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

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

ox.ac.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 187 posts

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

#41

Post by hutzlibu »

CodeGlitch wrote: post #11
mchusma wrote: 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.

Well, just check about Polio, which is allmost erradicated and what Antivaxxers think about it.

(or rather don't)

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

#42

Post by whycombagator »

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #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.

The U.K. like to big up/get behind their own. Relevancy on the world stage in anything is big over there, AstraZeneca (AZ) makes the U.K. relevant. Remember there’s also Brexit & having a “winning” vaccine produced by a U.K. company & university is clearly a huge deal.

In the EU AZ is under delivering doses at present[0], also they had that whole trial dosing mishap.

In the US AZ wasn’t as fast at delivering a vaccine as Pfizer & Moderna & AZ isn’t a US company, but Moderna & Pfizer are. So not really a shock that they get most of the buzz in the US.

Interestingly the US has ordered more AZ doses than any other vaccine & AZ is the most ordered/purchased vaccine worldwide[1].

It’s no surprise to me that countries are hyping up their own products and/or getting them approved first. As for the EU, they are certain to be sore given the lack of doses they’ve been able to acquire & their vaccination strategy in general.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25964197

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/covid-vaccine-tracker-glo...

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

#43

Post by robotmay »

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #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.

The EU seems to keep bringing focus back onto the over-65 efficacy. The German government has said it shouldn’t be used on over-65s, Poland has now followed, and Macron has been out in the press regurgitating incorrect statistics he misread somewhere (saying it’s only 10% effective, rather than the correct stat being that the age group made up around 10% of test subjects).

Personally I think the UK approach is the way to go and that the EU being cautious might backfire. We know the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is pretty safe and the UK has been giving it to over-65s quite happily. If it does turn out that it’s less effective, then we’ll still have gotten some efficacy across the vast majority of our population much quicker, and probably not added to the deaths. If it turns out that it’s just as effective as on everyone else, then the EU will have lost time yet again and have left their older population at risk for longer.

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

#44

Post by bluGill »

throwaway2245 wrote: post #20
simonswords82 wrote: post #3

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...

Note that deaths are very lagging. It can be a couple months between being exposed to COVID and death, maybe even more as medical science has learned about treating COVID over time. It is reasonable to assume that everyone dieing today got COVID before there was a vaccine, though there have been a few deaths by now that could have been prevented if the first vaccines were not given to someone else (if that person who got it would have got COVID and died instead is not something we can answer)

Deaths will start to stop soon, COVID infections are already dropping in many countries, with vaccines being part of the reason (but only part - again we cannot know how much)

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

#45

Post by LawnGnome »

caffeine wrote: post #29
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #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.

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.

Interestingly, the interim Sputnik results were published in the Lancet today, and they're good: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

I don't disagree about the process, though.

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

#46

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

nmca wrote: post #16
lbeltrame wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a reduction of the risk of symptomatic disease by 76% once vaccinated. But more importantly, there were no hospitalizations or deaths in the vaccinated people. This is a point the media often overlooks.

Because the "no hospitalisations or deaths" claim from the first Oxford paper was comparing n=2 to n=0 and thus was miles from significance. If the new paper has updated data on this happy to be corrected.

Tbh, the reductions in hospitalisations has been super high for almost all the vaccines, which is great news.

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

#47

Post by throwaway2245 »

renewiltord wrote: post #28
Eric_WVGG wrote: post #23

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.

A randomly controlled challenge trial would involve deliberately infecting scores of unvaccinated people, putting them at risk, along with anyone involved in the procedure and anyone they come into contact.

It would mean handling live virus, which requires a Biosafety Level 3 facilities.

And, it's not going to get your vaccine approved any quicker.

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

#49

Post by jackweirdy »

reportingsjr wrote: post #18
lawl wrote: 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.

In the Oxford trial, participants take weekly PCR swabs (https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200721-coronavirus-vacc...)

This was posited (but has not been confirmed) as one of the reasons it was posting lower numbers - it was catching some asymptomatic cases

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

#50

Post by jaynetics »

Even more consequential than the fact from the headline is the preliminary result that a spacing of 12 weeks does not seem to reduce efficiency.

I wish my country and others would take note and give priority to handing out as many first doses as possible, but my hope for such quick adoption of scientific findings has been rather diminished by the whole event.

Post reply on HN