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

ox.ac.uk

31–40 of 187 posts

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

#31

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.

Astra Zeneca bungled their FDA trials in 2020. They went from being one of the most promising vaccines to an also-ran.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/08/business/covid-vaccine-ox...

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

#32

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.

Yeah I keep meaning to ask dang why I get pummeled with down votes whenever I comment on something.

The majority of votes on HN I believe are instinctive - someone liked or didn't like what you said, or the tone or whatever and that's it. Often there isn't much rhyme or reason.

Clearly there are low/high value comments, or flame-wars but generally that's not it.

Apparently, PG himself was fond of voting for disagreement/agreement, but even he I don't think quite has seen the degree of arbitrary voting.

You will notice that people in the moments after your comment are much more likely to hate on it arbitrarily than later on when you might see some upswing.

If you comment on anything even remotely controversial, that even hints at something like Brexit, EU nationalism, Transgender etc. - expect to see a lot of volatility. It's really quite an interesting phenom to see.

Frankly it's pointless to meander about it and after much speculation I would say just don't worry about it - and - don't put too much stock in any kind of 'points system' it really doesn't matter that much at all.

The Oxford vaccine is doing well, the UK is way ahead due to the locality of it all, which is great, because they need the help what with having a considerably higher death reate.

I would recommend you see here [1] for a really good breakdown of vaccination and other COVID data.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations

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

#33
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.

> There haven't been any studies on vaccines preventing infections

This study has looked at that. From the press release: "Analyses of PCR positive swabs in UK population suggests vaccine may have substantial effect on transmission of the virus with 67% reduction in positive swabs among those vaccinated"

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

#34

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…

That was a super interesting video, thanks for sharing!

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

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I would participate in a challenge trial, for instance.

Me too. And nearly everyone I know in my risk tier.

We had an entire globe of low-risk people willing to be part of the most acute spread, whether for research, for personal immunity, or to be able to isolate for a defined time to protect loved ones, and we squandered it in favor of pseudoscientific horizontal interdictions like lockdowns. It's really an incredible abandonment of basic principles of public health.

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

#36

It just gets better and better for the UK - which is a relief because early January had some grim sickness and death numbers. Check out the data on the UK Gov dashboard if you've not seen it: https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/ Also - we are all in lockdown, which helps.

"Better" is doing a lot of work here. The UK (in particular, England) is currently reporting the second highest new death rate per capita in the world, still higher than it was at any point in 2020. It continues to report 1000+ unnecessary deaths per day. And, is it still the case that the UK has 50% more excess deaths than it is reporting in the daily coronavirus figures? A mystery...

Agreed, important to keep in mind the UK has highest per capita mortality of any large country. But this is good news for the government’s gamble to increase spacing between doses to 3 months

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

#37
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> I would participate in a challenge trial, for instance. Me too. And nearly everyone I know in my risk tier. We had an entire globe of low-risk people willing to be part of the most acute spread, whether for research, for personal immunity, or to be able to isolate for a defined time to protect loved ones, and we squandered it in favor of pseudoscientific horizontal interdictions like lockdowns. It's really an incre…

Medical ethicists believe they've solved the trolley problem by turning their back on the lever and letting Jesus take the wheel.

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

#38

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…

It is so frustrating, trying to figure out at least a bit of whats going on and understanding some numbers, but apparently I cannot do this, without having to dive into papers, too?

There is so much confusion and missinformation flying around, when even here on HN there is discussion about the meaning of basic numbers.

(but please carry on discussing it)

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

#39

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

You were breaking the site guidelines, so the downvotes are correct. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html (note the second-last).

Comments like the two you posted here are particularly off-topic because once users have fixed the situation with corrective upvotes, such complaints become uncollected garbage. That is, they linger on, even though they're false in addition to off-topic.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

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

#40
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It should also be noted, that shortly after getting vaccinated, most children start to talk! :)
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