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Oxford vaccine shows sustained protection of 76% in 3-month gap til second dose

ox.ac.uk

21–30 of 187 posts

Re: Oxford vaccine shows sustained protection of 76% in 3-month gap til second dose

#21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why you're being down voted. It's not like you said anything incorrect or controversial. Anyway I agree with you.

Now I'm being downvoted? Wtf HN

I don't see anything in particular to agree or disagree about. Dashboard link, saying lockdown helps against the pandemic, things looking up for the UK... yeah I'd also be curious how this is objectionable. The trouble is that talking about votes is discouraged in the guidelines. Not sure I agree, but that discussion is pretty meta, so we'll just have to keep guessing until someone provides the reason why this was deemed harmful to the thread.

Re: Oxford vaccine shows sustained protection of 76% in 3-month gap til second dose

#22
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Afaik it means that if you have a control group that isn't vaccinated vs this group (both should be drawn randomly of course), you will see 76% less infections in this group.

That is not what any of the vaccine studies have said so far. I haven't read this one, but I bet it also doesn't say this. The stated efficacy/protection percentages that have been presented so far have been for the reduction of _symptoms_. There haven't been any studies on vaccines preventing infections, probably due to lack of resources for testing everyone in a trial multiple times.

Maybe i misunderstood OPs question but i don't think that changes much. It's the difference between $measurement between the control group and the test group.

If that's the reduction of symptoms here, ok.

Re: Oxford vaccine shows sustained protection of 76% in 3-month gap til second dose

#23
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Afaik it means that if you have a control group that isn't vaccinated vs this group (both should be drawn randomly of course), you will see 76% less infections in this group.

That is not what any of the vaccine studies have said so far. I haven't read this one, but I bet it also doesn't say this. The stated efficacy/protection percentages that have been presented so far have been for the reduction of _symptoms_. There haven't been any studies on vaccines preventing infections, probably due to lack of resources for testing everyone in a trial multiple times.

IANAD but I'm nearly positive you're incorrect.

I spent last night puzzling over what "efficacy" means vis a vis this video: https://www.technologynetworks.com/immunology/videos/covid-1...

The author explains that the efficacy number is derived from the the number of the number of people in the control/placebo group infected divided by the total number of infections in the study.

76% efficacy means that, for a given population of people who contracted a disease (ignoring all uninfected), 24% were vaccinated (vaccine failures), 76% were not vaccinated. It has nothing to do with reduction of symptoms.

I think this is unintuitive because the "real" solution that laypersons want is, what percentage of vaccinated people exposed to a disease get infected? We can't measure that directly because we can't just expose a bunch of folks to Covid and hope for the best. But if the sample of placebo and vaccinated people is truly random, this would appear to arrive at the same ratio. (re: when I said "ignoring all uninfected"? in a good sample, the ratio of unexposed vaccinated and control units should be about the same)

Re: Oxford vaccine shows sustained protection of 76% in 3-month gap til second dose

#24
post #10

Hopefully this additional data will get the US to act the way they should have in November. Lift the ban on Astrazeneca. It's been given safely to millions now, with zero deaths from covid in the vaccinated (+14 days). The FDAs failure to approve Astrazeneca is the most horrifying government agency failure I have ever seen.

I was thinking the other day whether whether the world-wide effort to vaccinate as many people as possible will be a major blow to the anti-vax movement - in that once it is shown that there's no negative consequences of so many people taking a vaccine. E.g. no increase in autism rates. Fingers crossed.

7 billion people taking a vaccine; some percentage of them will die or experience significant illness after. Even if the two events aren’t related, the anti-vaxxers will seize on the timing and blame the vaccine.

Re: Oxford vaccine shows sustained protection of 76% in 3-month gap til second dose

#25

What exactly does "percent protection" mean in these announcements? Can we use the definition to derive a percent protection associated with having been through the virus? Is there a percent protection associated with your age / gender / race profile? It feels like the number doesn't mean much without having a similar number for the null cases.

Protection of antibodies from a previous infection is somewhere above 90%.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.15.21249731v...

Re: Oxford vaccine shows sustained protection of 76% in 3-month gap til second dose

#26
It’s interesting how the Astra Zeneca vaccine is such an emotional topic. In the UK it’s seen as the greatest weapon against the pandemic, in the US it is not playing much of a role and in the EU public perception is super negative.

Re: Oxford vaccine shows sustained protection of 76% in 3-month gap til second dose

#27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking the other day whether whether the world-wide effort to vaccinate as many people as possible will be a major blow to the anti-vax movement - in that once it is shown that there's no negative consequences of so many people taking a vaccine. E.g. no increase in autism rates. Fingers crossed.

7 billion people taking a vaccine; some percentage of them will die or experience significant illness after. Even if the two events aren’t related, the anti-vaxxers will seize on the timing and blame the vaccine.

Exactly, that's also where anti-vaxx started. Kids get diagnosed with autism usually just after getting their last childhood vaccines.

Correlation is enough.

Re: Oxford vaccine shows sustained protection of 76% in 3-month gap til second dose

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not what any of the vaccine studies have said so far. I haven't read this one, but I bet it also doesn't say this. The stated efficacy/protection percentages that have been presented so far have been for the reduction of _symptoms_. There haven't been any studies on vaccines preventing infections, probably due to lack of resources for testing everyone in a trial multiple times.

IANAD but I'm nearly positive you're incorrect. I spent last night puzzling over what "efficacy" means vis a vis this video: https://www.technologynetworks.com/immunology/videos/covid-1... The author explains that the efficacy number is derived from the the number of the number of people in the control/placebo group infected divided by the total number of infections in the study. 76% efficacy means that, for a given…

> We can't measure that directly because we can't just expose a bunch of folks to Covid and hope for the best.

We can, but medical ethics hasn't caught up yet. I would participate in a challenge trial, for instance.

Re: Oxford vaccine shows sustained protection of 76% in 3-month gap til second dose

#29

It’s interesting how the Astra Zeneca vaccine is such an emotional topic. In the UK it’s seen as the greatest weapon against the pandemic, in the US it is not playing much of a role and in the EU public perception is super negative.

My perception of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is that their credibility is compromised. I take claims of its efficacy with a similar dose of salt to claims about the Russian and Chinese vaccines.

Reason is that early on they were rushing data and approvals on grounds of national pride, in a very similar way to the Chinese and Russian authorities.

Pfizer and Moderna seem to have been more thorough.

Re: Oxford vaccine shows sustained protection of 76% in 3-month gap til second dose

#30

It’s interesting how the Astra Zeneca vaccine is such an emotional topic. In the UK it’s seen as the greatest weapon against the pandemic, in the US it is not playing much of a role and in the EU public perception is super negative.

The main EU issue was that they weren't getting supplies they said they were promised, right? [1] And, presumably, if the supplies are short, there wouldn't be enough available near-term in the US to make a difference. (Added: And, right, there were testing issues in US trials early-on.)

[1] https://www.npr.org/2021/02/01/962705729/eu-to-get-9-million...

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