was instituted in response to this rushed vaccine.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_swine_flu_outbreak

Re: No one who got Moderna's vaccine in trial developed severe Covid-19

#104

Post by hedora »

The null hypothesis (people with symptomatic covid are as likely to get severe symptoms, regardless of whether they received the vaccine) predicts this many cases with severe symptoms:

30 / 185 * 11 = 1.7

1.7 ~= 0, so the sample size is too small to support the headline.

Re: No one who got Moderna's vaccine in trial developed severe Covid-19

#105

Post by whb07 »

learc83 wrote: post #96
whb07 wrote: post #54

Hurray for a vaccine that is > 90% effective on a disease that for those who get it have a > 99% survival rate. Bring on the new overlords.

Those 2 numbers aren’t comparable. A 1% death rate with a disease as contagious as COVID means more than 50 million dead globally at some point (not everyone will get it but the majority will eventually). Near universal vaccination with a vaccine that is 95% effective at preventing severe cases means saving 47.5 million lives in that scenario. Despite the disease having a 99% survival rate. If the vaccine provides st…

That is not quite the case as the you're double counting quite a number of people.

set A = The set of all people who die from covid

set B = The set of people who were going to die that year from cancer, heart, age etc

Nearly all of set A fits inside set B. For evidence see either CDC or even the Italian health ministry data set they even published as far back as April 2020 where the median age of death was 79 and 50% had 3+ other diseases and sub 1% had no other diseases.

Re: No one who got Moderna's vaccine in trial developed severe Covid-19

#106

Post by throwaway2245 »

mchusma wrote: post #19

FDA says Dec 17 meeting to discuss. This contradicts some earlier opinions that the reason the FDA was taking so long to review Pfizer (Dec 10 scheduled date) was that they were planning to review 2-3 candidates together. For context, scheduling the meeting to review the candidates is running at 5-10% of the development time for these vaccines. 20M vaccines represent about 1/3 the elderly population in the US, there…

> And for safety, let's just assume it's going to be 2x worse than the worst vaccine ever

I'm guessing you have excluded the "one in three kids got polio" approved vaccine?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutter_Laboratories#Cutter_inc...

Re: No one who got Moderna's vaccine in trial developed severe Covid-19

#107

Post by orblivion »

ed25519FUUU wrote: post #58
blhack wrote: post #48

Does anybody have a good link for a layman's overview of how mRNA vaccines work? Lot's of nervousness from people around this, and would love to be able to help quell some of that.

Edit: I do plan to get the vaccine, but as a software engineer I know beta versions usually have the most “bugs” — and I have the health privilege to be in the back of the line so I will!

I just thought of this analogy today. Others should correct me if I got this wrong.

If I want to use your printer (ribosomes) to print out some stuff (proteins), I don't need to send files (genetic instructions) to your computer (nucleus). I can just get on your wifi, send my files directly to your printer, and go home. Except I accidentally left the protein at your house. But none of the genetic material sticks around.

Re: No one who got Moderna's vaccine in trial developed severe Covid-19

#108

Post by totony »

jaywalk wrote: post #101
officialjunk wrote: post #63

note there is not a claim this vaccine prevents infection, only lessens symptoms, meaning you are still contagious. "We all expect an effective vaccine to prevent serious illness if infected. Three of the vaccine protocols—Moderna, Pfizer, and AstraZeneca—do not require that their vaccine prevent serious disease only that they prevent moderate symptoms which may be as mild as cough, or headache." "Prevention of infec…

With this being the case, how does it even make sense for companies like Ticketmaster and Quantas to announce that they'll require their customers to be vaccinated? Yeah, 90-95% of your customers won't have symptoms if they get infected. But they'll still have the ability to pass on that infection to someone who wasn't vaccinated, or falls into the 5-10% of people who the vaccine isn't effective for. Obviously the va…

>With this being the case, how does it even make sense for companies like Ticketmaster and Quantas to announce that they'll require their customers to be vaccinated?

This is such a weird take imo. There is no need to vaccine non-risk people afaik. I thought the whole deal with covid is how mild it is for the general population but deadly for a subset of it.

Re: No one who got Moderna's vaccine in trial developed severe Covid-19

#109

Post by roywiggins »

IgorPartola wrote: post #73
newdude116 wrote: post #49

Thats good but I would not be overly optimistic. Two question since I dont know much about mRNA vaccines 1. The mRNA has to express the target Protein for the Anitbodies. If injected, how does this happen? It has to go somehow into the cell to be translated? Or is the delivery vehicle the magic sauce? 2. What makes mRNA vaccines so special? What is the difference of injecting the expressed protein sequence directly?

I have no knowledge of this but if injecting spike proteins worked wouldn’t we just always do that? Seems like way easier than the rest of the delivery mechanism.

The AstraZeneca vaccine puts the spike protein onto a chimp cold virus.

My understanding is that the hard part is to make the body understand that it needs to produce an immune response. Just injecting spike protein doesn't work, because it isn't recognized as a threat. The AstraZeneca one uses an attenuated virus that the body is going to respond to anyway.

I believe the mRNA vaccines work by getting cells to express the spike protein themselves. You can't smuggle the protein into cells just by injecting it, but mRNA will get in there and do its thing.

Re: No one who got Moderna's vaccine in trial developed severe Covid-19

#110

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

tpmx wrote: post #83
mrjaeger wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can read all of them in their published protocol at https://www.modernatx.com/sites/default/files/mRNA-1273-P301... under section 5.2.

Relevant criteria for the question "does it it exclude old, fragile people with various common pre-existing conditions?" (not exhaustive, but indicative): Included: Pre-existing conditions are okay as long as they are in a stable condition (defined as no significant change in therapy etc for the 3 months before enrollment). Excluded: Immunosuppressive or immunodeficient state, asplenia, recurrent severe infections (H…

I think (from my parents and in-laws) that immunosuppression is normally associated with current cancer treatment.

So, for example, it looks like this protocol would exclude people getting chemotherapy.

Happy to be proven wrong on this by someone with more information.

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