[HN Gopher] Oxford vaccine shows sustained protection of 76% in ...
___________________________________________________________________
Oxford vaccine shows sustained protection of 76% in 3-month gap til
second dose
Author : timthorn
Score : 113 points
Date : 2021-02-02 18:55 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ox.ac.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ox.ac.uk)
| ummonk wrote:
| The case for a one-dose first strategy gets stronger and
| stronger, but due to slavish proceduralism, the FDA wouldn't
| consider it.
| gojomo wrote:
| Indeed, even the practice of calling certain vaccines "2-dose"
| or "1-dose" is somewhat arbitrary & misleading, reflecting
| rushed early decisions about which courses to test.
|
| The Pfizer/Moderna mRNA vaccines _might_ be just as effective,
| 30d-onward after one dose, as the "1-dose" J&J.
|
| The tested 21d/28d spacing for the mRNA vaccines might be far
| shorter than optimal, so the ad-hoc "emergency" delays of
| booster shots by many jurisdictions might actually be
| benefitting long-term immunity.
|
| The "1-dose" J&J might benefit greatly from a booster 30d, 90d,
| 180d later.
|
| Even the dosings could be far from optimal, with some hints
| that half or less of the mRNA vaccines may be just as
| effective, especially in younger patients. And of course there
| was the AZ/Oxford glitch that mistakenly gave half the intended
| dose in the 1st shot - & that subgroup seemed to have even
| _less_ disease after the 2nd full-dose shot. (While this could
| be a statistical fluke, maybe also a "booster" that's stronger
| is read by the immune system to mean that the disease is
| continuing to become even more of a threat, so it reacts even
| more strongly than to a "same as we beat before" dose. Until
| lots more study is done - who knows?)
|
| So: people who treat the officially/rigorously evaluated
| doses/schedules as "optimal" or "the only safe course" are way
| overclaiming what the data shows. They data we have are a
| series of singular draws from the possibility-space, showing
| some points of reasonably-safe and -effective approach.
|
| With plenty of other data constantly arriving, hinting at other
| equally- or more-effective approaches, regions & practitioners
| should be free to use their best-judgement to navigate
| risk/reward tradeoffs.
| thehappypm wrote:
| There is 0 data that any of the vaccines approved by the FDA
| are efficacious with a single dose. There is 0 data to support
| that a delayed dose is efficacious. The FDA is making a very,
| very valid choice so far.
| mchusma wrote:
| This is very innacurate. We have the following data: -Moderna
| data between the 1st and 2nd dose at 28 days -Pfizer data
| between the 1st and 2nd dose at 21 days -Aztrazeneca data
| between 1st & second dose at various dosing schedules -J&J
| data -Novavax data -Data from Isreal real world deployments
| of the vaccine -Data from UK First Dose First effort -Our
| Bayseian priors - <30 day boosters are almost never tried in
| the real world because larger time gaps typically illicit
| better protective responses.
|
| You can read the FDA briefings for Moderna & Pfizer which
| review the 1 dose data, its very readable.
|
| The empirical data is overwhelming from many sources and the
| data matches our current disease models. All signs suggest
| overwhelmingly that: (1) 1 dose appears to be 100% effective
| at preventing death in all candidates >14 days after the 1st
| dose. (2) The marginal benefit of the second dose is real but
| comparatively much smaller. (3) The delaying the second dose
| appears to confer additional immunity.
|
| Focusing on 1st doses is by far the best decision.
| gojomo wrote:
| Your claim of "0 data" is completely wrong. The original
| phase 3 trials already showed limited support for partial
| one-dose efficacy. (They even broke it down in their
| writeups! That's non-zero data!)
|
| Observational reports so far on the _tens of millions_
| additional doses given (compared to a mere ~15-20K in phase 3
| trials) is also suggestive of 1-dose efficiency. (Most
| recently, a retrospective study in Israel - the nation with
| the highest proportion of its population immunized - found
| 51% efficacy against "confirmed COVID" looking at just days
| 13-24 after a single dose - and that's in a world with far
| more variants than the original mRNA studies. It's reasonable
| to conjecture from other results that the efficacy would be
| even better later, and better against "severe disease".)
|
| Plus, there's everything we can reason about from similar
| diseases & vaccines.
