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Israeli study finds 94% drop in symptomatic Covid-19 cases with Pfizer vaccine

reuters.com

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Re: Israeli study finds 94% drop in symptomatic Covid-19 cases with Pfizer vaccine

#251

Post by franze »

zyxzevn wrote: post #247

Congratulations, but some sceptical notes. The spring is coming, ending the wave like last year. This can reduce the cases by a similar amount. We will have to wait till next season what will happen. The sun and season has a dramatic influence on Covid. We saw that last year. Related with vitamin-D and ultra-violet radiation. Recently some countries had changes in PCR tests. Austria had a similar reduction after not…

>The spring is coming, ending the wave like last year.

hight of first wave in Israel was end of march. in Israel it just really started in march.

on average it was in the last weeks colder than last year.

Re: Israeli study finds 94% drop in symptomatic Covid-19 cases with Pfizer vaccine

#252

Post by bodyfour »

scrollaway wrote: post #57
kharak wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the vaccination distribution a zero sum game between nation states? Supply is limited. Some countries will get it sooner than others. Europe lost the bit against several other powers. Not to my surprise, I must say.

Is it zero sum? People keep saying that but if you give the suppliers more money, that allows them to scale up more and faster. It's not a given that they're just at 100 percent of their production capacity.

Just about any part of production that could be scaled up by throwing money at the problem has had billions of dollars flowing in its direction.

Re: Israeli study finds 94% drop in symptomatic Covid-19 cases with Pfizer vaccine

#253

Post by lloeki »

ancymon wrote: post #17

As I understand, for example in Europe Pfizer is producing vaccines in single factory and not in sufficient number. Why production doesn't happen in more places? Couldn't they sell license to other European pharmaceutical companies to produce it? Is production process so unique it can't be replicated in other places?

There was an article about that on HN 2 weeks ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26014616

Re: Israeli study finds 94% drop in symptomatic Covid-19 cases with Pfizer vaccine

#254

Post by legolas2412 »

mattzito wrote: post #193
Garlef wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But the number of positive tests should have gone down considerably > "Israeli study finds 94% drop in -> SYMPTOMATIC Asymptomatic cases still spread the virus.

They’re not saying there’s no decrease in asymptomatic cases, they’re saying they didn’t check for that. AstraZeneca’s study in the UK did surveillance testing of their study participants and found a significant drop in asymptomatic cases as well. Reasonable to assume the same is true with the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.

I find it inexcusable that moderna and pfizer decided to not test for asymptomatic at all, instead focusing on the subjective criterion of being symptomatic

Re: Israeli study finds 94% drop in symptomatic Covid-19 cases with Pfizer vaccine

#255

Post by spuz »

zyxzevn wrote: post #247

Congratulations, but some sceptical notes. The spring is coming, ending the wave like last year. This can reduce the cases by a similar amount. We will have to wait till next season what will happen. The sun and season has a dramatic influence on Covid. We saw that last year. Related with vitamin-D and ultra-violet radiation. Recently some countries had changes in PCR tests. Austria had a similar reduction after not…

Every one of those points seems to be countered by the control group:

> The comparison was against a group of the same size, with matching medical histories, who had not received the vaccine.

Re: Israeli study finds 94% drop in symptomatic Covid-19 cases with Pfizer vaccine

#256

Post by spuz »

pfortuny wrote: post #226
smiley1437 wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it looks that way because it's a relative chart - exaggerates the uptick in hospitalizations of unvaccinated non-elderly people If you toggle the 'relative' button you'll see the actual numbers - basically, hospitalization count for vaccinated elders is is decreasing, and the hospitalization of unvaccinated non-elders is slightly increasing.

Yes, not such a great idea to plot that without totals...

There is a check box that says "Relative change". Untick that to get the absolute numbers.

