Israeli study finds 94% drop in symptomatic Covid-19 cases with Pfizer vaccine • Hacker News Board

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

#441

Post by smileybarry » Tue, Feb 16, 2021, 12:49 AM UTC

pa7x1 wrote: post #34

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…

Most developed countries seem to be able to deploy close to 100% of the vaccines provided so far, modulo whatever strategy they have chosen regarding keeping some amount of second doses in storage. So that doesn't seem to be bottleneck. Israel simply paid more and bought a larger amount of vaccines delivered earlier. Which is smart but it's not a strategy that all countries can replicate, not because we cannot afford…

We ended up paying more (not much more at $20/shot "MSRP" apparently) but I think a greater part of that was contributing anonymized medical data. Statistical data on: groups vaccinated, positive test results, treatments in case of infection, etc. is worth a lot. That would also explain the swift deliveries, despite making that stats deal fairly late in the process. (early 2021)

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

#442

Post by smileybarry » Tue, Feb 16, 2021, 1:01 AM UTC

helge9210 wrote: post #425

melkhior wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Some people who are recruited as medics into IDF wouldn't have thought about being medics before that. They also have to serve their Army service either way.

Those who are on active duty are... on active duty. So you have to pull someone from the reserve. So instead of doing what they are doing at normal jobs they would be doing what IDF tells them to do. And no one would be doing their normal jobs.

Right, except a IDF medic in reserve may not work in healthcare day-to-day. Similar to combat soldiers, intelligence officers and listeners -- all working a different job since they finished military service.

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

#443

Post by smileybarry » Tue, Feb 16, 2021, 1:02 AM UTC

josh_fyi wrote: post #42

endymi0n wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree with the sentiment, don‘t forget the elephant in the room is vaccine supply. It‘s just not arbitrarily scaleable and most vaccination centers in my EU country are sitting around idle. What some describe as smart moves by Israel is also rather selfish. It’s made possible by the fact that they are a rather small country that has a large support by major powers for historical reasons, but they made a pact…

They got the deal by quickly offering Pfizer and Moderna (not the devil) whatever they asked: More money (but ~$40 instead of ~$20 per dose is trivial, to both sides), indemnification, and data.

It's $47 per head, not per shot[1]. It seems like we didn't overpay that much.

1: https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/the-cost-of-vaccinating-is...

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

#444

Post by mchusma » Tue, Feb 16, 2021, 1:08 AM UTC

gregwebs wrote: post #411

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…

I don't understand your comment. The phase III study was done I'm the real world, not a lab. So it's not surprising we are seeing the same numbers as it rolls out. I'm fact, it would be suprising if it didn't match the studies.

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

#445

Post by chrismcb » Tue, Feb 16, 2021, 4:24 AM UTC

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…

My take on it. No one believed Trump would do it, not wanted to give him a win. So there was little upfront planning. Then the vaccine was announced and people scrambled. Here in WA, a month after they got the first vaccines they decided to open songs vaccine centers. As if it was a new idea. Why weren't these ready to go day 1? Then there is the whole mess of who gets it. Should have been strictly by age. Instead there is a huge list of who can get it. And it was supposed to be done without discrimination. But because of the long list of exceptions, it makes it easy to discriminate. Then there was the whole save the second dose... No give everything out. While there are people who want to wait, that really isn't the problem. A freezer broke here, in the middle of the night and the put it a message in social media and delivered all the vaccines within hours. The stupid thing is, if they have the vaccine just to the elderly, we could practically go back to normal in like a month...

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

#446

Post by alkonaut » Tue, Feb 16, 2021, 7:37 AM UTC

loveistheanswer wrote: post #437

alkonaut wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing but time and money prevents scaling. If we really really wanted to we could add a lot more doctors and nurses several years from now if they start training today. Obviously a plan that doesn’t help the first few years. So not useful in this pandemic, but perhaps something to think about. I think your link is very US centric, this problem exists in the whole world (although the US isn’t alone in having a docto…

>Nothing but time and money prevents scaling. If we really really wanted to we could add a lot more doctors and nurses several years from now if they start training today. Time and money are not the only factors. Political will power and incentives are also important factors. Take World War 2 for example. Time was in short supply, but will power was not. As a result, manufacturing and training were scaled up quicker…

> Political will power and incentives are also important factors.

