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

ox.ac.uk

111–120 of 187 posts

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

#111

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’s current behavior is very sad to see, when up to now they had seemed much more sensible than the UK government.

AZ had production problems in the EU -- perfectly understandable as it’s a complex operation and they started somewhat later than in the UK. The EU Commission responded by threatening legal action (??) and almost bypassing the hard-won Northern Ireland border agreement (!!??!!) before backtracking. Ridiculously petty, dangerous, and does nothing to solve the problem and save lives.

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

#112
post #94

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.

Here's another way of framing it: Having messed this up so very badly doing idiotically risky things from the start the latest big risk taken by the UK government didn't actually backfire as badly as the previous ones. Others have pointed at the current per-capita deaths. This completely ignores the long-term effects to survivors accross the population. It can be a challenge to see how the UK government could have de…

> It can be a challenge to see how the UK government could have dealt with this worse.

For example they could have delayed ordering vaccines, like the Europeans have.

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

#113
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's another way of framing it: Having messed this up so very badly doing idiotically risky things from the start the latest big risk taken by the UK government didn't actually backfire as badly as the previous ones. Others have pointed at the current per-capita deaths. This completely ignores the long-term effects to survivors accross the population. It can be a challenge to see how the UK government could have de…

To be fair to the UK government, their vaccine strategy has been spot on: lot's of investment and early. They've messed up basically every else, and still are. But I think they do deserve some credit for that.

>to be fair

...taking a flyer on an utterly unproven vaccination strategy was a huge, huge risk and had it not come off there would be no vaccination strategy. Relying on being lucky doesn't seem like a "spot on" strategy to me.

"We gambled everything on red it and came up so we deserve credit for the strategy."

edit: This is in relation to the additional time between first and second jabs that was untested in the strategy - for which this result suggests we no longer need to be concerned that the vaccination might be reduced in protection as we were before this data came in.

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

#114
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's another way of framing it: Having messed this up so very badly doing idiotically risky things from the start the latest big risk taken by the UK government didn't actually backfire as badly as the previous ones. Others have pointed at the current per-capita deaths. This completely ignores the long-term effects to survivors accross the population. It can be a challenge to see how the UK government could have de…

> It can be a challenge to see how the UK government could have dealt with this worse. For example they could have delayed ordering vaccines, like the Europeans have.

The vaccine screw-up wasn't even the only... interesting part of the European pandemic response. For example, there was a very public push by the EU itself as an institution for member states to reopen travel in order to save the critically important summer vacation season that was just quietly forgotten about by the media after it turned out to be a terrible idea. Complete with a certain amount of pressure on the UK government to try and get them to go along with it too. The vaccine problems were just too visible and undeniable to ignore.

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

#115
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotal evidence I’ve been gathering points to the vaccine making long term covid go away. I have no idea how this works, but it is tempting me into signing up for the vaccine

Out of curiosity, why would you not want to sign up? All the vaccine results have been amazingly positive.

What’s the probability that today’s scientists look as ridiculous in a few decades as the ones from a few decades ago look like today?

Asbestos was considered a great building material.

While science had improved in absolute terms, there is a chance to screw up in new ways.

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

#116
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's another way of framing it: Having messed this up so very badly doing idiotically risky things from the start the latest big risk taken by the UK government didn't actually backfire as badly as the previous ones. Others have pointed at the current per-capita deaths. This completely ignores the long-term effects to survivors accross the population. It can be a challenge to see how the UK government could have de…

> It can be a challenge to see how the UK government could have dealt with this worse. For example they could have delayed ordering vaccines, like the Europeans have.

Yup, messing up both would have been catastrophic. Just a shame it took so many deaths for the UK government to wake up.

If saving lives is the end goal then countries that took it seriously from the start and had a competent strategy for social distancing and containment are still better off.

Barely a month ago Boris was promising a normal Christmas.

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

#117
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair to the UK government, their vaccine strategy has been spot on: lot's of investment and early. They've messed up basically every else, and still are. But I think they do deserve some credit for that.

>to be fair ...taking a flyer on an utterly unproven vaccination strategy was a huge, huge risk and had it not come off there would be no vaccination strategy. Relying on being lucky doesn't seem like a "spot on" strategy to me. "We gambled everything on red it and came up so we deserve credit for the strategy." edit: This is in relation to the additional time between first and second jabs that was untested in the st…

When they do badly you say it's because of their incompetence.

When they do well you still say it's because of their incompetence.

At every turn they’ve had credible expert advice telling them to do contradictory things. They’ve had to use judgement.

If only they had the sense to use hindsight, like you.

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

#118
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also because the US has numerous vaccine options for 2021 and eg the EU does not. The Oxford vaccine simply isn't that important to the US accordingly. We have Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, Novavax, along with Oxford. The US will end up with far more vaccine options than it needs. The EU is desperate for any vaccine supply because of how they massively screwed everything up. The US by contrast is…

>The Oxford vaccine simply isn't that important to the US Beg to differ there. We need to vaccinate the world. This is in the interests of the US. (Consider mutation etc). The analysis of the Oxford vaccine is that it is much easier to perform the logistics because of the significantly more modest refrigerations requirements. The US needs 7 billion to be vaccinated as much as anyone is my understanding.

It is also quite cheap, which as well as needing less refrigeration boggles my mind why the EU sat on their hands for 3 months trying to negotiate down an already cheap cost.

$140 billion to vaccinate the world is not a large cost, and many nations will choose (have chosen) their own solutions, for the remaining, perhaps $60bn, that's not a large amount for developed nations to pay compared to the costs of reduced trade and potential further mutations, that's $60-$100 per person in developed countries in cash, or more likely however countries want to amortise that.

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

#119
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair to the UK government, their vaccine strategy has been spot on: lot's of investment and early. They've messed up basically every else, and still are. But I think they do deserve some credit for that.

>to be fair ...taking a flyer on an utterly unproven vaccination strategy was a huge, huge risk and had it not come off there would be no vaccination strategy. Relying on being lucky doesn't seem like a "spot on" strategy to me. "We gambled everything on red it and came up so we deserve credit for the strategy." edit: This is in relation to the additional time between first and second jabs that was untested in the st…

To produce the vaccine so fast that had to be done.

The issues European production partners (one in Belgium I think) are suffering with the AstraZeneca vaccine are similar to those already solved at the UK production sites months ago because of the risk taken to start production early.

Each production facility can have unique issues that effect yield that simply need time to resolve.

Maybe AstraZeneca over promised, but it feels like risks to production yield were not properly assessed by those in charge of ensuring vaccine supply in the EU.

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

#120
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

If the sample consists of volunteers, it's hardly random. In particular, given that these volunteers are "low-risk people", it means that the results of this experiment will yield virtually no useful conclusions for the higher-risk groups

Exactly, this is the real issue here unfortunately.
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