[HN Gopher] Pfizer 91% effective in updated data, protective aga...
___________________________________________________________________
Pfizer 91% effective in updated data, protective against South
African variant
Author : reddotX
Score : 372 points
Date : 2021-04-01 13:51 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| deepakhj wrote:
| It's a comparison between two control groups and the amount that
| were infected.
|
| X - vaccine - 25 people get it Y - no vaccine - 250 people get it
|
| That would mean it's 1 - 25/250 * 100 = 90% effective.
| josmala wrote:
| It's good day to announce this. People are taking all
| announcements today very seriously.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v53EUMNSdQs
| alrex021 wrote:
| Hilarious that they still label it as a country variant, as if
| the variant carries a genetic "country" code that determines the
| origin. Plain stupidity.
|
| [Edit] To elaborate since there is so much negativity to my
| original comment. There is no absolute proof that the variant
| originated in South Africa, so calling it by a country's name is
| an insult to human intelligence. We refer to the virus as the
| Coronavirus and not the Chinese virus. Why should the variant be
| any different? (This variant being actually called 501.V2)
| aww_dang wrote:
| Of course you have a point. There is hypocrisy. Unfortunately
| it is difficult to express this without flames. Political
| polarity also plays a role.
| eplanit wrote:
| And note that it's not racist to name a variant by where it is
| found, but it is racist and xenophobic to name the original
| form similarly.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| This needs a citation or more detailed explanation for why
| it's not problematic.
| da_big_ghey wrote:
| If I am refer to "British variant", no person is thinking I
| am racist against Englishmen. If I am refer to "Chinese
| virus", every person is thinking I am racist against
| Chinamen. But it is not "Asian coronavirus", that would be
| having more credible potential for racism. Persons who are
| using term in racist way are symptom, not problem: even
| while we are seeing use of alternate terms in all places,
| there still has been in past year increasing of hate crime
| against Asian. Neither terming has problem, British nor
| Chinese. It is a simple easy. Common man is not having any
| desire for to remember scientific names for any thing. And
| in last point, some persons are say that it create stigma
| against China: this is feature, not bug. China is deserving
| much fault for her failings in this manner.
| Dirlewanger wrote:
| Must get tiring to perform all these mental gymnastics
| vmception wrote:
| Does that literally ever happen?
|
| The citationable things come later because a student
| decided to write a paper for their race studies class,
| which is just as meta as us just telling you what our
| experience is.
|
| These things aren't science, but maybe someone can
| articulate it better for you.
| Ecco wrote:
| It's just convenient. What other naming scheme would you
| suggest?
| abacadaba wrote:
| name after dinosaurs
| merpnderp wrote:
| Why humor them? Their "Plain stupidity" comment without
| offering anything resembling reason shows they will not
| respond to reason. Don't encourage the Twitterification of
| Hacker News.
| blendergeek wrote:
| The WHO generally recommends against naming diseases after
| countries or regions. Its why we say 'Covid-19' and not
| 'Wuhan Corona Virus'.
| alrex021 wrote:
| Do you refer to SARS-CoV-2 as the Chinese virus?
|
| The actual name for the variant in question is 501.V2.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| Use the evolutionary lineage nomenclature. If people can
| memorize street addresses and telephone numbers they can
| learn to identify viruses by some other pattern.
|
| The other problem with naming a variant after a country or
| state is what happens when the locale identifies a subsequent
| variant?
| vernie wrote:
| Yea, like is 20H/501Y.V2 or B.1.1.7 that hard to remember?
| romanovcode wrote:
| You can label it as a country variant unless that country is
| China.
| zzzeek wrote:
| agree, do all the downmodders here find it interesting that
| "the Spanish Flu" originated in Kansas? The variants have
| alphanumeric names such as B.1.1.7.
| [deleted]
| chmod600 wrote:
| Does anyone expect covid to be a significant cause of death in
| the US past, say, May 15? I guess if we get another wave very
| soon, maybe it could persist. But it just seems like this is on
| its way out between organic immunity and vaccine immunity
| (especially because the latter was focused on the vulnerable).
|
| I'm not an expert, so don't take this as advice to go coughing on
| everyone. But we all have to make some decisions based on
| imperfect information and it seems like covid is nearly knocked
| out.
|
| There is some concern over another wave, but it might just be
| minor cases from unvaccinated young people. That hopefully won't
| lead to a lot more deaths.
| sharken wrote:
| Depends if you can distinguish between dead because of Corona
| and dead with Corona, i.e. the Coronavirus was not the actual
| cause of death.
|
| In Europe each country has their own definition of the above,
| making it nearly impossible to compare.
|
| But judging from how things are going in Texas and Mississippi
| right now, there is a high chance of things being normal there
| on the May 15.
|
| Mind you it does require around 25-30% vaccinated before you
| can say that.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Texas is getting ready to spike again. There are counties
| where people are actively refusing to get vaccines because
| Trump told them not to. City folks are actually driving an
| extra hour or two to those areas to get vaccinated because
| they believe in science and that the vaccine can help while
| the locals scoff at them. I think texas will see a huge surge
| in the rural areas where they don't believe in science within
| the next month-ish.
| sneak wrote:
| I do.
|
| I expect the emergence of new variants that spread in the
| unvaccinated either in places without masks (and resistant to
| vaccinations) like the US south, or (more probably) in the 96%
| of human beings that aren't Americans (and have much less
| access to covid vaccines), and the vaccine pressure selecting
| for the spread of variants that are different enough for the
| current set of vaccines to be less effective.
|
| I am not an expert, this is just an educated guess by a
| layperson.
|
| I also anticipate a major backlash against those who would
| refuse vaccines, as well as an impending necessary overhaul of
| the process and timeline for bringing slightly modified
| vaccines to market (as a clear need to quickly protect against
| new variants or even new strains emerges).
| overtonwhy wrote:
| Your statements are inaccurate. In Michigan things are worse
| than ever thanks to the UK variant, and the Brazilian variant
| was just detected here also. There are multiple pages of data,
| links on the bottom to change page (it's a weird layout):
| https://www.accesskent.com/Health/covid-19-data.htm
| maxerickson wrote:
| Daily cases are trending up, but still below where they were
| for much of November and December, and many more people are
| immune than were during those months.
|
| There is clearly a surge, but it's not yet worse than the
| previous one, and hopefully vaccination reduces the impact.
|
| (I'm looking at the daily cases tab on https://www.michigan.g
| ov/coronavirus/0,9753,7-406-98163_9817... )
|
| Anecdotes about the variants spreading much more rapidly are
| going around though.
| jariel wrote:
| 'Another wave' is hitting right now in Canada.
|
| 50% of Republicans are wary of taking the vaccine. (Edit: that
| was Sep. 20' data. The partisan imbalance is now less with 56%
| of Republicans more or less opting in, notably, African
| Americans, theoretically 'most at risk' (we don' know exactly
| why) have the most hesitancy by race with only 61% planning to
| take it. [1])
|
| Surprising number of elderly are not taking the vaccine, for a
| variety of reasons - access to information, travel, knowledge,
| language.
|
| (Edit: more than 25% of age >80 in Ontario have been eligible
| and have not taken the vaccine. That's a 'very high number' for
| those most at risk. Toronto is now having mobile vans go door
| to door, esp. where there are high concentrations of elderly)
| [2]
|
| For the same reason not everyone votes - a lot of people won't
| end up taking it.
|
| I think the risk is that if there are 'no protocols' in place
| _and_ we have the new more aggressive versions _and_ lower
| rates of vaccination than we think ...
|
| And we could definitely have another wave during the summer.
|
| I believe the next few months will be fickle we should keep our
| guard up until 'done is done'.
|
| [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2021/03/05/growing-
| share...
|
| [2] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/covid-19-vaccine-
| onta...
| seppin wrote:
| Also, mutations are impossible to predict. If this becomes a
| new flu every year, the entire process will start over.
| JPKab wrote:
| The public health authorities won't be honest about any of
| this. Anytime the choice is between controlling the behavior of
| stupid people vs. telling the public the truth, they choose the
| former every time.
|
| "Organic immunity"? You mean that thing that the public health
| authorities are pretending doesn't exist, therefore requiring
| me, a person who caught, tested positive, and recovered from
| COVID in February to get vaccinated? Yeah, let me know when
| they stop pretending. I'm willing to get a vaccine, but annoyed
| because it has no benefit for me and only risk (albeit low).
|
| Edit:
|
| Downvote all you want, but I was a teen in the 90s when the
| public health authorities pretended like heterosexuals engaging
| in standard sexual activities were at equal risk of catching
| HIV compared to IV drug users and gay men. They weren't
| remotely at the same risk, by orders of magnitude. They wanted
| to promote safe sex and abstinence in teens and young people,
| which is a good thing, but they didn't hesitate to use the fear
| of HIV as a tool to (dishonestly) achieve that goal.
| zzleeper wrote:
| I have two friends who got covid twice. One had it first in
| July and then in January. Second one was brutal, maybe b/c it
| was likely the Brazilian strand, or maybe because the second
| time your lungs are still recovering. Who knows.
|
| But I would advise you to take it.
| JPKab wrote:
| Statistically, they likely had a false positive the first
| test. Columbia University commissioned a study on 50k
| people in Qatar (covid spread was rampant there) who were
| confirmed positive, and after 7 months, catching and
| recovering from it provided immunity at a threshold
| exceeding the Pfizer vaccine.
|
| Yes, there are people who have caught it twice. They are
| rare, and the paper highlighted that a likely explanation
| was false positives in the original testing.
|
| I'll take the vaccine, but shouldn't be required to.
| zzleeper wrote:
| It was not a rapid test; he got two positive PCR tests
| paid by his employer.
|
| Mind you, this is in Peru (he works at a mining firm)
| which was hit really hard in July and then now (one of
| the hardest per capita deaths).
|
| Also, the Qatar study might not say much about the newer
| strands
| sa1 wrote:
| People with long COVID symptoms have recovered after taking
| the vaccine. This is hypothesized to be due to persistent
| viral reservoirs, viral fragments, or an autoimmune response.
|
| We don't know how the vaccine would improve things for people
| without visible long covid symptoms, but it is likely to
| help.
|
| Also immune response improves after a vaccine just as it
| improves after a second shot.
|
| There are risks, there might not be benefits for you, but
| there are definitely benefits to taking the vaccine for
| people who recovered.
| JPKab wrote:
| Good to know. That helps me knowing that there are benefits
| rather than having it essentially being a placebo.
|
| Can you provide links to any peer reviewed scientific
| literature on the benefits of the vaccine for recovered
| individuals? I don't trust any of the journalism on this,
| considering that they are universally scientifically and
| statistically illiterate clickbait producers these days.
| soperj wrote:
| You're also getting immunity to variants that you haven't
| caught. Vaccines have been proven to confer some
| immunity, and less dire infections to those who do get
| it. Having previously caught it doesn't seem to,
| especially the Brazillian variant.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| This seems like the most logical argument to me. His body
| may have deteremine and locked on to some other protein
| in whatever variant infected him rather than the one
| targeted by the vaccines that I believe all 3 currently
| approved vaccines go after.
| JPKab wrote:
| One added note on "long covid":
|
| I think a lot of sufferers of it are psychosomatic. The
| demographic for long covid doesn't match the demographic of
| those who are most at risk of the virus or get the worst
| symptoms. Instead, it matches the demographic most likely
| to complain about symptoms from other diseases that have
| attracted large numbers of sufferers, only to have most of
| them disappear when the disease became less trendy:
| Fibromyalgia and gluten intolerance, who had massive spikes
| in patients claiming to have the diseases, and suddenly big
| drop offs, for lifelong illnesses that don't go away. These
| patients tended to be affluent, white, middle-age women,
| who are not remotely the most at risk from covid, but are
| disproportionate in claiming long covid.
|
| The vaccine probably has a placebo effect on these kinds of
| folks. Underestimating the full power of psychosomatic
| driven symptoms is a big problem. The mind can really make
| the body sick, and there's a lot of science backing this
| up.
|
| I should specify that i don't think this is voluntary, or
| humans wanting attention. I think it's induced by excessive
| fear-based media and the subconscious, combined with the
| huge evolutionary advantage of the mind having the ability
| to induce vomiting if other tribe members who have eaten
| contaminated food begin getting sick.
|
| https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23851-what-if-your-
| gl...
| bonniemuffin wrote:
| If their symptoms are psychosomatic, but the vaccine
| cures those symptoms through the placebo effect, then
| what's the problem? They were genuinely suffering, and
| now they're not: the vaccine cured their long covid.
| snakeboy wrote:
| Probably better to give them a placebo vaccine so we
| don't waste the good stuff ;)
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| No one is expecting you to get a vaccine, just don't expect
| to be able to fly in a couple of months if you don't have a
| vaccine card or be allowed in certain establishments. It's
| your body, your choice, but you also have to live with the
| ramifications of your choice.
| knowaveragejoe wrote:
| The biggest worry would be a new vaccine-resistant variant at
| this point, right? From my limited understanding, the big
| biotech companies involved can respond relatively quickly, but
| it may become a game of whack-a-mole.
| distrill wrote:
| This is how the flu shot works. I don't see how this would be
| that big of a deal, we get shots for previous pandemic
| strains every year.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| > we get shots for previous pandemic strains every year.
|
| That's not exactly how the flu shot works. They make an
| educated guess as to which strain will become most
| widespread, then develop the corresponding vaccine. Years
| that the flu shot isn't as effective is when they guess the
| wrong strain.
| pmiller2 wrote:
| Yep, and next year is going to be a total shot in the
| dark for people formulating flu vaccines. Nobody's
| getting flu because COVID precautions are effective
| against flu, too. But, pigs and birds are, and their flu
| viruses jump over to us pretty readily.
|
| My guess is that next year's flu season is going to be a
| lot worse than more recent ones because of this.
| yellowapple wrote:
| On the bright side, the practice we've (hopefully) had
| with masks, hand washing, and personal space should
| hopefully carry over to flu seasons in the future. If it
| does get severe, then we know what to do.
|
| Whether we do it, though, is another question altogether.
| pmiller2 wrote:
| Yeah, I wouldn't count on people actually doing it,
| either. Especially when a large segment of the population
| is convinced that mask mandates are a form of tyranny.
| selectodude wrote:
| For obvious reasons, you're not going to see mask
| mandates for flu season. It's simply not contagious
| enough. I think there will be more social pressure to
| wear masks when you're not feeling well and an increased
| acceptance of staying home when sick though.
| kmonsen wrote:
| It is a bit different now because mRNA vaccines are much
| quicker to develop. It is somewhat realistic we can keep
| having up to date vaccines.
| saalweachter wrote:
| Hmmm, my understanding is that the flu vaccines are
| basically built on the seasonality of the flu -- the
| southern & northern hemisphere's flu seasons run six
| months opposite each other, so you basically take the
| strains that were biggest in the southern hemisphere
| during its season and vaccinate the northern against
| them, and vice-versa six months later.
|
| Do we have any sign yet on whether the COVID-season would
| be expected to run on a similar schedule?
| maxerickson wrote:
| Not really, no. The vaccines developed a year ago are
| mostly effective enough against the strains circulating
| now though, so it may work out for the better.
|
| (the "spike" that the vaccines target is important to the
| virus, so changes to it often make it much less
| infectious or whatever, and we don't really know how much
| room is has to both escape the vaccine triggered immunity
| and stay highly infectious)
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Having to pay a tax to a private company to get a mandatory
| yearly medical procedure is not my idea of fun. So now you
| get the flu and covid shot every year. Next 5 years, new
| bug, new vaccine, you do three ? And of course we have no
| long term data on cumulative shots effects, or
| interractions between various shots together, with other
| medicines, etc.
|
| Doing anything like this systematically should be though
| out carefully.
|
| Doing my first 10 vaccines felt like buying software
| licence in the 90'. I fear that the new ones will be like
| those sucky Saas subscriptions.