Yes. I think people would rather take a vaccine that doesn't have 10 years of "long term effect trials" than together form the political will to pay a LOT more taxes for some war effort to scale healthcare because the vaccines are "too risky".

> manufacturing and training were scaled up quicker than ever before in history.

If 5 people can build a bomber in a year then a 100 people can build it in a month. But if training a doctor takes 5 years then training a doctor in an extreme hurry still takes more or less 5 years. Not to mention the time to build hospitals (or forming the political will to do so).

Basically: politics and healthcare scaling are interesting topics but quite irrelevant to the Covid pandemic response. Any healthcare changes (and the political changes preceding them) would have to take place in the early part of the 2000's.

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

#447

Post by thu2111 » Tue, Feb 16, 2021, 9:43 AM UTC

xbmcuser wrote: post #358

thu2111 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asymptomatic infection doesn't seem to exist. The current status of this belief amongst even the most panicked researchers is that "more data is needed": https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4851 But a large scale study in Wuhan found no cases of asymptomatic transmission, and the same findings have been found elsewhere. NB: there is a difference between asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic. The latter sometimes can tran…

I think when people here say Asymptomatic they are probably talking about people that had a very mild symptoms maybe a bit of sniffles or a blocked nose not the scientific Asymptomatic of no symptoms at all

Ah. Well if that's how people are using the term, what I said wouldn't apply to that. The term asymptomatic is clearly defined as "no symptoms at all and never develops any". Presymptomatic means "no symptoms at all but eventually develops some". I don't think there's a technical term for bit of sniffles/light cough beyond mild symptoms.

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

#448

Post by maxerickson » Tue, Feb 16, 2021, 12:27 PM UTC

azinman2 wrote: post #404

jacquesm wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

If it saves lives and gets their economy back to normal, that was the right call. Meanwhile we’re discussing sending multi-thousand dollar checks in the US because of Covid.

The US has administered 5x the vaccines as Israel.

It's not that likely that a comparable investment from the US would have accelerated vaccine availability to the same extent as happened with Israel, which was able to get substantial shipment in part because the US invested a lot in the mRNA vaccines, and in part because the EU waffled about making orders.

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

#449

Post by bushbaba » Tue, Feb 16, 2021, 3:50 PM UTC

mchusma wrote: post #399

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…

The US also has almost no sense or urgency (maybe more than the EU, but pretty bad). Examples: - modernas main bottleneck is filling. They applied weeks ago to fill the same bottles with 15 doses instead of 10. The FDA has still not approved it. - the us prioritizes second doses over first doses. This creates a ton of cascading issues, including the fact that many places are storing half the doses for 28 days. Many p…

The us has 330 million people. Israel has roughly 10.

Their is a real supply shortage. Israel Can and did secure enough vaccines for all its people. The us cannot, there’s not enough supply.

Because of the lack of supply the us has been focusing its efforts on using the supply it has to go to the groups most likely to face complications from covid, and the folks supporting said group.

The US is leading the world when it comes to total vaccines given.

As for the second shot prioritization. The feds screwed up distribution with there being no strategic reserve. What you have already is what you’ll have. Anything else is not gaurenteed.

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

#450

Post by bushbaba » Tue, Feb 16, 2021, 3:53 PM UTC

Dma54rhs wrote: post #436

f6v wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Belgium is a small, densely populated country. One of the highest average salaries in Europe. Not to mention great universities and flourishing biotech sector. Bottom line: this country can afford to pay for, and should be able to produce a lot of vaccines. Yet it doesn’t, I guess it’s some kind of EU bureaucracy thing. The UK seems to be doing much better since they’re not tied by the EU supply strategy.

There are not enough vaccines at the moment anyway since EU failed miserably at getting them. You can't really make a massive effort of maybe even asking military to help etc if there are not enough jabs. Then it's smarter to use the ones you have in q strategic manner.

Sure but the EU still failed in securing supply from the available manufacturing capabilities.

Instead they were de prioritized in the list.