It took two days to develop Moderna’s vaccine • Hacker News Board

Re: It took two days to develop Moderna’s vaccine

#321

Post by lostlogin » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 2:12 AM UTC

matz1 wrote: post #318

lostlogin wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Searching about I see data like yours and ones like those I include below, which show an excess. Why these differ, I don’t understand. In your link, if you assume the death rate for the remainder of the year will remain static and calculate the end of year total (it’s roughly adding 5%) you get a number that looks like it spikes, but not hugely. The below show a clear excess and a long tail after the spike in deaths.…

We'll see what the number end up, covid has spread since the beginning of this year, highly unlikely that in next 2 weeks suddenly the death jump significantly. Also keep in mind that the excess death may or may not be due to covid alone.

> highly unlikely that in next 2 weeks suddenly the death jump significantly.

Is it? Cases have been spiking but deaths are going in the other direction or are flat lining. There is usually an increase in deaths about a month after covid cases go up.

Even conservative modelling predicts a lot more deaths (+50%) and less conservative models see a doubling or more.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/

https://covid19.healthdata.org/sweden?view=total-deaths&tab=...

Re: It took two days to develop Moderna’s vaccine

#322

Post by renewiltord » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 6:29 AM UTC

winston_smith wrote: post #245

renewiltord wrote: post #112

The problem is one of medical ethics in an unequal society. The problem is that there's a sum of money for which I would have taken the risk and got a vaccine in January and had exposure to the disease in February. Everyone in society would have been better off if I had been permitted that. America could have paid me and 49 others a million dollars each and come out wayyy ahead (since direct exposure tests will yield…

It's great that you care about poor people, but it's also elitist to treat them like they're too poor to afford free will.

Meant to be a summary of the current state-of-the-art in medical ethics not in my personal view of the world (which goes so far as to allow non-fatal organ sales). You can rest assured I neither care about poor people more than other people nor do I wish to infantilize them.

Re: It took two days to develop Moderna’s vaccine

#323

Post by skissane » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 8:45 AM UTC

tialaramex wrote: post #230

ashtonkem wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In many ways, this was a worst case scenario for countries without a history of fighting respiratory diseases. It’s lethal enough to rack up a significant body count, but “safe” enough for large portions of the population to disregard the risk and potentially transmit it. Oh, and it’s airborne and you’re infectious before you have symptoms. Ironically, a disease with a much higher case fatality rate probably would’ve…

> Ironically, a disease with a much higher case fatality rate probably would’ve killed fewer Americans, since we’d be more aligned on stopping it Not unless it was much higher, like 10% whole population fatality might do it but merely twice as much death wouldn't move the needle. It's because of one of the most literal examples of survivorship bias. No living people have ever died as a result of taking some particula…

> It's because of one of the most literal examples of survivorship bias. No living people have ever died as a result of taking some particular obviously unsafe shortcut

People take something far more seriously if someone they know, especially a family member, friend, immediate colleague, etc, dies of it, compared to if the only deaths they know are stranger deaths reported in the media. So I don’t think it is true that people will ignore something unless they personally die from it, if your spouse or child or parent or best friend or boss dies from it you will take it very seriously.

I don't personally know anyone who has died from COVID. As far as I know, I don't know anyone who knows anyone who has died of it either. Probably the majority of people are in the same boat as I am. Not saying I don't take it seriously, but I'm sure I'd take it even more seriously if someone I knew died from it.

(A work colleague got sick with it, had to go to spend some time in hospital due to breathing difficulties, but has since recovered – that obviously raises the psychological impact of it for me a bit, but they live in another country, if they lived in the same country, even same metro area, as me, the psychological impact for me would be greater.)

