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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

#411

Post by gregwebs »

The vaccine has 95% efficacy in initial controlled trials. It is almost impossible to reach (within 1%) of that same level of effectiveness in the real world as claimed here. The real world has a big chunk of the population with an immune system that doesn't respond nearly as well to the vaccine (such as the elderly).

Here is an overview of an Israeli study that was finding a more realistic effectiveness of 70% https://dalewharrison.substack.com/p/israeli-vaccination-dat...

If anyone has a link to the actual study, please post it! It is really annoying to see news articles posted about studies that don't link to them or even provide any basic information to find the study.

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

#412

Post by nir »

fortran77 wrote: post #342
pid_0 wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this getting down voted? Anti-Israel users I guess? Mad that Israel has its shit together?

There's a reason why my Israeli company won't do business with any Y Combinator company. This sentiment is common on Hacker News and across the parent organization. It comes from deep-seated hatred, and will hurt them in the end.

??? I'm pretty sure there are several YC startups with Israeli founders.

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

#413

Post by mattzito »

zbrozek wrote: post #407
azinman2 wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you’re making a lot of assumptions that FDA approval/disapprovals are slow due to a sense of urgency. I’d like to see evidence for that, I’d personally assume it’s quite the opposite— they’re trying to get it as right as they can before doing something at scale that can’t be easily undone. If 15 doses lead to issues compared to 10, then you jeopardize all those vaccines which are slow and difficult to make. Y…

It's really hard to grok why 15-vs-10 doses in a bottle should be a problem. Sure you've got the out-of-fridge time, but that hardly seems like an issue when the population is itching to get vaccinated.

My understanding is that they wanted to validate that the additional needle insertions through the vial doesn't damage the seal enough to cause contamination.

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

#414

Post by siculars »

scrollaway wrote: post #5

Israel feels like the only nation taking the importance and urgency of vaccination seriously. Here in Europe, articles are coming out complaining that the slow vaccination could be harming the economy which, well, fucking duh. ( https://www.brusselstimes.com/news/belgium-all-news/154626/c... ) Fast rollout. Involve pharmacies. Involve the army. Distribute widely and efficiently. Prepare for months before the vaccine…

It's because at every level of government Israel plans for, practices and anticipates any type of scenario from nuclear war, to chemical attack to biological warfare.

Rapidly distributing materials to the population is absolutely within the ability of the IDF and their civil counterparts. Vaccines fall into these categories. It also doesn't hurt that most of the over 18 population have been in the military and know how to follow orders. For those of you who would attribute the successful roll out to the latter, don't. It all starts with anticipating black swan events and being prepared for them.

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

#415

Post by davidf18 »

jacquesm wrote: post #144
rock_artist wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To give some balance. Just as I got my second jab and waiting the 10min needed for surveillance. (Tel Aviv, Israel) > Israel feels like the only nation taking the importance and urgency of vaccination seriously. It's a mixed situation here. * Israel supposedly paid 3 times more than others per shot (but if it works, it's cheaper than the economy losses). * Israel has free public health care. * All public health care…

> Israel supposedly paid 3 times more than others per shot More than that even, closer to a factor of 10. https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/the-cost-of-vaccinating-is... $47 / head! VS closer to $5 in other countries.

USA paid about $20 per dose for Pfizer, $15 per dose for Moderna.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/eu-coronavirus-vaccines...

Paying $100 for 2 doses at 9 million Israelis comes to less than $1 billion.

Paying $40 for 2 doses in US for 300 million comes to $12 billion. The USA national health budget is $3.7 trillion.

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

#416

Post by nopzor »

peteretep wrote: post #133
nopzor wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i don’t think “rich” has much to do with it. look how much economic loss and fiscal stimulus many countries have endured, on a per capita basis. in the grand scheme of thing, relative to that, does it matter whether they pay 20$, 40$, 100$ etc per dose?