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| Can someone enlighten me on the logic of this sort of
| thinking?
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| I think people are very worried since only richer countries
| are getting significant amounts of vaccine currently, poorer
| countries are in the backlog for vaccines, so we most likely
| see some kind of mutation from those countries by the end of
| the year and maybe at least a couple more years of lockdowns
| and new booster vaccines around the globe. I think this is
| far from over.
| bmurphy1976 wrote:
| The more people get vaccinated, the fewer the infections.
|
| The fewer the infections, the fewer the mutations.
|
| The fewer the mutations, the fewer the vaccine resistant
| variants.
|
| The fewer the vaccine resistant variants, the fewer the need
| for new vaccines.
|
| The fewer the need for new vaccines, the fewer the need for
| people to get vaccinated.
|
| Repeat.
|
| It's hard to predict when it will happen, but infections will
| collapse the same way they spread, but only if people get
| vaccinated and retain some discipline until the collapse.
| peytn wrote:
| > The fewer the mutations, the fewer the vaccine resistant
| variants. > The fewer the vaccine resistant variants, the
| fewer the need for new vaccines
|
| Aren't you committing a logical error here? There will need
| to be new vaccines as long as there is at least one escape
| variant. The "fewer the need" is really a binary 0 or 1,
| and you haven't done anything to show that your "getting
| vaccinated and retaining some discipline until the
| collapse" gets us from a 1 to a 0. There's a time component
| as well.
|
| But yeah, it's a neat story that gets shots in arms.
| feanaro wrote:
| > The "fewer the need" is really a binary 0 or 1
|
| I can see several ways in which this is not true.
|
| For one, several different variants might need to be
| handled with several different vaccines. Vaccines might
| also not work perfectly on a variant, but they might
| confer some protection, leading to overall less total
| viral particles produced, reducing the probability of an
| effective mutation.
| deminature wrote:
| The mRNA vaccines have a turnaround of only a few weeks to
| produce a variant booster, so this is less of a concern than
| with older vaccine technologies. Moderna and Pfizer are
| currently trialing their SA strain booster that was
| formulated and produced in under a month [1][2].
|
| [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/24/moderna-covid-vaccine-
| booste... [2] https://www.statnews.com/2021/02/25/is-more-
| simply-better-wh...
| drcross wrote:
| Big pharma has deep pockets and believe me, this is part of
| their plan. Vaccine passports are the big pharma wet dream
| come to life. For a disease that 99.85% recover from.
| xxpor wrote:
| For something that they're selling at cost? Your
| conspiracy detector is a bit off there.
| bamboozled wrote:
| It takes months to manufacture and distribute though.
| tyingq wrote:
| Hard to tell, as it depends on personal choices. If everyone in
| a high risk group gets immunized, sure.
|
| Anecdotal but for my 2 appointments, the immunization centers
| clearly had a lot more capacity than customers. Lots of unused
| space and not-busy workers. I would guess because people that
| should be in line chose not to be.
| jccooper wrote:
| Many (most?) vaccination centers are still supply
| constrained, and will use up most of their supply early in
| the day, just serving stragglers later. This is good news, in
| that it means that it's pretty easy to scale up distribution
| as supply increases. The one I worked at was doing something
| like 6000 doses a day, and most of them before noon. If you
| came by at 4pm, you'd think we were doing nothing at all.
| usrusr wrote:
| Did they also have lots of unused vaccine? Given the cost of
| every additional day until back to normal it would be foolish
| to set up for anything less than best case supply, and then
| some.
| tyingq wrote:
| No idea. I would guess so, because of all the various types
| of workers that were doing nothing. And this wasn't a walk-
| up thing, you had to have an appointment.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Or they had more needles, more staff, than vaccine. If there
| is extra, send it to canada. Their shortage us getting less
| funny by the day.
| tyingq wrote:
| Maybe, but wouldn't they send excess workers home?
|
| To be clear, these were places where an appointment was
| needed, so they should have had a clear picture of demand.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| In this economy you don't send people home unless you
| have to.
| chmod600 wrote:
| So if high risk people choose not to vaccinate, then we don't
| need to modify our lifestyle any more. They've accepted the
| risks.
| tunesmith wrote:
| You still have to care about the immuno-compromised people
| they might infect.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| As a countering anecdote, the pharmacy where I got my shot
| had two pharmacists trying to deal with the normal work of
| distributing prescriptions while also juggling incoming
| vaccine appointments from multiple systems with a list
| printed that morning and people coming to the counter to
| request any "extras" they had. The main guy was keeping a
| cool head, but it looked like it had been a long day.
| ghaff wrote:
| Took a lot of work to get a vaccine appointment at CVS
| pharmacy chain in MA. Friend who works in IT there told me
| over the weekend, they get 10-100X the hits every morning
| that they have doses for. So apparent lack of activity may
| just be lack of doses.
|
| But he also said shipments are improving and I also got a
| message from one of the mass vaccination sites.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| It will become endemic like HIV, which kills about a million
| per year over the past few decades.
| namuol wrote:
| Yes.
| ummonk wrote:
| I think it's possible that in some communities with high
| proportions of anti-vaxxers, Rt could remain at 1 and continue
| to cause deaths a little past May 15th before organic herd
| immunity is achieved.
| jsight wrote:
| I think that is going to depend on your definition of
| "significant". I think at best we would have similar numbers to
| Israel right now by then. That would still represent >250
| deaths per day.
|
| (EDIT: If there is some reason that our rates will fall more
| quickly, I'd love to hear it.)
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| There is absolutely no way we will get vaccine update like
| Israel, there are far too many antivaxxers in the states for
| that to happen. They will just catch it sometime between now
| and year's end I will guess.
| therealdrag0 wrote:
| Seems about right. Israel appears to have twice the
| percentage of their population vaccinated and half the death
| rate compared to US. Current deaths in US is ~900/d, so half
| that is ~450.
|
| http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-
| visualization/?chart=countri...
| chmod600 wrote:
| That's on the order of a bad flu season, right? So not enough
| that it should affect our behavior in major ways.
|
| The argument for our lifestyle changes was always to "slow
| the spread" or "bend the curve". It seems we've done that
| about as well as we can.
| jsight wrote:
| I think that would still that would still be 40% or more
| higher than our worst flu season?
|
| Its definitely getting into the same order of magnitude at
| that point, though. It'd be hard to argue for stringent
| lockdowns, IMO.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| That's the with-lockdowns rate, is it not? The without-
| lockdowns rate would be much higher.
| kryogen1c wrote:
| dont forget that flu deaths are _after_ vaccinations, of
| which there are now billions annually.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| The CDC estimates the flu vaccine prevents 6,500 deaths
| per year in the US. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/prevent/keyfa
| cts.htm#effectiveness
| azernik wrote:
| Current Israeli death rates are with some social
| distancing measures, but nowhere near lockdown. They're
| having concerts and (vaccinated-people-only) indoor
| dining.
| drcross wrote:
| Wait until you hear about Florida and Texas.
| ls612 wrote:
| By May, not really. Assuming by mid-May 50% of people are
| vaccinated and some more have had natural immunity the
| total immunity rate is likely to be around 70%, and much
| of the remainder is children and young teens. At that
| point you could do nothing and not worry much. Especially
| when the only excuse for being old or at risk and not
| being immune is your own anti-vax tendencies, not a
| realistic supply limitation.
| tedivm wrote:
| There are entirely too many assumptions in that
| statement, especially with the complete lack of evidence
| cited. There is a lot of concern right now amongst
| scientists that our uneven rollouts could cause new
| variants to spread, and that this could turn into more of
| a yearly flu vaccine with a constant fight to stay in
| front of it.
|
| The problem is that those 70% numbers assume even
| distribution, but that isn't turning out to be the case.
| Not only are different countries going at very different
| rates, but even inside of the US you can see a huge
| spread. This isn't just about where the vaccine is being
| delivered but we're it's being ignored. It's not hard to
| imagine that LA County might not ever get up to the 60%
| to 70% threshold needed for herd immunity due to a large
| community of antivaxxers who can support and spread new
| variants that spread further out.
|
| This very article we're reading briefly mentions this, as
| pfizer is already working on boosters. Covid is not going
| to just disappear in the next six weeks.
| jychang wrote:
| I'm actually more optimistic than that.
|
| I read an interesting article arguing that "the people
| who deserve the vaccine the least, should be the ones
| getting it first". As in, the kid who irresponsibly goes
| to Miami on spring break, should be the person getting
| the vaccine first- because vaccinating super spreaders
| would save more lives than vaccinating someone who stays
| home anyways. So arguably, the people who are most likely
| to transmit the disease should get vaccinated first.
|
| The flip side of the coin is people who are most likely
| to catch the disease- probably already did. I can name a
| handful of people who I'm facebook friends with, who gave
| no shits about staying at home and caught covid already a
| few months ago.
|
| So now, 1 year into the lockdown, the people who are most
| likely superspreaders- already got infected and are
| mostly immune. On the other hand, we're going to have 1/3
| or 1/4 of the population still stay at home regardless of
| what the govt says.
|
| So a significant percent of the population isn't
| contributing to spread anymore, even if they're not
| vaccinated.
| ummonk wrote:
| Once every adult has had the chance to get vaccinated,
| there is no reasonable argument for lockdowns.
| noahtallen wrote:
| The other aspect is that negative side effects are much
| more prevalent with COVID. So keeping cases down is still
| important
| sharken wrote:
| But how widespread are the negative side effects, do you
| have data on this ?
| ttesttom wrote:
| There have been a bunch of studies that have come out,
| with a range of quality in case selection methodology eg.
| biased sampling, so its still early days. I've seen
| estimates ranging from 2% - 33% for effects up to 7
| months after infection for mild-moderate symptomatic
| cases. But generally, it seems quite a serious issue.
|
| This is a good review on whats out there:
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01283-z
| tunesmith wrote:
| I think the answer to your question depends on the conclusion
| that may come after it.
|
| Like if it's "therefore, past May 15 we should all just act as
| we did pre-COVID", that's different than "therefore, that's
| overall very good news for society".
|
| There's a quantitative/qualitative thing going on here. We
| could be mostly "back to normal" in a broad numbers sense,
| while immuno-compromised people are left with a much more
| dangerous reality than they faced pre-COVID. They're left
| hoping for test/trace/eradication.
|
| Personally, I'll feel pretty safe hanging out, even in closed-
| in areas, with other vaccinated people. But out and about, the
| decision to wear a mask will be more predicated on the actual
| disease prevalence numbers in that area. And we'll all continue
| to wait on data of how long the vaccines last.
| roywiggins wrote:
| We are already seeing the beginning of a new wave in Michigan.
|
| > But she said the most significant increase in
| hospitalizations in the state is in people in their 50s, a
| group still at risk of becoming severely ill or dying from
| Covid-19. Younger people have driven the rapid increase in
| cases recently, she said, including high school students who
| participate in sports and have contracted the virus through
| those activities.
|
| > "I do think this could be the beginning of a third surge,"
| Dr. Khaldun said, after an initial rush of cases in Michigan
| last March and April, followed by a surge in October and
| November. "I am concerned. But I also think there are things
| that we can do today that will start to turn that curve down."