Re: It took two days to develop Moderna’s vaccine

#324

Post by skissane » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 8:54 AM UTC

_ph_ wrote: post #281

tzs wrote: post #24

Suppose an mRNA vaccine is developed for some virus, but it fails to clear phase 1 safety testing. Question: what would be the likely reasons for that? In particular, is it almost certainly going to be due to whatever carries the mRNA, or could the mRNA itself be the problem? If it is the carrier in which potential safety issues lie, does that mean that once we have one successful safe mRNA vaccine for virus A, then…

In therory, the mRNA vaccines should be extremely safe, as they are so specific and only require a carrier but no other substances in the vaccine. In practise, you still need to test. There is always a small risk of something unexpected happening. Like the vaccine from Australia which has been completely abandoned - not sure whether it also was mRNA or some other kind of vaccine. It didn't cause any health problem, b…

> So while no direct heahlt impact, it is quite a disaster if one couldn't test people for HIV any more.

It only invalidated certain types of HIV tests. The impact would be that some subset of existing HIV tests would have to be abandoned. That would impose a cost on the health system.

The real issue is that there were other vaccines being developed that were equally effective but which did not have this drawback. If this was the only vaccine available, the health system would have worn the burden of changing HIV test regimes; given several other effective vaccines are becoming available, it wasn't clear that the cost of imposing massive changes on HIV testing regimes was justified.

Re: It took two days to develop Moderna’s vaccine

#325

Post by nullsense » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 8:58 PM UTC

matz1 wrote: post #312

nullsense wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just last night on the news they announced we were actually out of recession. The bounce back has been pretty good. Tourism is still fairly impacted. Most everything else feels pretty normal. The lockdowns were worth it IMO. Especially now we see it ravaging the rest of the world becoming more and more severe. That just feels totally foreign to me since we only experienced a very mild outbreak initially, followed by…

I disagree but I still respect your choice, at very least you acknowledge that in the end lockdown or not lockdown is subjective preference.

At the of the day how it is received is down to the individual. Our family is healthy and we've all kept our jobs and none of us are suffering any form of hardship. Lockdown was temporary.

Some people have lost businesses, jobs or careers and they're going to be less happy about that.

From my day to day perspective my life is very normal. I remember the level of background anxiety grew rapidly the more it spread into the community in the initial outbreak. The second and third waves around the world look increasingly terrifying.

I'm calm. Im at peace. That suits me perfectly.

Re: It took two days to develop Moderna’s vaccine

#326

Post by sacks2k » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 9:21 PM UTC

FreakyT wrote: post #253

sacks2k wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China welded people into their homes, forced people into the hospital at gun point, and disappeared any doctor that actually wanted to warn the world about it back in December. There was also a recent document leaked that told us what many already suspected: they lied about their numbers. This isn't much of a surprise, since they stopped giving any updates pretty quickly into the pandemic. I have family that live in…

> Trump warned us back in January Ah yes, "warned", by assuring us that the virus was no worse than the common cold, and we were rapidly "turning a corner", and that it would just "go away on its own". > wanted to close the borders If he really wanted to, what stopped him? He was clearly fully capable of closing borders, given that he did close the border to China (too late) and Europe (also too late). Where was the…

"Ah yes, "warned", by assuring us that the virus was no worse than the common cold, and we were rapidly "turning a corner", and that it would just "go away on its own"."

I suppose he shouldn't have listened to the WHO at the time, which told us it couldn't spread from human-to-human. Nobody really knew anything about the virus at the time, except China, and the lied about it...but orange man bad.

He was also being impeached at the time and the Democrats were too busy with this to care about the potential spread of Covid-19.

He also talked about hydroxychloroquine, which his doctor was using at the time as a preventative measure for Covid-19.

Was it a cure? No (he never said it was), but Doctors were taking it at the time and many were still were taking it before the vaccine.

Because everything Trump said is bad, it was equated with junk science and possibly lead to the deaths of many more people.

"If he really wanted to, what stopped him? He was clearly fully capable of closing borders, given that he did close the border to China (too late) and Europe (also too late). Where was the closure to South Korea when the virus was spiking there?"

