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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

#151

Post by radiator »

sjs382 wrote: post #88
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...

Because they have no way of testing for side-effects that could occur 4 + years down the line. > “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,”

You don't say? Then why are so many people here criticizing those who want to delay 4 years before testing this vaccine on themselves and on their family?

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

#152

Post by laurentoget »

hedora wrote: post #104

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.

Headline is "no one in the trial developed severe symptom" - i am not sure how your computation proves this wrong.

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

#153

Post by Majromax »

hedora wrote: post #104

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.

If you take a Beta(1,1) distribution as your prior, then the control group's risk-of-severe-covid-given-symptoms posterior is Beta(31,156), and the experimental group's conditional risk posterior is Beta(1,12).

Drawing 100,000 samples from these distributions (`betarnd` function in matlab) gives an 87.8% sampled likelihood that the intervention reduces the conditional risk (intervention(i) This is suggestive (but not yet "clearly convincing") evidence that the vaccine reduces the risk of severe covid conditional on being infected in the first place, and that comes on top of the obviously compelling evidence that the vaccine reduces the baseline risk of infection.

This conclusion makes intuitive sense since the vaccine is intended to produce an immune response. A patient who has a moderate response to the vaccine itself may not neutralize the infection before developing symptoms but would still have a primed immune system to control the disease before it becomes severe. (That is: the response to the vaccine intuitively falls on a range, rather than being "all or nothing").

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

#154

Post by amanaplanacanal »

sandworm101 wrote: post #136
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.

There is an additional question that opens the door to all sorts of hidden exclusions: Were study participants given medical advice prior to participation? If I ask my doctor whether it is a "good idea" for me to participate in an investigational study like this, there are all number of reasons he may advise against. Those reasons form a defacto hidden list of exclusions. Would a doctor advise a patient with diabetes…

Why wouldn’t they? It’s not like the study intentionally infected people with the virus.

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

#155

Post by maxerickson »

hobs wrote: post #42
ed25519FUUU wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it cures late stage cancer a few million per treatment would actually be a bargain. Edit: I have no clue why people would rather something not exist than for something to exist but for it to be too expensive.

Considering that no, we dont have a few million per person than no, its not really a "bargain" unless you mean in the context of a pact with the devil.

Not everyone has cancer. And the price is sort of likely to come down if there is a technique that reliably treats cancer.

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

#156

Post by coffeefirst »

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!

This is irresponsible fearmongering, and says more about how lackadaisical software engineering is towards quality control than anything else.

On the other hand, if you want to read about how software works when it actually matters, "space shuttle coding style" is fascinating.

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

#157

Post by zetazzed »

IronRanger wrote: post #21

What was the age profile of the trial? If you fill it with healthy people under 50 during Summer you would expect the same results with a placebo, given the profile of the virus.

  Is anyone else on HN depressed by the number of people who seem to think - "AHA, based on not reading anything, I believe there is a meaningful chance that the whole medical and regulatory community just missed this extremely obvious possible flaw that just popped in my head?"
  Do people really think that the most-publicized clinical trials of our times were conducted by over-reaching noobs?

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

#158

Post by SomeoneFromCA »

smt88 wrote: post #51
SomeoneFromCA wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are failing the Marshmallow test.

You are accidentally correct. You seem to think the Marshmallow Test is a test of willpower. That interpretation is debunked. It is actually a test of poverty. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/new-research-marsh...

No I meant actually what I meant. Did you actually read the paper itself, which was supposed to be debunking the experiment? You probably should: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/095679761876166...

It does not debunk anything, the effect does not vanish, it just diminshes to 1/3 of what was originally calimed. Which means, that within a single socieconomical group, the effect will still be quite noticeable.

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

#159

Post by maxerickson »

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.

They trigger an immune response, priming the immune system to be ready for the virus, preventing or limiting infection and disease.

I'm not sure what information beyond that will actually be received and comforting to a lay audience that is skeptical.

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

#160

Post by amurale »

MauranKilom wrote: post #143
amurale wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What is your reason for assuming P I fully admit that I am not up to speed in proven COVID-19 medium- or long-term effects beyond having seen headlines, but to essentially assume none when there have been very obvious and multi-faceted indications of them implies you must have a very good basis of research to base your estimate on. Care to share?

I take the IFR (infection fatality rate) for age For example, IFR(age[0] https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/laninf/PIIS1473-3099...
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