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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

#401

Post by rebuilder »

castis wrote: post #297
rebuilder wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't yet know whether the vaccines prevent infection and transmission AFAIK.

it would prevent infection and transmission as much as any other vaccine would. you're just priming your immune system to handle something its not actually seen before. you can still get the virus, it will still affect you, but your immune system will recognize and deal with it much much faster. thinking logically, if you are given the virus, your body will still make copies for a short amount of time and you would s…

I was going by this paper in the Lancet, where they note that it's not clear if the vaccines will provide sterilising immunity in the upper airways:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

This is from September, though, so maybe more is known about that now. I haven't seen news about that, however.

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

#402

Post by jonpalmisc »

ageitgey wrote: post #326
rebuilder wrote: post #245

Do we have any more data on what the wider effectiveness of these vaccines is likely to be? Duration of immunity? I've heard a minimum of 3-4 months reported, possibly longer, but do we know more now? Am I right that we don't yet know if they reduce transmission or simply prevent the disease? If the duration of immunity turns out to only be a few months, I wonder how this is going to play out. Will we periodically va…

> Duration of immunity? I've heard a minimum of 3-4 months reported, possibly longer, but do we know more now? The only way to know for sure is to wait and see. But patients vaccinated for SARS in ~2004 still show immune responses now and people who received the various SARS-COV-2 trial vaccines in April of this year still show immunity. There's also studies showing many people who recovered from COVID on their own h…

Thank you for this comment, I learned a lot.

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

#403

Post by anthonypasq »

SifJar wrote: post #141
fabian2k wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to compare the risks to the risks of the disease and the likelyhood of contracting that disease. And for COVID-19 the risks are very high. It doesn't make much sense to me to trade the very high known risks of COVID-19 against the relatively low risk of rare side effects in a vaccine. These vaccines have been tested in ~40,000 people each, so we do know quite a bit about their safety. The fatality rate of CO…

> These vaccines have been tested in ~40,000 people each, so we do know quite a bit about their safety. We know quite a bit about their short term safety. It's impossible to know for sure if there is any long term side effect. But that is probably a risk we have to take to get past the immediate threat of covid-19.

vaccines pretty much never have long term side effects

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

#404

Post by shrikant »

CodeGlitch wrote: post #368
shrikant wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Ministry of Defence was heavily involved in the logistics planning and execution for the mobile testing units across England and Wales.

Yes the British MOD has a record of being very good at logistics [1] "One country that has achieved an unparalleled level of efficiency and responsiveness in its logistics and sustainment activities is the United Kingdom (UK). The British Ministry of Defense (MOD) has wholeheartedly embraced outsourcing many of these functions to the private sector." Also of interest: "One of the primary reasons why the MOD is willin…

I had the good fortune of first-hand experience of working with the MoD for a small slice of the mobile testing unit logistics, and would absolutely echo the sentiments expressed in that blurb.

The whole article is a fascinating read, especially when I noticed that it was written in 2016 :-O

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

#405

Post by pjc50 »

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…

You're going to have to provide sources for this lot. When we're talking about corruption we're talking about things like the no-bid contract to Platform-14 for PPE. Or the "Seaborne Freight" incident.

Tiny firms and shell companies are "an organisation which had no economies of scale, nor any demonstrated expertise in logistics in a competitive environment". DHL at least has a track record of large scale delivery.

> NHS insisted on only using NHS labs, despite being given direct commands to scale up testing as fast as possible

Unsourced, never heard this.

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

#406

Post by sjg007 »

xiphias2 wrote: post #358
bluedevil2k wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3. Vaccinated people can still be carriers of the virus and infect others who aren't vaccinated yet. As you point out in #1, vaccinated people still need to practice social distancing and wear masks.

Is there a high chance for it? I’d really like to know. Moderna was testing for SARS-COV-2 protection efficiency, while Pfitzer was testing for COVID protection efficiency, but they have similar targets as far as I know. I’d love to know an experts’ answer because the difference between the two is huge, I would hate myself to kill my parents by catching SARS-COV-2 after getting vaccinated.

The answer is that we don't know. But it is not unlikely.

You can still get the flu even if you had a flu shot for example. Some of that may be due to the flu shot being the wrong strain but some of it is definitely due to infection post vaccination. The main reason that they recommend a flu shot is that you usually have a milder course of illness.

Covid will probably be the same way. You could have mild symptoms or be asymptomatic despite being vaccinated and infect someone else.

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

#407

Post by napier »

ulrikrasmussen wrote: post #158
mystcb wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UK Gov originally published this as the priority interim list [1] - * older adults’ resident in a care home and care home workers * all those 80 years of age and over and health and social care workers * all those 75 years of age and over * all those 70 years of age and over * all those 65 years of age and over * high-risk adults under 65 years of age * moderate-risk adults under 65 years of age * all those 60 years…

In Denmark where I live, a large proportion of infected people are age 20-29, and I wonder if it would make sense to vaccinate them first when you get to "rest of the population". Even though they have a smaller risk of getting seriously ill, that could be an effective way to lower transmission. That is: 1. Immunize the age group that is dominating in the hospitalization statistics, then 2. Immunize the age group is…

From a sheer infection control standpoint it makes a sense to vaccinate hypermobile social superspreader nodes first. Anyone who comes into contact with lots of people is going to be responsible for more onward infection chains than a reclusive grandma. The butterflies among the young are probably key drivers of spread. Take them out of the susceptibility picture and everyone benefits.

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

#408

Post by Mauricebranagh »

ryanbrunner wrote: post #325
Ekaros wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would the vaccine work on those groups? My understanding is that you need baseline immuno-response to develop the resistance with help of vaccine. Isn't one point of vaccination of population to protect exactly that population who can't receive the vaccination?

I'm going through the transplant pipeline right now, and I've been told to expect that it should still work, but probably at a lower effectiveness than someone not on a post-transplant drug regimen. I'm really hoping the timing works out so I can get it pre-transplant though.

Fingers crossed :-) I have a call with the Post transplant team this after noon so will ask.

Which hospital / trust are you with? I had mine done at Royal Free.

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

#409

Post by josu »

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?

Given that they could halt the rollout of the vaccine at any point, it makes sense to approve ASAP to get all bureaucratic burdens out of the way, and concurrently analyze the situation. Not saying that this is the case though.

For example, the EU is going to review the Pfizer vaccine on December 29, and they have requested further information.

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

#410

Post by throwaway122378 »

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…

Be careful with that type of reasonable thinking. Fear and compliance is the way to go.
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