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Pfizer submits Covid vaccine to FDA for approval, to distribute in December

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Re: Pfizer submits Covid vaccine to FDA for approval, to distribute in December

#381

Post by tomjen3 »

ericb wrote: post #133
FiberBundle wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are all short-term studies. Given that this is a completely new type of vaccine, a certain amount of scepticism about its long-term effects is warranted in my opinion. Personally I fail to see what benefits non-vulnerable people have from immediately being vaccinated.

There's a good portion of people with long-term effects that weren't "vulnerable" but end up with chronic fatigue, lung damage, or mental health problems. If you compare the frequency of those side effects alone vs. the rarity of side effects we've seen in historical "bad" vaccines, you still end up with a pretty obvious cost-benefit in favor of taking it. From that point of view, "even smaller chance of dying" becom…

The long term covid effects are exactly what worries me about this vaccine. If a vaccine is an inactive or reduced version of the real thing, why wouldn't they have similar effects?

Re: Pfizer submits Covid vaccine to FDA for approval, to distribute in December

#383

Post by rhino369 »

floatingatoll wrote: post #206
ghaff wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fully expect that once it is widely available (major caveat), many workplaces and schools will require it absent medical exceptions. Certainly, most schools require vaccinations today and I don't expect there will be a lot of sympathy for those that want to hold off.

I don’t think voluntary exceptions will be granted for Covid, and I’m hard-pressed to come up with a case where an involuntary medical exception would be necessary for someone that is mobile. (No doubt a one in a billion case exists, of course.)

Pregnancy is one. It wasn't tested on them.

Re: Pfizer submits Covid vaccine to FDA for approval, to distribute in December

#384

Post by hobofan »

chaostheory wrote: post #375
hobofan wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your first link only focuses on (the easier to test) antibodies, and doesn't mention T cell memory, which is the much more important factor in long-term immunity. And of course there are going to be individual cases of reinfections with 55+ million cases.

Your logic checks out, but are there peer reviewed papers that back up your argument? This isn't my field, so I'm not aware of any.

There is one right in the list on the CDC page you linked[0]. There is also a recent Nature paper[1] that shows that T cells levels are stable for at least the first 100 days they observed. I don't know of a specific link to send you for that, but that usually indicates T cell immunity on the timescale of multiple years (otherwise some drop in levels would have already been visible in the observed time period).

[0]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7427556

[1]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-01143-2

Re: Pfizer submits Covid vaccine to FDA for approval, to distribute in December

#385

Post by ghaff »

kube-system wrote: post #332
ghaff wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fully expect that once it is widely available (major caveat), many workplaces and schools will require it absent medical exceptions. Certainly, most schools require vaccinations today and I don't expect there will be a lot of sympathy for those that want to hold off.

I expect that state school systems will mostly apply their existing laws for required vaccines. (which is that 4 or 5 of them actually require them, and the rest give religious and/or philosophical exemptions) But for the vast majority of workplaces, there's not much of an existing precedent to do this, and I suspect the vast majority of employers will not want to rock the boat too much. I suspect it'll be something…

>will be "required" by policies but not enforced in practice

That would seem to be extremely unethical and possibly at least borderline an OSHA violation. If a workplace is claiming that certain procedures are being followed and they are in fact not being followed, I think plenty of lawyers would be happy to take that lawsuit.

Re: Pfizer submits Covid vaccine to FDA for approval, to distribute in December

#386

Post by PandawanFr »

smrk007 wrote: post #370
Irene wrote: post #13

Pfizer selected New Mexico, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Texas for their pilot delivery program "due to the states' immunization infrastructures, urban and rural variations, size and population diversity". First batches of vaccine will probably go to frontline medical workers first, followed by frail old people. a paper in Medrxiv favored "older first" model based on evolutionary game theory and mobility data, for lar…

Can I get a link to the Medarxiv paper? Would be an interesting read.

I am guessing this is the one: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.14.20175257v...

Re: Pfizer submits Covid vaccine to FDA for approval, to distribute in December

#387

Post by xiphias2 »

phillc73 wrote: post #350
xiphias2 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are your main concerns with the mRNA product? Are you afraid of long term side effects? We already know that it has less short term side effects than the adenoviral vaccine. Actually I'd like to see deeper thinking about it from professionals.

I'm not a medical doctor, but I do work in pharma and I have tried to inform myself. Still, I could be quite wrong. Yes, I do have some concerns regarding long term effects of mRNA based vaccines. As you said, I would also like to see some deeper thinking about this. I feel that other delivery vectors may be better known and have an existing track record. I also understand that mRNA treatments have had some excellent…

> I also understand that mRNA treatments have had some excellent outcomes in cancer patients

One interesting thing is that I was quite worried that in April/May all these experimental treatments have been stopped, because all the most interesting companies were forced to redirect their focus to COVID (the only reason you could use a lab). I'm relieved, that at least we got something in return: derisking mRNA as a delivery method, and showing that it's far superior to older ones. You're right that we don't have medium / long term data yet, but this article is quite relevant:

https://www.jpost.com/health-science/could-an-mrna-vaccine-b...

Linial explained that “mRNA is a very fragile molecule, meaning it can be destroyed very easily... If you put mRNA on the table, for example, in a minute there will not be any mRNA leftover. This is as opposed to DNA, which is as stable as you get.” She said that this fragility is true of the mRNA of any living thing, whether it belongs to a plant, bacteria, virus or human. As such, she said the worry should not be that the mRNA won’t get into the cells and instead will stay outside, floating in the body and causing some kind of reaction. Rather the concern should be that if it doesn’t enter the cells, it will disintegrate and therefore be ineffective.

Re: Pfizer submits Covid vaccine to FDA for approval, to distribute in December

#388

Post by ghaff »

mindcrime wrote: post #208
rayiner wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I think "don't use version 1.0" advice applies here just like it does for software. No it doesn’t, because vaccine development is more like bridge building than software development.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacoma_Narrows_Bridge_(1940) It was fine... until it wasn't (four months later). Anyway, this analogy is silly. Neither software nor bridges is exactly like the human body and the myriad of complex interactions that happen within. At the end of the day, all I'm saying is that A. under normal circumstances, it takes a lot of time to get a vaccine tested and approved - for good reason. And…

As a somewhat nit, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge was known to have issues before construction was even finished although, obviously, it wasn't expected to fall down.

From your reference: "The original bridge received its nickname "Galloping Gertie" because of the vertical movement of the deck observed by construction workers during windy conditions. The bridge became known for its pitching deck, and collapsed into Puget Sound the morning of November 7, 1940, under high wind conditions. "

Re: Pfizer submits Covid vaccine to FDA for approval, to distribute in December

#389

Post by chaostheory »

anthony_doan wrote: post #362
chaostheory wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless I missed it, there hasn't been any data released. I'm only seeing PR accouncements.

> Unless I missed it, there hasn't been any data released. I'm only seeing PR accouncements. Because there is no long term data on covid19 mutation speed. You need a cohort to take the vaccine and then some time before doing a retroactive study.

There's still data, and it hasn't been released. I would like to know the details of 95% effective.

Re: Pfizer submits Covid vaccine to FDA for approval, to distribute in December

#390

Post by ghaff »

mindcrime wrote: post #150
nojito wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You would be foolish not to get vaccinated given what we know about COVID. Nobody said anything about not getting vaccinated. The point of discussion here is about not rushing to do it the first day the vaccine is available.

So if not Day 1, when? 6 months out, 1 year out, 2 years out, 10 years out? What arbitrary standard should those who are concerned about long-term effects apply?
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