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We should administer Covid-19 vaccines as fast as possible, not reserve doses

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Re: We should administer Covid-19 vaccines as fast as possible, not reserve doses

#141

Post by handmodel »

afavour wrote: post #136
Siira wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes taking chances is worth it. As far as I have heard, every single vaccine trial has concluded “yeah, our vaccine is effective.” So if people had been allowed to take experimental vaccines, the pandemic would have been a lot better. In this circumstance as well, taking a chance is worth it. Even if the virus mutates, changing the mRNA vaccines shouldn’t take more than a week.

> So if people had been allowed to take experimental vaccines, the pandemic would have been a lot better. > In this circumstance as well, taking a chance is worth it. Nope nope nope nope. This is the literal example of survivor bias. You can't look at the results and use them to inform prior behaviour. The vaccine could have had catastrophic side effects.

I think it is clear the regulatory framework wasn't ideal.

The last stage of the trial (which took three months) was not about if they were safe - but simply if they worked. Meaning, they were cleared to have minimal side effects, just unclear if it worked.

If you had approved people to choose to take the vaccine in August we could have had 50M people with shots already.

A lot of people have my skepticism that the main reason that the FDA didn't want to do that since it might be a bit of a media heartache for them, but so what. Even if you thought it would only work 20% of the time that 20% of the time it saves 100,000+ lives.

Re: We should administer Covid-19 vaccines as fast as possible, not reserve doses

#142

Post by cmrdporcupine »

ahelwer wrote: post #116
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would take Alberta's latest numbers with a giant grain of salt. Testing rates are awful there right now. Too bad my family there used the numbers as an excuse to break quarantine. Enraging.

My sister lives there and knows multiple people her age (mid 20s) who've had the coronavirus. To my knowledge I only know a single person here in the US who has had it. Seems bad.

Alberta is about the middle of the pack in North America for per-capita rates. Not as bad as the worst US states, but nowhere close to the good ones.

Ontario, meanwhile is better than any US state other than Hawaii, last time I looked.

However, if you look at per-capita death rates, Ontario does not look so good.

Re: We should administer Covid-19 vaccines as fast as possible, not reserve doses

#143

Post by random5634 »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #24
dougmwne wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not what the article is about at all. It is saying we should not reserve the second dose in the freezer for that patient and should instead immediately distribute it to at-risk populations. Then we should trust the supply chain will come through for the second dose and that a 1-2 week delay in case it did not would not overly harm immunity. It is perhaps a very sensible suggestion that would depend on the sup…

Sure it is. Again, if there should be some issue with the supply chain, then the first dose could be 'wasted'. For hospital personnel etc that would be a bad scenario. We're not talking millions/billions of doses. We're talking about what are really very small numbers. It may be worth taking some very small hit in herd immunity, for an assured continuity of care.

Is there an actual serious claim that the first dose would be wasted?

This claim is being made despite CLEAR CDC guidance on how to handle delayed vaccination doses?

I'm serious - where is the citation for the claim you are making that the first dose is wasted if the second dose is not perfectly on schedule.

The reason this claim is likely a lie is that millions / billions of vaccines are given out. Every school child in America is getting vaccines. With very narrow exceptions, if you are off the exact timing (ie, you get a 12 month vaccine a bit later, you get the second shot 14 days later) which by the way happens ALL THE TIME because doctors and parents are busy etc - there is no evidence that the first shot is wasted or that you need to restart vaccination.

So please provide a citation for the "first shot wasted" claim.

Re: We should administer Covid-19 vaccines as fast as possible, not reserve doses

#144

Post by cmrdporcupine »

ced wrote: post #97
bryanlarsen wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's interesting phrasing. Ontario & Québec have increasing numbers but they still have lower per capita case rates than western provinces.

Not really true anymore, according to https://mackuba.eu/corona/#compare.daily?pop=1&c=ca-on,ca-qc...

Alberta's numbers over the holiday are nonsense. Hinshaw even said so herself.

Re: We should administer Covid-19 vaccines as fast as possible, not reserve doses

#145

Post by danarmak »

ubercore wrote: post #77
danarmak wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Page 31, table row "mitigate health inequities" says: An upside (green) of vaccinating essential workers (non-healthcare) first: "Racial and ethnic minority groups disproportionately represented in many essential industries. ~1/4 of essential workers live in low-income families." A downside (red) of vaccinating adults age >65 first: "Racial and ethnic minority groups under-represented among adults >65". The next page…

They don't say ethics outweighs science, do they? They're just two axes on which to evaluate the model. You're coming to some interesting conclusions from those slides, unless I'm misreading something.

You're right, my comment was partly wrong (and it's too late to edit it). They don't say that Ethics outweighs Science as a subject matter. They say that Science predicts all three proposals are equally good, and therefore Ethics gets the deciding vote.

(I disagree with the claim that the choice of which group to vaccinate first won't strongly affect the total number of infections and deaths. But that's a different argument.)

