Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Pfizer Covid vaccine approved for use next week in UK

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

441–450 of 766 posts

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

#441

Post by djsumdog »

abootstrapper wrote: post #435
shusson wrote: post #71

Out of curiosity, how do people on HN rate the risk of long term side-effects?

Risk of long term covid side effects seems greater to me than long term vaccine side effects.

Why do you believe this out of curiosity? Every single "long term covid" symptom study I've read are case studies. The UK one from the publication in Charlottesville covered 60 distinct people and they were all either high risk workers or over 55.

We don't know what "permanent damage" is actually happening. I remember having pneumonia in the 90s and it took my lungs over 3 months to recover, and that's from a normal known infection.

I think there is a strong case to be made, that a lot of these "long covid" cases might be a combination of normal pneumonia recovery, nocebo effect and fear/hysteria over this disease.

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

#442

Post by graeme »

CJefferson wrote: post #400
graeme wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not aware of any vaccine that had long term side effects that were not also apparent in the short term. E.g. I believe it was the swine flu vaccine that caused narcolepsy in a small percentage of people receiving it. But that was apparent immediately. To my knowledge no one has identified any slow acting consequences of a vaccine that would not have been obvious from the first rollout of a vaccine. So this questi…

What do you mean by short term? That swine flu vaccine is my main concern. It wasn't clear in trials, and it took a couple of years before anyone took the problem seriously as far as I can tell -- by that point a significant chunk of the world could have a COVID vaccine.

I mean the effects would have been immediate, rather than say “develops cancer in 20 years”. Though I guess the narcolepsy took about a month to develop. I suspect there will be much more monitoring and speed with these vaccines than with the swine flu vaccine.

The mechanism for the narcolepsy was a protein present in the virus itself. So actually getting the flu would have been much worse for those with the genes that made them susceptible.

It doesn’t sound like mRNA vaccines would have this vulnerability. Though I do take your point that it’s possible something like the swine flu narcolepsy event would only be found after the fact. However that would be a pretty small consequence since in this case the flu also would have caused worse narcolepsy.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4562845/

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

#443

Post by HPsquared »

mkl wrote: post #172
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…

What a strange apostrophe (it's in the official list). Or am I misreading it?

"The resident, who is the property of the older adults..."

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

#444

Post by afandian »

djmobley wrote: post #318
afandian wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To your point 3, Belgium may well have great logistics but the UK government has knowingly undermined and compromised UK logistics (the whole industry is crying out) as part of their Brexit process. Maybe there are extraordinary arrangements being made for the vaccine, but it won't be because of a good prevailing open-market logistics situation. Edit: here's the Road Haulage Association warning of severe supply chain…

Your comment has nothing to do with the logistics of rolling out a mass vaccination programme, but how exactly have the UK government’s Brexit negotiations “undermined and compromised UK logistics”? Negotiations are ongoing to secure a trade deal with the EU once the transition period is over. The UK are also securing trade deals with other countries, including Canada and Japan. Both sides recognise failure to reach…

The original comment said

"3. Developed country with great logistics."

Which I now realise I misread as "Developed in a country" (i.e. Belgium, where it's manufactured). An entirely different, erroneous, reading of the sentence.

Therefore my comment addressed the nature of cross-channel shipping which authorities I respect have repeatedly warned about.

It's too late to edit to add that clarification about the misreading. But that's what was missed.

If the army steps in to provide logistics at a time of national crisis, that's great. But it's not what I would expect this government to do based on the recent historical evidence: We've been in a national crisis for a while and the government has routinely preferred to neglect public-sector expertise and go private in a vast array of public procurement. Much of it has been highly questionable judgment (ministers awarding contracts to friends with penalty clauses).

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

#445

Post by djsumdog »

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?

Yes, it's likely. Regulators are not as independent from the industry as you think. They've been getting closer and closer over the decades. It's call corruption and it's growing.

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

#446

Post by rkangel »

jakemal wrote: post #391
rkangel wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All the info that's out there says that immunity to C19 is temporary This isn't quite true. What is true is that there is no information out there to conclusively support long term retention of antibodies, in large part because we've only got 6 months of data. As to the latter point, I wonder about the trial design. If they didn't give all participants a Covid antibody test before starting, it is very likely that s…

> If they didn't give all participants a Covid antibody test before starting, it is very likely that several participants were previously infected. Doesn't comparing to a control group account for that?

There's always some criteria for the test group. An example might be:

Age 20-65, BMI below 2, with no long term medical conditions

You find enough people that fit that group and then randomly divide them into two groups, one of which is the test group and one the control. It is possible but unlikely that the criteria includes "has not previously had Covid 19". Assuming the criteria didn't include that, then some of the participants and some of the control group will have previously had Covid, and so we now have some evidence as to whether a cytokine storm occurs.

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

#448

Post by marcosdumay »

rjtavares wrote: post #129
SubiculumCode wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? The 'Oxford' vaccine has been pretty shaky. Edit: source: https://www.wired.com/story/the-astrazeneca-covid-vaccine-da...

Source? Latest news[1] seem to indicate it's effective. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/health-55040635

Yeah, there was a ton of news on that vaccine last week.

After a bit of push-back the laboratory acknowledged that this 90% efficacy was comparing a much younger vaccinated population than the one that got placebo.

That has put some doubts on the entire procedure (with countries forcing them to publish details), but it doesn't look like a real problem right now. Anyway that one high efficacy result is very likely flawed.

Anyway, what I get is that the important part is this: "Nobody getting the actual vaccine developed severe-Covid or needed hospital treatment."

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

#449

Post by VBprogrammer »

arc0 wrote: post #432
VBprogrammer wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a fairly stereotypical British trait to be self deprecating. If we were singlehandedly saving the world from a rogue asteroid the general sentiment would probably be "let's hope we don't mess this up".

I've noticed a shift in the last decade or so from self deprecating to self loathing. People seem loath to admit that we are one of the richest, most privileged, most developed countries in the world.

I think a large part of that is because it doesn't tally with how the vast majority of people in the UK experience life.

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

#450

Post by [deleted] »

J-dawg wrote: post #314
spuz wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I agree. The maths says that we need about 70% of the population to take the vaccine in order for it to no longer be a threat. We also have polling that says about 53% will refuse to take the vaccine. So we're already at the point where something else must be done such as adding incentives, a passport system or better advertising etc. OR continued lockdown measures and enforcement of mask wearing. It's n…

> The maths says that we need about 70% of the population to take the vaccine in order for it to no longer be a threat ...to no longer be a threat to an unvaccinated person. This isn't like the childhood vaccines, where we need herd immunity to protect the children who are too young to be vaccinated. Provided that everyone who wants the vaccine can get it, I don't see the problem with letting everyone else make their…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN