Pfizer Covid vaccine approved for use next week in UK • Hacker News Board

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

#501

Post by sjg007 » Wed, Dec 02, 2020, 5:10 PM UTC

xiphias2 wrote: post #465

sjg007 wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There has never been a flu shot with 95% efficiency. Actually Moderna announced in September that they are getting into the flu vaccine business. It will be great to see mRNA based flu vaccine coming hopefully soon.

If you read the clinical trial press they state that nobody who received the vaccine had a severe covid 19 disease. That means some had symptoms and a mild course of disease.

We do not know that if you get covid, despite vaccination, that you are not infectious.

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

#502

Post by rootusrootus » Wed, Dec 02, 2020, 5:11 PM UTC

marricks wrote: post #389

dbbk wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The full data was just released like last week? There hasn’t been time to fully review it which may be the point. The US set a meeting date of 12/10 to decide on EUA so scientists had time to review the data.

AFAIK both the FDA and the MHRA have been getting data regularly from the various vaccine developers. They didn't have to wait for a final dump of data just to see any of it.

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

#503

Post by vkou » Wed, Dec 02, 2020, 5:15 PM UTC

refurb wrote: post #306

samcheng wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 'beta' test already happened. Tens of thousands of people have proven it safe and effective. Haven't you been following the news? Selfishly, I guess we should be happy that there is an anti-vaxxer sentiment; it means the rest of us will get our vaccines faster.

proven it safe and effective Having worked in the pharmaceutical industry, if I ever said my FDA approved drug was "safe and effective" I'd have the FDA dropping the hammer on me. The FDA does not prove a drug is safe . No drug is 100% safe. The FDA determines whether the risks of the treatment are outweighed by the benefit . I have no doubt that additional safety signals will pop up from Covid vaccines as the treate…

A seatbelt might strangle you in one in a million crashes, but colloquially, we can all agree that seatbelts are safe.

No drug is safe, but in this case, not taking a drug is not safe. If it's safe enough to vaccinate 15,000 people, when 300 of them are expected to die without vaccination, it's incredibly unlikely that side effects discovered on 1 billion people will not make the vaccine the safe choice.

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

#504

Post by simonbarker87 » Wed, Dec 02, 2020, 5:16 PM UTC

shmel wrote: post #341

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. The UK government has ruled out having a vacination passport (for good reason in my opinion).

The UK government had also ruled the second national lockdown, but here we are. Is there a counter since the last U-turn of the UK government?

The Flip-flop / U turn complaint has always irked me. People don’t know the future, people change their minds. I would be disappointed if government were given new information and didn’t change their mind if it was now clear they should do so.

Strong opinions, loosely held.

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

#505

Post by jl6 » Wed, Dec 02, 2020, 5:16 PM UTC

tonyhb wrote: post #473

jl6 wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A better analogy would be living in a nice comfortable house, which is much better than nearly all other houses - but then someone spots a problem with the chimney and starts comparing it to other houses’ chimneys, some of which have better chimneys, some of which have better chimneys but a worse overall house, and some of which are fantasy chimneys that could theoretically exist if only we all spent a bit more time…

Not quite. A substantial number of people in the UK live in poverty - between 20 and 25% [0]. This has been made worse by terrible political decisions, such as Brexit [0]. Specifically, austerity and political decisions (not limited to corruption) is linked to 130,000 preventable deaths [1]. Those same "budget cuts" for austerity exist while money is sent to "consultants" to "help fix things". Not everyone in the UK…

Thanks for the great example. The poverty chimney needs to be considered in conjunction with the security doors and the air quality windows and the human rights carpets and the unemployment basement and the healthcare bathroom and so on... before deciding on the house’s value.

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

#506

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Dec 02, 2020, 5:16 PM UTC

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]

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

#507

Post by lavezzi » Wed, Dec 02, 2020, 5:17 PM UTC

sschueller wrote: post #353

jakozaur wrote: post #19

In terms of rollout. UK is the ideal country to be the first: 1. Heavily impacted by Covid-19. 2. Centralised health care system makes it easier to compare results and efficiency. E.g. it's UK which figured out that dexamethasone is efficient against Covid https://www.who.int/news/item/16-06-2020-who-welcomes-prelim... 3. Developed country with great logistics.

4. Is an island that can be cut off incase of a zombie apocalypse...

Not sure we can boast that if it takes the same amount of time to deal with incoming passengers from abroad who were carrying COVID.

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

#508

Post by graeme » Wed, Dec 02, 2020, 5:18 PM UTC

djsumdog wrote: post #460

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…

The 1976 Swine Flu? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bOHYZhL0WQ Vaccines are also very young. We've had them for 185 years, and there were probably a lot of side effects from people getting stabbed with Horse Pox, but a lot of them probably just died and we didn't collect data back then they way we do today. It's not comparable.

No the 2009 one. Caused narcolepsy in a small number of people. Notably the mechanism was the same one as in the flu itself, so actually getting the flu would have caused worse narcolepsy.

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

#509

Post by VBprogrammer » Wed, Dec 02, 2020, 5:20 PM UTC

BjoernKW wrote: post #436

hermitcrab wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, they are being realistic. The current UK government is riven with incompetence and cronyism. They couldn't organize a piss up a brewery.

There's the government and there's the people who run things, i.e. the Civil Service in this case. While governments change and might or might not be incompetent, those structures largely remain the same.

While I appreciate your point I think the current UK government have done more than average to "shake up" the civil service. Others might describe these changes in less charitable terms.

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

#510

Post by aspyct » Wed, Dec 02, 2020, 5:21 PM UTC

tubularhells wrote: post #476

jonplackett wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't realise I was on reddit...?

This place is a drop in replacement for r/asd.

Yeah uhm... Never been to /r/asd, and now I'm slightly afraid of checking it out, seeing as two comments have been deleted :D