Live data from Hacker News

Europe's Vaccine Disaster

spiegel.de

291–300 of 434 posts

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#291
post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a personal disaster, but not a disaster for society.

Yes it is. Once hospitals fill and no longer function you are living in a society without healthcare.

And, at least in my country, that's not the fault of the virus, but politicians who didn't invest in healthcare not even remotely enough. Here we were hit hard by virus, however we never had more than 10k people hospitalized. If we, as a country of 7 million have a problem with this weak virus, what would happen if it were couple times stronger.

People should be outraged with how healthcare failed, but media and politics are reporting about the virus like it's a plague, just so they can cover their asses.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"not that bad" -> more people dying

I don't understand this comment. Could you please expand it in a more constructive way? Vaccination is not the only way available to stop the spreading of the virus: - Keep social distancing - Avoid friends and familiar reunions - Wash your hands frequently - Wear a mask - Be careful The top 5 places with most coronavirus deaths are: 1. USA 2. Brazil 3. Mexico 4. India 5. UK None of these are in the EU.

The parent comment is just saying that a poorly-run vaccination programme results in more deaths than a successful one, everything else being equal. Hope that helps.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#293

Assumption is "more vaccinated -- better outcome" which is not proven yet. In Israel (I'm israeli) almost two millions got two shots of Pfizer vaccine (starting from older population at risk and gradually including younger age groups). Amount of patients in serious or critical condition is growing. Amount of infected grows. This number is manipulated by changing the amount of tests and selection process. Those vaccin…

Israel has a population of 9 million, if you only have 2 million vaccinated and people stop acting like it's a risk then of course the cases are going to go through the roof.

If you have 6 million vaccinated, across the whole population not just old people, then you will see a decrease as the chances are that the people you meet will not be a vector.

Until then, act like you are infected.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you talking about? Countries have been closing borders left and right, the EU hasn't prevented this.

That's a joke - even during the strictest lockdowns, you could travel easily across europe if wanted. Yes often you end up in quarantine at the destination, that is largely not enforced so just best hope. But if you cross 5 states while getting to your destination, they just let you through. Has been like that since... whole covid. We traveled from west to east and back 4x during 2020 through 4 countries, never any i…

This is not correct. Travel restrictions, not only at borders between EU countries but even within countries have been common ever since the first lockdown in Italy (I remind you that the European chapter of the crisis started with a couple of counties in northern Italy getting cordoned off, before the whole country eventually locked down). See

https://www.dw.com/en/european-travel-restrictions-non-essen...

for the current status.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.27.21250612v... You’ll have to actually read it, or find a tldr from someone who knows what they are doing. The same calc that leads to 0.04% above would say overall covid mortality is 0.08% and is intentionally misleading - but no news media so far (in Israel or outside) has done any review. They are all parroting the misleading numbers. Anything but primary data these…

Quoting from the link you provided: "We demonstrated an effectiveness of 51% of BNT162b2 vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 infection 13-24 days after immunization with the first dose. Immunization with the second dose should be continued to attain the anticipated protection." I.e. if you take only the first dose of the two required then 13 days after taking it you already get an effectiveness of 50%. Therefore they recommen…

The 95% everyone quotes is for mild disease.

For severe disease, Pfizer had 4 in the control group, and 1 in the vaccine group. That’s 75% RRR, with a confidence interval that spans 0-100%.

Look at the graphs here and in Pfizer’s. Immunity seems to taper at 12-18 days and stay there. The 2nd vaccine does not seem to confer more immunity - just expected to last longer time. This article looks at more severe disease than Pfizer’s 95% endloint (though possibly not severe as their “severe disease” endpoint - I don’t remember what definition each uses, but just in Israel the “severe” definition has changed several times)

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#296
post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're mixing up two different datasets. The former deals with first dose effectiveness (which we've always known to be lower - that's why the regiment is two doses), the latter with the full two dose regiment. Ynet is Yediot, which is either the biggest daily newspaper or the second-biggest depending on how you count, either way it has more influence than Yisrael-Hayom. They do neglect their English site, but this p…

Please look at the graphs and data, not the headlines. Nothing magical happens past day 12 from the first vaccine in the Pfizer paper, or day 18 in this paper. Seriously. Look at it. Yes, ynetnews is ynet/yediot. Their reporting of covid is exactly parroting the government with no criticism whatsoever so far. I’m not antivax, I’m provad. 50% is pretty damn good for a first attempt. But everything has become so politi…

I'm not referring to the Pfizer research, I'm referring to the Maccabi paper. The data is explicitly for the first dose and not the second. The paper also mentions the effect starts from day 18, not beforehand - maybe you should read it again.

What Maccabi did publish on the second dose, it was in a much more encouraging note. Granted, not a peer reviewed paper, that would be difficult given lack of time.

Claiming Yediot is parroting the government is delusional. I won't belabor about it, since most HN readers deserve better than Israeli politics or the eternal elections.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#297
I believe the UK contract is along the lines of "once you've met our order, you can ship UK made vaccines elsewhere" If the EU commission used their head, the sooner this was met they'd get it sooner and MORE vaccines. The EU had dropped the ball, stabbed it and ran it over. They make it seem the pharmaceutical companies are out to screw them. Far from it, the risk is being taken by government's and fully funded.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comparing USA states to countries is a very common practice of uneducated Americans.

In the case of health care, it’s apt because the federal government cannot force states to take actions. They can only issue guidelines.

That’s due to being a federation. The US is not the only federation; Australia, for example, is one too, and just like the US, in Australia public health is primarily a state responsibility, the federal government provides most of the funding but the states own the public hospitals and control most of the operational decisions. Yet I never heard any Australian compare foreign countries to Australian states. Other federations include Germany, Canada and Mexico, yet I’ve never heard any German or Canadian or Mexican make that comparison either. It seems to be a peculiarly American habit.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#300
post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A significant part of the vaccines the UK has administered were produced in EU factories. Now that the EU tries to do the same as countries like the UK and the US do - not exporting - they are bullies? Right.

> A significant part of the vaccines the UK has administered were produced in EU factories Yes, and those vaccines are, or were, only approved for use in the UK, the EU, only yesterday finally approved the AZ vaccine, 3 months after the UK. So who else are the pharma companies going to ship those vaccines to, when the shelf life is weeks or months? There is a global supply chain at work here, from the substances for…

Approval doesn't matter when AZ has to build stock to meet deadlines. Basically they weren't building stock to fulfill UK orders, from EU based production.

It takes months to build stock, but they were flushing that stock to UK.

Post reply on HN