Pfizer’s Covid-19 Pill is 89% Effective in Phase 2/3 Study • Hacker News Board

Re: Pfizer’s Covid-19 Pill is 89% Effective in Phase 2/3 Study

#231

Post by epgui » Mon, Dec 20, 2021, 2:34 PM UTC

spurgu wrote: post #229

epgui wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Driving Rt below one will cause any species to go extinct. That’s just basic maths. If it’s not happening, then Rt is not below 1. As for the rest, you’re taking ideas that have some truth to them, and probably misinterpreting what these things actually mean and taking them unreasonably far or to the extreme: - Herd immunity is a thing, but I'm not sure how you imagine it in your head, or what you think that means. -…

R0 < 1 should be measured globally unless you're planning on isolating forever.

Be careful because R0 and Rt refer to different things: R0 is a property of the pathogen under the assumption of “normal life” and measures how inherently infectious it is.

Rt is a measure of the real-life infectivity of a pathogen at a specific point in time, under no assumption of “normal life”, and possibly within some arbitrary geographical bounds. The purpose of Rt is not to measure the inherent infectivity of a pathogen, but rather its infectivity in a specific environment and set of circumstances: it’s the high-level metric that informs you of the combined impact of public health measures, social behaviour changes, immunity, etc, on the pathogen’s infectivity.

You can see Rt as being equal to R0 times some correction factor that accounts for everything else.

Re: Pfizer’s Covid-19 Pill is 89% Effective in Phase 2/3 Study

#232

Post by throwoutway » Mon, Dec 20, 2021, 2:42 PM UTC

stunt wrote: post #225

It doesn't help that public is too sensitive about this subject. Government can't scrutinize companies like Pfizer enough if they are worried about public reaction. And I'm not too surprised if some companies rush since a lot of money is on the table. To be fair, this is the best effort we have ever had to develop a vaccine. So I don't think it's fair to blame these companies if their vaccine wasn't effective on new…

> So I don't think it's fair to blame these companies if their vaccine wasn't effective on new variants as they initially promised. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't thoroughly scrutinize them.

It depends. On example: If they hid data that propped up their number, then we should blame. Otherwise we should not blame them. Either way, there needs to be scrutiny so that they don’t feel they can easily hide things that matter to public health

Re: Pfizer’s Covid-19 Pill is 89% Effective in Phase 2/3 Study

#233

Post by throwoutway » Mon, Dec 20, 2021, 2:55 PM UTC

epgui wrote: post #226

refurb wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your response is some impressive hand waving. Yes, those things are infectious disease concepts and they were touted as to how COVID will be dealt with. Lots of talk of “once we get to 80% vaccination rate we’ll hit here immunity”. You don’t hear that any more huh? “If we drive R below 1 we can extinguish Covid”. Now it’s “Covid is endemic, it’s not going away”. “Once everyone is vaccinated, Covid goes away”, then “I…

My response isn’t hand-wavy, it’s pretty categorical: the problem is that people can’t deal with uncertainty, and fill in too many blanks in their minds with over-simplistic assumptions. If you’re looking for a full picture of certainty about the future, that’s not exactly what science will give you.

> the problem is that people can’t deal with uncertainty, and fill in too many blanks in their minds with over-simplistic assumptions.

No, the problem is that this was communicated in imperfect ways to the public (as you said yourself), who then filled in the gaps themselves. Risk communication is complicated and the govt, the experts, and the media all failed the public here.

Re: Pfizer’s Covid-19 Pill is 89% Effective in Phase 2/3 Study

#234

Post by spurgu » Mon, Dec 20, 2021, 4:01 PM UTC

epgui wrote: post #231

spurgu wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

R0 < 1 should be measured globally unless you're planning on isolating forever.

Be careful because R0 and Rt refer to different things: R0 is a property of the pathogen under the assumption of “normal life” and measures how inherently infectious it is. Rt is a measure of the real-life infectivity of a pathogen at a specific point in time, under no assumption of “normal life”, and possibly within some arbitrary geographical bounds. The purpose of Rt is not to measure the inherent infectivity of a…

Ah thanks for the explanation, I wasn't aware of the difference!

Re: Pfizer’s Covid-19 Pill is 89% Effective in Phase 2/3 Study

#235

Post by xboxnolifes » Mon, Dec 20, 2021, 4:02 PM UTC

beaned wrote: post #168

xboxnolifes wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't recall a single instance of 100% efficacy claim. It was around 92-97%.

Here you go. I don't know anything about this website (found it from a google search) but the video montage has plenty of claims of 100%, and a "virtually 100% efficacious" quote from Fauci. The montage is in a meme format making fun of the situation, which is not my preference, and I don't intend to inflame by sharing such a take, it's just the most succinct thing I found. It highlights quite clearly what I'd mentio…

I'm not a fan of the "virtually 100% efficacious" claim, but the "and others" part of your original comment, to me, meant "high ranking / respected health officials", not random internet articles and PR lines. Science article titles are rarely accurate to their content, for worse, so screenshots of said titles aren't really meaningful to me. I mean, just look at any hackernews post. Usually the first comment is complaining about the title's inaccuracy.

Maybe there was a narrative shift, but I don't recall ever seeing those 100% claims back in February.

