It's interesting to layman's eyes that the dosing regime using 1.5 doses is more effective than the one using 2 doses as I would expect the inverse; are there any plausible explanations for this?
Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine
131–140 of 569 posts
Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine
#132Contrary to some views here, I am very heartened by a press release which doesn't gild the lily. This restores a lot of faith in reporting.
"gild the lily" = try to improve what is already beautiful or excellent.
70% efficacy at 2c-8c storage for $4 is indeed excellent but many comments here go to "but modena is 95% efficacy whyyyy" and "they're underselling it"
Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
There were no hospitalisations or severe incidents for either the Pfizer and Moderna trials were was related to the vaccine. And it's pretty easy to compare the vaccines. It will mostly come down to price, ease of manufacture and ease of distribution i.e. temperature. Given that for the 3 viruses all have no risks associated with their use.
How do we know there aren't long term side effects?
If there is no known mechanism by which side effects could occur with long gestation, and if experience with other vaccines and vaccine trials provides no evidence of any such, then it would seem unlikely.
Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine
#134It's interesting to layman's eyes that the dosing regime using 1.5 doses is more effective than the one using 2 doses as I would expect the inverse; are there any plausible explanations for this?
One possibility is that 1.5 dosing regime reduces unwanted immune reaction against vector (not payload).
Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are not vectored.
Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We don't need to eradicate it, just get things under control Based on what we've seen there is no grey area. Either you fully control it which then ends up basically eradicating it e.g. Australia/NZ or you don't and then you end up like EU/US and going in and out of infection waves.
The thing with the EU is that we have variable, externally controlled infection rates. We could eradicate it, but there's no point because we have land borders to countries we can't control. So we're just trying to keep local rates below crippling. (With mixed success.) The point of a vaccine is that you can't scale it back for populist appeasement; once you have broad immunity you keep broad immunity for long enough…
Eradication means elimination across the entire world. The last 1% is very hard and expensive, requiring sustained funding long after the crisis has passed. To date, we have only managed to eradicate two diseases (smallpox and rinderpest. Not counting diseases that never really managed to spread like SARS) in the entire history of humanity. Ever.
Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
So, the Oxford vaccine stated "... no hospitalised or severe cases ..." The Pfizer press release states: "There were 10 severe cases of COVID-19 observed in the trial, with nine of the cases occurring in the placebo group and one in the BNT162b2 vaccinated group." So, zero severe cases for Oxford, and one for Pfizer. Interesting. Should also point out the Pfizer trial may have had 43,000 participants, and the Oxford…
The statistical difference between 25,000 and 43,000 samples being... small. Basically, any effect visible at less than 2 in 40,000 might be missed by the 25,000 test. Seriously, do you think this is a huge difference in quality of measurements?
The bigger dependent will be the prevalence of COVID during the trial (time, location and population sensitive)
Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine
#137Incoming possible Silly, Stupid and Lazy Questions, 1. Are there any vaccine ( of any Disease ) that are 100% effective? Or do we operate ( as I would assume ) something like 5 Nines effective rate and call it 100%? 2. Across all type of Vaccine, what are the average or median effective rate? i.e Should we expect Vaccine to be 90%+ effective in the first place? Or is that a wrong expectation to make? 3. What happens…
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Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine
#138Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine
#139Why do they sabotaged their own messaging by using the 70% number? Reading further, it looks like the vaccine is 90% efficient. Also, "There were no hospitalised or severe cases in anyone who received the vaccine". Can we infer anything from that statement? They seem to be suggesting that the infection might be less serious in the vaccinated population...
Classical British understatement.
Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
-80ºC for Pfizer vaccine and -20ºC for mRNA vaccine. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/11/17/9355633...
mRNA is a term from molecular biology [0]. "MRNA" is the stock symbol of Moderna [1]. Both Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna use a mRNA based method for their vaccine. You might want to update the comment to avoid confusion. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messenger_RNA [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moderna
And initially formed as "ModeRNA Therapeutics"... I think they're enjoying the intentional confusion. :)