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/01/us/michigan-covid-outbrea...
| [deleted]
| seizethecheese wrote:
| Sure, a new wave of cases, but will it translate to deaths?
| My understanding is that most deaths come from 20% of
| population and we have vaccinated over 30%.
| tyingq wrote:
| _" we have vaccinated over 30%"_
|
| Some places are at much lower percentages. "Fully
| vaccinated" varies from ~12% in Utah to ~24% in New Mexico.
| 17% overall for the US.
| azernik wrote:
| Point being, we've focused vaccination on the most
| susceptible groups. Vaccinating even 15% of the total
| population means we've probably vaccinated ~90% of people
| aged 75+ (with that number being limited by health
| conditions that contraindicate vaccination).
| flatline wrote:
| New Mexico is currently at 48.4% of the eligible
| population with at least one dose, which recent research
| indicates is at least 80% effective. Research also
| indicates that the non-eligible population - children -
| are not as likely to spread or contract the disease. By
| mid-May I expect many more states to lift mask mandates,
| for venues to open at near 100% capacity, etc. People
| will still be dying from COVID, 80-90% effective still
| leaves a lot of people vulnerable. But that has not
| stopped us so far!
| ghaff wrote:
| You can quibble about the date, but there's every reason
| to believe that as the US eases into summer,
| restrictions/mandates will largely fade away and it will
| be the Roaring 20s all over again. I fully expect that
| not everyone is going to be happy about that but it seems
| inevitable. International travel without restrictions
| will almost certainly take longer.
| Baeocystin wrote:
| The 80-90% numbers are for symptomatic Covid. The
| protection against hospitalization/death seems to be
| close to 100%, which is fantastic news.
| kmonsen wrote:
| Yeah, people are reading the effective number wrong. It
| is very close to 100% in protecting against
| hospitalization/death, which is what we really care
| about. If we could vaccinate 100% (perhaps at some time
| interval), this would be over.
| hammock wrote:
| >most deaths come from 20% of population and we have
| vaccinated over 30%.
|
| In the US, most (59%) deaths come from people aged 75+
| according to CDC. People aged 75+ make up roughly 12% of
| the population.
| nradov wrote:
| We don't really have enough contact tracing data to reliably
| conclude that that many younger people contracted the virus
| through participating in sports activities, as opposed to
| other activities. That seems like unscientific and
| irresponsible speculation.
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| Do you know that to be true, or is this speculation on your
| part? Just because you don't have the data doesn't mean it
| doesn't exist (unless you're saying that you're an
| epidemiologist in Michigan?)
| krona wrote:
| The null hypothesis is that we don't know why/how they
| contracted the virus. Parent doesn't have to know it's
| true, or be an expert in anything.
| roenxi wrote:
| Humans have been dealing with respiratory diseases since
| well before the dawn of recorded history. An article on
| nytimes.com proves nothing, but the null hypothesis (for
| a trained and educated medical professional) is not going
| to be "I dunno". The null hypothesis is "this will behave
| like [most similar virus I know about] and humans action
| will be causing spread in a manner following the
| epidemiological studies I have read".
|
| COVID shouldn't be so much of a mystery any more, it has
| been 12 months of the most focused study the world
| medical profession has ever done. The only thing holding
| our knowledge back of the short term behaviour of COVID
| is ourselves at this point. We've had time to watch the
| disease play out multiple times.
| chmod600 wrote:
| I don't see how that makes May 15 and beyond look any worse.
| A wave now means more organic immunity as well as more
| tranmission in the short term. But with so many vulnerable
| people already vaccinated, and so much organic immunity
| already, do you really think it will be a six-week-long wave?
|
| Probably not. And in 6 weeks, that just means millions more
| will be vaccinated and younger people will have even more
| organic immunity.
|
| In other words, there may be another surge, but it will
| probably be the last one, and probably over by May 15.
|
| Again, non expert, don't cough on people, etc.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| My friend's mom was just admitted to a hospital on the East
| side of Michigan with really, really bad Covid. Opening day
| for baseball is today, cases are surging like crazy and
| everyone is just pretending like it's over. I hope that
| things improve in 6 weeks, but I'm really pessimistic at
| the moment.
| sharken wrote:
| Michigan is at 30% vaccinated with at least one dose
| according to
| https://data.lansingstatejournal.com/covid-19-vaccine-
| tracke...
|
| So things are better than in most places and will
| continually get better.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Yeah, it will eventually get better, but I have family
| who are physicians who are swamped again and friends with
| relatives in ERs and ICUs.. Hard to be too optimistic at
| the moment. NYTimes' latest concurs;
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/01/us/michigan-covid-
| outbrea...
|
| > _Michigan has more recent cases per capita than any
| other state, and has seen them soar in recent weeks, to
| more than 5,600 cases a day from about 1,000 on Feb. 21.
| The nation's top five metro areas in recent cases per
| capita are all in Michigan: Jackson, Detroit, Flint,
| Lansing and Monroe._
|
| ...
|
| > _Health officials partly attributed the rapid rise in
| cases to the B.1.1.7 variant that was originally
| identified in Britain and is widespread in Michigan. But
| they have also observed a broader return to prepandemic
| life seen in a relaxing of mask wearing, social
| distancing and other strategies meant to slow the spread
| of the virus -- many weeks before a substantial portion
| of the population is vaccinated. On Thursday, Michigan
| officials announced that they had identified their first
| case of the P.1 variant, which has spread widely in
| Brazil and has now been found in more than 20 U.S.
| states._
|
| ...
|
| > _Dr. Joneigh S. Khaldun, the state's chief medical
| executive, said on Tuesday that 50 percent of state
| residents over 65 were fully vaccinated, a sign of
| progress that the most vulnerable population is closer to
| protection from Covid-19._
|
| > _But she said the most significant increase in
| hospitalizations in the state is in people in their 50s,
| a group still at risk of becoming severely ill or dying
| from Covid-19. Younger people have driven the rapid
| increase in cases recently, she said, including high
| school students who participate in sports and have
| contracted the virus through those activities._
| fredophile wrote:
| More people getting covid means more chances of a mutation
| that makes it spread easier or is resistant to current
| vaccines. A surge now is a bad thing.
| hammock wrote:
| What is the likelihood that any given mutation increases
| vs. decreases contagiousness or resistance?
| [deleted]
| unilynx wrote:
| That's probably random, but the mutations that increase
| contagiousness will be the ones surviving natural
| selection.
| pmiller2 wrote:
| It doesn't matter how likely any individual mutation is
| to increase transmissibility or resistance. We won't ever
| see the ones that decrease transmissibility or
| resistance, because they'll be outcompeted by the Brand X
| virus, as well as any nastier mutants.
| titzer wrote:
| > A surge now is a bad thing.
|
| It's always been a bad thing and will continue to be a
| bad thing.
| fredophile wrote:
| I'd argue that it's worse now. Where I live we have over
| 20% vaccinated right now and that number increases every
| day. This adds a bias for mutations that are vaccine
| resistant. A mutation that gives a slight disadvantage,
| but means the vaccine won't stop it, would have gone
| nowhere a year ago. Now that same mutation has a large
| population where it can easily outcompete the current
| virus.
| pmiller2 wrote:
| It's a little worse now in terms of selective pressures,
| but, at least hospitals aren't overflowing currently.
| kmonsen wrote:
| I think May 15 is a bit early, but if you say for example 4th
| of July I think you are correct. At least by that date everyone
| who wants a vaccine in the US should be able to get it. And
| they do work incredibly well, enough to lift all restrictions
| and even start traveling again. I fully expect to be able to go
| home to Europe to visit family and have some vacation by the
| end of the summer.
| ghaff wrote:
| For me, beginning of July is probably the relevant date, I
| usually go up to Maine then. So I'll have my vaccinations but
| probably won't change behavior all that much through late
| May/June and will (rightly or wrongly) expect more or less
| back to "normal" (doing heavy lifting) in July.
| fullshark wrote:
| I don't expect COVID to ever go away, so I expect COVID deaths
| to be a thing forever. My guess is we all move on regardless
| and accept a slightly deadlier flu season each year.
| pmiller2 wrote:
| No, COVID as a disease probably won't go away entirely for
| longer than a human lifetime, I would guess. And, even then,
| it would probably either end up as a much milder disease.
|
| But, we can probably reduce the number of cases per year to
| near 0 in the US, _if_ all eligible people get vaccinated.
| Wiki told me there were under 500 confirmed cases in the US
| in 2018, and Google told me that r_0 for measles is between
| 12 and 18. COVID is nowhere near that transmissible.
| fullshark wrote:
| > if all eligible people get vaccinated.
|
| I don't see that ever happening, at least for another
| generation or two.
| redisman wrote:
| I you look at Israels numbers, it seems like the vaccination
| herd immunity is slow but powerful. They're at early 2020
| numbers now.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| The wave has already started, there are plenty antivaxxers out
| there who would rather die than take it. US uptake of the
| vaccine will be 70% max because of the nonbelievers and
| antiscience people that form the core of Trump's cadre. There's
| still plenty people left to kill and I bet we will hit at least
| 600,000 (aka another 50000) by the end of the year. There
| absolutely will be a 4th wave.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I'm always confused about "effectiveness" numbers. Are these
| "effective at preventing severe disease" or "effective at
| preventing symptomatic disease" or against transmission period?
| The article seems to suggest it's the latter, but it seems
| somewhat ambiguous. Does this term have a specific definition in
| epidemiology that journalists and pharma marketers assume
| everyone understands what kind of "effectiveness" they're talking
| about?
| thepete2 wrote:
| This is a good question that was picked up by a blog I read.
| IIRC it refers to the ratio of infections in the control group
| vs. the vaccinated group. Hence an effectiveness of 90% means
| 90% of cases occurred in the non-vaccinated group.
|
| It does _not_ mean 10% of people end up with no protection at
| all, as was my first thought.
| m-ee wrote:
| Minor nit. The ratio you refer to is called efficacy, not
| effectiveness. Effectiveness is the number you would get by
| observing people in the real world rather than the phase 3
| trial. It's worth noting the difference because we're also
| starting to get data on effectiveness, like the CDC study
| that tracked healthcare workers and found the vaccine also
| prevented asymptomatic infection.
| clomond wrote:
| Its a technical & medical term, rather than one that is meant
| to be useful for broader discussion.
|
| Efficacy in vaccines == people who were prevented from being
| confirmed COVID positive (symptoms sufficient to prompt a test,
| leading to a positive result)
|
| Therefore, a 91% effective metric for vaccines means that 91%
| of those who receive that vaccine are expected to NOT contract
| COVID 'at all'. Thing is though, many vaccines broadly do not
| prevent disease but shift the severity upon contraction.
|
| The metric that is actually useful for informing the public and
| policy is the answer to the question of 'does this prevent
| hospitalization, severe disease and death?'. Broadly speaking
| most approved vaccines globally have near 100% effectiveness in
| this.
| [deleted]
| _Gyan_ wrote:
| The primary endpoint is symptomatic infection, not any
| infection per se. And it's a bit of a kludge, as all the
| Phase III protocols I've read define symptomatic infection as
| X no. of symptoms for Y+ no. of days i.e. there are people
| with fewer symptoms who aren't counted (or even tested to
| check for infection).
|
| The efficacy is the 1-relative risk of the primary endpoint.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > Therefore, a 91% effective metric for vaccines means that
| 91% of those who receive that vaccine are expected to NOT
| contract COVID 'at all'. Thing is though, many vaccines
| broadly do not prevent disease but shift the severity upon
| contraction.
|
| But I was just reading about another study of medical
| personnel who were taking periodic COVID tests so as to catch
| asymptomatic transmission, and I believe this study (or maybe
| merely the media about it) _also_ used "effectiveness".
| input_sh wrote:
| They're all 100% effective at stopping hospitalization/death
| (at least in phase 3, not necessarily out in the field). So 9%
| chance for any infection, but all those that test positive have
| mild to no symptoms.
|
| They basically split people at a certain area into two groups,
| give one the real thing, another one placebo, track infections,
| compare the results.
|
| Comparing vaccines by effectiveness is meaningless because
| they're not all tested at the same place at the same time. So
| J&J has lower effectiveness, but it was calculated at the peak
| of the outbreak, when each participant interacted with Covid
| more frequently in their everyday lives.
|
| For the comparisons to become meaningful, it'd need to be re-
| done at the same place at the same urban area, with 10s of
| thousands of participants for each vaccine. You'd also need to
| have approximately similar age spread, plus similar population
| distribution within an urban area. Since it's all volunteer-
| based, this kind of study won't happen.
|
| In conclusion: take any that's available to you.
| yumraj wrote:
| My wife and I decided to take different vaccines. I got
| Moderna and J&J for her, primarily as a hedge if they have
| different efficacy against different variants.
|
| Especially important since we have kids.
| thepete2 wrote:
| I really don't know why this term is thrown around in the
| news so much without explanation. What I thought at first
| (and I think is the obvious interpretation) is that with an
| effectiveness of 90%, 10% of vaccinated people have no
| protection at all.
| xeromal wrote:
| Yeah, J&J especially got the shit end of the stick on that.
| 72% effective, in the US, at no symptoms, but 100%
| effective at preventing death but every talks like it's a
| worthless vaccine.
| clarkevans wrote:
| Moreover, it's only one shot. J&J is currently enrolling
| for a 2-shot trial
| (https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04614948),
| unfortunately, the control arm .. is no vaccination. I
| can imagine how this may hinder recruitment.
| xeromal wrote:
| I wonder if us legacy J&J users will be able to get a
| second dose at some point.
| bluGill wrote:
| That is the plan if it is helpful, but it depends on a
| lot of factors. First, of course how much better is a
| second shot vs one - if the difference is minimal it
| probably isn't worth it. I'm guessing that we will
| forever say the difference is too minimal - it works well
| enough with one shot, so why not give the second shot as
| a first shot to someone else? Of course this gets mixed
| in those who might be more vulnerable (and thus more
| helped with a second shot) if we can figure that out. And
| there is the possibility of buy a second shot for you (at
| double price but that isn't stated), and we send a free
| shot to some poor person in [pick a poor country]. There
| is also the question of do we reach herd immunity - if
| Covid isn't spreading in your country and you are not
| traveling to a different country where it is why make
| your arm sore?
|
| Probably more considerations, but the above should get
| you started thinking of them.
| xeromal wrote:
| My interest is purely from avoiding further
| unpleasantness from catching COVID19. I took the J&J
| vaccine and ended up around 103F fever for a few hours so
| I have an inkling if I end up in the 28% who still has
| symptoms when catching COVID19, would I go through
| another bout of fevers and chills. Of course I could ride
| it out, but if I had the opportunity to avoid, I would!
| antattack wrote:
| First dose of Russian Sputnik V vaccine uses the same
| adenovirus as J&J vaccine, both of virus vector type.
| Second dose of Sputnik V is using different adenovirus. I
| would think J&J second dose would have to use different
| adenovirus also.
| bluGill wrote:
| There has been a lot of speculation on that. It isn't an
| unreasonable idea. However we don't know if it is true or
| not. We will have to wait for the 2 dose trials to see
| how they turn out.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| I guess we hang out in different strata of society since
| all my friends want the J&J virus if they get a choice
| because it's one and done.
| maxerickson wrote:
| The companies have every incentive to publish the good
| results and the media doesn't care about explaining things
| clearly.
|
| I'm not sure I can envision a reasonable way to embargo the
| numbers.
| ggreer wrote:
| The J&J vaccine having lower effectiveness makes sense.
| Unlike the mRNA vaccines which use lipid nanoparticles as
| their delivery mechanism, the J&J vaccine uses an adenovirus.
| Some fraction of the population has immunity to this
| adenovirus due previous exposure to similar viruses. That
| means the delivery mechanism won't be nearly as effective for
| those people. It also means that booster shots won't be
| nearly as effective since everyone who gets the J&J vaccine
| will be immune to the adenovirus. For higher booster
| effectiveness, they'll probably have to choose a different
| adenovirus.
|
| Obviously if you can get any vaccine, do so! But to claim
| that we can't possibly compare vaccines is silly. Yes the
| trials have differences, but they're not so different as to
| make us totally ignorant. We can use the trial data plus
| knowledge of the mechanism of action to make solid bets on
| relative effectiveness.
| gregwebs wrote:
| The claim that they prevent death is not significantly
| significant. https://dalewharrison.substack.com/p/vaccine-
| boosterism
| some_cut wrote:
| This is conflating P(death|vaccinated) with
| P(death|infected while vaccinated).