Re: Pfizer’s Covid-19 Pill is 89% Effective in Phase 2/3 Study

#236

Post by beaned » Mon, Dec 20, 2021, 4:32 PM UTC

xboxnolifes wrote: post #235

beaned wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here you go. I don't know anything about this website (found it from a google search) but the video montage has plenty of claims of 100%, and a "virtually 100% efficacious" quote from Fauci. The montage is in a meme format making fun of the situation, which is not my preference, and I don't intend to inflame by sharing such a take, it's just the most succinct thing I found. It highlights quite clearly what I'd mentio…

I'm not a fan of the "virtually 100% efficacious" claim, but the "and others" part of your original comment, to me, meant "high ranking / respected health officials", not random internet articles and PR lines. Science article titles are rarely accurate to their content, for worse, so screenshots of said titles aren't really meaningful to me. I mean, just look at any hackernews post. Usually the first comment is compl…

Ok, that seems then to be a matter of personal interpretation then and not completely what I meant. I don't know about "February" specifically but clearly 100% claims were being made at some point early on.

People get their information from the newsmedia, and this is what it was reporting. So either our newsmedia isn't truthful or our scientists aren't, or - as my original (flagged) comment was saying - time and reproducibility matter, and may affect the efficacy ultimately reported.

Re: Pfizer’s Covid-19 Pill is 89% Effective in Phase 2/3 Study

#237

Post by eli » Mon, Dec 20, 2021, 4:38 PM UTC

rimiform wrote: post #123

eli wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The data was real the first time. The virus got worse.

I suspect the worry is that it will be similar for the pill. Highly effective now, but less effective for future variants.

"Highly effective now" sounds like the best one can reasonably expect. Though I am very interested in the early work on a pan-coronavirus vaccine

Re: Pfizer’s Covid-19 Pill is 89% Effective in Phase 2/3 Study

#238

Post by disambiguation » Mon, Dec 20, 2021, 7:34 PM UTC

epgui wrote: post #214

disambiguation wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what I thought.

All the behaviour changes, vaccines, masks and other public health intervention have the effect of reducing Rt, geometrically, by some factor. When Rt goes below 1 for long enough, not only do variants go away, covid goes away. When you do all kinds of halfass measures and either Rt does not go below 1, or keeps going below and above 1, then you’re giving time for the virus to mutate, and this has the effect of movin…

Right, I'm not disputing the math of herd immunity. What I'm getting at is that we "lost the race". Delta emerged from India in Dec 2020 before vaccines became publicly available. Maybe Rt of the original strain would have been pushed below 1, but the Rt of delta among the vaccinated is way above 1. Omicron is even worse w.r.t immune escape.

We know there are many viruses we can manage with mass vaccination and herd immunity, such as smallpox and measles. But the important difference is those diseases don't mutate as quickly as covid. Therefore it's not a given that covid is something that can be snuffed out with the same methods. We're clearly in a position of playing catch-up and fire-fighting.

Your post implies a sentiment like: "if only we didn't half ass things, we could've beaten this virus. The problems aren't with the measures themselves, just that we didn't go far enough."

Ok, how much further should we go compared to countries that have the strictest measures? Take Australia for example, they have quarantine camps, lockdowns for the unvaccinated, advanced tracing and databases, etc.

For a while this worked pretty well. But their cases have been skyrocketing as of July this year, and it's likely a delta wave. What will omicron look like once it gets there? Would you say their measures were half-baked?

You express indignation but don't say what we should have done differently or what we should do now.

Those who share your mindset come off as having a kind of denial-ism, and an urge to point the finger.

The fact is we're not as "in-control" as we like to think. Nature is inevitable. Our technology and ability to organize is bad.

Let's recognize that an endless state of emergency also has consequences, health measures should be proportional, and for the most part we've done our best. If we can't snuff out the disease and the variants are getting milder anyway, then it's time to start thinking about moving past covid.

Re: Pfizer’s Covid-19 Pill is 89% Effective in Phase 2/3 Study

#239

Post by fivea » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 10:11 AM UTC

refurb wrote: post #217

acdha wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem was that it was politicized hard early on. Now you have roughly a third of the country who’ve been told that public health measures are an unpatriotic plot, and a lot of belligerence had been encouraged. The rhetoric around this made it a very clear party loyalty test and lots of people rose to that challenge. How many people are willing to admit that they were so wrong for the better part of two years an…

I’ve spent months in 4 different countries since Covid hit and it’s politicized everywhere . Not sure how you can force people to stay at home, kids out of school, then hand out billions in relief (or not in one country) and not have it be political?

> I've spent months in 4 different countries since Covid hit and it’s politicized everywhere.

There's a world of difference between criticizing a government for imposing a lockdown at 10pm instead of 11pm or enforcing a 80% occupancy limit instead of 50%, and attacking basic public health measures like taking a vaccine based on sheer lunacy and conspiracy theories.

Re: Pfizer’s Covid-19 Pill is 89% Effective in Phase 2/3 Study

#240

Post by epgui » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 12:03 AM UTC

throwoutway wrote: post #233

epgui wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My response isn’t hand-wavy, it’s pretty categorical: the problem is that people can’t deal with uncertainty, and fill in too many blanks in their minds with over-simplistic assumptions. If you’re looking for a full picture of certainty about the future, that’s not exactly what science will give you.

> the problem is that people can’t deal with uncertainty, and fill in too many blanks in their minds with over-simplistic assumptions. No, the problem is that this was communicated in imperfect ways to the public (as you said yourself), who then filled in the gaps themselves. Risk communication is complicated and the govt, the experts, and the media all failed the public here.

I don't disagree that there were a lot of communication issues, but I think many people don't appreciate just how difficult public health communications is.

It literally does not matter how right you are or well you communicate something: there will always be groups of people who misinterpret what you say, don't understand what you say, or weaponize what you say for political purposes.