|
| The reason to wait for 2nd-dose-plus-7d in study "primary
| endpoints" is to have a singular, legible, stark readout for
| rather-simpleminded regulatory processes. But smart people
| who live in the real world know the actual mechanisms are far
| more fluid/incremental, with immune processes starting
| immediately from one dose, then accelerating over weeks (even
| without a booster).
| endgame wrote:
| There is also minimal data that parachutes are better than
| placebo for people who jump out of planes. This situation
| needs wartime thinking, not peacetime proceduralism.
|
| What you're saying is that we must assume the worst case,
| that the FDA-approved vaccines are like 2-pack epoxies: that
| first doses give 0% immunity, and all the efficacy comes from
| applying the second. That seems completely absurd.
| dhbradshaw wrote:
| What exactly does "percent protection" mean in these
| announcements? Can we use the definition to derive a percent
| protection associated with having been through the virus? Is
| there a percent protection associated with your age / gender /
| race profile?
|
| It feels like the number doesn't mean much without having a
| similar number for the null cases.
| aqme28 wrote:
| Protection of antibodies from a previous infection is somewhere
| above 90%.
|
| https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.15.21249731v...
| lbeltrame wrote:
| It is a reduction of the risk of symptomatic disease by 76%
| once vaccinated.
|
| But more importantly, there were _no_ hospitalizations or
| deaths in the vaccinated people. This is a point the media
| often overlooks.
| nmca wrote:
| Because the "no hospitalisations or deaths" claim from the
| first Oxford paper was comparing n=2 to n=0 and thus was
| miles from significance. If the new paper has updated data on
| this happy to be corrected.
| lbeltrame wrote:
| It is a constant in any vaccine, including the "lowest"
| performers from Sinovac and Sinopharm. At this point, I'm
| inclined to believe that any resonably effective vaccine
| will have this effect.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| Tbh, the reductions in hospitalisations has been super high
| for almost all the vaccines, which is great news.
| orra wrote:
| Indeed. These are some of the best vaccines ever invented[1].
|
| Look at the two charts[2] in this paper from the UK's JCVI.
| They show the number of severe incidents (severe COVID or
| death). The linear or exponential growth curves are for
| people on the placebos. The almost flat lines are for people
| on the Pfizer-BioNTech and the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines,
| respectively.
|
| Oh, after just the initial dose, not the booster!
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/18/briefing/donald-trump-
| par...
|
| [2] https://www.cas.mhra.gov.uk/ViewandAcknowledgment/ViewAtt
| ach...
| adamc wrote:
| It's huge. On the whole, avoiding hospitalizations is far
| more important than whether people had mild cases.
| lawl wrote:
| Afaik it means that if you have a control group that isn't
| vaccinated vs this group (both should be drawn randomly of
| course), you will see 76% less infections in this group.
| reportingsjr wrote:
| That is not what any of the vaccine studies have said so far.
| I haven't read this one, but I bet it also doesn't say this.
|
| The stated efficacy/protection percentages that have been
| presented so far have been for the reduction of _symptoms_.
|
| There haven't been any studies on vaccines preventing
| infections, probably due to lack of resources for testing
| everyone in a trial multiple times.
| jackweirdy wrote:
| In the Oxford trial, participants take weekly PCR swabs
| (https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200721-coronavirus-
| vacc...)
|
| This was posited (but has not been confirmed) as one of the
| reasons it was posting lower numbers - it was catching some
| asymptomatic cases
| lamontcg wrote:
| The vaccines which are administered intramuscularly aren't
| expected to prevent infection at all.
|
| You won't have neutralizing antibodies in the mucosal
| surfaces in the upper respiratory tract which would be
| required to completely prevent infection.
|
| You will have NAbs in the bloodstream which should very
| effectively isolate the infection to the upper respiratory
| tract. Immune responses will also be primed so that the
| infection in the upper respiratory tract will be
| dramatically reduced. In many cases though the infection
| will be detectable via rtPCR but that won't be significant
| since the person won't be symptomatic, won't "feel sick"
| (or very sick) and will be very unlikely to transmit the
| virus. It should also entirely cut out the multi-organ
| involvement of covid since the neutralizing antibodies in
| the blood will prevent spread to the
| lungs/kidney/heart/brain/etc.
|
| Testing via rtPCR for "infection" would be an expensive
| waste of time in a vaccine which isn't expected to confer
| that level of protection. And when it failed to confer that
| level of protection you're left trying to explain why that
| low number doesn't matter to a population expecting some
| kind of medical miracle.