Right. He could easily just make decisions without the Democrats using everything in their power to stop him. Where have you been the last 4 years?

Again, The WHO was warned about this back in December from Taiwan officials.

Trump has been stopped from making decisions every step of the way from the Democrats and then Demonized in the press (which spread false information to the masses).

You really can't then blame him for making the wrong decision.

Re: It took two days to develop Moderna’s vaccine

#327

Post by sacks2k » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 9:26 PM UTC

addicted wrote: post #277

FreakyT wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Trump warned us back in January Ah yes, "warned", by assuring us that the virus was no worse than the common cold, and we were rapidly "turning a corner", and that it would just "go away on its own". > wanted to close the borders If he really wanted to, what stopped him? He was clearly fully capable of closing borders, given that he did close the border to China (too late) and Europe (also too late). Where was the…

The China border was “closed” yet we had tens of thousands of Chinese travelers enter the US straight after the closure. And the European border “closing” was so badly managed that it almost certainly seeded the massive outbreak in the NorthEast in the initial phase by causing hundreds of super spreader events daily in airports across the northeast as people all tried to return from Europe within the same few days an…

Most countries were unprepared, except for Taiwan. The government of China lied about SARS outbreaks and Taiwan has since had scientists that study disease outbreaks in China. Covid was spotted in December, but the WHO is under the influence of China and didn't listen.....

It's strange how the Chinese government: lied about the disease, allowed it to spread throughout the world without warning anyone, and purchased all of the PPE (creating a shortage and possibly causing even more deaths).

Yet here we are, blaming Trump.

Re: It took two days to develop Moderna’s vaccine

#328

Post by timwis » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 12:19 AM UTC

If I came across this article on facebook or something, I wouldn't trust it because I've never heard of the source (and, to be honest, I'm kind of judgy of the old design). How do you determine its credibility?

Re: It took two days to develop Moderna’s vaccine

#329

Post by FreakyT » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 3:34 PM UTC

sacks2k wrote: post #326

FreakyT wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Trump warned us back in January Ah yes, "warned", by assuring us that the virus was no worse than the common cold, and we were rapidly "turning a corner", and that it would just "go away on its own". > wanted to close the borders If he really wanted to, what stopped him? He was clearly fully capable of closing borders, given that he did close the border to China (too late) and Europe (also too late). Where was the…

"Ah yes, "warned", by assuring us that the virus was no worse than the common cold, and we were rapidly "turning a corner", and that it would just "go away on its own"." I suppose he shouldn't have listened to the WHO at the time, which told us it couldn't spread from human-to-human. Nobody really knew anything about the virus at the time, except China, and the lied about it...but orange man bad. He was also being im…

"It’s going to go away, hopefully at the end of the month. And, if not, hopefully it will be soon after that." — Trump, 2020-03-31

That's long after human-to-human transmission was confirmed. So, no, you can't blame the WHO there.

> Right. He could easily just make decisions without the Democrats using everything in their power to stop him.

...Uh okay? Since when has Trump cared what Democrats thought? Again, why did he not attempt to close the South Korean border if he cared so much? I'll tell you why: it's because Trump was just looking for an excuse to close the border to a country he already didn't like. He never cared about the virus, only about his personal agenda.

Re: It took two days to develop Moderna’s vaccine

#330

Post by nerdponx » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 11:01 PM UTC

mrits wrote: post #71

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #47

I’m glad to see this and we need to concentrate on speeding this process up. This isn’t the last pandemic and all things considered this one was a pretty benign one to have to fight. The next one might not just kill mainly the old and weak and might need much more than a mask (that we still can’t get people to wear!) to prevent its spread. Hopefully before then, we can work to get everyone more on the same page and h…

To get worse than COVID you'd need a virus that takes a long time to develop symptoms and then has a high death rate. In that scenario there would be a lot more public fear and we'd have an easier time keeping people at home. So I'm still of the opinion it's harder to have a worse situation than COVID.

Something like smallpox, then?