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Yeah I don't know how people miss that but I guess a lot
| of people read to support their opinions rather than for
| the truth.
| quantgenius wrote:
| It's a percentage reduction in risk. If a random unvaccinated
| person has a 10% chance of infection and a vaccinated person
| has a 1% chance of infection, the vaccine is 90% effective.
| [deleted]
| gregwebs wrote:
| Most of the responses to your question that I have read are
| factually incorrect in some way. Efficacy/effectiveness is up
| to each study to define.
|
| Generally you should assume they are measuring symptoms of
| infections that go beyond the upper respiratory tract. This is
| because the vaccines provide little protection against an upper
| respiratory tract infection but instead are very effective at
| preventing it from progressing further into a more severe
| infection. This is referred to as non-sterilizing immunity: it
| is probably the most important concept for everyone to
| understand about the vaccines.
|
| I am seeing a lot of comments here claim that vaccines are 100%
| effective at preventing death or severe infection where severe
| is generally defined as hospitalization. Nothing is 100%
| effective, and particularly not vaccines for those whose immune
| system does not respond properly. Death in particular is
| generally not an endpoint that can be compared in a
| statistically significant way in these studies. [1]
|
| I will still be getting the first imperfect vaccine I am
| allowed to at the first chance I get. When I needed to get an
| appointment for my Mom I started writing a user script to help
| with that. [2]
|
| [1] https://dalewharrison.substack.com/p/vaccine-boosterism
|
| [2]
| https://gist.github.com/gregwebs/265e0ef6b1a3051377cfc4d66ac...
| jjcon wrote:
| > the vaccines provide little protection against an upper
| respiratory tract infection
|
| They prevent symptomatic covid infection which includes
| respiratory symptoms.
| amichal wrote:
| My layman's understanding was that "91%" "effective at
| preventing disease" (from the TFA) goes something like this:
| - Take two identical[1] populations of people - Wait for
| some people (100 for easy math here) in the unvaccinated group
| to get the disease. Probably measured by a PCR test indicating
| presence of the virus and ignoring symptoms since they say
| "preventing disease" and not severe symptoms, hospitalization,
| death etc. - Count how many folks have the disease in
| the vaccinated group[2]. In the "91%" case we would expect 9
| people to test positive, meaning 91 of 100 people we would
| expected to get the disease did not.
|
| I like to think of it as I am ~1/10th as likely to get the
| disease as I would be if i had not been vaccinated.
|
| Is this what they mean in this? [1] Doing your
| best to create identical groups by controlling for population
| differences such as gender, age, and other known risk factors,
| [2] We need also to control for time in the study etc.
|
| [Lots of editing for formatting etc]
| matwood wrote:
| > I like to think of it as I am ~1/10th as likely to get the
| disease as I would be if i had not been vaccinated.
|
| Same, and it gets less likely if you are in a group of
| vaccinated people since the chances of being exposed to
| someone who is sick goes down. Herd immunity at that point.
| herrvogel- wrote:
| This short video[1] explains it quite well imo. They also
| make the interesting point that efficacy rates are not
| comparable because the studies were done at different
| times/locations with different spread of the virus in the
| population.
|
| [1]https://youtu.be/K3odScka55A
| amichal wrote:
| Reading the more technically detailed comments I think
| really reinforces throwaway894345's point. I understood
| what "91%" means (much better than non-techies in my
| circle) but assumed a lot incorrectly about the controls
| and the actual "end point" they are measuring. It seems
| lots of folks are saying the different studies use
| different sets of symptoms etc and not routine testing at
| intervals to identify those who have the disease.
|
| I suspect most of the public doesn't even know what 91%
| means. Combine that with being bad at evaluating risk in
| general. It mostly represents a 10x improvement in cases
| per capita per time, but I think telling folks that their
| risk went from 1 in 10,000 to 1 in 100,000 (or whatever)
| probably doesn't mean a lot. Folks just want "safe" or
| "not-safe" :(
| thamer wrote:
| > I like to think of it as I am ~1/10th as likely to get the
| disease as I would be if i had not been vaccinated.
|
| > Is this what they mean in this?
|
| Yes, that's what they mean. And even for the vaccines that
| are ~60-70% effective, _all of them_ have so far been 100%
| effective in preventing hospitalization and death. It 's not
| binary, the vaccines don't make you completely immune to this
| virus but greatly reduce the impact it has.
|
| I thought this video explained it well:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3odScka55A
| makomk wrote:
| As I understand it, it turns out that none of the vaccines
| are 100% effective in preventing hospitalization and death,
| it's just really hard to measure this accurately in the
| kind of studies used for vaccine approval because there
| aren't enough people in them, especially people at high
| risk. The actual figure from the various large-scale
| rollouts is closer to 80% I think?
| thamer wrote:
| It's quite possible that some people will eventually
| contract COVID-19 and die from it, even several weeks
| after getting their last immunization shot (supposedly at
| a point when they're fully protected). It just didn't
| happen in any of the trials.
|
| If anyone wants to look at the raw phase 3 numbers:
|
| Pfizer numbers: 43,448 participants received injections
| (21,720 the vaccine and 21,728 the placebo); 8 cases of
| COVID-19 in the vaccinated group and 162 in the placebo
| group, 9 were severe (8 of those in the placebo group).
|
| Pfizer study: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMo
| a2034577?query=fe...
|
| Moderna numbers: 30,420 participants, evenly split with
| 15,210 in each group, over 96% got both injections. There
| were 185 symptomatic cases in the placebo group and 11 in
| the vaccinated group. 30 participants had severe cases
| including one causing death: all were in the placebo
| group.
|
| Moderna study:
| https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2035389
| alistairSH wrote:
| Yeah, the language I've seen is usually something like
| "...there were 0 deaths in the test group..." Which most
| people will read as "100% effective in preventing deaths"
| but technically there's no specific claim at preventing
| deaths - the "0 deaths" is effectively an anecdote.
| Spivak wrote:
| I would assume that even a claim about being 100%
| effective has some asterisks like "has a strong enough
| immune system" where "strong enough" means "unless you've
| already been diagnosed with having a weak immune system
| you're fine."
| makomk wrote:
| Most (possibly all?) of the headline figures for how
| effective Covid vaccines are at preventing disease are based
| on the number of _symptomatic_ cases, including mild
| symptoms. So it 's not purely measured based on number of
| positive tests regardless of symptoms, but it's not just
| severe symptoms either.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Two weeks past second dose, I'm taking a _lot_ fewer
| precautions, as I expect is the case for the vaccinated trial
| groups (based on an N of 1 where I know they started taking
| fewer precautions while in the J &J trial). This is, of
| course, the _entire point_ of getting vaccinated.
|
| That might make the vaccine even more effective than the
| study shows if the stats don't back out risk adjustment
| (which they probably cannot do).
| jfengel wrote:
| The CDC recommendations do substantially reduce the
| precautions you have to take once you're fully vaccinated.
|
| But note that wearing a mask is still required. At a
| technical level, you may still be able to spread the
| disease, even if you're fully vaccinated. And the vaccines
| aren't 100% effective, so even the minimal self protection
| you get from a mask is better than nothing.
|
| More importantly, I believe, is sociological: once there
| are a lot of people in public without masks, even if it
| were safe, a lot of people would take it as an excuse not
| to wear one. That leaves both them and others open to
| getting sick. The mask is a minimal inconvenience, and
| should be continued.
|
| If you want want to skip the mask among people you know to
| be vaccinated, in private, that's about as safe as anything
| ever gets in life. Even small, private gatherings with a
| cluster of unvaccinated people (i.e. people who all live
| together) are reasonably safe without masks for those who
| are vaccinated.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I fully believe the CDC is optimizing for the
| sociological aspects rather than biological aspects with
| respect to mask-wearing.
|
| I'll do it for many more months, because the sociology
| aspect is valid.
| yellowapple wrote:
| Yep. Plus, it's about as easy as it gets, _and_ I get to
| conceal myself from facial recognition cameras. Win-win-
| win.
| fastball wrote:
| I don't think "against transmission period" is really possible,
| no?
|
| The whole point of a vaccine is to prime your immune system, it
| does not provide a magical shield to your body. If you get
| exposed to COVID-19 after being vaxxed, you will still have
| COVID-19 in your system for some amount of time. It will just
| (hopefully) get killed very quickly when the memory B/T cells
| (that were created by your body when you had an immune response
| to the vaccine) ramp up production.
| breck wrote:
| Be *very skeptical* of any future articles on the long run
| effectiveness of these vaccines.
|
| I was paid to work specifically on COVID, so was monitoring the
| vaccine data very closely. It was *very* promising, but there
| were a few things that puzzled me in where comparing results in
| placebo/control group vs vaccine groups, for both Pfizer and
| Moderna.
|
| So I would check near daily for new results.
|
| And then after Christmas break, when I went to check, found out
| both control groups had been effectively destroyed. (https://ww
| w.wsj.com/livecoverage/covid-2020-12-17/card/Pc6LV...)
|
| I'm not kidding, there are no longer any control/placebo groups
| for these vaccines. These were studies that were approved to
| run for 2 years!
|
| I had to sit through hours of boring mandatory training from
| NIH on importance of control groups. In these cases they just
| threw that away.
|
| It reaks to high heaven to me.
|
| (Note: I've seen nothing to indicate these vaccines are
| dangerous. Effective? Looks very likely, at least in the short
| run. Long run effective? HIGHLY skeptical. Total contribution
| to ending the pandemic from the vaccines? I'm highly skeptical
| that it will actually be high, when an honest accounting comes
| out). Would I personally take the vaccine had I not had COVID
| already? Yes. Though not if I were a kid or teenager (very
| little risk from COVID).
|
| If you are in medical research, please don't look to these
| people as role models. Please do things openly, on git, and
| don't sweep uncomfortable truths under the rug.
| xxxtentachyon wrote:
| Can you say more about what you think the implications of
| offering the control group vaccinations are? My prior
| assumption would be that protecting the control group would
| cause the study to underestimate the effectiveness of the
| vaccine since it now looks comparatively more similar to the
| control.
| breck wrote:
| We've lost any type of objective long term way to get to
| the truth on how dangerous COVID really was/is, and how
| long term effective the vaccines are.
|
| The numbers do not come close to supporting any ethical
| reason for doing this.
| jsnell wrote:
| There was never going to be a two year control group. The
| moment somebody in a trial could get vaccinated via some
| other channel, they'd drop out and get unblinded. Anything
| else would make it much harder to get people to participate
| in the study.
|
| For Covid, there's an additional problem with antibody tests
| being relatively abundant, and would allow the participants
| to unblind themselves anyway.
| breck wrote:
| > There was never going to be a two year control group.
| Actual Study Start Date: July 27, 2020 Estimated
| Primary Completion Date: October 27, 2022
|
| [0] https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04470427
|
| I thought there was going to be a two year control group
| because that was the plan published on ClinicalTrials.gov
| run by NIH.
|
| > The moment somebody in a trial could get vaccinated via
| some other channel, they'd drop out and get unblinded
|
| If this is such obvious common knowledge why wasn't it in
| the plan? Why isn't it in the training?
|
| I am 100% open to fundamentally and drastically changing
| the way we test medicines and vaccines et cetera, but
| that's very different than just making decisions willy
| nilly that just so happen to align 100% with shareholder
| interests.
| jsnell wrote:
| The trial protocol allows for a participant to leave at
| any time for any reason. It does not require the
| participants to not get another vaccine if one becomes
| available. They'd obviously do that if possible, because
| there was a 50/50 chance they had gotten the Placebo.
| Both the treatment and control groups would start to
| disintegrate the moment a vaccine gets approved for an
| EUA.
|
| (But fair enough; in the case that no vaccine got an EUA,
| the control group would have lasted for two years.)
|
| All that the protocol change to give the control group
| the Moderna vaccine at that point did was to let them at
| least continue with the observational open-label phase B
| of the study.