|
| Instead they watch for symptoms and then they confirm that
| is a SARS-CoV-2 infection via rtPCR, and this is the
| typical "efficacy number" which is reported (I think the
| initial Oxford trial results did report the results of
| randomized rtPCR testing so their numbers were dramatically
| lower, which has caused all kinds of confusion since its
| not apples-to-apples with the mRNA vaccine results).
|
| Reduction in transmissibility is more difficult to
| determine which is why those numbers aren't reported, it is
| assumed that reduction in symptoms correlates with
| reduction in transmissibility. So none of the vaccine
| trials can conclusively rule out asymptomatic spread in
| vaccinated individuals. However since the people are being
| followed over time what is caught is any infection which
| subsequently produces symptoms. So the vaccinated
| asymptomatic individuals would be truly asymptomatic and
| not just presymptomatic. Dramatically cutting down symptoms
| is expected to be a pretty good proxy to dramatically
| cutting transmission.
|
| Relevant quote from a recent BMJ article on truly
| asymptomatic transmission:
|
| > The transmission rates to contacts within a specific
| group (secondary attack rate) may be 3-25 times lower for
| people who are asymptomatic than for those with
| symptoms.1121415 A city-wide prevalence study of almost 10
| million people in Wuhan found no evidence of asymptomatic
| transmission.16 Coughing, which is a prominent symptom of
| covid-19, may result in far more viral particles being shed
| than talking and breathing, so people with symptomatic
| infections are more contagious, irrespective of close
| contact.17 On the other hand, asymptomatic and
| presymptomatic people may have more contacts than
| symptomatic people (who are isolating), underlining the
| importance of hand washing and social distancing measures
| for everyone.
|
| https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4851
|
| The title study here on HN on the Oxford vaccine is pretty
| clear that they're looking for "primary symptomatic
| COVID-19" which means they're not screening for
| asymptomatic infection, they're waiting for symptoms, then
| confirming.
|
| They found that one shot conferred good protection (76%)
| for at least 90 days post vaccination (after the first 2
| weeks) with little waning and some evidence that it gets
| better. They also found that the BEST boosting interval was
| 12+ weeks or more, reaching 82% efficacy. This matches what
| I've heard some virologists yap about informally online
| that longer boosting intervals are generally what is
| recommended (more or less letting the learning immune
| response bake longer while letting the immediate response
| to the vaccine vector wane) but the early studies used
| short intervals due to pandemic driven concerns around
| giving health providers and the elderly the best immunity
| in the shortest period possible. Now that we're
| transitioning to needing to vaccinate literally everyone
| the message may unfortuntely shift in ways that make people
| suspicious.
| timthorn wrote:
| > There haven't been any studies on vaccines preventing
| infections
|
| This study has looked at that. From the press release:
| "Analyses of PCR positive swabs in UK population suggests
| vaccine may have substantial effect on transmission of the
| virus with 67% reduction in positive swabs among those
| vaccinated"
| lawl wrote:
| Maybe i misunderstood OPs question but i don't think that
| changes much. It's the difference between $measurement
| between the control group and the test group.
|
| If that's the reduction of symptoms here, ok.
| Eric_WVGG wrote:
| IANAD but I'm nearly positive you're incorrect.
|
| I spent last night puzzling over what "efficacy" means vis
| a vis this video: https://www.technologynetworks.com/immuno
| logy/videos/covid-1...
|
| The author explains that the efficacy number is derived
| from the the number of the number of people in the
| control/placebo group infected divided by the total number
| of infections in the study.
|
| 76% efficacy means that, for a given population of people
| who contracted a disease (ignoring all uninfected), 24%
| were vaccinated (vaccine failures), 76% were not
| vaccinated. It has nothing to do with reduction of
| symptoms.
|
| I think this is unintuitive because the "real" solution
| that laypersons want is, what percentage of vaccinated
| people exposed to a disease get infected? We can't measure
| that directly because we can't just expose a bunch of folks
| to Covid and hope for the best. But if the sample of
| placebo and vaccinated people is truly random, this would
| appear to arrive at the same ratio. (re: when I said
| "ignoring all uninfected"? in a good sample, the ratio of
| unexposed vaccinated and control units should be about the
| same)
| StavrosK wrote:
| > The author explains that the efficacy number is derived
| from the the number of the number of people in the
| control/placebo group infected divided by the total
| number of infections in the study.
