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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

#741

Post by Solstinox »

credit_guy wrote: post #480
shusson wrote: post #71

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

CDC has a page [1] with the notable historical vaccine adverse events. I think it's an informative page to read, but just in case you don't have time, here's my summary: - most adverse events were due to manufacturing issues (e.g. contamination with some live virus). In this respect, I don't think the Covid vaccines are likely to be any more or less risky than other vaccines, such as the annual flu vaccine - two vacc…

Good sources, keeping in mind that past performance is no guarantee of future results.

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

#742

Post by tinus_hn »

joshuahughes wrote: post #738
tinus_hn wrote: post #598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make it sound like a bad thing. It was never a secret the vaccines were coming and as each day of delay means 5000 people dying I think putting a lot of effort into speeding up the rollout is pretty well worth it.

Ummm, latest daily UK deaths "with Covid" is 414, not 5000. Ref: https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk

Latest daily EU deaths with COVID is about 5000.

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

#743

Post by MauranKilom »

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…

I don't know if it's different in pharmaceutics, but for medical devices it is literally all about proving a product "safe and effective".

And the FDA itself talks about approved drugs being safe and effective: https://www.fda.gov/drugs/drug-information-consumers/fdas-dr...

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

#744

Post by ryanbrunner »

Mauricebranagh wrote: post #408
ryanbrunner wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm Canadian, so I imagine it's a completely separate system (for example, I don't know what a "trust" is). I go to my local hospital which has a pretty large nephrology department.

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

#745

Post by tonyhb »

gadders wrote: post #578
tonyhb wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

They're shit, until you compare them to who they were up against, which was a jew hating Marxist.

You know that jew hating was "branding" and bullshit from the tories, right? Literally false conservative propaganda.

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

#746

Post by tonyhb »

gadders wrote: post #578
tonyhb wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

They're shit, until you compare them to who they were up against, which was a jew hating Marxist.

You know that jeep hating was "branding" and bullshit from the tories, right? Literally false conservative propaganda.

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

#747

Post by refurb »

tinus_hn wrote: post #396
refurb wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd fit right in with the folks that approved thalidomide. "Why worry about something that isn't going to happen?"

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.

I see this kind of binary thinking on HN all the time. Every issue has a true/false answer.

In reality life is full of gray and often the correct answer is found "in between".

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

#748

Post by refurb »

MauranKilom wrote: post #743
refurb wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't know if it's different in pharmaceutics, but for medical devices it is literally all about proving a product "safe and effective". And the FDA itself talks about approved drugs being safe and effective: https://www.fda.gov/drugs/drug-information-consumers/fdas-dr...

It might be a matter of "do as I say, not as I do". If you look up prior FDA violations, you'll see the FDA get pretty ticked about not clearly laying out the safety risks of a medication - as such, using language such as "our drug is safe" would go directly against that.

The FDA is incredibly strict when it comes to advertising. I remember reading about one violation where the ad had a tagline for an ADHD medication "So you can concentrate on the important things" and showed a picture of a child studying. The FDA said "the image implies that your medication will improve the ability of a child to study and you have submitted no data to the FDA to support this claim".

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

#749

Post by jMyles »

alex504 wrote: post #497
JamisonM wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am personally quite terrified of the possible unknown long term side effects of COVID-19 and largely confident that the vaccines are going to be safe. If you offered me a vaccine tomorrow vs a 100% certain mild case of COVID-19 that would guarantee me immunity for a year so I could get the vaccine in 12 months when there was /even more/ confidence about the safety of the vaccine I would take the vaccine.

Yeah I think that basically sums it up. The dangers of long term COVID far, far outweigh the potential risks of the vaccine. It seems many people have a fundamental distrust of vaccines and many also still don't understand how dangerous COVID seems to be for people who have relatively little risk of dying from the disease. I haven't been able to come up with a theory as to why public health departments and the media…

Is the long covid phenomenon any more pronounced with this virus than any other coronavirus (last I read[0], the answer seems to be 'no')? Since there are four others circulating, will this vaccine even have a significant effect on these post-viral symptoms?

0: https://sebastianrushworth.com/2020/11/17/what-is-long-covid...

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

#750

Post by tinus_hn »

refurb wrote: post #747
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.

I see this kind of binary thinking on HN all the time. Every issue has a true/false answer. In reality life is full of gray and often the correct answer is found "in between".

Either you start vaccinations and people stop dying, or you don’t start and people keep dying. That is black and white.

Let’s look at how it turns out in the UK. Mr. Fauci already ate his words of critique and apologized.

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