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Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% protection

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Re: Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% protection

#381

Just curious, why the reaction towards this and the ones from Russia/China are different ?

None of those have announced positive results on a phase 3, have they? In effect, the Russian one is also in phase 3; they kind of pretended it wasn't, but are doing a very limited rollout that is for all practical purposes just a phase 3 trial.

Also, this one was developed in Germany and the trial is being run in Germany and the US; people might be forgiven for trusting a combination of the EMA and FDA, who will need to approve this, somewhat more than Putin's one.

Re: Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% protection

#382

Good: + ~90% of individuals achieve immunity. + no significant side-effects. Not so good: - two doses needed, 3 weeks apart, immunity after one month from first dose. Slow rollout. - -80C storage and transport needed. Challenging, but doable in developed countries, but still may slow down mass rollout. Not feasible in many developing countries. I still wonder about long-term immunity. Anyone can share any insight?

I believe that temperature is achievable with fairly simply-insulated dry ice containers, in situations where mechanical cooling is not feasible.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/18/business/coronavirus-covi...

I guess you should invest in dry ice manufacturing companies!

Re: Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% protection

#383

Good: + ~90% of individuals achieve immunity. + no significant side-effects. Not so good: - two doses needed, 3 weeks apart, immunity after one month from first dose. Slow rollout. - -80C storage and transport needed. Challenging, but doable in developed countries, but still may slow down mass rollout. Not feasible in many developing countries. I still wonder about long-term immunity. Anyone can share any insight?

The latest data (preprint, not peer reviewed etc etc) mention memory B and T cells up to 8 months after recovery from the illness. This means that an immunity of one year is probably likely. This would be probably enough to quench the spread, but not to eradicate the virus.

This is incorrect. They tested SARS patients over 17 years later and they still exhibited an immune response. As long as SARS-CoV-2 doesn’t mutate dramatically the body probably has long term immunity.

Re: Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% protection

#384

Why are people in the comments so interested in the reactions of stock markets? I don't understand. These are the same markets that cheer when job cuts and redundancies are announced. These are the same markets that cheer when horrible working conditions are enforced (see Tesla, Uber, Deliveroo, etc.) Why should I take the markets seriously? It's just a bunch of rich people in the end.

The beauty of it is, you don't have to. The subtle truth is that, as a practical matter, you often have to care about "opinions" you don't respect or admire. Another's opinion is a fact, albeit a minor one, from your point of view. What's more, it's the legitimate output of a computation they performed based on a set of (weighted) inputs. The market is best seen as a machine that measures two things: which market is better (meta market), and within each market, which product is better, from the sole perspective of making money.

All things die, including businesses. Layoffs can be a good thing if the job is terrible, the business is a zombie. Can you imagine working at Sears? It's good to let bad businesses die because the alternative is worse. That said, humans like to get settled, comfortable, get a rhythm to life, and changing jobs (because of a business failure or whatever) is a HUGE stressor. And its uncertain if you don't know where you can "plug in" to the economy and get a job, so you're in a rush, and new employers rush you through onboarding and acquire all kinds of legal leverage over you, and so on.... And the American worker is not trained to examine their options from any perspective other than "Job Title" and "Salary". Even "Benefits" often get short shrift.

Anyway, long ramble short, you don't have to admire the minds that move money, but you should take them seriously. It's worth considering, though: what would it take to have your cake and eat it too? How would you make the "markets" more admirable, which in your case seems to mean "more moral"?

Re: Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% protection

#385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm feeling a deep-seated wave of relief that I never thought possible. Like waking up from a year-long nightmare. Thank God. Moderna is also only weeks behind Pfizer/Biontech here with a very similar technology and manufacturing capability of hundreds of millions of doses. We'll be seeing the first EUA's by December, and shots in the arm before the end of the year. Pretty incredible that we can just science our way…

This is great and all, and I'm not against vaccinations, but is this safe long term? Am I the only one here who doesn't want to get inoculated in basically the first batch?

Have there historically been issues with vaccines causing problems for the long term that didn't show initially?

I've never heard of such a thing, but then again I have only a surface understanding of vaccines.

Re: Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% protection

#386
post #216
post #16

Pfizer's press release with more information: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201109005539/en/ - Vaccine candidate was found to be more than 90% effective in preventing COVID-19 in participants without evidence of prior SARS-CoV-2 infection in the first interim efficacy analysis - Analysis evaluated 94 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in trial participants - Study enrolled 43,538 participants, with 42% having div…

"diverse backgrounds" What does that mean exactly? Surely a random sample of people will have diverse backgrounds.

It means that it includes people from different ethnicity, ages (also younger and older people) and some immunocompromised people.

Re: Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% protection

#387
post #77
post #29

Great news, but I think the importance of the -80 degrees centigrade storage requirement is underestimated. Serbia, where I live, has ordered this vaccine. And our medical system is far from world-class, but leaps and bounds from less developed countries, and I honestly think logistics here will not be able to match those requirements. I've seen tetanus vaccines just being kept in regular, commercial, refrigerators.…

> Vehicles equipped for transport are an issue by itself. What about putting it into liquid nitrogen?

I'm not sure it can be used, since it is much colder than -80. I actually hope it can be, because there is quite a few liquid nitrogen facilities, usually near big medical facilities. Dry ice, quite rare. I've seen some for special effects, but declared at a higher temperature than -80.

Re: Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% protection

#388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Ebola vaccine required -80 C storage as well and they got it into literal war zones. It’s a difficult problem, but a solved one.

My understanding is that -80c cold storage isn't widely available. The Ebola outbreak might have shown how to get small numbers of doses into a warzone, but scaling this up might prove to be a logistical difficulty. "Once a provider receives that vaccine, it really starts the clock that the vaccine needs to be administered within five days of when it's put in the refrigerator" Source: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cor…

Sure it is. Any small city (> 50,000 people) has someone who can get you liquid nitrogen in far larger quantities than will ever be needed (thus stuff is used for a lot of industrial processes). Put it in a cooler from wal-mart and you have a week.

Any you get a week after thawing it to use is anyway, so you don't need the cold storage where the end user is. I don't know what the thawing protocols are of course.

Re: Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% protection

#389
post #216
post #16

Pfizer's press release with more information: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201109005539/en/ - Vaccine candidate was found to be more than 90% effective in preventing COVID-19 in participants without evidence of prior SARS-CoV-2 infection in the first interim efficacy analysis - Analysis evaluated 94 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in trial participants - Study enrolled 43,538 participants, with 42% having div…

"diverse backgrounds" What does that mean exactly? Surely a random sample of people will have diverse backgrounds.

You want to have at least a nontrivial group of every race and ethnicity to ensure that you collect enough data to make sure it's also effective on everyone.

Additional challenges in the US are that many minority communities are distrustful of the pharmaceutical industry due to historical reasons and you typically need a concentrated effort to do outreach there to actually collect enough volunteers to meet your sampling concerns.

Re: Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% protection

#390
post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How dangerous did you assess it to be?

Vast majority of the cases are asymptomatic or only have mild symptoms.

The vast majority of single rounds of Russian Roulette are won too.
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