|
| Wouldn't that make a vaccine that does nothing 50%
| effective, instead of 0% effective (which is what one
| would expect)?
| Eric_WVGG wrote:
| Well, let's see... say you had 2000 participants in the
| trial, 1000 with a junk vaccine, and 1000 with placebos.
|
| Furthermore, let's say you had 200 infections, split
| equally between the junk and the placebo.
|
| So yeah, 100 / 200 = 50% effective. A coin toss, which is
| to say, no better or worse than not getting the vaccine.
|
| Again, this isn't measuring "what one would expect" (how
| many vaccinated people, exposed to the virus, get the
| disease), it's "what proportion of vaccinated people get
| sick relative to unvaccinated people." (again IANAD)
| iggldiggl wrote:
| No, 50 % means the infection rate (or whatever you're
| actually measuring) in the vaccine group is half that of
| the control group. In your example the infection rate are
| exactly the same, giving an efficacy of 0 % (+- whatever
| confidence interval the size of your trial and placebo
| groups gives you). See e.g. https://blogs.sciencemag.org/
| pipeline/archives/2020/09/21/th...
| StavrosK wrote:
| Kind of seems odd, given that you can never have 0%
| efficacy (unless your vaccine somehow caused every
| vaccinated person to get the disease instead of a non-
| vaccinated person). It seems like you're wasting half
| your "spread", basically.
|
| If you measured efficacy as "1 - (vaccinated infections /
| unvaccinated infections)", it would be much more
| intuitive, and you could even get a bit of negative
| efficacy in the case where your vaccine did nothing.
| renewiltord wrote:
| > _We can 't measure that directly because we can't just
| expose a bunch of folks to Covid and hope for the best._
|
| We can, but medical ethics hasn't caught up yet. I would
| participate in a challenge trial, for instance.
| throwaway2245 wrote:
| A randomly controlled challenge trial would involve
| deliberately infecting scores of unvaccinated people,
| putting them at risk, along with anyone involved in the
| procedure and anyone they come into contact.
|
| It would mean handling live virus, which requires a
| Biosafety Level 3 facilities.
|
| And, it's not going to get your vaccine approved any
| quicker.
| renewiltord wrote:
| See, this is a classic example. You need BSL3 facilities
| if you want to have a hundred people have it. But the
| alternative is 27 million people getting it in planes,
| boats, and buses - none of which are BSL3. That part is
| okay.
|
| Quite the example of the asymmetry. If you engage with
| the problem you have to operate absolutely perfectly. Way
| better not to engage with it and kill a few hundred
| thousand people. After all, no one can blame you for that
| part.
|
| And of course it's not going to get the vaccine
| 'approved' quicker because yeah, 'approval' is also
| subject to the same people. But it will let us know if it
| works and whether it hurts.
| throwaway2245 wrote:
| > You need BSL3 facilities if you want to have a hundred
| people have it. But the alternative is 27 million people
| getting it in planes, boats, and buses - none of which
| are BSL3.
|
| Those things are not true alternatives.
|
| I said "it's not going to get your vaccine approved any
| quicker" in the hope that you would understand: vaccines
| have reached the point of global distribution without
| doing the additional deliberate harm of intentionally
| infecting people.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Well, we've taken your approach and killed 300k in the
| process, so I guess we could play at being tankies in the
| '90s and say "If only the Communism were properly done"
| or we could revisit the approach.
|
| Of course I am healthy, my family has had the vaccine or
| the disease and punched through, so I don't really care
| all _that_ much.
| travismark wrote:
| FDA still hasn't authorized the AZ vaccine
| dmurray wrote:
| Other countries have, though, and they don't have
| millions of doses waiting for approval or factories
| waiting to spin up production.
|
| The bottleneck has generally been manufacturing rather
| than approval so far. It may shift to distribution.
| jMyles wrote:
| > I would participate in a challenge trial, for instance.
|
| Me too. And nearly everyone I know in my risk tier.
|
| We had an entire globe of low-risk people willing to be
| part of the most acute spread, whether for research, for
| personal immunity, or to be able to isolate for a defined
| time to protect loved ones, and we squandered it in favor
| of pseudoscientific horizontal interdictions like
| lockdowns. It's really an incredible abandonment of basic
| principles of public health.
| carschno wrote:
| If the sample consists of volunteers, it's hardly random.
