Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Johnson and Johnson single-shot vaccine appears 66% effective in global trial

cbc.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 274 posts

Re: Johnson and Johnson single-shot vaccine appears 66% effective in global trial

#21

Post by aphextron »

foepys wrote: post #12
SubiculumCode wrote: post #10

imo 66% effectiveness is pretty good, not on a personal level, but at the population policy level. I'm glad to get another vaccine on the market soon.

On the other hand it's quite sad that we as humanity have already developed two vaccines with 95% (or even higher) effectiveness but are not able (or rather: are too greedy) to share this knowledge to vaccine every human on earth as fast as possible. Instead the US and Europe are putting trade restrictions in place to keep the vaccines for themselves. India and China are more than capable to produce the vaccines in i…

It's not a tech problem, it's a production problem. There are only a few companies on earth that are capable of producing the precursor chemicals for these mRNA vaccines, and until now they were geared towards producing small batch research drugs. They are expanding rapidly but production capacity is at 100%.

Re: Johnson and Johnson single-shot vaccine appears 66% effective in global trial

#22

Post by wtvanhest »

JamesBarney wrote: post #3

66% protection against getting moderate to severe Covid but 100% protection against death and hospitalization. I have no idea how the FDA can hold back these vaccines in good conscience while peoples are dying by the thousands on a daily basis.

Personally, I’d rather take the J&J which uses old, proven tech. In 5 years we will know a lot more about nRNA vaccine long-term safety, and I’ll be much more comfortable taking an nRNA vaccine at that point.

When I’m eligible, I still may take the nRNA, but my preference is on older tech at this point.

I fully acknowledge that the nRNA is extremely likely to be safe, but it’s just my preference

Re: Johnson and Johnson single-shot vaccine appears 66% effective in global trial

#23

Post by GizmoSwan »

znebby wrote: post #16

I'm really struggling to understand these numbers. In some other articles I'm seeing that it offers 100% protection against hospitalisation and death. "The J&J vaccine was 85 per cent effective at preventing severe Covid-19. Twenty-eight days after the jab, it offered “complete protection” from hospitalisation and death." [1] Wouldn't having "severe" infection require hospitilisation? [1] https://www.ft.com/content/d…

People would get the disease but it won't kill them. They get a milder version of the disease that they otherwise would have.

It is like having some sort of immunity to type A,B, Spanish, etc of flu and getting them still but not dying like in early 1900s.

Re: Johnson and Johnson single-shot vaccine appears 66% effective in global trial

#24

Post by raverbashing »

gogopuppygogo wrote: post #5
JamesBarney wrote: post #3

66% protection against getting moderate to severe Covid but 100% protection against death and hospitalization. I have no idea how the FDA can hold back these vaccines in good conscience while peoples are dying by the thousands on a daily basis.

Unpopular opinion: the FDA has to justify their existence. If vaccines can be developed safely and deployed quickly, inexpensively, and in large quantities all without FDA then people would realize how bloated our government really is.

The 737 Max would like a word

Re: Johnson and Johnson single-shot vaccine appears 66% effective in global trial

#25

Post by outlace »

znebby wrote: post #16

I'm really struggling to understand these numbers. In some other articles I'm seeing that it offers 100% protection against hospitalisation and death. "The J&J vaccine was 85 per cent effective at preventing severe Covid-19. Twenty-eight days after the jab, it offered “complete protection” from hospitalisation and death." [1] Wouldn't having "severe" infection require hospitilisation? [1] https://www.ft.com/content/d…

Presumably severe includes some people who don’t need hospitalization. Some high risk patients can get new monoclonal antibody treatments that may prevent them from needing hospitalization. Some people are sent home from the ED with oximeters and told to come back if their oxygen saturation drops below a certain threshold and a doctor calls them everyday. Hospitals in hard-hit area have to be very judicious about only admitting patients who really need it so there may be some severe/high risk cases that are just closely followed as an outpatient.

Re: Johnson and Johnson single-shot vaccine appears 66% effective in global trial

#26

Post by bpodgursky »

yread wrote: post #6
cj wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have any trials been done to determine the efficacy of just 1 shot for the double dose vaccines?

Not yet, but you can kinda see it from the data. For Pfizer it was 60-70 after one dose already, iirc

That's only if you include all infections within the two week window between shots. If you look at the tail end (ie, after the shot has time to be effective) it seems more like 90.

Re: Johnson and Johnson single-shot vaccine appears 66% effective in global trial

#27

Post by mchusma »

The contrast between the response to Astrazeneca and J&J is striking. Similar efficacy numbers, but Astrazeneca is still banned and got terrible headlines. J&J has all positive headlines. I don't know if this is just because more time has passed and people realize it was dumb to not approve Astrazeneca? Is "Supercovid" just making people realize we can't wait around?

I think J&J, Astrazeneca, and Novavax all easily surpass the "net expected benefit" threshold and should all be approved immediately. In the US, this would allow us to end this thing within 90 days.

Re: Johnson and Johnson single-shot vaccine appears 66% effective in global trial

#28

Post by malux85 »

gogopuppygogo wrote: post #5
JamesBarney wrote: post #3

66% protection against getting moderate to severe Covid but 100% protection against death and hospitalization. I have no idea how the FDA can hold back these vaccines in good conscience while peoples are dying by the thousands on a daily basis.

Unpopular opinion: the FDA has to justify their existence. If vaccines can be developed safely and deployed quickly, inexpensively, and in large quantities all without FDA then people would realize how bloated our government really is.

There's always going to be work for the FDA, there's an unending stream of new diseases/conditions and cures. I very much doubt they are worried about running out of work

Re: Johnson and Johnson single-shot vaccine appears 66% effective in global trial

#29

Post by Jtsummers »

happytoexplain wrote: post #9
gogopuppygogo wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unpopular opinion: the FDA has to justify their existence. If vaccines can be developed safely and deployed quickly, inexpensively, and in large quantities all without FDA then people would realize how bloated our government really is.

>If vaccines can be developed safely ... without FDA You forgot a critical distinction: safely every time

Doesn't need to be every time, it "just" needs to meet or beat the current FDA record. The FDA has approved treatments in the past that turned out to be harmful for substantial numbers of people. If the industry could reliably replicate the FDA's present track record (which is, overall, very good) then the FDA could be shown to be unnecessary.

However, having worked in regulated industries I do not trust industry to do any better than the FDA. At least not in the long term.

Re: Johnson and Johnson single-shot vaccine appears 66% effective in global trial

#30

Post by Exmoor »

I suspect the title was abbreviated to fit HN length requirements, but it cut out perhaps the most important part. This data is for a single shot. There is an ongoing trial for boosting with a second shot down the line, but having a single shot that's known to be effective at eliminating the disease and extremely effective at reducing severe cases and hospitalizations is a game changer. We can vaccinate lower risk populations with this vaccine and do it twice as fast. Once everyone is vaccinated, we can invite people to come back for a second shot as a booster. From the phase 1/2 trial data I saw, I'd expect a second shot to boost the efficacy to numbers approaching the mRNA vaccines.

Edit: It also only needs to be refrigerated so it eliminates a lot of coordination related to frozen transportation, scheduled appointments, etc. will be eliminated.

Post reply on HN