Re: Israeli study finds 94% drop in symptomatic Covid-19 cases with Pfizer vaccine

#257

Post by danhor »

hef19898 wrote: post #202
Robin_Message wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EU approved the vaccines over a month later IIRC, and Germany and France won't use the easy to distribute vaccine (astraveneca) in over 65s, the major target group. So I'm not sure it's only a supply issue.

The AZ story is a very interessting one. This whole debate started after the Handelsblatt, a German newspaper, pblished an article saying that the AZ vaccine is only 8% effective for people over 65. Totally wrng of course, as 8% was the number of trial patients above thaage. Yet, the source was apparently someone in the German Ministry of Health. Obviously, that story went viral, it got all the uplift it needed when…

The handelsblatt report is (probably) based on a draft from the STIKO, which included a 6% effectiveness rate (most likely a different draft), but with a huge confidence interval (https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n414), so it's probably correct but irresponsibly misleading.

The EMA allowed the use of AZ for patients over 65 (because they guess that it'll probably be effective), but the STIKO and other government institutions of the various EU countries restricted it.

I don't think it'll make a huge difference, since more than a third of german vaccine doses were used based on occupation, where AZ can be used. The obvious scapegoat for slow vaccinations is that AZ cut deliveries by a large amount, which might not be AZs fault, so the different scapegoat wasn't needed.

Re: Israeli study finds 94% drop in symptomatic Covid-19 cases with Pfizer vaccine

#258

Post by dogma1138 »

jacquesm wrote: post #225
dogma1138 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Israel is paying about $30 a dose about twice the Pfizer listed price in the US and EU not 10 times more. It’s paying 10 times more when comparing to the AZ vaccine but that’s not apples to apples.

https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/the-cost-of-vaccinating-is... says $47 / dose

No, it says $47 per person that’s under $30 per dose.

Re: Israeli study finds 94% drop in symptomatic Covid-19 cases with Pfizer vaccine

#259

Post by bodyfour »

ema wrote: post #200
bajsejohannes wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bottleneck is vaccine production. It doesn't matter how fast you vaccinate. Sure, Israel did a great job negotiating for vaccines, but it's a zero-sum game so only a few countries could have pulled this off.

It's only a zero-sum game if more money wouldn't ramp the production up faster. This might be case but I whish people who say it's zero-sum would say why they think so.

Because nobody credible in the vaccine industry is saying "we could speed up XYZ if we had a bit more money." If they did, they'd find themselves buried under an avalanche of cash before they finished the sentence.

The story right now is one of the entire industry ramping up production as fast as they possibly can with money being no object.

Re: Israeli study finds 94% drop in symptomatic Covid-19 cases with Pfizer vaccine

#260

Post by EvgeniyZh »

corty wrote: post #245
EvgeniyZh wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't need full immunity to see the effect tho.

Right. But still, don't worry yet, worry when it hasn't shown improvement in a few weeks. Edit: Also, when you look at the JHU data (e.g. via google), it shows a peak at Jan 15th in the number of cases followed by a steady decline. The number of deaths peaks on Jan 28th, followed by a similar, steady decline. Which is as expected, so I would say we are already seeing the effects on the number of deaths. Sorry that I…

I'm looking on case fatality rate: cases and death count are too volatile and depend on many factors.

My hypothesis (it's not mine but I agree with it): if population with high death risks is disproportionately vaccinated, at the level it can make visible effect on case count for this population, it should have effect on case fatality rate. Of course, multiple factors can reduce/slow down the decline, but it should be there. Reducing death probability by half for the 60+ people without changing anything else should significantly reduce case fatality rate.

Yet the data does not support it: https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToS...

The case fatality rate peaked at the end of November, slightly declined until mid-January, then grown a bit and is almost constant in last three weeks.

So, the options I see are: either no effect at all can be seen yet behind the noise (it's hard to believe for me), or there is some factor compensating for the case fatality rate reduction (I can think of what could increase fatality that much and exactly compensate the effect), or the hypothesis is wrong (I can't see why either)

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