| In particular, given that these volunteers are "low-risk
| people", it means that the results of this experiment
| will yield virtually no useful conclusions for the
| higher-risk groups
| renewiltord wrote:
| Medical ethicists believe they've solved the trolley
| problem by turning their back on the lever and letting
| Jesus take the wheel.
| [deleted]
| elliekelly wrote:
| That was a super interesting video, thanks for sharing!
| hutzlibu wrote:
| It is so frustrating, trying to figure out at least a bit
| of whats going on and understanding some numbers, but
| apparently I cannot do this, without having to dive into
| papers, too?
|
| There is so much confusion and missinformation flying
| around, when even here on HN there is discussion about
| the meaning of basic numbers.
|
| (but please carry on discussing it)
| akiselev wrote:
| To be clear, this isn't some settled math like basic
| algebra or science like Newtonian physics - this is
| cutting edge stuff at the intersection of medicine,
| public health, and biotechnology. Experts disagree about
| the nuances of measuring the efficacy of drugs, vaccines,
| and therapeutics so throw in the glaring ethical concerns
| into the mix and you have a recipe for a complex field.
| It's rare (unheard of?) to find a clinical trial where
| the company (or their CRO) scientists didn't sit down
| with FDA regulators and negotiate over key features &
| risk indicators, benchmarking, patient selection, and so
| on because they bring expertise the FDA is unlikely to
| have.
|
| It's very difficult to get even a basic grasp of the
| details because you need to grok some complex statistics,
| biology, and public health to really dig in. Journalists
| sure aren't going to get the nuances so of course you
| have to read the academic literature.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| I get it, that I won't really get it, without studying
| it. But it would be nice, to know what important numbers
| roughly mean, without that amount of work.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| It's interesting how the Astra Zeneca vaccine is such an
| emotional topic. In the UK it's seen as the greatest weapon
| against the pandemic, in the US it is not playing much of a role
| and in the EU public perception is super negative.
| whycombagator wrote:
| The U.K. like to big up/get behind their own. Relevancy on the
| world stage in anything is big over there, AstraZeneca (AZ)
| makes the U.K. relevant. Remember there's also Brexit & having
| a "winning" vaccine produced by a U.K. company & university is
| clearly a huge deal.
|
| In the EU AZ is under delivering doses at present[0], also they
| had that whole trial dosing mishap.
|
| In the US AZ wasn't as fast at delivering a vaccine as Pfizer &
| Moderna & AZ isn't a US company, but Moderna & Pfizer are. So
| not really a shock that they get most of the buzz in the US.
|
| Interestingly the US has ordered more AZ doses than any other
| vaccine & AZ is the most ordered/purchased vaccine
| worldwide[1].
|
| It's no surprise to me that countries are hyping up their own
| products and/or getting them approved first. As for the EU,
| they are certain to be sore given the lack of doses they've
| been able to acquire & their vaccination strategy in general.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25964197
|
| [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/covid-vaccine-tracker-
| glo...
| lbeltrame wrote:
| > in the US it is not playing much of a role
|
| That's because the FDA is waiting for the completion of AZ's
| trial in the US. This should be definitely better run than the
| meta-trials done elsewhere and give clearer numbers.
|
| A likely readout would be in March, or April.
| robotmay wrote:
| The EU seems to keep bringing focus back onto the over-65
| efficacy. The German government has said it shouldn't be used
| on over-65s, Poland has now followed, and Macron has been out
| in the press regurgitating incorrect statistics he misread
| somewhere (saying it's only 10% effective, rather than the
| correct stat being that the age group made up around 10% of
| test subjects).
|
| Personally I think the UK approach is the way to go and that
| the EU being cautious might backfire. We know the
| Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is pretty safe and the UK has been
| giving it to over-65s quite happily. If it does turn out that
| it's less effective, then we'll still have gotten some efficacy
| across the vast majority of our population much quicker, and
| probably not added to the deaths. If it turns out that it's
| just as effective as on everyone else, then the EU will have
| lost time yet again and have left their older population at
| risk for longer.
| alkonaut wrote:
| Countries that have a supply of Pfizer/Moderna as well as AZ
| can understandably be more cautious with AZ to over-65 at
| least early on. It's just a matter of assigning the right
| vaccine to the respective groups, e.g Pfizer to the elderly
| and AZ to healthcare workers.