|
| Your suggestion that this a sinister plot to hide the
| long-term inefficacy of their vaccines is absurd. A Covid
| vaccine that was highly effective for only a couple of
| years would be a goldmine in the long term, and would
| sell just as well right now.
| belltaco wrote:
| It would be unethical to hold back vaccinations from a
| control group for 2 years after it already proved efficacy.
| It would also get very hard to find study volunteers because
| why would people join a vaccine study if there is a 50-50
| chance it means they can't be protected for 2 full years?
| breck wrote:
| > It would be unethical to hold back vaccinations from a
| control group for 2 years after it already proved efficacy.
|
| Is it? I don't remember reading about that in NIH training
| on control groups. I'm pretty sure when your plan is to
| distribute 1 billion vaccines, holding out 0.000015 for a
| placebo control group is a sensible "ethical" tradeoff.
| Especially if, I don't know, everyone *volunteered* and
| agreed to those terms when signing up! And especially if, I
| don't know, all the data they had to date showed no
| increase in death rate?
| jsnell wrote:
| There is no standard definition. The clinical trial would have
| a set of predefined outcomes ("endpoints") that are used for
| the efficacy analysis. The endpoints will not necessarily be
| the same ones for each vaccine, even for the same disease.
|
| You'll need to read the actual trial protocol for a specific
| vaccine to find out just what they were measuring, and how they
| defined e.g. "serious" vs. "non-serious" cases.
| [deleted]
| ehsankia wrote:
| It's "effective at preventing symptomatic disease".
|
| All the vaccines so far are 100% effective against "preventing
| severe disease"
|
| The last one (non-symptomatic), we don't really know, I don't
| think any studies have been done which regularly test everyone,
| at scale. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.
| arisAlexis wrote:
| the 100% number _probably_ doesn 't include the P1,SA
| variants, no data on them. There is good probability that
| they become dominant so I'm waiting for the results on those.
| maxerickson wrote:
| There's some studies that have done regular testing, the
| vaccinations prevent infection.
|
| https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2102153
|
| https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2101927
|
| 2 weeks after the second Pfizer dose, one of the medical
| centers had a positive test rate of 0.05% (not a typo, 0.05
| percent).
| ehsankia wrote:
| Those are great, though they are pretty early results. I
| think in both cases, they finished giving the 2nd dose
| around February, so we've only had around 1 month of data.
|
| I'm a little confused by the percentage though. Looking at
| the 2nd study, and ignoring 1-7 days after the second dose,
| there's still 8+7 people who got infected a week after the
| 2nd dose, out of ~5000 tested. How do they get to the 0.05%
| number? Also, if I understand correctly, the table says
| there's around 16,000 eligible, but only 4000-5000 were
| tested? Am I missing something?
| maxerickson wrote:
| I misinterpreted them is what it is. The 0.05% is
| 7/14990, so it's the infections identified in the
| vaccinated group and isn't about regular testing, it's
| just that the result may include cases that were
| identified by testing rather than being symptomatic.
| ortusdux wrote:
| This is the key point that needs to be conveyed when the J&J
| 1-shot starts to be distributed. It has a 66-75% efficacy at
| preventing symptomatic disease, but 100% efficacy at
| preventing hospitalization. In situations where the 1-shot is
| ideal, patients being scared off by the lower efficacy rate
| could be an issue.
| ehsankia wrote:
| Not only that, J&J is also doing a trial for 2nd shot, as
| well as some places such as UK ended up doing
| Pfizer/Moderna with one shot only with delayed 2nd shot
| (3-4 months later). So we'll see how that works out, there
| may be the possibility of getting a 2nd shot of J&J later
| down the line to increase your immunity.
|
| I believe Pfizer has even started doing 3rd shot boosters
| for very early phase 1-2 people from last year.
| jgalt212 wrote:
| There are many businesses that have adapted to and prefer
| pandemic life. They, perhaps even more so than the hysterics, are
| our major blockers to returning to normalcy.
| newdude116 wrote:
| Expect to get vaccinated several times a year. No kidding.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-eu-vac...
|
| "The European Union aims to increase the region's COVID-19
| vaccine production capacity to 2-3 billion doses per year by the
| end of 2021"
|
| Hint: The EU has about 400 Million people
| ceejayoz wrote:
| There's a world of nearly eight billion people to vaccinate out
| there, and the manufacturing capacity may be useful when we
| start playing with mRNA vaccines for things like malaria.
| [deleted]
| jauntbox wrote:
| Isn't that because a lot of their vaccines get shipped all over
| the world? We need doses for ~7B people in total. I don't see
| anything there that says they're planning on administering
| multiple vaccination rounds per person.
| newdude116 wrote:
| https://www.euractiv.com/section/coronavirus/news/eu-
| hopes-t...
|
| 3 bn PER year. Trust me. You may have to get vaccinated every
| year. Don't get me wrong, the strategy makes sense. Still not
| very encouraging.
| corty wrote:
| Well, two shots a year, probably, maybe less.
|
| The real reason the EU needs this kind of capacity is that the
| current EU vaccination campaign is going very poorly. Most of
| the population will only get vaccinated late in summer and
| autumn, so the yearly capacity needs to be appropriate to at
| least get it done this year and before the next flu season.
|
| Oh, and the EU produces vaccines for a lot of others like UK,
| Israel and the US, as well as most third-world-countries.
| Imports into the EU are neglegible.
| kyboren wrote:
| Hint: The world has more than 400 million people.
| newdude116 wrote:
| Ok. What are you trying to say?
|
| Hint 2: ""Quite often vaccines are more effective than
| natural immunity but we might need to vaccinate everybody
| every year, or two or three, for quite some time and maybe
| forever."
|
| https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-will-we-need-an-
| annual-v...
|
| Sorry to break the news to you but it is unlikely the world
| will be what it was.
| jpollock wrote:
| It's an export market, and the vaccines they are using require
| 2 doses.
| 99_00 wrote:
| If you told me that in 2021 there would be a global genetic
| engineering campaign I would have said you were crazy. But here
| we are. What an amazing time.
| [deleted]
| earthboundkid wrote:
| "Global genetic engineering campaign" suggests that the genes
| of humans are being edited, but it's just the genes of the
| vaccine.
| mcavoybn wrote:
| Ahh yes, arguing about semantics.
| 99_00 wrote:
| The vaccine deliveries genetic material into the cells, and
| the cells create protein using this genetic material. How
| isn't this genetic engineering?
| tachyonbeam wrote:
| It is genetic material but it doesn't get into your DNA and
| stay there. Those vaccines inject RNA into the cell. The
| RNA gets expressed into proteins, and then it breaks down.
| When people talk about genetic engineering, they are
| typically talking about permanently changing the genome of
| some host organism, and possibly that of its descendants.
| 99_00 wrote:
| >When people talk about genetic engineering, they are
| typically talking about permanently changing the genome
| of some host organism, and possibly that of its
| descendants.
|
| Maybe I don't understand what is and isn't genetic
| engineering them. Still it is exciting and amazing thing
| that is happening.
| 99_00 wrote:
| Do you know how long it takes for the RNA to break down?
| Is this why they need two shots? I find it very hard to
| find answers to these kind of questions using search
| engines.
| maxerickson wrote:
| It doesn't take very long for the mRNA to break down, a
| few hours.
|
| It's perhaps overly simplified, but the first shot
| teaches the immune system what to look for and the second
| shot causes it to prepare a bunch of antibodies that will
| attack the virus (in some sense, the second shot is a
| reminder to keep defending against the virus, and the
| immune system does that by making antibodies).
| jjcon wrote:
| Is that very fundamentally different from like... eating
| food?
|
| 'The administration of beef to the stomach delivers genetic
| materials which are used to create energy to power the
| hemoglobin that carries oxygen in your blood.'
| 99_00 wrote:
| >Is that very fundamentally different from like... eating
| food?
|
| yes
| mahogany wrote:
| Unless I'm misunderstanding, the host's DNA is not changed
| during this process. When I think of genetic engineering, I
| think of "changing the host's genome". What does genetic
| engineering mean to you?
| 99_00 wrote:
| the deliberate modification of the characteristics of an
| organism by manipulating its genetic material.
| adrianmonk wrote:
| By this definition, the mRNA vaccines aren't genetic
| engineering. They don't manipulate the organism's genetic
| material. They borrow the machinery that the organism
| uses (downstream) when doing stuff with its genetic
| material.
|
| When I borrow your kitchen to cook my own recipe, I don't
| alter or even look at your cookbooks.
| 99_00 wrote:
| Isn't adding functional genetic material modifying?
| yellowapple wrote:
| Only in the same sense that navigating to
| https://news.ycombinator.com modifies your web browser's
| code.
|
| That is: no, not at all.
| 99_00 wrote:
| An analogy about computer code isn't a valid counter
| point.
| Redoubts wrote:
| Going to be doing some genetic engineering later tonight
| then.
| yellowapple wrote:
| Giggity.
| vmception wrote:
| The main distinction is that saying genetic engineering
| doesn't convey a shared concept.
|
| The point of language is to convey a shared concept and by
| saying genetic engineering nobody knows if you are a useful
| idiot for disinformation campaigns or just being unspecific
| in a way that nobody uses the term.
| 99_00 wrote:
| "Yes, some COVID vaccines use genetic engineering. Get
| over it." - Cornell Alliance for Science.
|
| https://allianceforscience.cornell.edu/blog/2020/12/yes-
| some...
| Redoubts wrote:
| Interesting. Looks like they're talking about the
| Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine which uses a reengineered
| virus as a delivery mechanism.
| 99_00 wrote:
| It also says the BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna vaccines put
| mRNA into the cell. But I don't think it say how it's
| done.
| vmception wrote:
| I'm glad you found an article that matches an obscure
| academic use of the term, retroactively, as you started
| this thread with a question.
| 99_00 wrote:
| That's not what happened.
|
| When I google "vaccine reprogram cells" it is on the
| first page. So, not sure how obscure it is.
| aww_dang wrote:
| As a layman who is generally skeptical of media promotions, 91%
| sounds wonderful. According to a recent study 100% of young
| teenagers found it effective. On face value the marketing sounds
| good.
|
| However, I wouldn't be interested personally. If after long term
| use these vaccines prove to be everything they are promised to be
| _and_ coronvirus remains an issue, I would gladly take it. As it
| is I am relatively healthy and not at risk.
|
| Reasonable people can disagree on the trustworthiness of media,
| government and technocrats.
|
| Ultimately, trust is earned. It is up to the individual to decide
| for himself. Attempts to scare people into vaccination or mandate
| use don't help the sale. Trust has been lost. Until this has been
| addressed, the optics surrounding the promotion of these vaccines
| can appear as hard sell, urgency, "act now while supplies last"
| scare techniques.
|
| I know many here are convinced. Hopefully this gives some insight
| into the skeptical view. Tinfoil or microchip implants don't play
| a role.
| knowaveragejoe wrote:
| By not taking the vaccine if available, you are effectively
| offering up your body as another potential host within which
| for the virus to mutate.
| titzer wrote:
| Not only that, as a (likely asymptomatic) carrier to help
| that chain of infections keep going and spreading.
| caeril wrote:
| I'm pro-vaccine, and I got my first dose nine days ago, but
| the media drumbeat that those who already had the infection
| should get vaccinated anyway, and continue to wear masks, is
| definitely cause for suspicion.
|
| It's a very strange position not predicated on the available
| science. People who are wary of the vaccine are likely
| reacting to the obvious anti-scientific message.
| zzzeek wrote:
| > However, I wouldn't be interested personally. If after long
| term use these vaccines prove to be everything they are
| promised to be _and_ coronvirus remains an issue, I would
| gladly take it. As it is I am relatively healthy and not at
| risk.
|
| if you get the coronavirus you put _other people_ at risk. Risk
| of death, in fact. shrugging off covid as not your problem is
| actually unethical.
| aww_dang wrote:
| >...you put other people at risk. Risk of death!
|
| Without knowing anything about my situation, you jump to the
| furthest extreme. Please understand how this speaks exactly
| to my point.
| ArgyleSound wrote:
| Unless you withdraw from society, it will unfortunately
| remain an issue
| matwood wrote:
| > you jump to the furthest extreme
|
| But that's exactly what not getting a vaccine for a very
| contagious disease does. In a population there will be
| people who can't take the vaccine for medical reasons or it
| was ineffective for some reason. But, if the whole
| population takes the vaccine that can, herd immunity is
| still achieved and those people end up protected. By not
| taking the vaccine when you medically can, you're putting
| others in the community at risk.
|
| Much like prior to covid, we were seeing an uptick in
| measles outbreaks because of antivaxers. Not only did the
| antivaxers put their kids at risk, but also kids in the
| groups I mentioned earlier.
|
| > https://www.cbsnews.com/news/measles-outbreak-anti-
| vaccinati...
| ceh123 wrote:
| I'd love to hear how this analysis does not apply to your
| situation.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Sure, but if you get in a car you put other people at risk.
| And CO2 emissions mean that if you breathe you put other
| people at risk. The question then becomes how much risk is
| intolerable and it isn't clear that a single person
| vaccinating and free-riding is actually providing some
| appreciable level of risk.
|
| Besides, there are ways of mitigating that risk. He could
| just prep at home and wait out the two weeks. It won't be the
| end of the world.
| rlpb wrote:
| If people collectively opt to take some risk, then
| ethically that's fine. Your car and CO2 emission examples
| both include reciprocation: everyone benefits and takes
| risk more or less equally. The problem comes when you
| participate in putting others at risk when they don't want
| to reciprocate.
|
| For example, what if 90% of people on a flight would prefer
| for the 10% of unvaccinated-by-choice people not to be
| present on the flight at all? They would presumably be fine
| if the airline put on special "unvaccinated" flights for
| unvaccinated-by-choice people - except that probably
| wouldn't be viable as a business model. Since there isn't
| reciprocation, why should the vaccinated people be forced
| to be put at risk by you?
|
| What if, instead of flights, we were talking about access
| to your local grocery store?
| titzer wrote:
| > Sure, but if you get in a car you put other people at
| risk.
|
| Last I checked, car wrecks aren't self-replicating,
| mutating, exponential-growth deadly diseases.
| renewiltord wrote:
| And so? HIV/AIDS is a self-replicating, mutating,
| exponential-growth deadly disease and there is a non-zero
| probability that you carry the virus right now. But I'm
| not going to ask you to stop having sex.
|
| It still boils down to total risk vs threshold. After
| all, breathing exposes us to atmospheric-CO2-driven
| climate change risk which has a small probability of
| being an extinction-level event.
| titzer wrote:
| You can't give AIDs to people by being in the same room
| with them.
|
| Stop trying to reason using bad analogies. You keep
| coming to bad conclusions.
