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Pfizer Covid vaccine approved for use next week in UK

bbc.com

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Re: Pfizer Covid vaccine approved for use next week in UK

#261

Post by Wintamute »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #254
Wintamute wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're missing is that amongst a certain class of Brit, and across much of the West, relentless and savage cultural self-criticism has become the norm, and a currency used for in-group signalling. Even when people in the UK should be celebrating, as literally the first country in the world to develop an approved C19 vaccine in record breaking time, and enjoy the privilege of a free health system that can roll it…

> it's a habit of personal advancement at the expense of others How does this relate to your point about a culture of self-criticism?

My point was related to cultural self-criticism, i.e. criticising your own culture, not a culture of (personal) self-criticism.

Re: Pfizer Covid vaccine approved for use next week in UK

#263

Post by tome »

dbbk wrote: post #239
gr2zr4 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We all are still waiting peer-reviewd scientific papers instead of press releases....

Sorry, do you think the UK regulator approved Pfizer based on... a press release?

I suspect that gr2zr4 doesn't think that, rather that the press release (about the approval) has been released and the scientific papers haven't.

Re: Pfizer Covid vaccine approved for use next week in UK

#264

Post by tialaramex »

PureParadigm wrote: post #123
alibarber wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mRNA itself isn't doing the protection - it's training your immune system to do that for you (in a safe way).

So its effect on the immune system lasts even after it's gone. So if it were to cause any problems (in the immune system, for example), those could also persist after the mRNA is gone. So how exactly is this line of reasoning reassuring?

Everything you're exposed to in your environment impacts the immune system. That's one of the mistakes anti-vax people make about childhood vaccination. They're like "Oh no, my baby can't handle six different vaccines in one shot, that must be too many at once surely" but actually it's a baby and babies eat dirt - its immune system is already seeing all sorts of new nonsense that isn't supposed to be there every day and problems are very rare, vaccination isn't any more of a problem.

So yes, but no. And it's reassuring compared to say DNA tweaking which would permanently change the instructions in some cell lines in your body, or more extremely germ line DNA tweaking which would alter your cells and those of any subsequent offspring you have.

Re: Pfizer Covid vaccine approved for use next week in UK

#265

Post by colinb »

thu2111 wrote: post #243
DanBC wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We had excellent Public Health test and trace departments who had a wealth of experience of tracing people for sexual health purposes. But we still chose to give the contract to Dido Harding despite her poor record at NHS Improvement. And I saw what happened to NHS Logistics, which was one bit of the NHS that wasn't losing money. It was running well. It was privatised to DHL in 2006 for purely ideological reasons, an…

That story can easily be told in reverse. NHS Logistics didn't run well. As is consistently true of government run organisations it was run so badly that most of the NHS didn't even try to use its services. At the time of the privatisation the NHS sourced around half a million products but only acquired 50,000 of them via NHS Logistics. The entire purpose of privatising it was to try and make it work better and thus…

Your last paragraph caught my interest. Can you point me at countries that are widely accepted to have done a better job?

My own experience of the NHS (as a non-Brit who lived in the UK for more than a decade) is that it is inefficient at the small things (sitting in a waiting room for an hour - but being shamed if I show up 10 minutes late for my appointment) but brutally effective at big important things (treatment for life threatening diseases - worked well, but the biscuits were rubbish). I know this isn't data, but I also know that British people love to carp about the NHS, and having lived with health services in two other industrialised countries, I quite liked it.

Re: Pfizer Covid vaccine approved for use next week in UK

#266

Post by tome »

_Microft wrote: post #68
modeless wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pfizer concluded their trial and filed for approval with the FDA almost two weeks ago. People are dying. Why is it not approved yet?

Approval is like code review. They go over the work and make sure it is sound. Just giving an OK without doing the approval work would be called "rubber-stamping".

"LGTM!"

Re: Pfizer Covid vaccine approved for use next week in UK

#267

Post by acqq »

jfoster wrote: post #256
acqq wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The researchers joke that "animals lie", in the sense that animals can have different reactions compared to humans, in spite of the researchers trying as much as possible to get something useful in the experiments. Having said that, I still believe your claim of what can be concluded to be unlikely based on "animal model observation" is false, from what is known up to now. Specifically: https://www.medscape.com/viewa…

Might this also have a silver lining? If the virus is still able to spread, does that mean that it is less likely to face selection pressure to mutate around the vaccines?

Contrary to what is often believed, regarding mutations, coronaviruses behave completely differently than flu viruses.

The mutation rate among coronaviruses is so slow that it's much more probable that whenever we see some new significant change among them it is due to the recombination, not due to the mutation. Coronaviruses have a specific mechanism of "error correction" in them which lowers the mutation rate, compared to most RNA viruses.

The "selection pressures" are also less likely in this case then most would estimate. We as humans are much more "pressured" by this virus in its current form than the virus by anything we'd do. The viruses themselves don't even "need" to come "around" anything, and there are enough unknown viruses in the world which aren't less potential threat than this one which understandably got the spotlight.

It's surely good to be aware of all the processes involved but the probabilities of different events and outcomes should also direct our responses.

Re: Pfizer Covid vaccine approved for use next week in UK

#268

Post by pmoriarty »

usrusr wrote: post #216
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a suspicion that once the vaccine rolls out and is working then everybody will throw caution to the wind. It’s going to be interesting to watch this unfold.

Fully expect the same. Basically, if you are less than 65 years old and not working in one of the early access professions, forget all concerns about vaccine safety. Buckle up to face the virus natively in that third wave that will sweep through unmitigated once the high mortality groups are vaccinated.

There may be places you won't be allowed to go and things you won't be allowed to do (like work, maybe) unless you show proof of having been vaccinated.

There's a good chance that situation will create a black market both for vaccines (real and fake) and forged proof of vaccination.

Re: Pfizer Covid vaccine approved for use next week in UK

#269

Post by tome »

mns wrote: post #27
waihtis wrote: post #20

Not sure why the posts asking for vaccine risks are getting downvoted. Pandemrix, the vaccine for swine flu, caused a notable amount of narcolepsy cases in recipients here in FIN (notable here meaning the amount of yearly cases spiked by 3-4x) and as with anything that's taken quick to market there has to be some risk of overlooking some tail events somewhere. It's not an anti-vaccine attitude, just healthy skepticis…

Because the entire subject is so politicised and polarised that even daring to ask a question that might go against the current might get you labeled as a right wing science denier racist (based on the country, different labels might apply). Edit: it's funny that the comment above gets downvoted just for asking a question. Great world we live in. We didn't learn anything from the past. Blaming and shaming gay people…

3 in 4, according to a sister comment

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25274255

Re: Pfizer Covid vaccine approved for use next week in UK

#270

Post by apexalpha »

john_alan wrote: post #251
eastendguy wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, fwiw, the inventor of the mRNA vaccine idea, Ingmar Hoerr, thinks side effects are very unlikely, since the mRNA molecules dissolve after a few days. He has been working on this for 20 years, with no serious side effects ever observed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingmar_Hoerr

Was the SARS vaccine virus not mRNA?

Yes, this is why these mRNA vaccines are here so fast; a lot of prework was done for SARS vaccine, which is also a Corona disease.

But I think SARS died out before the vaccine was ready/needed.

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