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

541–550 of 766 posts

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

#541

Post by acqq »

Angostura wrote: post #311
ulrikrasmussen wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

We don't know yet whether the vaccine stops people from being asymptomic spreaders. We do know that it is effective at stopping people from getting ill. So we don't know how beneficial your 2 above would be.

Exactly, as explained here:

https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/941030?src=soc_tw_20111...

The results announced up to now just showed that the vaccines reduce chance of a vaccinated person becoming sick.

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

#542

Post by nkohari »

macintux wrote: post #394
J-dawg wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> ...I don't see the problem with letting everyone else make their own decision. Pandemics have, since time immemorial, been an exception to the "I can do what I want" rule. Much like allowing parents to fall into conspiracy theory traps and refuse to allow their children to be vaccinated against measles, resulting in that disease suddenly becoming a threat again, if we're going to get back to normalcy we can't let h…

If there is an effective vaccine which is readily available to anyone, there is no need for lockdowns.

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

#543

Post by grillvogel »

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.

any virus is gonna have a small subset of people who have weird long term reactions to it

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

#545

Post by rebuilder »

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!

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

#546

Post by henryaj »

thu2111 wrote: post #490
colinb wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The problem with British people's opinions of the NHS is that they routinely conflate the NHS with healthcare. (BTW, I am British myself). You're doing the same thing here. The NHS is not healthcare. The NHS is not doctors or nurses or life saving operations. The NHS is not hospitals. All first world countries have these things, but none have an NHS except Britain. The NHS is a bureaucracy that manages resource alloc…

[replying to pjc50]

> Any whiff of ineligibility by payment is completely unacceptable, and rightly so, or we'd end up with the US disaster

Lots of European systems require e.g. payment for GP appointments and aren't anything like the US system. Likewise, the UK makes people pay for dentistry, spectacles.

> From a political point of view, we have to defend the existing system because otherwise the US one will be forced on us

This sounds like unsourced propaganda...

> Private health insurance is quite cheap in the UK compared to America because anything complicated or expensive can and will be dumped back on the public sector.

Most private healthcare in the UK covers complicated and expensive cancer treatments, including ones not covered by the NHS, so this doesn't hold water. (There are a few cheaper, less common insurance plans that don't cover cancer and are designed to complement the NHS coverage, AFAIK)

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

#547

Post by elif »

annadane wrote: post #538
lumberingjack wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great with comments like this the site is now basically worthless reddit

I'm 99% certain the person you're replying to is kidding. I thought it was funny

That's his point. A decade ago, the comments on this site were 99% relevent, solid technical feedback and analysis. The top post being layperson speculation with a joke response topping it bears a much stronger resemblance to reddit than to hn's origin.

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

#548

Post by tannhaeuser »

Wintamute wrote: post #241
ksec wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a high level overview and global perspective, what the OP is saying, or meant , is that comparatively speaking UK is much better than possibly 80% of developed countries. Not to say NHS is without flaws, far from it. But if you step outside and look around the world many are surprised how awful public health services and logistics can be. So to put it another way, It is not that NHS is good, it is just the other…

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…

I've got to say that you yourself seem to fall victim to the very thing that you're criticizing (namely, polarizing over a national pride thing) as the vaccine is neither developed nor produced in UK. In fact, given the demand, it's not clear supply of the vaccine will allow for NHS' projections.

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

#549

Post by vkou »

djsumdog wrote: post #539
vkou wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

60,000 people have already died of COVID in the UK, and many more are scheduled to, without vaccination. Hard to walk or smile when you're dead.

The vast majority of people under 50 who catch CoV2 recovery completely with minimal symptoms. There is a trade-off and people need to be able to evaluate those risk and make those decision individually.

You are shifting the goal posts.

1. More than 5,000 people under 50 in a population of 66 million will have serious side effects from COVID.

2. In fact, nearly 3,000 people under 50 have already died from COVID in the UK.

3. This is despite only a small percentage of the population (3-10%) having been infected by COVID.

4. Even if you are under 50, and don't die to COVID, you are going to kill other people, by spreading it to them.

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

#550

Post by grillvogel »

fabian2k wrote: post #57
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…

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…

the risks of covid are very low for ~99% of the population

IMO the risks of an rushed new vaccine are much higher

Post reply on HN