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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

#211

Post by rocknor »

hinkley wrote: post #193
learc83 wrote: 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…

One of the lessons I learned from Thinking, Fast and Slow, is that people who present a number as a percent scale can (but might not) have an agenda, as can people who report an absolute magnitude. What I took from this is that if you want to have a rational reaction to the data, you need to have both numbers in mind while deciding how to feel about the situation. That means 1% aka 70 million dead. Which I interpret…

> you want to have a rational reaction to the data, you need to have both numbers in mind

That's exactly what Hans Rosling says in "Factfulness", always be wary of lonely numbers.

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

#212

Post by smt88 »

SomeoneFromCA wrote: post #158
smt88 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 noticeabl…

I have read the paper[1], and its discussion section supports the conclusions drawn by other readers, who are smarter than I am[2][3][4].

Here's one excerpt from the discussion:

> "When considering how our results might inform intervention development, recall that models with con-trols for concurrent measures of cognitive skills and behavior reduced the association between delay of gratification and age-15 achievement to nearly zero."

To put it another way, when controls for education and socioeconomic status are added, there is no significant effect.

1. https://sci-hub.se/10.1177/0956797618761661

2. https://jasoncollins.blog/2018/05/31/the-marshmallow-test-he...

3. https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/06/marshmall...

4. https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/6/6/17413000/mar...

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

#213

Post by ogre_codes »

throwawaysea wrote: post #60
ghaff wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Note: I think the bar for requiring a vaccination can/should definitely be higher than the bar to lift a total ban on a vaccine. It's unlikely in the US that the federal government could require vaccination. States maybe could but only because of very old case law that might well not stand up today. Of course, private workplaces, schools, government offices, airlines, etc. could to the degree that it might be quite…

> States maybe could but only because of very old case law that might well not stand up today. Of course, private workplaces, schools, government offices, airlines, etc. could to the degree that it might be quite difficult at some point to refuse. States probably can compel people to take it, considering some already require it for use of public services like schools. I’m guessing private companies can do whatever th…

> States probably can compel people to take it, considering some already require it for use of public services like schools.

Public schools likely could not exist in the densities they currently exist if people didn't vaccinate. Likewise, dense urban housing, and many public venues would cease to be viable. Measles spread far faster than COVID; even with something like 95% of the population vaccinated we still have outbreaks in high anti-vaxxer communities. If we didn't require measles vaccines where we do, it would be absolutely everywhere. Likewise similarly conquered diseases like smallpox and polio.

> Citizens who are forced to give up bodily autonomy to use basic services they can’t reasonably avoid (roads, public transportation, schools, etc) simply don’t have basic freedoms in my view.

To date, no state requires vaccinations to use roads/ public transportation and I find it unlikely that they ever will. But I would support requiring proof of vaccination at the state/ national borders during an outbreak to prevent spreaders. Likewise, large gatherings (including schools) absolutely must require vaccinations. This isn't a matter of freedom/ versus not freedom. If they didn't require vaccination, they could not safely exist.

If you choose to opt out of large events, then I support that right. But schools/ colleges/ concerts/ etc, cannot exist in a vaccine optional world.

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

#214

Post by thisistheend123 »

There a lot of comments that are being downvoted just for questioning different aspects of such a vaccine and other related issues.

That's not what I have come to expect from a crowd of curious people carrying a scientific temper.

C'mon HN. Let's answer the questions without downvoting someone to oblivion.

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

#216

Post by MauranKilom »

amurale wrote: post #160
MauranKilom wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Ok, I can get behind that thought process.

I will note that the cited 0.0045% infection fatality rate number is quite old/outdated (June 1st). It's not easy to match different areas under the age curve (which seems to be exponential) and that it can vary a lot by region, but here is a review paper which has your number for ages 0-34 (Table 3) and (substantially) higher ones for ages above that:

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.23.20160895v...

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

#217

Post by wait_a_minute »

orblivion wrote: post #134
nobleach wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm interested in this as the only pushback I've heard has been from some Christian folks on YouTube claiming that we're no longer "human" if we hack or mix our DNA. I tend to look at it more like "right to repair". If I buy an iPhone, I should be able to hack it to my heart's content. I have no idea if that's the angle you're mentioning. I'd be really interested to hear the other potential dangers that others see.

I'm an atheist more or less and I agree with this sentiment. I'm not fond of transhumanism. But I don't think the mRNA vaccine process fits this description.

Why aren't you fond of transhumanism? At some point medicine and technology will advance so much that we can save and improve many lives by replacing bits of ourselves with superior artificial variants. Is that so bad?

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

#218

Post by CamperBob2 »

tsimionescu wrote: post #208
CamperBob2 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite a bit of our DNA isn't "human" to begin with, never mind our cells themselves. In fact, most of the cells in our bodies are bacterial, as I understand it. (Edit, that's oversimplified and/or inaccurate, see below.)

That's highly debatable. Also, obviously 'most' begs the question 'most by what?' if it's just by number, then that seems unlikely but possible. But most by weight, volume, or, more importantly, functionality - not really, that's definitely human cells.

Interestingly, you're right in that the "most of your cells are bacteria" point is a myth. I'm not a specialist, and fell for the pop-sci BS. Apparently the real ratio is closer to 1:1 ( https://www.nature.com/news/scientists-bust-myth-that-our-bo... ), if we can trust Nature's summary of several recent articles.

With regard to functionality, that's a very open question. We're constantly finding that features that didn't seem useful are not just functional but important. This trend can be seen at multiple levels, from gut flora to "junk DNA."

As for what fraction of our genome is either shared with other non-human organisms or originated with them, it's tough to find a straight answer on that, but rest assured it's far from zero. See https://www.cshl.edu/the-non-human-living-inside-of-you/ . That's been well-understood by everyone other than religious fundamentalists for some time now, and there are countless legitimate sources that can be cited.

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

#220

Post by inglor_cz »

faitswulff wrote: post #31
delfinom wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly from the manufacturing process description alone, we are going to be decades away from when it's actually ...not a few million dollars per individual to treat.

An individually tailored cancer treatment is already available in the form of the CAR-T therapies, which might give an indication of how expensive it’ll be - you were pretty much right on the dot, since each treatment in a course of treatments is estimated at $375,000.

In order to produce a personalized anti-cancer RNA vaccine, you need to

a) do a biopsy of the tumor and some healthy tissue, which is fairly cheap,

b) do genetic analysis of those samples to find the differences. This used to be prohibitively expensive, but now is fairly cheap too, the price went down six (!) orders of magnitude since 2000,

c) ask specialized software to find the optimal protein set to express. This software can be used for all the patients around, so cost of development will be split among them,

d) synthetize the correct messenger RNA and embed it in lipid nanoparticles. Not cheap, but not prohibitively expensive either, this is basically a biological equivalent of a printing job,

e) check the resulting drug and send it to the clinic where the patient is treated.

This all together is a much more straightforward and automatized process than extracting tumor-invading lymphocytes from a patient and babying them in vitro with a lot of attention from human scientists and use of fairly expensive reagents. The price tag for this process per se should be at least two orders of magnitude lower.

Then you must add the original development and testing costs, amortized equipment cost and profit. This is where the total price tag may balloon.

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