Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 712 posts

Re: Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

#241

Post by nickcotter »

DanBC wrote: post #221
nickcotter wrote: post #152

Good news but still a long way to go. How's it going to be rolled out? Here in the UK we have tried and failed to get a regular flu jab (our GPs have run out of a very small supply and the pharmacies don't have any to sell) and I'm not optimistic about our chances of getting this next year or whenever it arrives.

Can I check: are you in the priority group for flu jabs? Because GPs (in England, I don't know about the other nations) should have enough stock. They are prioritising higher need first, and then the expanded programme later in the year, and then anyone else who wants one after that. If you're not priority need you can try a pharmacist.

Pharmacists don't have them available. Boots for example are "working hard to acquire additional stock" but have suspended their service.

Re: Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

#243

Post by wbl »

krona wrote: post #219
tgb wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that a different number, though? You have to factor in that vaccines aren't 100% effective at preventing disease. Wikipedia spells it out in the vaccine section here [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity

True but you're also not taking in to account that far less than 100% of the population appear susceptible to the virus, especially in e.g. Japan and Germany, for various reasons.

Do you have a credible source? I've heard these claims multiple times and they done seem to be borne out by events or supported by repudiable epidemiologist.

Re: Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

#244

Post by qwerty1234599 »

covid-69 wrote: post #242

So who will actually get the vaccine? Not me.

Admit it, you're just subconciously afraid of needles as most people.

Noticed it with Trump. No way he'd take an experimental COVID vaccine, but an experimental antibody drug cocktail through the mouth was more than ok to him.

Pro tip: it all ends up in the bloodstream in the end.

Re: Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

#245

Post by MrAlex94 »

aphextron wrote: post #212
MrAlex94 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It uses a weakened live virus that can (and apparently has, in the case of the J&J vaccine, which is using very similar tech) cause serious adverse systemic reactions. There is no evidence to prove the vaccine has caused any serious adverse effects so far. If that were the case, it is unlikely the Data Safety and Monitoring Board (DSMB) and U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) would recommend resuming the trial.…

>There is no evidence to prove the vaccine has caused any serious adverse effects so far. If that were the case, it is unlikely the Data Safety and Monitoring Board (DSMB) and U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) would recommend resuming the trial. There's also no evidence to prove that it wasn't. Furthermore, the AstraZeneca vaccine was halted for a case of transverse myelitis, a very common (and serious) adverse…

Well, we won't find out until the trials end, but why would they have been approved to continue by safety boards if that wasn't the case?

Also, the AZ trial was given the go-ahead along with the J&J trial.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-astraz...

Re: Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

#246

Post by nickcotter »

standardUser wrote: post #216
nickcotter wrote: post #152

Good news but still a long way to go. How's it going to be rolled out? Here in the UK we have tried and failed to get a regular flu jab (our GPs have run out of a very small supply and the pharmacies don't have any to sell) and I'm not optimistic about our chances of getting this next year or whenever it arrives.

"but still a long way to go" It's actually an "indeterminate way to go". Assuming it is "long" has no factual basis. Phase 3 results could be released literally any day now, and good results would lead to government approvals in the following weeks.

You're right, it could be anytime soon. But I was more concerned with what comes after that: distribution, stock piling etc.

Re: Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

#247

Post by komali2 »

breakfastduck wrote: post #82
input_sh wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're vastly overestimating our capacity to build enough vaccines and distribute them over the world, as well as dealing with those who will refuse to vaccinate. Even if we had a vaccine ready for the roll-out today, I don't see us going back to normalish until late 2021 at earliest. As with any vaccine, you'd need about 80% of the population to vaccinate in order for herd immunity to kick in. I feel like we…

Overly cautious about the herd immunity stuff here. We're not going to eliminate the virus completely. That's a given, we should stop aiming for that. If we get to a point where there's a stable number of daily deaths then we're good. (like we have for literally every single fatal illness.)

Doing so would ignore the sometimes dramatic effects survivors experience - from the people I know alone, this ranges anywhere from previous marathon runners still huffing and puffing their way up stairs despite having been otherwise symptom free for 6 months, to a man who survived by the skin of his teeth and it now appears will never be able to taste or smell again.

I don't know about you but I'm feeling like simply "getting to a stable number of daily deaths" doesn't cut it. Also, that statement alone doesn't make sense to me - a fatality rate of 50% could potentially maintain a stable rate of daily deaths... Of thousands.

Re: Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

#248

Post by strgcmc »

_Microft wrote: post #165
bufferoverflow wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I care. Just like about the bailouts. Socializing the funding/losses and privatizing the profits is just pure corruption.

The nominal world economy 'GDP' was $90T in 2019 [0]. An economic contraction of 5% because of the pandemic would mean a loss of $4500B. If a vaccine helps to avoid that, even a cost of dozens of billion dollars for it would be peanuts in comparison. This is only the economic cost avoided let alone the human tragedies. Edit: german Wikipedia suggest that the contraction is only expected to be 3% but because of the nu…

This is also how criminal mobs operate, in terms of protection money, extortion, ransom, etc. The underlying economic principle is the same ("gee, sure would be a shame if this expensive thing X were to break..."). Beware of relying on this as the only reason to justify the cost.

Hopefully there is some other significant differentiating characteristic or attribute to justify this state of affairs between society and big pharma, that would distinguish it from the same analysis you would use to pay a ransom or protection fee.

Re: Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

#249

Post by cesarb »

digitalice wrote: post #218

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this the vaccine that killed a test subject? https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/volunteer-astraze...

What has been reported in the local media, is that the doctor who died did not get the vaccine. He was one of the test subjects, but half of the test subjects receive a placebo instead of the vaccine (the whole point of the experiment is to see how the vaccine compares with a placebo); he was in the group that received the placebo.

Re: Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

#250

Post by komali2 »

krona wrote: post #219
tgb wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that a different number, though? You have to factor in that vaccines aren't 100% effective at preventing disease. Wikipedia spells it out in the vaccine section here [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity

True but you're also not taking in to account that far less than 100% of the population appear susceptible to the virus, especially in e.g. Japan and Germany, for various reasons.

Susceptible in what sense? Getting it and not having severe symptoms doesn't count as having benefitted from herd immunity - you still got it.
Post reply on HN