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| I wish it was easier to tell which vaccine was the better one to
| take. I know the "correct" answer is "whichever one is available
| to you", but let's pretend we're free-agent adults here and put
| the infantile answers aside for a moment.
|
| There seems to be a very strong urge not to compare any of them
| as _better_ , which puts users in a position of information
| asymmetry where they might not make the best health choices for
| themselves.
|
| Is there any realistic way to compare which of the vaccine
| selections available in the USA is better given certain
| conditions? For example, if someone has a history of reacting to
| vaccines (GBS), is the attenuated adenovirus from J&J a better
| choice compared to the mRNA alternatives?
| jmull wrote:
| (Note: this is from a US perspective, so I'm leaving AZ, and
| other vaccines that don't have EUA here out of it.)
|
| Your questions would need to be answered by scientific medical
| research... which hasn't been done.
|
| The "strong urge not to compare any of them" is good because
| there isn't a good basis for doing sound comparisons.
|
| Also, even if you somehow knew, for example, that Pfizer was X%
| more effective or X% safer for you than J&J, but J&J was
| available now while Pfizer would be available in 4 weeks, you
| would still need to add the risk of four additional weeks of
| unprotected exposure to the equation for Pfizer to understand
| the relative risks.
|
| Putting it together: (A) there isn't a sound way to compare the
| relative efficacy of J&J, Pfizer, and Moderna (especially on an
| individual basis) (B) waiting _will_ increase your risk of
| serious problems from covid means "whichever one is available
| to you" _is_ the right answer (not an "infantile" one --
| careful there; you're throwing around a pejoritive, but I'm
| pretty sure you're the one who has a superficial grasp of the
| situation.)
|
| As more data is collected it may be possible to break things
| down, e.g., by age group or region (if a particular variant is
| dominant in a region a particular vaccine is especially
| effective against that variant), but we'll have to see.
| eCa wrote:
| > I know the "correct" answer is "whichever one is available to
| you", but let's pretend we're free-agent adults here and put
| the infantile answers aside for a moment.
|
| The way this sentence is worded negatively affects the way the
| rest of your comment is read. You would have created a better
| foundation for discussion (I believe/hope) if you had removed
| all the snark:
|
| "I know the answer is 'whichever one is available to you', but
| lets put that aside for a moment."
| y-c-o-m-b wrote:
| I disagree. I think it's a good way to illustrate the
| bullshit that needs to be curated from some of the armchair
| expert answers here on a constant basis.
|
| People can grow thicker skin and not let a slighly snarky
| argument undermine a valid discussion. This isn't reddit,
| there's no reason for the hivemind mentality here. I come
| here to see discussions around the substance of the content
| and not ridiculous semantic disputes or someone flexing their
| "iamverysmart" muscle
| newacct583 wrote:
| > There seems to be a very strong urge not to compare any of
| them as better, which puts users in a position of information
| asymmetry where they might not make the best health choices for
| themselves.
|
| This is a bad analysis. Disease management is simply not a case
| where "best health choices for themselves" has any meaning
| whatsoever. The best choice, the UNAMBIGUOUSLY best choice, for
| everyone, everywhere, is to get the vaccine that is available
| first as soon as you possibly can. Period. That's the "best"
| choice.
|
| Imagining that you can do better individually relies on an
| intuition that everyone else will be following the rules while
| you cheat. And that's why no one wants to give you answers as
| to which the "best" vaccine is.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| > Is there any realistic way to compare which of the vaccine
| selections available in the USA is better given certain
| conditions?
|
| No. Because the trails were structured differently and measured
| different things and there is little interest in doing studies
| comparing the options rather than just administering them to as
| many people as possible.
| bgentry wrote:
| It's unfortunate that you've been downvoted as this is a
| worthwhile discussion to have.
|
| I think the short answer is that we simply don't know yet which
| one is "better", especially since there are so many dimensions
| for what can make one vaccine better than the others:
|
| - dosing schedule
|
| - logistical constraints like refrigeration, shelf life
|
| - rate of severe side effects (like allergic reactions)
|
| - rate of mild side effects (like the severe cold symptoms I
| got from the J&J shot)
|
| - duration of immunity
|
| - effectiveness against emerging variants
|
| - effectiveness at preventing hospitalization vs severe disease
| vs transmission vs infection altogether
|
| We just don't have data to fairly compare the vaccines on all
| these dimensions.
|
| The answer from a public health perspective is to get as many
| shots in as many arms as fast as possible, as long as they have
| low rates of severe side effects and are reasonably effective.
| However I agree that it sows distrust to not be honest &
| upfront about the fact that it's highly unlikely that all
| vaccines are actually equal, and that we simply don't have the
| data to know exactly how they differ. That could easily be
| followed up with a "once we figure out which ones are actually
| better we'll give additional vaccines and/or booster shots to
| those that drew the short straw".
|
| Pretending they are all equal is only going to further erode
| trust when we inevitably figure out how they're not actually
| equal.
| sharkweek wrote:
| I'm not going to go deep on this right now because I don't
| have the emotional will to type out the entire story but my
| in-laws have kinda fallen off the "trust healthcare
| professionals" boat over the last couple of years.
|
| This pandemic has really shined a light on their lack of
| trust in institutions, and while they both got the J&J vax,
| they are proactively sending me and my partner literature
| about why mRNA is dangerous / should be avoided / how it's
| all a big plot to... X/Y/Z.
|
| They're not crazy, I swear. In fact if you sat and had a
| conversation with either of them, you'd think they were some
| intelligent / kind people. But for some reason, I have to
| spend way more time than I care to combating misinformation
| they send us to the point where we had a harsh talk recently
| that we need them to stop bringing it up or we'll cut off
| communication for a bit.
|
| If I had to take a guess... they got to retirement with too
| much free time on their hands, so they spend all day on their
| phones reading crap they see on the internet. They might have
| had their initial biases, but when they see a headline that
| strengthens the bias they can't get enough.
| irq wrote:
| > They're not crazy, I swear
|
| > I have to spend way more time than I care to combating
| misinformation
|
| I find these statements at odds with each other. FWIW, my
| in laws and my extended family all believe in various
| vaccine conspiracy theories and that makes them all
| literally, truly crazy.
| sharkweek wrote:
| Yeah, you're probably right, but it's like deep down I
| think they're just gullible. I think if I really pushed
| hard on correcting this thinking (I honestly don't have
| it in me right now), we'd probably get somewhere back to
| normal.
| irq wrote:
| Anecdata but, I have not witnessed this happening or even
| heard of this ever happening. Once people accept a kernel
| of bullshit into their knowledge map, they've lost the
| ability to separate fact from fiction from uncomfortable
| truths, and then they start adding more and more bs to
| their knowledge base at an accelerating pace. It's quite
| a lot like cancer, really, and there are doctors that can
| help with this, but of course these people don't
| typically trust doctors. So don't feel bad if you don't
| have it in you, chances are it would make no difference
| except potentially destroying your relationship with
| them.
| dougmwne wrote:
| The Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines seem to have strong
| evidence of being more protective than other options. The
| AstraZeneca vaccine has some early evidence of not being
| protective against the South African variant and has some minor
| safety concerns around extremely rare blood clotting. As far as
| I have heard anecdotally, the mRNA vaccines seem to have
| stronger flu-like symptoms, especially for the second dose.
|
| If you are in the USA you should be able to easily choose
| between the three approved vaccines, so it is relevant to
| gather good information, just as you would with any medical
| decision.
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| Pfizer, Moderna, and J&J used a prefusion-stabilized version
| of the spike protein; AZ used the wild spike protein. The
| former should prove more effective against variants as a
| result.
|
| https://cen.acs.org/pharmaceuticals/vaccines/tiny-tweak-
| behi...
| balls187 wrote:
| "whichever one is available to you" is not an infantile answer.
|
| It's a rational answer.
|
| Humans are notoriously irrational in their decision making, and
| focusing on which is better in order to make the _best_ health
| decision may lead to making a decision that is far worse.
| asveikau wrote:
| I think it's especially true because the most important
| aspect of vaccination is not really protection of the
| individual, even if it does accomplish that. It's getting as
| many people as possible vaccinated so that society as a whole
| has a good handle on the disease.
|
| If the 90% effective one is supply constrained and has this
| complicated 2 dose thing, and the 60-some % is simple and
| available, you're still doing your part to make a serious
| dent in the spread of the disease overall. And if the death
| rate of covid is some low number x, making it 0.3x is a
| pretty good deal.
| y-c-o-m-b wrote:
| If someone is asking for more information and is willing to
| learn the details, it's counter-productive to give them a
| canned answer like "whichever one is available to you".
| You're encouraging ignorance, not being "rational" as you put
| it. Lack of transparency is what sows the distrust in the
| first place. Acting like an elitist by withholding the
| information because "you're not smart enough to make this
| decision" is what makes the approach so infantile.
| sectumsempra wrote:
| >Acting like an elitist by withholding the information
| because "you're not smart enough to make this decision" is
| what makes the approach so infantile.
|
| counterpoint: if a person believes themselves to be "smart
| enough to make this decision", they should also be smart
| enough to read the research and make that conclusion for
| themselves which one is better for their specific
| situation, no?
|
| AFAIK, the research is publically available, so it's not a
| problem of a lack of information, rather it's a lack of
| anyone with significant enough credentials willing to speak
| up and endorse a particular solution over the others.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| It's a difficult question. You don't want to infantilize
| people, and there does seem to be a trend towards
| manipulating the informational landscape in order to create
| better outcomes in people.
|
| At the same time, this is a country where 45% of people
| believe ghosts are real and 35% have been in contact with
| someone after the've died. You absolutely do not want
| people at the margin holding out for a longer time to get
| the vaccine they think is best when they could have been
| vaccinated a month ago.
| [deleted]
| y-c-o-m-b wrote:
| You make a valid statement, but it doesn't appear to
| valid in this case. I don't think the demographics of
| this platform fall under that umbrella. If someone on
| here is asking for more information and articulating
| their reasons for it well, there's no reason to hide it.
| There's also an equal risk that if people don't know
| enough about the vaccines, they won't get any of them at
| all let alone deciding which to get. Seldom is it that I
| believe withholding information will have a better effect
| than being adequately transparent; keyword here being
| _adequate_ because you still need to explain and
| emphasize strongly in plain English why it would be
| detrimental to wait it out.
|
| Treating people like idiots yields worse results than
| making them believe they're intelligent (be it true or
| not). You can look at our political landscape for
| evidence of that. That's just my opinion of course.
| toofy wrote:
| > I don't think the demographics of this platform fall
| under that umbrella. If someone on here is asking for
| more information and articulating their reasons for it
| well, there's no reason to hide it.
|
| The data is available. No one is hiding it. No one is
| treating people like idiots. Those with expertise in
| pandemics may not consider every single internet comment
| made by every single internet random, but honestly, it
| would be ridiculous to think every internet random's
| comment should have the same weight as those with
| expertise.
|
| The data is not hidden, we're all free to analyze it.
| balls187 wrote:
| No one is encouraging ignorance. Public health officials
| are encouraging a policy that will best resolve the current
| situation.
|
| All the vaccine information that is available is fully
| available, and the only decision that is available is:
|
| Get the vaccine, or don't get the vaccine. Picking which
| vaccine is not an option at this time.
| dahfizz wrote:
| I hate this toxic anti-thinking attitude.
|
| You may think people should get whatever vaccine is available
| to them. That is fine. But to actively discourage discussion
| and information comparing the vaccines is downright
| Orwellian.
| balls187 wrote:
| That clearly was not what my comment conveyed. The OP's
| desire to be able to more easily get information to compare
| was not under question.
|
| It's Loserthink to believe every person has the medical
| background and qualified to weigh the medical information
| on vaccines to make an informed decision to wait for their
| choice of vaccines.
| cwhiz wrote:
| >Humans are notoriously irrational in their decision making,
| and focusing on which is better in order to make the best
| health decision may lead to making a decision that is far
| worse.
|
| This doesn't matter on an individual level. There are public
| health reasons to try and get as many people as vaccinated as
| possible, no matter the vaccine. But aggregate math means
| little to the individual person. The difference between. 70%
| and 90% is fairly profound, profound enough to weigh against
| individual people making a decision on which vaccine to get.
|
| It's not irrational at all for an individual to prefer the
| vaccine with the highest efficacy. It's hubris, or insanity,
| on the part of public health officials to expect an entire
| nation of people to put individualism aside for the sake of
| greater good.
| balls187 wrote:
| > It's not irrational at all for an individual to prefer
| the vaccine with the highest efficacy.
|
| Clearly I disagree with the rationality--you're comparing
| the efficacy rates of being vaccinated among Moderna,
| Pfizer, or J&J. That's irrational--instead a person should
| compare the efficacy rate of being vaccinated by any of the
| available vaccines vs the efficacy rate of not being
| vaccinated due to holding out for personal preference of a
| vaccine.
