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

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

#181

Post by harry8 » Fri, Feb 05, 2021, 12:50 AM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #177

harry8 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>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 yo…

This is a nonsense response. You'd have to be craven to suggest that holding any politician from any party or ideology as being responsible for their actions and policies is "assume the worst under all circumstances." I see no possibility of meaningful exchange of ideas here. Best.

The policies have had a massive cost countable in deaths and misery. Those who advanced those policies have to deny that consequence or resign. They deny like weak politicians. I don't believe them. I'm not alone among people who would much rather be noting their successes.

If the long wait between really was a good bet with limited downside and not yet another big risk I would be so relieved. That wasn't the way it was reported at the time.

If you take one thing to understand about this point of view I am expressing make it this:

Being conservative about risk with decisions where countless lives are at stake is a good thing. Gambling and winning does not retropsectively make it a good decision.

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

#182

Post by chrisseaton » Fri, Feb 05, 2021, 12:55 AM UTC

harry8 wrote: post #181

chrisseaton wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 yo…

This is a nonsense response. You'd have to be craven to suggest that holding any politician from any party or ideology as being responsible for their actions and policies is "assume the worst under all circumstances." I see no possibility of meaningful exchange of ideas here. Best. The policies have had a massive cost countable in deaths and misery. Those who advanced those policies have to deny that consequence or r…

> Being conservative about risk with decisions where countless lives are at stake is a good thing.

It's not necessarily! Being too conservative can be as bad as being not conservative enough! If you wanted maximum caution you'd never take a decision and never do anything. If governments did nothing yet about COVID and were still carefully considering a course of action at this stage we'd be fucked. No thanks.

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

#183

Post by harry8 » Fri, Feb 05, 2021, 7:11 AM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #182

harry8 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a nonsense response. You'd have to be craven to suggest that holding any politician from any party or ideology as being responsible for their actions and policies is "assume the worst under all circumstances." I see no possibility of meaningful exchange of ideas here. Best. The policies have had a massive cost countable in deaths and misery. Those who advanced those policies have to deny that consequence or r…

> Being conservative about risk with decisions where countless lives are at stake is a good thing. It's not necessarily! Being too conservative can be as bad as being not conservative enough! If you wanted maximum caution you'd never take a decision and never do anything. If governments did nothing yet about COVID and were still carefully considering a course of action at this stage we'd be fucked. No thanks.

How conservative you need to be depends on the circumstances. Hurrah! Progress...

"But I made it home without killing anyone." Is not a defence for downing 3 family sized vodkas and driving. "You'd condemn me weather i killed people or not!" Quite. Being too conservative we'd never have put the wheel on a vehicle. SFW.

Sensible conservative approaches to public health policy with tens of thousands of lives at stake is a reasonable thing to insist on. Herd immunity policies were NOT that. The additional, un-tested time between jabs was widely reported as being risky. If it wasn't actually terribly risky, then the prior risk assessment was spectacularly badly communicated.

"I made it home alive." Which this report, mercifully, confirms to my relief and joy, forms stuff all part of analysing the risk that was taken and the sense behind it.

Noting also you can take every reasonable precaution and still get a bad result without that result being sufficient to condemn the decision making. So absolutely the result is not the most important thing when there's a risky decision made. But it's really, incredibly bloody hard to ignore when 3 family-sized vodkas in, having been told not to drive you do anyway, straight into some children. Or 110,000 covid deaths. Those kind of losses are rather hard to ignore when they're the consequence of risk-taking. Even if at first blush you didn't think it was pretty reckless even though it was described frequently as such, in advance.

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

#184

Post by harry8 » Fri, Feb 05, 2021, 7:14 AM UTC

nicoburns wrote: post #160

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…

> As I recall there was some serious doubt about whether anyone would get benefit from vaccination at all. Again if it was /known/ that it was likely to work that's not a bad decision - but I haven't seen that analysis. Have you? Please do link it if you have. I'm also not clear about what the upside for running that risk was. Are there better results for people contracting covid after only one jab? Do we have data?…

>The upside is being vaccinate twice as quickly (esp. valuable early on when supply is constrained

Is one jab much use to prevent bad results it was that unknown and we're still hopeful that it will turn out that it is?