|
| In a month or two there will be more data, but in Q2 there
| will also be more supply of Pfizer and Moderna in the EU.
|
| The EU can be cautious with AZ to elderly now because it can
| afford to due to large quantities of rna vaccine.
|
| A few thousand elderly will die waiting for the slow buildup
| of rna delivieries while AZ could be made available. That's
| the obvious drawback of this caution.
| krzyk wrote:
| > Pfizer to the elderly and AZ to healthcare workers.
|
| With Pfizers (and Moderna) ~95% efficacy and AZ at 60% I
| would give AZ to only those that want to jump the line or
| as the last resort.
|
| You don't want doctors to spread COVID (40% vs 5% that can
| spread is huge).
|
| Poland wants to give AZ to teachers, a group that has
| contact with many children (which have contact with their
| families) - this is poor thinking. AZ should go to people
| that don't have much contact with others, e.g. unemployed
| or volunteers.
| orra wrote:
| > Countries that have a supply of Pfizer/Moderna
|
| I'm very excited that RNA vaccines are now a reality.
|
| But the logistics for these RNA vaccines is much more
| difficult. Specialist freezers are required. Meaning it
| takes longer to vaccinate folk.
| caffeine wrote:
| My perception of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is that their
| credibility is compromised. I take claims of its efficacy with
| a similar dose of salt to claims about the Russian and Chinese
| vaccines.
|
| Reason is that early on they were rushing data and approvals on
| grounds of national pride, in a very similar way to the Chinese
| and Russian authorities.
|
| Pfizer and Moderna seem to have been more thorough.
| orra wrote:
| This is nonsense. It's not about national pride. The UK
| authorised Pfizer first.
|
| We knew back in December how effective just one dose[1] of
| the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine is, at stopping death. See
| figure 2 on page 28.
|
| [1] https://www.fda.gov/media/144434/download
| LawnGnome wrote:
| Interestingly, the interim Sputnik results were published in
| the Lancet today, and they're good: https://www.thelancet.com
| /journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
|
| I don't disagree about the process, though.
| ghaff wrote:
| The main EU issue was that they weren't getting supplies they
| said they were promised, right? [1] And, presumably, if the
| supplies are short, there wouldn't be enough available near-
| term in the US to make a difference. (Added: And, right, there
| were testing issues in US trials early-on.)
|
| [1] https://www.npr.org/2021/02/01/962705729/eu-to-
| get-9-million...
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| The negative public perception of AZ in the EU is independent
| of delivery issues. Those exist with most vaccine
| manufacturers as the EU did not introduce export controls.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Astra Zeneca bungled their FDA trials in 2020. They went from
| being one of the most promising vaccines to an also-ran.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/08/business/covid-vaccine-ox...
| oska wrote:
| Reporting from Australia I think the general feeling here about
| the AZ vaccine is positive, as we feel fortunate to have access
| to a vaccine that is robust (doesn't require an extreme cold
| chain) and, most importantly, that we can manufacture
| ourselves. Not just for Australia but also for the Pacific
| nations in our area (e.g. New Guinea, Fiji, Tahiti, etc).
|
| I can't speak for India but I imagine that they are happy to
| have access to this vaccine as well, as they are similarly
| going to manufacture it, and to a scale that will dwarf
| everyone else.
| jaynetics wrote:
| Even more consequential than the fact from the headline is the
| preliminary result that a spacing of 12 weeks does not seem to
| reduce efficiency.
|
| I wish my country and others would take note and give priority to
| handing out as many first doses as possible, but my hope for such
| quick adoption of scientific findings has been rather diminished
| by the whole event.
| xvedejas wrote:
| The first dose prevents hospitalization. Right now, for every
| second dose we give, that's a decision to deny someone a life-
| saving dose in favor of someone already protected. What a
| strange prioritization to make.
|
| The bright side is that, if the rate of vaccination continues
| to increase, those denied the first dose now should still get
| the first dose soon after. Let's hope we don't hit some
| manufacturing bottleneck.
| strstr wrote:
| The problem is the lack of certainty. Most suspect that you
| won't lose protection by waiting longer than the suggested
| timeline, but what you really don't want to do is sleep-walk
| into throwing away the currently administered doses.
|
| Frustratingly, I'm guessing the timelines for a study on
| single dose moderna/pfizer would take about as long as it
| will take to ramp up production.
| krzyk wrote:
| How that compares to the announcement from
| https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/news/ema-recommends-covid-19-va...
| where they state the the efficacy is 59.5%?
|
| Is it a different dose or different timeline?
| mrtksn wrote:
| "The initial data from Astra and Oxford last month appeared
| positive but raised concern over how much protection the shot
| would offer after the trials produced two different results
| from two dosing regimens. The partners said their vaccine was
| 90% effective when a half-dose was given before a full-dose
| booster, and that two full doses showed an efficacy of 62%."