| paconbork wrote:
| If you're eligible now, it will probably cost you 2-3
| weeks at most to choose the one you want (it only cost me
| a day to pick pfizer though). It will likely be a long
| time before you're able to get a different shot, so
| picking one that has more evidence for covering
| mutations, lasting longer, and being more effective in
| real world scenarios may well be the rational choice.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > It's hubris, or insanity, on the part of public health
| officials to expect an entire nation of people to put
| individualism aside for the sake of greater good.
|
| It is absolutely not hubris to encourage people to take the
| vaccine available to them now, rather than wait a month for
| the one with 90%.
|
| It's a prisoners dilemna and the government _should_
| encourage people to choose the cooperate approach by
| imposing incentives and manipulating the informational
| landscape.
|
| It's the same reason why I support government recycling
| initiatives or the general idea of taxation.
| smnrchrds wrote:
| Not the OP, but let's rephrase: if you go to the clinic to
| get the shot and they tell you they have so many doses of all
| vaccines available that it's up to you to choose which one to
| take, and either way, you are going to get the shot today,
| which one should you choose? And how much does this choice
| matter in your expected health outcomes?
| josefresco wrote:
| I would ask the doctor and not trust my ignorance (as a
| non-medical professional) to provide me the answer.
| Everything being equal? I'm taking the shot that doesn't
| require me to come back for a second.
| smnrchrds wrote:
| And what would the doctor say? And please don't reply
| "whatever the correct answer is", because then I will
| have to ask "what is the correct answer" and we end up in
| an infinite loop.
| 35fbe7d3d5b9 wrote:
| The guidance provided so far is that all three shots are
| equally effective. That's likely what the doctor would
| say.
|
| From my own, semi-informed research:
|
| * The effectiveness of J&J is likely under-reported
| because it was tested during a significant outbreak.
|
| * Moderna seems to have slightly higher reports of side
| effects compared to Pfizer, though unlikely to be
| statistically significant.
|
| * I am a young, healthy person.
|
| With that calculus:
|
| 1) I'd pick whichever was available to me the fastest. In
| my area immunizations are by appointment and segmented by
| vaccine. I'd rather have Moderna tomorrow than wait a
| week for an appointment for another to open up.
|
| 1.a) In the unlikely case that I had a choice between the
| shots, I'd select J&J, as it has been shown to be safe
| and effective with one shot. This simplifies my life.
|
| In reality, scheduling a vaccine seems to be the hardest.
| No one of the ~10 or so I've talked to who have had their
| first shot between January and early March have had the
| ability to chose. When I received my first dose of Pfizer
| last month I didn't have a choice of options; I was on
| four or five call lists and took the one that offered me
| an appointment. My wife received Moderna because her work
| coordinated mass vaccinations and that's what they
| offered. A coworker received J&J because there were
| leftover doses that needed to be administered.
|
| Perhaps that's changed, but as many states open up to 16+
| I suspect it'll remain the biggest challenge.
| casefields wrote:
| Using the words _equally effective_ is a lie though. An
| uncharitable take being government propaganda being
| repeated because bureaucrats /politicians see it as a
| noble lie. If these studies only produced a pass/fail
| then that would be acceptable, but we all know that's not
| how studies are done.
| balls187 wrote:
| Which is a fair question, and a fair way to raise it.
|
| Calling the standard answer infantile was where I took
| issue.
|
| Assuming your question wasn't rhetorical--in the
| hypothetical scenario you described based on today's info,
| I would opt for J&J,
|
| 1) as a matter of convenience
|
| 2) The technology behind J&J is more mature
| neither_color wrote:
| J&J, one and done. In any future scenario where the
| vaccinated have privilege over the non-vaccinated(as has
| been proposed with vaccine passports), then J&J is the
| better choice. 1.5 months to freedom vs 15 days. People can
| say out loud otherwise because it's not the right thing to
| say, but deep down J&J offers the best incentive for a non-
| vulnerable risk-group member. "Whichever one is available
| to you" is a platitude that assumes all our motivations for
| getting it are the same. You're doing it out of concern for
| X, I'm doing it because chances are I'll have to, etc.
| ghaff wrote:
| That assumes that, at this point in time, having a
| "vaccine passport" confers some concrete benefit. It's
| also more like 2 weeks vs. 5 weeks. The other factor is
| if you end up getting a vaccine somewhere 2 hours away or
| something like that. Which is a reasonable consideration
| but fairly minor in the scheme of things.
| [deleted]
| bgentry wrote:
| Data from the study released this week (of frontline
| healthcare workers vaccinated in December) showed that
| the mRNA shots had a high efficacy just two weeks after
| the first dose, likely higher than the efficacy of the
| J&J shot.
|
| Just a single data point from one study, but I raise it
| only to point out that it may in fact not be the case
| that the J&J shot provides better immunity vs two weeks
| after the first mRNA dose.
| paconbork wrote:
| If your goal is just to get a vaccine passport then J&J
| will still be the better option until regulators
| acknowledge that one shot of mRNA is about as good
|
| _shrug_
| balls187 wrote:
| There is new data showing the efficacy for Pfizer is
| better for children age 12 and up.
|
| The point being; it's way too early to know which is
| better and why, and to base a decision on that data.
| libraryatnight wrote:
| No, it's a non-answer. If someone asked the question, they
| deserve a real answer. That's a great PR answer for
| advertising the importance of the vaccine, it's not an answer
| to a pointed and specific question from an educated person
| with access to either vaccine.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > access to either vaccine.
|
| Is this your situation? I hadn't heard of this happening
| for anyone.
| paconbork wrote:
| Indiana here, I can get Moderna at most sites nearby,
| Pfizer at Walgreens/CVS, or J&J by driving to Indy
| dsissitka wrote:
| In Florida you can book an appointment at Publix on
| Monday or Friday if you want Moderna or Wednesday if you
| want Johnson & Johnson:
|
| https://www.publix.com/covid-vaccine/florida
| libraryatnight wrote:
| Yes, I can get J&J from places like Costco or the County
| sites, I can get Moderna and Pfizer from the state sites.
| balls187 wrote:
| And which did you choose and why?
|
| Or did you ask, and were told who cares, just get it.
| [deleted]
| hannob wrote:
| It seems a lot of people don't really want to discuss this, but
| I think the facts are relatively clear: The mRNA vaccines have
| an effectiveness above 90% and none of the others comes close
| to that. Biontech and Moderna are so close to each other that
| there's probably no argument for either of those.
|
| I'd take any approved vaccine without hesitation if it'd be
| offered to me right now. But if I am free to choose: It'd be
| Biontech or Moderna.
| babelfish wrote:
| I received Pfizer, but I would also probably choose Moderna
| if I had the choice. IIRC a Pfizer shot has 30ml of mRNA and
| Moderna has 100ml of mRNA. I know that the amount of mRNA
| injected shouldn't make a difference so long as your body
| learns the proper immune response, but my monkey brain thinks
| "more = better".
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Wait, I thought producing just a few grams of mRNA is very
| hard and requires huge amounts of resources. Surely there
| isn't that much mRNA in every vaccine? Does that include
| the nano lipids?
| mgerullis wrote:
| Wouldn't less of the same thing with an almost identical
| outcome be better? I mean, it's a liquid being shot into
| your arm, not chocolate.
| 0xcafecafe wrote:
| I chose to get Pfizer for the exact same reason. If it was
| able to get the same effectiveness as Moderna with lesser
| mRNA it seemed to be an efficient choice (as a programmer
| :))
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I'd choose Pfizer because AFAIK this is the first vaccine
| Moderna has ever made. At least Pfizer has some history,
| even if both are using a new technology. Also, anecdotally,
| the Moderna shot seems to cause more side effects.
|
| But I wasn't given a choice, and I'd happily get J&J if it
| was "this or nothin." So I ended up with Pfizer anyway.
| cyberlurker wrote:
| Effectiveness doesn't really mean much between these
| vaccines. Please watch this video:
| https://youtu.be/K3odScka55A
|
| From what we know so far, any of the approved vaccines are
| excellent and no one knows for sure if one is better than the
| other. The only logical thing to do is get what is offered to
| you as soon as possible.
| umeshunni wrote:
| That video is bullshit (and Vox is a publication that in
| Feb 2020 was pushing the "just a flu" narrative).
|
| The effectiveness is measured as 1-(Nnotinfected /
| (Ninfected + Nnotinfected)).
|
| The video claims that when the study was done during the
| surge or in "other countries", the effectiveness might be
| different because Ninfected is higher, which makes no sense
| at all, since the probability of the vaccine protecting you
| shouldn't change based on how the virus is spreading in the
| general population. For a set of 100 placebo and 100
| vaccinated, even if all 100 are infected, the vaccinated
| segment should be as protected as possible. 95% efficacy
| means only 5 in the vaccinated are infected. 66% efficacy
| means 50 in the vaccinated are infected.
| tzs wrote:
| That's not what they are claiming. They are claiming that
| the chance that a vaccinated person will get the disease
| is higher if that person is subject to more exposure
| events. What they say about trials during surges then
| follows from that.
|
| For the part about other countries, what they are saying
| is that there were more infectious strains circulating in
| those countries during the trial, so you can't compare to
| trials done before those strains were circulating.
| ardit33 wrote:
| bro, you are missing out the news and the point of this
| whole post, pfizer is 90% effective against all current
| strans overral, even the nasty ones
|
| Unless you are claiming that right now there are less
| strains around, compared to october-novemeber (when the
| J&J data was compiled)
|
| This news just solidifies the argument that the mRna
| vaccines are much better. Suggesting otherwise is just
| either ignorance, or willful lie (let other take it, so i
| have more for me)
| timr wrote:
| > It seems a lot of people don't really want to discuss this,
| but I think the facts are relatively clear: The mRNA vaccines
| have an effectiveness above 90% and none of the others comes
| close to that. Biontech and Moderna are so close to each
| other that there's probably no argument for either of those.
|
| There are error bars on those point estimates, and they're
| wide, because the trials didn't have a huge number of
| hospitalizations or deaths. You also can't compare them
| across trials, because they were tested on different
| populations, at different times, under different conditions
| (i.e. dominant variants, but also temperature, disease
| prevlance, etc.)
|
| Based on everything I've seen so far, the approved vaccines
| are all essentially statistically indistinguishable, with the
| caveat that the J&J vaccine is one dose, the mRNA vaccines
| are two, and the AZ trial was kind of a mess. But the choice
| of dosing strategy was always somewhat arbitrary, based on
| the inherent sloppiness of a combined phase 1/2 trial. Had
| Pfizer and Moderna decided to go with a one-shot regimen, the
| trial would have reported a very similar effectiveness
| profile to J&J.
|
| I strongly suspect we'll see better data on all three that
| will put them within a margin of error of each other, and
| suggest better dosing strategies.
| paconbork wrote:
| I opted for pfizer just because they let you get the second
| shot a week earlier
| da_big_ghey wrote:
| I have been seeing legitimate concern with the response of "i
| want the better one" or "i want the quicker one" because
| these are being each obstacle to quick spread of vaccine. But
| attempting for to say only "just as good" or "no difference"
| is only creating more mistrust between public with agencies
| that already having great mistrust from public.
| maxerickson wrote:
| I had a preference for the mRNA vaccines because the immunity
| appears to build faster.
|
| It's not enough of a difference to wait for one of the others,
| but it would drive my choice if I had an option.
|
| When I made my appointment, the clerk warned me that they only
| had 2 dose vaccines, apparently enough people wanted the 1 dose
| that it was worth mentioning it.
|
| So it can be pretty situational which one is 'better'.
| Taek wrote:
| I've been trying to follow along and I'm not super confident in
| my answer, but Pfizer and Moderna both seem to be doing
| incredibly well, either one is a safe choice as "this is the
| best I can do for myself"
|
| AstraZeneca seems to be lagging behind, and what little data
| I've seen on J&J seems to suggest that it's better than
| AstraZeneca but still not as effective as Pfizer or Moderna.
| vmception wrote:
| Bloomberg has really good analysis in their vaccine tracker.
| Especially all the data about vaccines not offered in the west
| (for all vaccines they have a timeline of testing, use, and
| also temperature, and a description of their type and the
| organizations involved instead of just "China" "Russia" while
| saying "Oxford" "Pzifer" for others).
|
| Worth paying for a subscription during this pandemic.
|
| For me, the list in order of preference is:
|
| Pzifer
|
| Moderna
|
| Sputnik V
|
| Sinopharm
|
| JnJ (steep bell curve to get to this point)
|
| I think its helped me, who was already sold on the mRNA ones.
| But most important to me is how it undermines most of the
| "plandemic" theories, not that they were ever convincing, only
| how they never factored in geopolitical realities.
| pwarner wrote:
| "whichever one is available to you" is still the right answer
| since as some other comments suggest there isn't enough data,
| yet. For sure one is likely better than the others. If we had
| the data we'd make the choice, but it seems it's not possible
| to know yet. The better one may be the one that protects
| against the variant that is forming via mutation right now in
| some person in Iowa. But yeah, we don't know yet. So you can
| wait until we know more, for sure eventually in retrospect we
| may see there is a clear vaccine winner. But really today just
| get one, or wait and see which one is the winner, with the
| risks associated with waiting. I think that's the free-agent
| adult pants decision.
|
| Also, let's say you get vaccine A today. And in 6 months, it
| turns out you really wanted vaccine B since it's way more
| effective it turns out. Why can't you just get vaccine B in 6
| months? I imagine if vaccine B is the clear winner, they are
| going to crank up production on that one as much as they can?
| N_A_T_E wrote:
| Its my understanding that the mRNA (pfizer and moderna) had
| better efficacy numbers from the phase 3 trials than J&J. 94%
| vs 72% when comparing similar phase 3 trials with >30k
| participants.
|
| I am interested to see if there is any difference in how long
| the protection lasts for. Hopefully we will get that knowledge
| as the long term studies continue.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/health/pfizer-biont...
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/27/health/covid-vaccine-john...
