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

bbc.co.uk

911–920 of 1001 posts

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

#911

No significant side effects so far tested. I'm always curious what the long term side effects will be, and we won't know that for years.

Well that settles it then. We’ll just wait for a few more years to see what the long term side effects are.

I feel like this is unnecessarily condescending towards the parent comment. There have been at least a few cases in US history of medications / vaccines having some amount of long term side effects that were not known until a few years had elapsed.

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

#912
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it's a minor logistical challenge, it's simple enough to ship this in a liquid nitrogen dewar. Even very small cities will have liquid nitrogen facilities. Shipping from the nearest city to most of the population sounds very doable in 24 hours. Remember you only need to get most of the population to halt the spread. If there's some tiny village 3 days hike away in the rainforest, you can skip them.

Shipping hundreds of thousands of doses of vaccine at -80C is more than a “minor logistical challenge”. First, you’d never ship in a liquid nitrogen dewar. It would be a massive logistics bottleneck considering the weight of dewars and the volume you'd be shipping (Pfizer already has deals secured for hundreds of millions of doses). And plus, these are packaged vaccines - a glass vial with a label, in a paper box, wi…

I agree. I think sometimes it is hard to fully understand how complicated logistics can be. I mean that’s why people study logistics in school and companies pay money for professionals well versed in logistics.

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

#913
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shipping hundreds of thousands of doses of vaccine at -80C is more than a “minor logistical challenge”. First, you’d never ship in a liquid nitrogen dewar. It would be a massive logistics bottleneck considering the weight of dewars and the volume you'd be shipping (Pfizer already has deals secured for hundreds of millions of doses). And plus, these are packaged vaccines - a glass vial with a label, in a paper box, wi…

This is a fundamentally easy thing to solve. Developing a safe and effective vaccine -- fundamentally hard. Developing a nuclear weapon -- fundamentally hard. Developing a quantum computer -- fundamentally hard. Shipping something cold at a large scale? Hard, but not fundamentally hard. We'll solve it. There's no fucking way the vaccine effort is stopped by refrigeration needs.

I disagree. All problems you mentioned are fundamentally hard. It is unfair to say that a logistical challenge is easier simply because it involves refrigeration at scale as opposed to research, weapons development, or computing at scale.

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

#914

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that the -80C storage is most likely simply because they haven't tested at higher temperatures yet.

Probably due to DNA storage because I used to work with genomics and we had the same temps

RNA* You can leave DNA out on your bench for a month and it will be fine.

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

#915

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we can eradicate it by contact tracing. With 90% efficiency it will be extremely tough for the virus to spread. For any new cases you simply test everyone in the vicinity of the infected person. But I don't think even that will be necessary. 90% efficiency reduces R so much, it will probably die out on its own. The real problem is mutations that are not covered by the vaccine. If it mutates as efficiently as…

> With 90% efficiency it will be extremely tough for the virus to spread Aren't you assuming 100% coverage at 90% effectiveness? What if it's - say - only 50% coverage, at 90% effectiveness. That's not looking so good. I'm still trying to understand why an otherwise young and healthy person would want to get take one, or more likely multiple, shots of a C19 vaccine, given the risk from C19 is so low. What's the benef…

There are long term complications from contracting the virus

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

#916

For those wondering how their vaccines will be distributed among countries during the next year when supply is constrained... it seems complicated. Pfizer is a US company, but has at least one key ingredient from Austria, is made with technology from Germany, has manufacturing in US+Europe, etc. Pfizer's CEO answered this question this morning on CNBC. Pfizer has two separate manufacturing divisions- one in the US (M…

Do you have more information about the ingredient from Austria?

"Polymun Scientific Immunbiologische Forschung GmbH is one of a handful of makers of lipid nanoparticles, microscopic vessels used to deliver genetic material into the body."

https://www.wsj.com/articles/if-one-leading-coronavirus-vacc...

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

#917
post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trust. Russia and China lie through their teeth on everything and anything. It's irrelevant whether or not they are lying in this particular instance: they cannot be trusted.

America launched a fake vaccination campaign to catch osama-bin-laden; many villagers in surrounding areas are refusing to take vaccine because they have lost trust. Western governments are no doubt better for their own citizens than say Russia or China, but we outsiders have absolutely no reason to trust one government over the others. Russia's vaccine has only passed phase 2- now that's a good point, "Trust" absolu…

I believe the vaccination drive was a cover, not fake - people were still vaccinated as intended.

That doesn't necessarily mean it was justified, but I do think it's important to note the difference.

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

#918

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it won't. they are projecting 50 million doses to be ready in 2020 and 1.1 billion next year. That means that mom and dad and grandma are likely to get it within the next few months and that by mid next year, you'll probably have access to it if you are a healthy thirty year old.

Those 1.1 billion doses are not for the US alone. The vaccine was actually developed by Biontech in Germany before Pfizer was involved. Pfizer is the partner to scale up the studies and production. But you can assume that those doses are not US only. And then I'd doubt that a healthy 30 year old will get it in summer of 2021.

Indeed. If you're in a low-risk group - no comorbidities, under 35 years old, not working in a front line role that exposes you to Covid, it's going to be a long time before you get the vaccine.

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

#919
post #584

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?

Also bad: What did they use to stabilize the mRNA? If they’re managing to do it with just temperature and maybe glycerol, that’s great. If it’s RNAlater, then that’s going to have safety issues. If it’s something else, how was the additive tested for long term safety? (Vaccines like this have been in the works for a long time. There has been time for safety studies.) Edit: RNAlater MSDS sheet: https://tools.thermofis…

If you’re trying to spread misinformation, the HN crowd is going to be a difficult target. You might want to check in over at Reddit instead. Critical thinking isn’t really their forte.

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

#920

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?

How does this compare to the chinese vaccine? It's already in use around the world[1], but I haven't heard of how many people gain immunity thanks to it in percentage, nor if that one also requires multiple jabs. 1. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/11/3/uae-pm-and-dubai-ru...

Or the Russian one /s
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