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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

#691

Post by Diederich »

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.

Just some somewhat related date:

The worst year of the Polio epidemic in the United States was 1952 where 3145 people died and about 21,000 had some level of lasting (but not necessarily permanent) health impact.

I personally don't think the state should mandate vaccinations by the way, even though such a mandate would almost definitely be a net good to society.

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

#692

Post by Diederich »

throwaway201103 wrote: post #666
vkou wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 spread…

If there's an effective vaccine, those who do not want to risk infection from COVID can make the choice to take the vaccine. Those who feel that the risk that they will become infected is one that they are willing to take can do that. Nobody is put into danger that they do not choose to accept.

Do you know that there are quite a few people who can't get vaccinations? Most of them also can't afford to self isolate.

Choosing to not get a vaccination primarily endangers you personally, but definitely also raises the danger level to those who have no choice in the matter.

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

#693

Post by tinus_hn »

bluGill wrote: post #610
tinus_hn wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would have been impossible to predict the problems with thalidomine by looking at the equivalent report as what is available now for these vaccines. So looking at it for 20 days isn’t going to help with that. It’s just going to cost 100000 lives.

Even if they approve today and the best case happens were are still looking at the same 100000 lives lost. Maybe a handful would be prevented, but no matter what supply ensures that they cannot vaccinate enough people to make a significant dent in that number.

No because if you start later you’ll be done later. The vulnerable population is a really small part so the first batch is already big enough to cover that.

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

#694

Post by alexchamberlain »

dane-pgp wrote: post #679
alexchamberlain wrote: post #673

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess that's reasonable, though it appears the name goes back to the 1st century, so the UK is named after the Isles, rather than the other way around? Has anyone proposed a viable alternative?

> the UK is named after the Isles Great Britain may have been named after one of the isles, but the controversy arises because the UK spans (part of, but not all of) the two main isles. > Has anyone proposed a viable alternative? I don't know what would count as "viable" if you reject "Britain and Ireland" and "Atlantic Archipelago".

Sorry, I didn't mean to reject anything.

> Great Britain may have been named after one of the isles

Great Britain is the largest island of the isles. The UK's full name is The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland; ie there's no political entity of Great Britain (and never has been).

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

#695

Post by tinus_hn »

_Microft wrote: post #608
tinus_hn wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actions speak louder than words. 20 days delay is 100000 people dead. That’s the option they choose.

Sure, that's why I am convinced that they are working as fast as possible . (I'm fully aware by now that you seem perfectly fine with corner cutting, so no need to reiterate that again).

No, I don’t think the UK is cutting any more corners than the EU. That’s not the same thing as being ok with cutting corners.

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

#696

Post by tinus_hn »

bluGill wrote: post #604
tinus_hn wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer to that is two-fold, of course. In the US and UK any hold-up is going to be blamed on the government, while in the EU it’ll be blamed on some nebulous, far away EU institution which is not elected anyway. Second one country might care more about a lot of people dying unnecessarily (besides the burden on the economy) than another. Clearly the EU has no issue with it and prioritizes theatrics instead. Again,…

The EU didn't get the data to make a decision until just a couple days ago. The FDA and UK had a head start so of course they can make an informed decision sooner. Maybe the EU should say "We haven't seen the data, but it is good enough for the UK so good enough for us.". However what if the data shows it is good enough for anyone from north-west Europe, but not anywhere else in the world - then the approval would ju…

Do you have a source for that? I’m pretty sure the EU got the same information in advance, they say on the EMA website. Why would they not?

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

#697

Post by DanBC »

_Microft wrote: post #294
tinus_hn wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So are you saying the UK cut corners?

That's one of the possibilities I had in mind when I started the thread. Look at my top level comment so see what I asked exactly.

Don't forget people have been working on coronavirus vaccinations for nearly a decade.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3586247/

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

#698

Post by marricks »

scld wrote: post #618
marricks wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The US meeting date is based on an arbitrary scheduling rule saying meetings like this must take place 15 days after request, or something to that effect. The FDA itself closely inspects data throughout the phase 3 trials so this review should just consist of looking at the details to see if something was missed, (ideally) not some brand new information come to light.

Wow, thanks for the info. I didn't know it was arbitrary scheduling. Seems like given the circumstances you'd hope they would just setup a meeting tomorrow.

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

#699

Post by fuzxi »

tubularhells wrote: post #592
aspyct wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Look at the way people communicate here, how little empathy they show, the complete sense of humour, how anal they can be about not about the big picture that the other person is arguing for but, say, choice of words, someone's formulation of a sentence, use of the oxford comma, whatever really. Then tell me if this site is not the largest community for autistic software developers, diagnosed or not. This is in no wa…

I honestly see more of that on reddit. 90% of reddit users seem to treat every conversation as a debate they feel compelled to win.

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

#700

Post by joshuahughes »

treesprite82 wrote: post #686
johnisgood wrote: post #594

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taking a rushed vaccine with God knows what long-term effects is not going to be a choice. Have fun with it. You are playing Russian roulette that I do not wish to play. In majority of the cases COVID-19 is not lethal at all, there should be no mandatory vaccines, especially not when we have no knowledge of its long-term effects and so on and so on. If you want you can take the Chinese or Russian vaccine. I do not wa…

> You are playing Russian roulette that I do not wish to play. In majority of the cases COVID-19 is not lethal at all You accuse them of playing Russian roulette while you justify not taking the vaccine with "the majority of COVID cases aren't lethal" ? > I think this is way too overblown. 1.5 million people have died. > I want to know how likely it is for asymptomatic people to spread the virus. I swear, I will keep…

> 1.5 million people have died

But did they die FROM or WITH covid? That's the million dollar question. Here's CDC data that says 94% of Covid-19 deaths involved one or more comorbid conditions... i.e. these are not healthy people struck down in their prime... https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm#Co...

Point is, just a raw number doesn't actually make a great argument.

Even worse, it's a number without context. The most recent annual death stat I could find was for 2017 which saw about 54,750,000 deaths. So '1.5m dying from covid' is less than 3% of this year's deaths.

In my opinion, and the opinion of many others, those numbers seem a fair argument for the "overblown" POV.

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