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

#185

Post by chrisseaton » Fri, Feb 05, 2021, 1:10 PM UTC

harry8 wrote: post #183

chrisseaton wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being conservative about risk with decisions where countless lives are at stake is a good thing. It's not necessarily! Being too conservative can be as bad as being not conservative enough! If you wanted maximum caution you'd never take a decision and never do anything. If governments did nothing yet about COVID and were still carefully considering a course of action at this stage we'd be fucked. No thanks.

How conservative you need to be depends on the circumstances. Hurrah! Progress... "But I made it home without killing anyone." Is not a defence for downing 3 family sized vodkas and driving. "You'd condemn me weather i killed people or not!" Quite. Being too conservative we'd never have put the wheel on a vehicle. SFW. Sensible conservative approaches to public health policy with tens of thousands of lives at stake i…

> Herd immunity policies were NOT that.

As has already been pointed out to you, there was no herd immunity policy.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-54252272

You need to be able to tell the difference between someone using the words 'herd immunity' in a sentence, and it being official policy.

Your response to this is just 'nah... I'll ignore that and just assume they're lying'. That's where your prejudice is coming into it.

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

#186

Post by harry8 » Sat, Feb 06, 2021, 1:34 PM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #185

harry8 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How conservative you need to be depends on the circumstances. Hurrah! Progress... "But I made it home without killing anyone." Is not a defence for downing 3 family sized vodkas and driving. "You'd condemn me weather i killed people or not!" Quite. Being too conservative we'd never have put the wheel on a vehicle. SFW. Sensible conservative approaches to public health policy with tens of thousands of lives at stake i…

> Herd immunity policies were NOT that. As has already been pointed out to you, there was no herd immunity policy. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-54252272 You need to be able to tell the difference between someone using the words 'herd immunity' in a sentence, and it being official policy. Your response to this is just 'nah... I'll ignore that and just assume they're lying'. That's where your prejudice is com…

Maybe I'll consider that it's true you can use a words in a sentence without it being policy. WIll you consider the difference between the name of a policy used by a politician and declared to be "official" and a description of what that policy actually is? Good link. Let's excerpt.

>At the start of the pandemic, the government's chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, spoke about "herd immunity" - the idea that once enough of a population had been exposed to the virus, they would build up natural immunity to it.

This was when the virus spread really kicked off. There was a press conference I saw with disbelief where people were encouraged to attend football games because on average a positive case will infect 5 others so attending football games is fine.

>"Our aim," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that morning, is to "try and reduce the peak - not suppress it completely, also because most people get a mild illness, to build up some degree of herd immunity whilst protecting the most vulnerable".

"to build up some degree of herd immunity" is not a herd immunity policy.

See you could call that policy "isolate, trace and contain" and that name does not make any difference to what the policy actually was.

That particular knight of the realm was clearly speaking so badly out of term about the UK following a policy that was not being followed that he was of course immediately fired. I just can't find the link. Maybe it didn't happen and I just assumed you'd have to be fired if you literally lied about government policy in a pandemic and that has been confusing.

>in a BBC interview on 11 March with Dr David Halpern, chief executive of the government-owned Behavioural Insights Team, known as the "nudge unit", and a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage).

He told the BBC: "You'll want to protect those at-risk groups so that they basically don't catch the disease and by the time they come out of their cocooning, herd immunity's been achieved in the rest of the population."

Let's call the policy "Geoffrey" and between us declare that name official to this discussion. That doesn't change anything either.

As long as we can treat this:

>"In a statement, a government spokesman said the emails "make clear… herd immunity has never been a policy aim".

With at least some of the utter contempt mustered by the bbc journalist in that piece.

I hope my another repitition of my rejection of what has "been pointed out" is now sufficiently clear to you. The policy was followed the aim of spreading the virus achieved the hoped for payoff for that strategy has been elusive. Or perhaps they just stumbled into following a herd immunity policy by accident while talking about it. The distinction is not important to me.

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

#187

Post by o-__-o » Sun, Feb 07, 2021, 2:26 AM UTC

iainmerrick wrote: post #109

o-__-o wrote: 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.

Because the guidance for long haul was to wait. Now that I have anecdotal evidence I will probably sign up sometime this summer when the original antibodies wane