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

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

#121
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.

Check out Dr. John Campbell's video titled "The next COVID year and vaccine function".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smm_ZvJqJk4&t=7m28s

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

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There may be other ways to reduce risk if you belong to the at risk population, though. Those statistics all have to be taken with a grain of salt. Like if it says "x% of some population will die from some thing", it could mean "x% in the population tend to be reckless" (like "x% of people under 30 will die from base jumping", but it is easy to avoid by not doing base jumping). In the case of Covid, perhaps not livin…

There may be in general, but in this case I don't think it's a factor. Something like 40% of deaths have happened in nursing homes, where residents don't have much agency to reduce their individual risk.

But that would distort the risk for "people over 80", wouldn't it? Like if you are in a nursing home, the risk is probably higher than average for that age group, if you are not, the risk is lower than average.

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

#123
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We don't know a priori who will have very adverse reactions. Comorbities and old age increase your chances, but those are categorically not the only variables at play.

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

#124
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And autoimmune conditions, robbing a list from wikipedia: celiac disease, diabetes mellitus type 1, Graves' disease, inflammatory bowel disease, multiple sclerosis, psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, and systemic lupus erythematosus.

I don't know how many people with conditions take immunosuppression medication. I take it for arthritis and alopecia and have come across many people on similar meds for diabetes or other things. But that could be a form of confirmation bias

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

#125
post #83

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…

Immune suppressed/deficient patients are not good candidates for vaccines in the first place, since they would be unlikely to mount an effective immune response.

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

#126
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

you can't completely predict who it's going to be mild for. 14-year olds with no known underlying issues have died, 25-year olds have lost their sense of smell and taste permanently or suffer from long covid months later.

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

#127
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious what those rare cases are.

Viruses! RNA viruses like SARS-cov-2. They make the cell reverse transcribe their RNA cargo into DNA, and then the cell produces more viruses.

That usually (right?) doesn't lead to staying in the host's DNA, but I understand that some of our DNA is virus DNA so it DOES happen. Viruses per se aren't exactly rare, so maybe he specifically meant this phenomenon.

But also - that's reverse transcription, not reverse translation. Maybe Lupe made this point a little too late in his description.

EDIT: Sorry, moved around the above after rethinking

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

#128
post #105
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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%…

1. The median age of death at 79, and 50% of people have 3+ diseases doesn't imply that "Nearly all of the people who die from COVID had a life expectancy of 2. Lets say you are correct and 90% of people who die of COVID would have died within 1 year. And let's assume that you have some magic PR method that will convince 100% of the population that this is true.

That means that COVID is still more deadly than the Flu, and some large percentage of people will still choose to remain home, stop traveling, stop eating out etc...

These people will continue to damage the economy until an effective vaccine is available. And even in your scenario a vaccine that is 95% effective will still save millions of lives.

An effective vaccine will save lives, and it will improve the economy. There is no logical reason to deny that fact.

[1] https://wellcomeopenresearch.org/articles/5-75 [2] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.08.20050559v...

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

#129

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…

For that final batch of 5-10% of people, today's headlines from the Moderna data dump shows that its vaccine is 100% effective (so far) in preventing serious disease to those that have been vaccinated. And 100% effective in preventing death (there were deaths in the placebo group).

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

#130

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…

It is all about rates, not binary can/cannot statements. An non-symptomatic person can indeed spread the virus, but someone with a fever who is coughing constantly (ie a symptomatic case) will spread exponentially more virus. So a vaccine that prevents such symptoms can in practice reduce infection probabilities. Bring those probabilities low enough and spread stops.
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