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-08/astra-vac...
|
| Turks also find that the Sinovac vaccine is %91 effective when
| others reported less.
|
| I guess it depends on the variant, on what do you understand by
| "protected" or on how much you want it to work.
| lbeltrame wrote:
| The data the EMA (at least, the public stuff) is from the first
| "lock" of the data for analysis - November 4th. The current
| preprint from Oxford is from about one month later.
| sgt101 wrote:
| I think that the early oxford trials reported infections from
| day 1 of the shot, later reports are talking about what happens
| after 21 days.
| [deleted]
| simonswords82 wrote:
| It just gets better and better for the UK - which is a relief
| because early January had some grim sickness and death numbers.
|
| Check out the data on the UK Gov dashboard if you've not seen it:
|
| https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/
|
| Also - we are all in lockdown, which helps.
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| Not sure why you're being down voted. It's not like you said
| anything incorrect or controversial.
|
| Anyway I agree with you.
| simonswords82 wrote:
| Yeah I keep meaning to ask dang why I get pummeled with down
| votes whenever I comment on something.
| jariel wrote:
| The majority of votes on HN I believe are instinctive -
| someone liked or didn't like what you said, or the tone or
| whatever and that's it. Often there isn't much rhyme or
| reason.
|
| Clearly there are low/high value comments, or flame-wars
| but generally that's not it.
|
| Apparently, PG himself was fond of voting for
| disagreement/agreement, but even he I don't think quite has
| seen the degree of arbitrary voting.
|
| You will notice that people in the moments after your
| comment are much more likely to hate on it arbitrarily than
| later on when you might see some upswing.
|
| If you comment on anything even _remotely_ controversial,
| that even _hints_ at something like Brexit, EU nationalism,
| Transgender etc. - expect to see a lot of volatility. It 's
| really quite an interesting phenom to see.
|
| Frankly it's pointless to meander about it and after much
| speculation I would say just don't worry about it - and -
| don't put too much stock in any kind of 'points system' it
| really doesn't matter that much at all.
|
| The Oxford vaccine is doing well, the UK is way ahead due
| to the locality of it all, which is great, because they
| need the help what with having a considerably higher death
| reate.
|
| I would recommend you see here [1] for a really good
| breakdown of vaccination and other COVID data.
|
| [1] https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| Now I'm being downvoted? Wtf HN
| lucb1e wrote:
| I don't see anything in particular to agree or disagree
| about. Dashboard link, saying lockdown helps against the
| pandemic, things looking up for the UK... yeah I'd also be
| curious how this is objectionable. The trouble is that
| talking about votes is discouraged in the guidelines. Not
| sure I agree, but that discussion is pretty meta, so we'll
| just have to keep guessing until someone provides the
| reason why this was deemed harmful to the thread.
| dang wrote:
| You were breaking the site guidelines, so the downvotes are
| correct. Please review
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html (note the
| second-last).
|
| Comments like the two you posted here are particularly off-
| topic because once users have fixed the situation with
| corrective upvotes, such complaints become uncollected
| garbage. That is, they linger on, even though they're false
| in addition to off-topic.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&so
| r...
| nine_zeros wrote:
| That's pretty good. Is the vaccination drive going on in full
| speed?
| pityJuke wrote:
| Very much so, the UK is currently only behind the UAE and
| Israel in vaccine rollout per 100 residents* [1].
|
| * for major countries (incidentally, the UK territory
| Gibraltar is 2nd in the world if you include minor
| countries), and only considering the first dosage, which in
| fairness, appears to be the correct for this specific
| vaccine.
|
| [1]: https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-vaccine-tracker/
| mprovost wrote:
| Yes, there have been over 10 million vaccinations so far.
| They did over 900,000 last weekend alone.
| sterlind wrote:
| That R number is pretty good. I hope it holds up!
| throwaway2245 wrote:
| "Better" is doing a lot of work here.