Let's say you're buying two-three treatments per person to try and make sure you end up with one that works, at 2021 Q1 delivery prices of around $40 per treatment ... $100 per capita. And let's say you're Malaysia, so that's $3.2bn in total which is 10% GDP. If you wait until Q3, you can get a proven vaccine for $3 per person, so $90m instead, so going early is going to cost you ... $3.1bn? So that's still 10% of GD…

that’s 1%’of their gdp not 10%

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

#417

Post by jounker »

bzbarsky wrote: post #298
bodyfour wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is exactly what happened -- governments around the world paid for pre-approval manufacturing and the pharma industry has spent the last 6-8 months ramping up production. That's the reason we have any supplies at the moment. The truth is just that mass-manufacturing of a brand new vaccine is a hard problem. The fact that we're only a couple months from the very start of vaccinations and the world is already neari…

While there was some pre-production, I disagree that vaccine supply is the only binding constraint we have going on. And the lack of sane regulatory approvals and sane distribution setups has been heartrending. If you look at https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/covid-vaccine-tracker-glo... and scroll down to "U.S. Vaccination Campaign" you will see that in the US 74.5% of the vaccine doses that have been delivered hav…

> And I should note that I can imagine various poverty-and-social-whatever issues D.C. might be facing, but they don't obviously apply to Rhode Island in the same way.

I don’t think this is true. Rhode Island has tremendous wealth disparity.

https://www.providencejournal.com/news/20180210/studies-inco...

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

#418

Post by davidf18 »

nir wrote: post #405
2-tpg wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Israel has one of the best biowarfare offense and defense in the world. For them, Iran releasing a bioengineered pathogen is a legit threat. The El-Al flight that crashed in Amsterdam in 1992 was carrying materials to produce large quantities of Sarin for the purpose of testing gas masks. Israel is specifically suited to treat COVID as a test-run for a biowarfare attack. A real War Effort, because it is one.

Actually it's the HMO system here, much more than the military. Every Israeli, by law, has healthcare insurance. It works much like income tax - deducted automatically from your pay, varies according to income level, and is transferred directly to the HMO you pick among several options which compete (quite vigorously) with each other.

Also, their PM and much of their leadership are ex-military in a country that cannot afford to lose a war and has been in many wars.

The current PM Netanyahu was part of a special forces unit that saved a plane from terrorists. The head of that team was a former Israeli PM Ehud Barak.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabena_Flight_571#Hijacking

Compare leadership of France, Germany, etc.

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

#419

Post by siculars »

tehjoker wrote: post #331
scrollaway wrote: post #5

Israel feels like the only nation taking the importance and urgency of vaccination seriously. Here in Europe, articles are coming out complaining that the slow vaccination could be harming the economy which, well, fucking duh. ( https://www.brusselstimes.com/news/belgium-all-news/154626/c... ) Fast rollout. Involve pharmacies. Involve the army. Distribute widely and efficiently. Prepare for months before the vaccine…

Except for Palestinians of course where they refuse their legal duties as an occupying power to render medical aid. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/03/israel-giving-5000-vaccine-d...

1) At worst, flatly false. At best, debatable. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/04/world/middleeast/israel-p... .

2) Generally, the Palestinian Authority can do a better job allocating its resources, uh, you know, to prepare for these sorts of events https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_Authority_Martyrs_... . Of course, it goes without saying that the terrorist run enclave of Hamas-land in Gaza is another story completely, yet for the purposes of this discussion fall under agreements with the PLO, see point 1.

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

#420

Post by aquadrop »

bodyfour wrote: post #156
lordnacho wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing I don't get is why not try to mass manufacture the candidates before we know they are effective? It seems the work of what drug to make was done really quickly, and most of the time is spent in the trials, and then mass production. Maybe I missed it, but you'd think with something so devastating we'd just make a bunch of candidates, get them out to the clinics for storage, and as soon as we thought a given…

That is exactly what happened -- governments around the world paid for pre-approval manufacturing and the pharma industry has spent the last 6-8 months ramping up production. That's the reason we have any supplies at the moment. The truth is just that mass-manufacturing of a brand new vaccine is a hard problem. The fact that we're only a couple months from the very start of vaccinations and the world is already neari…

Do you have any data/links for "ramping up production"? What exactly was done, how many doses vaccines were available at the moment of approval etc?
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