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Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine

ox.ac.uk

31–40 of 569 posts

Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine

#31
Incoming 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 in the case of 10% ineffective, do they take a third dose?

Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine

#32
post #20

over 7 billion human population, a 90% effectiveness is what? alright? please enlighten me. does anyone know what was the effectiveness of the smallpox vaccine that we did actually manage to eradicate successfully?

Google claims that the smallpox vaccine was somewhere between 90-97% effective (they didnt do fully controlled studies back in the day) Keep in mind, that controlling covid is a giant win. We don't need to eradicate it, just get things under control.

> 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.

Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine

#33
post #16

This statement seems a big deal: "There were no hospitalised or severe cases in anyone who received the vaccine" Is that also true of the Pfizer and Moderna trials? Are the various trials measuring 'effectiveness' in the same way? Is there a standard for 'effectiveness' in these Covid-19 trials? It will take some digging and real effort to compare the risks and benefits of the various vaccines coming to market.

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 one 24,000, so they are different size trials. Also, it's super easy to miss important details when comparing outcomes like this, to do this properly really requires a project or in-depth investigation, not my 15-minutes research effort. :)

Pfizer release: https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-deta...

Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine

#34
post #24
post #12

From AstraZeneca: > One dosing regimen (n=2,741) showed vaccine efficacy of 90% when AZD1222 was given as a half dose, followed by a full dose at least one month apart, and another dosing regimen (n=8,895) showed 62% efficacy when given as two full doses at least one month apart. The combined analysis from both dosing regimens (n=11,636) resulted in an average efficacy of 70%. All results were statistically significa…

One thing that isn't obvious to me is exactly how `n` is defined, and how that relates to how many people of that `n` were infected by covid during the trial. E.g. maybe n=2,741 people were vaccinated following the first dosing protocol, but perhaps only a small fraction were infected with covid. So the actual sample sizes being used to estimate the efficacy of each dosing protocol may be smaller.

Yes, they do state that all of the results are statistically significant though, with very low p-values.

Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine

#35
post #14
post #12

From AstraZeneca: > One dosing regimen (n=2,741) showed vaccine efficacy of 90% when AZD1222 was given as a half dose, followed by a full dose at least one month apart, and another dosing regimen (n=8,895) showed 62% efficacy when given as two full doses at least one month apart. The combined analysis from both dosing regimens (n=11,636) resulted in an average efficacy of 70%. All results were statistically significa…

Wow, what a fascinating phenomenon. A weak first dose somehow primes the immune system better than a full one?

IANAD but my guess is maybe a stronger immune response in the first dose makes the immune system respond so quickly to the second dose, that it doesn't have time to get anywhere and interact with enough of the body to have much of an effect. That way a weaker immunization in the first dose leaves more room for the second dose to have a refreshing/strengthening effect. Basically, 1 + 2 > 2 + 0

Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine

#36
post #31

Incoming 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…

> 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?

Sometimes, vaccines are only 30% or 40% effective, leading to terrible flu seasons.

I don't really know the mean/median/mode, but 90% is really high for a vaccine.

> 3. What happens in the case of 10% ineffective, do they take a third dose?

How do you know if someone is one of those 10%?

Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine

#37
post #16

This statement seems a big deal: "There were no hospitalised or severe cases in anyone who received the vaccine" Is that also true of the Pfizer and Moderna trials? Are the various trials measuring 'effectiveness' in the same way? Is there a standard for 'effectiveness' in these Covid-19 trials? It will take some digging and real effort to compare the risks and benefits of the various vaccines coming to market.

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.

My understanding from the Pfizer press release, and I quoted it, is that there was one severe case in the vaccinated group. Did I miss something?

Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine

#38
post #5

The key differentiator here is the storage requirements (2-8c ‘normal refrigerator’). That’s much more accessible to developing / low GDP countries as opposed the cumbersome and expensive storage requirements of the other two.

What are the storage requirements for the other two?

Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine

#39
post #9

over 7 billion human population, a 90% effectiveness is what? alright? please enlighten me. does anyone know what was the effectiveness of the smallpox vaccine that we did actually manage to eradicate successfully?

this is different for each disease based on how quickly it transmits. for SARS-COV-2 you need around 70% immunity in the population to achieve herd immunity

> you need around 70% immunity in the population

This is the required immunity of the population, but not the effectiveness of the vaccine. Inside the population there are groups that you cannot put the vaccine (smallest babies, immunosuppressed people, etc).

Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine

#40
post #5

The key differentiator here is the storage requirements (2-8c ‘normal refrigerator’). That’s much more accessible to developing / low GDP countries as opposed the cumbersome and expensive storage requirements of the other two.

What are the storage requirements for the other two?

-80C for Pfizer, and below 0 for the other one (I forget exactly).

-80C is really close to dry-ice temperatures. So I wonder if its actually -80C or if the researchers were just saying "Dry Ice".

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