|
| The UK (in particular, England) is currently reporting the
| second highest new death rate per capita in the world, still
| higher than it was at any point in 2020. It continues to report
| 1000+ unnecessary deaths per day.
|
| And, is it still the case that the UK has 50% more excess
| deaths than it is reporting in the daily coronavirus figures? A
| mystery...
| bluGill wrote:
| Note that deaths are very lagging. It can be a couple months
| between being exposed to COVID and death, maybe even more as
| medical science has learned about treating COVID over time.
| It is reasonable to assume that everyone dieing today got
| COVID before there was a vaccine, though there have been a
| few deaths by now that could have been prevented if the first
| vaccines were not given to someone else (if that person who
| got it would have got COVID and died instead is not something
| we can answer)
|
| Deaths will start to stop soon, COVID infections are already
| dropping in many countries, with vaccines being part of the
| reason (but only part - again we cannot know how much)
| sgt101 wrote:
| It's worth looking here : https://github.com/dkobak/excess-
| mortality for clear statistics. There is a big difference
| between what is reported and what the actual numbers work out
| to be.
| twoslide wrote:
| Agreed, important to keep in mind the UK has highest per
| capita mortality of any large country. But this is good news
| for the government's gamble to increase spacing between doses
| to 3 months
| password321 wrote:
| Strangely, this news went under the radar:
| https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n149 23 deaths in Norway,
| possibly from vaccine.
| Veen wrote:
| First, it was 33 people out of around 50,000 elderly and
| vulnerable people who were vaccinated. Your source is outdated.
|
| Second, it went under the radar because it's probably not
| attributable to the vaccine. The people who died were over 80
| and already extremely frail with pre-existing conditions. They
| either died from those conditions or from their inability to
| cope with the mild side-effects of the vaccine, which everyone
| already knows about. Death rates in Norway are well within the
| historical range, so it's fairly likely that there were no
| excess deaths caused by the vaccine at all.
|
| Them dying after having the vaccine does not mean they died
| because of the vaccine.
| jmorse2 wrote:
| To reinforce this, one of the statistics that the beeb have
| wheeled out is that in the most vulnerable group being
| vaccinated (in the UK), aged 80+, one in ten of them will die
| regardless of covid in the next year. Quoted from "How to
| vaccinate the world -- Vaccine Hesitancy" [0] from 12 minutes
| in to 15 minutes. (And because it's BBC sounds, for some
| reason it randomly skips episodes when I load the page).
|
| The entire series is well worth a listen, data driven and
| statistics heavy.
|
| [0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000qblw
| mchusma wrote:
| Hopefully this additional data will get the US to act the way
| they should have in November. Lift the ban on Astrazeneca. It's
| been given safely to millions now, with zero deaths from covid in
| the vaccinated (+14 days).
|
| The FDAs failure to approve Astrazeneca is the most horrifying
| government agency failure I have ever seen.
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| I was thinking the other day whether whether the world-wide
| effort to vaccinate as many people as possible will be a major
| blow to the anti-vax movement - in that once it is shown that
| there's no negative consequences of so many people taking a
| vaccine. E.g. no increase in autism rates.
|
| Fingers crossed.
| pb7 wrote:
| I think you'll find that data or lack thereof wasn't what was
| driving anti-vaxxers. :)
| fweespeech wrote:
| You cannot reason people out of a position they did not
| reason themselves into. These people are not thinking
| logically and reacting to facts, they are reacting to what
| influencers in their sphere say and accepting that appeal to
| authority as fact.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Well, just check about Polio, which is allmost erradicated
| and what Antivaxxers think about it.
|
| (or rather don't)
| mchusma wrote:
| I suspect it will hurt the anti-vax movement. There wasn't a
| lot of Anti-Vax activity before 1980 because so many people
| watched diseases get eradicated by vaccines in realtime. But,
| I don't expect it to make a giant difference :(
| macintux wrote:
| 7 _billion_ people taking a vaccine; some percentage of them
| will die or experience significant illness after. Even if the
| two events aren't related, the anti-vaxxers will seize on the
| timing and blame the vaccine.
| carlmr wrote:
| Exactly, that's also where anti-vaxx started. Kids get
| diagnosed with autism usually just after getting their last
| childhood vaccines.
|
| Correlation is enough.
| _ph_ wrote:
| It should also be noted, that shortly after getting
| vaccinated, most children start to talk! :)
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