And then, within the Ethics group, they say that the deciding ethical factor in favor of vaccinating essential workers is that they have a higher proportion of minorities and low-income families than the other groups (of high-risk and of old people).

They don't give any reasoning, so it's hard to argue with this. Unlike the Science section, which links a study that models deaths prevented by targeted vaccination. The Ethics section lists some unsupported and unquantified claims (table on slide 31) and at the same time judges which outcomes are better.

Crucially, the first line of this table says that ethically it's equally good to either "Preserve services essential to the COVID-19 response and overall functioning of society", or to "Reduce morbidity and mortality in persons with highest burden of COVID-19 hospitalization and death". Why? Based on what refutable data or model or ethical theory? Who knows.

Of course, this is a summary presentation; there may have been something behind it that they didn't refer or link to.

Re: We should administer Covid-19 vaccines as fast as possible, not reserve doses

#146

Post by zamalek »

wolco2 wrote: post #139
Siira wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes taking chances is worth it. As far as I have heard, every single vaccine trial has concluded “yeah, our vaccine is effective.” So if people had been allowed to take experimental vaccines, the pandemic would have been a lot better. In this circumstance as well, taking a chance is worth it. Even if the virus mutates, changing the mRNA vaccines shouldn’t take more than a week.

They had to pull a few because of side effects during the trials and some just not working. Producing vast amounts before they have been tested at all would have been costly when they had to throw them out.

Due by the first 100 000 recipients, 3 people had an allergic reaction. Those 3 people still received a second dose.

It would not only be costly to throw out the vaccines, but also stupid.

Re: We should administer Covid-19 vaccines as fast as possible, not reserve doses

#147

Post by iso1210 »

mrighele wrote: post #65
dvivsivd wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CDC tried to have non-medical essential workers ahead in line of seniors. The argument was that, although more people would die (including more African Americans), it would even out black vs white ppl deaths metric. [edit] source: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/meetings/downloads/slides-...

I thought that the point of vaccinating essential workers first is that they are those that are more likely to spread the virus so by starting with them you stop the virus before it reaches the seniors. Depending on the factors (% of seniors vs. essential workers, availability of vaccine) I can see either approach being more effective.

Not aware of evidence that vaccination stops or reduces spread. Given that asymptomatic and presymptomatic people are the main spreaders, it's certainly not a given.

Vaccinating front line health and care workers does make sense for two reasons

1) Far more likely to catch it

2) Far more problematic if they catch it and are off ill because of it

Other front line workers like police probably less important -- less likely to catch it, and not as problematic if large numbers are off ill as the people who fix it. Saving lives and reducing load on hospitals by vaccinating the over 70s is likely more beneficial.

Re: We should administer Covid-19 vaccines as fast as possible, not reserve doses

#148

Post by cbhl »

wolco2 wrote: post #139
Siira wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes taking chances is worth it. As far as I have heard, every single vaccine trial has concluded “yeah, our vaccine is effective.” So if people had been allowed to take experimental vaccines, the pandemic would have been a lot better. In this circumstance as well, taking a chance is worth it. Even if the virus mutates, changing the mRNA vaccines shouldn’t take more than a week.

They had to pull a few because of side effects during the trials and some just not working. Producing vast amounts before they have been tested at all would have been costly when they had to throw them out.

> Producing vast amounts before they have been tested at all would have been costly when they had to throw them out.

I'm under the impression that's precisely what the world governments did? There were bar charts going around saying that XX% of each country's supply commitments came from Pfizer or Astrazeneca or Moderna or whatever.

Re: We should administer Covid-19 vaccines as fast as possible, not reserve doses

#149

Post by [deleted] »

iso1210 wrote: post #140
wbl wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you look at the death rate this year? We are on track for 10٪ excess deaths, most of those with at least a decade of life expectancy. The clinical trial for the vaccine was not going to see this with only a few hundred observed cases. That's only a handful of deaths.

In an average year there are about 350,000 deaths in the UK. This year we've had 415,000 - 18% more deaths. The promises from the covid-skeptics were that covid "just killed off people a few months earlier". That hasn't borne out -- in the North West where we suffered from a second wave in October, which led to 40% increase on expected deaths each week for the entire of November (people catching in October) and hospi…

[deleted]

Re: We should administer Covid-19 vaccines as fast as possible, not reserve doses

#150

Post by DanBC »

ketamine__ wrote: post #92
DanBC wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When people talk about "pre-existing conditions" they mean things like high blood pressure or type 1 diabetes -- the kind of thing that can be well maintained and has almost no impact on the person.

Heart disease has no impact on the person? About 3,000 people die every day in the US because of this condition.

But pre-existing conditions isn't only heart disease. It includes a long list, many of which can be well maintained and have no impact on the person's day to day life.

https://twitter.com/profhelenward/status/1343883846568325122...

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