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

171–180 of 187 posts

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

#171

Post by firethief »

lawl wrote: post #22
reportingsjr wrote: post #18

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.

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.

We don't know how much it changes. We don't have much information on the difference between the ratio of $measurement0 : $measurement1 between the two groups. Once everyone is vaccinated (antivaxxers don't count, they get what they get), symptom rate is all that matters. But in the interim months, transmission rate from vaccinated sources is incredibly important, which is partly determined by infection rate among vaccinated.

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

#172

Post by orra »

caffeine wrote: post #146
orra wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is nonsense. It's not about national pride. The UK authorised Pfizer first. We knew back in December how effective just one dose[1] of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine is, at stopping death. See figure 2 on page 28. [1] https://www.fda.gov/media/144434/download

The link you posted is about the Moderna vaccine, not AstraZeneca. I have no qualms with the Moderna vaccine, I consider it and the Pfizer to be the most effective and least questionable.

Argh, you're right. I badly skimmed over the JCVI document.

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

#173

Post by [deleted] »

heavenlyblue wrote: post #167
chrisseaton wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I find it amusing that now every single UK conservative is defending the UK government with this specific point when the UK government managed to have a series of regular fuckups over the last year nobody else managed to get in the EU.

[deleted]

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

#174

Post by [deleted] »

heavenlyblue wrote: post #167
chrisseaton wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I find it amusing that now every single UK conservative is defending the UK government with this specific point when the UK government managed to have a series of regular fuckups over the last year nobody else managed to get in the EU.

[deleted]

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

#175

Post by harry8 »

timthorn wrote: post #157
harry8 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK's has been a gambler's strategy, for mine, seat-of-the-pants I'm-feeling-lucky stuff. This "win" does not compensate the losses nor justify the strategy. The win here is "the decision outcome has not been smashed by a possible downside." There were rather a lot of people suggesting that doing an unproven vaccine strategy of getting the maximum number of people their first vaccine and a longer period between fi…

> Who were the credible experts who recommended it? The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation. Membership listed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/groups/joint-committee-on-vacc... > What support did they give that it wasn't a pretty big risk? Analysis available here: https://app.box.com/s/iddfb4ppwkmtjusir2tc/file/759357623956 (via the minutes hyperlink on the JCVI page above) Relevant conclusion: "The C…

>>Herd immunity was not government policy: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-54252272

>Others, however, have suggested, despite the denials, that "herd immunity" was indeed the strategy for a period of time.

So I'm one of those. I'll accept that it wasn't announced as government policy by name, but what of that?

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/health/uk-herd-immunity-coro...

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-51892402

Obviously denying the bet was made is the best course of political action to do otherwise would be a resignation letter.

Accepting responsibility for the very large losses would take some kind of integrity, bravery and honnesty that is more than a little unusual accross the entire spectrum of professional politicians.

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

#177

Post by chrisseaton »

harry8 wrote: post #175
timthorn wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who were the credible experts who recommended it? The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation. Membership listed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/groups/joint-committee-on-vacc... > What support did they give that it wasn't a pretty big risk? Analysis available here: https://app.box.com/s/iddfb4ppwkmtjusir2tc/file/759357623956 (via the minutes hyperlink on the JCVI page above) Relevant conclusion: "The C…

>>Herd immunity was not government policy: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-54252272 >Others, however, have suggested, despite the denials, that "herd immunity" was indeed the strategy for a period of time. So I'm one of those. I'll accept that it wasn't announced as government policy by name, but what of that? https://www.standard.co.uk/news/health/uk-herd-immunity-coro... https://www.bbc.com/news/science-envi…

> Obviously denying the bet was made is the best course of political action ... Accepting responsibility for the very large losses would take some kind of integrity, bravery and honnesty that is more than a little unusual accross the entire spectrum of professional politicians.

I think you're admitting here that you're determined from the start to assume the worst under all circumstances, success and failure, that you will never believe anything they say either way, and that no amount of reason will persuade you to give them an inch of credit or even just tolerance for them trying to do their best and it sometimes not being perfect.

I hope you aren't subject to this kind of cynical, relentless, and impossible to satisfy abuse in your job as you're dishing out to them.

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

#178

Post by thu2111 »

heavenlyblue wrote: post #170
thu2111 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel I just looked into a mirror world that's exactly like the one I live in, except everything is reversed. The UK started out very briefly with a Sweden-like strategy. We now know the Sweden strategy was correct: their results are in line with the EU average[1] despite a drastically smaller decline in GDP, a much smaller backlog of non-COVID health care problems and of course, a critically higher freedom and qual…

Your [1] literally is showing that Sweden's numbers are double European's over the course of the whole of summer.

What matters is the current status, and that they're not really different. Different countries had their first wave start and end at slightly different times, but that's not relevant.

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

#179

Post by ineedasername »

ummonk wrote: post #147
ineedasername wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that the booster is moot if you're walking around unprotected until you get it because the first dose has worn off. No one here is arguing that a second shot wouldn't bring your immunity back up. The problem isn't the efficacy of the second shot. It's the delay during which you are much less.protected. As for 3-4 weeks being too short, I'm not aware of any specific research there. But I'll assume you're…

But it's not a choice between vaccinating one person with one dose and vaccinating one person with two doses. It's a choice between vaccinating one person with two doses and vaccinating two people with one dose apiece. If you try to give the person a second dose, that means you're causing another person to be walking around completely unprotected.

I completely agree that, once we know if or when immunity starts to drop, we should absolutely maximize # of people getting shots instead of maximizing the immunity level of people getting the shots which is a relatively incremental increase anyway. I'm not sure we have that data though, and until we do have that data then we need to proceed with a known protocol that maximizes immunity.

Because if the vaccine wears off quickly. Then, the issue of the second person it moot. Vaccinating them becomes a net 0: Person A that got the first vaccine is losing their immunity while second person is gaining immunity.

However, assuming the pharmaceutical companies can & are massively ramping up production, and given that the logistics network for distributing & administering the shot is improving, We will hopefully get to the point when all of the above is completely irrelevant because there will be ample supply and ample bandwidth to administer the dosesto everyone.

I think in the short term we also get a little bit of a boost from the folks who have already been infected. AFAIK, their resistance may not last long-- as little as 6 months perhaps. But in terms of getting spread rates under control, and assuming twice as many people have been infected as the official record shows (which might be conservative, it's just educated guess) Then that means in addition to those getting vaccinated, We have about 55million formerly infected people that should have some level of resistance.

Anyway, thanks for an interesting conversation.

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

#180

Post by throwaway2245 »

n4r9 wrote: post #154
sgt101 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth looking here : https://github.com/dkobak/excess-mortality for clear statistics. There is a big difference between what is reported and what the actual numbers work out to be.

The UK is still pretty near the top there. What happened to Bulgaria recently?!

As best as I can tell, the timeline of these data is lagging and inconsistent...

I believe it's (now) listing UK up to 2020 Week 51, and Bulgaria to 2021 Week 3.

That's a 5 week difference in which Bulgaria was hit pretty hard. We don't see the effect in this data set of the British variant yet.

Post reply on HN