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/27/health/covid-vaccine-john...
|
| Disclaimer: I worked on the tech side of the moderna trial so
| I'm biased.
| bluGill wrote:
| There is one real consideration that most of forgotten about:
| what is your personal allergy situation. For a few people the
| wrong vaccine is potentially much worse, but what vaccine is
| wrong is different for each person.
| smnrchrds wrote:
| I think that's what the challenge study was supposed to do, but
| it didn't go ahead.
| y-c-o-m-b wrote:
| This article has a chart you can refer to:
| https://www.businessinsider.com/covid-19-vaccines-efficacy-v...
|
| It includes data on the variants and how the differing vaccines
| are impacted by those variants. Disclaimer: this is just
| preliminary data and obviously needs way more research.
|
| I've also been following the Israeli studies for Pfizer and
| that's what lead me to choosing the Pfizer vaccine over the
| Moderna one.
|
| One follow-up question I had is this: is it dangerous to have
| more than one type of vaccine? Provided it's spaced out long
| enough (2-6 weeks apart) and there's an abundance in supply of
| course.
| smiley1437 wrote:
| For covid vaccines, there is currently a trial in the UK
| studying the outcomes on alternating doses of different
| vaccines. A positive outcome would be significantly increase
| flexibility in scheduling second shots.
|
| From what I understand, mixing vaccines is not a new strategy
| for vaccinations in general (it's called heterologous prime-
| boost) and can provide enhanced immunity.
|
| https://www.advisory.com/daily-
| briefing/2021/04/01/vaccine-m...
| wycy wrote:
| Moderna and Pfizer seem to be nearly bit-for-bit identical at
| the mRNA level, though Moderna seems to have stabilized the
| mRNA better to be viable at higher temperatures.
|
| J&J appears to be slightly less effective with its one dose,
| but would probably be just as effective as Moderna and Pfizer
| (if not more) if a second dose were given. J&J simply doesn't
| _need_ the second dose because 75+% is still considered
| extremely good.
|
| Even though J&J isn't considered one of the "mRNA vaccines", it
| still functions similarly to the mRNA vaccines. Their
| adenovirus carries the mRNA, allowing it to be remain stable in
| your body for longer, building strong immunity from 1 dose.
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| A single dose of Moderna or Pfizer is 80% effective:
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/29/cdc-study-shows-single-
| dose-...
| wycy wrote:
| This appears to be a very new finding. I seem to remember
| earlier studies suggesting single doses of Moderna/Pfizer
| were between ~53-70% effective. The number 53 sticks out in
| my memory for some reason. Could be misremembering though.
|
| Edit: Looks like the earlier results I was thinking of say
| 52% effectiveness from 1 dose, _but_ that included people
| who were infected very shortly after the first dose.
|
| > Using the data from the published study of the Pfizer
| vaccine, Public Health England determined that vaccine
| efficacy was 89% for 15-21 days after dose 1 - and before
| dose 2 on day 21. The range was between 52% and 97%.
|
| Source: https://globalbiodefense.com/2021/03/20/how-
| effective-is-the...
| _delirium wrote:
| I'm not sure there's enough data at the moment to give an
| answer. Each of the approved vaccines had a double-blind
| placebo-controlled study run, but on different timelines and in
| different locations, so it's hard to conclude much from small
| differences between the reported numbers.
| ehsankia wrote:
| Right, unless you do a full trial with all vaccines side by
| side with similar sample/timeline, it's not really possible
| to tell. Also, the error bar on these effectiveness numbers
| are realistically probably +/- 5% or more, so it's not like a
| 76% is definitely worse than the 80%.
|
| The dosage also matters. J&J for example decided to study one
| dose first, but are now doing a phase trial to see how good
| the immunity is for a 2-dose program. So potentially if you
| get a second dose (maybe down the line), you will also get a
| stronger immunity closer to the other 2 dose vaccines.
| hannob wrote:
| > Also, the error bar on these effectiveness numbers are
| realistically probably +/- 5% or more, so it's not like a
| 76% is definitely worse than the 80%.
|
| But we're talking 91% vs. 76%.
| ehsankia wrote:
| Right, but as the comment above was pointing out, there
| are many other factors.
|
| Pfizer/Moderena both did their trial from July-November,
| whereas J&J did their phase 3 from Sept-January. Looking
| at the COVID case graph [0], you can see J&J was tested
| at the peak. Not only that, J&J was party tested in the
| UK and South Africa, when the two new variants were
| starting to take over.
|
| [0] https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2021/02/15/seamus-
| coronavir...
| bgentry wrote:
| Just this week we also saw data from Pfizer & Moderna
| mRNA vaccine rollouts to frontline healthcare workers in
| December (at a time of peak infection and emerging
| variants) that touted 80% effectiveness after a single
| dose, 90% after two doses. I'm struggling to find a
| reason not to interpret that as further evidence that the
| mRNA vaccines are in fact more effective than the J&J
| shot.
|
| Medical workers take precautions better than the general
| public, maybe? But they're also far more exposed.
| ehsankia wrote:
| 80% with one dose seems right in line with 75% with one
| dose of J&J (in the US). For what it's worth, J&J is also
| now doing a phase trial of two doses, and I expect that
| to be around 90% too.
|
| So yes, once you take into account the +/- 5% error, they
| seem to be pretty much equal.
| itake wrote:
| You can't compare the 91% vs 76% numbers because the 91%
| test was performed in the late summer last year between
| virus waves and in a location with an less-contagious
| form of the virus.
|
| Whereas the JJ virus was tested during the fall 2nd-wave
| in South Africa when there was a lot of cases and more
| cases of a higher infection strain.
|
| The only fair comparison would be if all of the testing
| was done at the same time in the same geographic
| location.
|
| source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3odScka55A&featu
| re=youtu.be
| boc wrote:
| There was a new, recent study that showed that the mRNA
| vaccines were still 90% effective among healthcare
| workers during the big surge in December/January period
| when the variants were certainly present.[1] This doesn't
| mean the J&J vaccine is bad by any means, but it does
| show how incredible the new mRNA vaccines have performed.
|
| [1] https://www.statnews.com/2021/03/29/real-world-study-
| by-cdc-...
| ehsankia wrote:
| From that same study:
|
| > The study suggested that even the first dose of vaccine
| was 80% effective at preventing infection
|
| Which is within the error bar of J&J's one dose result in
| the US (75%). We will have to see the results of the
| 2-dose J&J trial coming out soon, but I expect that to be
| around 90% too.
|
| It's also worth noting that some places in the world (UK,
| Canada), have been using 1-dose pfizer regimen to get the
| most out of their short supply, with possible 2nd shot
| 3-4 months down the line. Similarly, we could see a
| delayed J&J booster being given to increase immunity to
| matching 90%.
| bluGill wrote:
| No, the 91% from Pfizer is just announced and covers
| roughtly 6 months, including up until at least the middle
| of march, at which time the variants were circulating.
| Notably this covers the entire time of the J&J trials.
|
| Of course they used somewhat different geographical
| regions so you can't compare them, but still the 91% does
| include variants.
| beeforpork wrote:
| Funny how US media write 'Pfizer' and EU media write 'Biontech'.
| Patriotism, probably. Or for Reuters, maybe Brexit!? What's it
| usually called in Asian, South American, or African media?
|
| 'Pfizer/Biontech' or 'Biontech/Pfizer' is just too long!
| cblconfederate wrote:
| We could have called them the Boris, Merkel, and Trump vaccines
| ...
| woutr_be wrote:
| The Hong Kong government here usually uses its brand name
| "Comirnaty". The news uses every variation "Pfizer-BioNTech",
| "BioNTech", "Pfizer", or often just "the German made jab".
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| So can you walk in and say "give it to me German style" ?
| EdwinLarkin wrote:
| Czechoslovakias were often referred to as "Czechs". Go figure.
| yellowapple wrote:
| I always wondered: after the Czechs and Slovaks split up,
| what ever happened to the O's?
| 74d-fe6-2c6 wrote:
| Referring to "that" vaccine with Pfizer instead of Biontech is
| like saying that "Yellow Submarine" is from EMI instead of the
| Beatles because EMI produced the LPs.
| jjcon wrote:
| That's why both companies are equally sharing both the costs
| and the profits?
| jakub_jo wrote:
| The vaccine was developed by BioNtech. Not by Pfizer. You
| also have an Apple AX in your iPhone. Not a TSMC chip,
| right?
| jjcon wrote:
| Efficacious vaccine candidates are high in supply
| (moderna, Pfizer, j&j, AstraZeneca etc etc) - massive
| manufacturing capacity, testing and clinical trial
| ability however is not. If Pfizer hadn't partnered with
| biontech they wouldn't have idle manufacturing, they
| would have partnered with another lab to create something
| else.
|
| Apple is a customer of TSMC - they pay for fab time to
| create a specific component they need for their devices.
| Pfizer and biontech however are splitting the development
| costs and sharing the profits. That is a very different
| relationship.
| jakub_jo wrote:
| So if they're sharing everything, why is not BioNtech
| mentioned in the submission's title?
|
| This America first thing is becoming really annoying for
| the rest of the world. Germany and the EU funded much of
| the vaccine's development. It's the EU who is supplying
| the world with vaccines. The US only stand out by
| blocking exports.
| jjcon wrote:
| It's called the 'Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine' in virtually
| every language and country (see Wikipedia pages per language).
| Most people outside of Germany just say Pfizer vaccine because
| it's a lot shorter and has some preexisting name recognition.
|
| I haven't even heard people discuss the 'where' when getting
| the vaccine they just want one of the more effective vaccines
| (be it Moderna or Pfizer- Johnson and Johnson and AstraZeneca
| are possibly just as effective but that's hard to communicate
| and still being studied).
|
| I think either way is probably fine, both companies are sharing
| the costs and profits equally.
| ruph123 wrote:
| Credit where credit is due. It was developed by BioNtech and
| Pfizer helped with trial and distribution. Calling it Pfizer
| vaccine because it is American or just because it is bigger
| is such a shame. Give credit to the small company that
| developed it no matter what country it is from. If the
| company was from the US, there would've been hundreds of
| fluff pieces and heroism on display writing up the company
| and the name would be known long and wide.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Why? Anyone who would be investing in companies would know
| it's Biontech if they did 5 minutes of research. I think
| they'll do just fine after developing the vaccine. The
| people who matter to their future will know their name.
| asdff wrote:
| I don't even know how to say BioNtech. Bio-inn-tech? Bion-
| tech? Bio-and-tech? It's a clumsy name, to be fair,
| compared to moderna or pfizer.
| solids wrote:
| Argentina, Pfizer
| mrtksn wrote:
| In Turkey it's BioNTech colloquially, probably because the
| inventors are Turkish immigrants in Germany.
| jakub_jo wrote:
| Reuters fixed the title and added BioNTech. Someone at HN should
| update the submission's title.
| solarkraft wrote:
| The vaccine was developed by BioNTech. Its name is Comirnaty.
| It's not the "Pfizer vaccine".
| jakub_jo wrote:
| US HN downvotes you.
| paconbork wrote:
| https://xkcd.com/2275/
| Black101 wrote:
| I just got my first dose but they have no appointment available
| for the second dose so I wonder how effective it is with only one
| dose.
| yellowapple wrote:
| It's weird that it's even possible for someplace to be able to
| schedule the first dose and not the second. I noticed that with
| my local Smith's when I was vaccine hunting, too - I could pick
| a date for the first dose no problem, but nothing available for
| the second.
|
| What gives? You'd think it'd be the other way around if
| anything.
| asdff wrote:
| My second dose was automatically scheduled after receiving my
| first.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Nothing that has been proven conclusively, but evidence
| suggests that in the near term you get over 90% effectiveness
| >12 days after the first dose. What isn't known is how long
| that phase lasts before fading. Personally, I wouldn't worry
| too much about delaying a bit, as long as it wasn't more than a
| month or so.
| Black101 wrote:
| My state tells me that the best time-frame to get the 2nd
| dose is 21-42 days after 1st dose. But luckily some sloths
| because available (maybe they weren't scheduling that far out
| yet).
| cyberlurker wrote:
| I'm seeing a lot of similar concerns in the comments so I just
| want to post this video from Vox. They did a great job explaining
| this issue.
|
| Effectiveness doesn't really mean much between approved vaccines
| in the US. Please watch this video: https://youtu.be/K3odScka55A
|
| From what we know so far, any of the approved vaccines are
| excellent and no one knows for sure if one is better than the
| other. The only logical thing to do is get what is offered to you
| as soon as possible.
|
| That being said, this is excellent news that Pfizer is protective
| against the SA Variant. Not trying to minimize that news, just
| point out that it still is better to just get whatever approved
| vaccine you can.
| fossuser wrote:
| I'm not sure I really buy that video - don't control groups
| account for differences in the general population at the time
| it was done?
|
| This Pfizer data, plus the results in Israel suggest that the
| mRNA vaccines really are just objectively better.
|
| They all prevent death and hospitalizations though so get the
| one you can get, but it seems likely the mRNA shots are better.
|
| The main thing I'm wondering is if the people that got covid
| post J&J had really mild disease (like a tiny cold or
| something) or "mild" disease like absolutely miserable but just
| didn't have to go to ICU. Is that information known?
|
| Basically the video confuses some of what the control group
| actually does and then says "well they all prevent death
| anyway" - no shit. The question is if one is better than the
| other and the answer seems like yes. The main counter would be
| the presence of variants, but the Israeli population faced
| variants and the mRNA efficacy rate held. This new Pfizer data
| suggests mRNA is just better.
| timr wrote:
| > The main thing I'm wondering is if the people that got
| covid post J&J had really mild disease (like a tiny cold or
| something) or "mild" disease like absolutely miserable but
| just didn't have to go to ICU. Is that information known?
|
| Of course. It's right there in the FDA report, starting on
| page 51:
|
| https://www.fda.gov/media/146219/download
|
| _7.1.1.5.3 Case Definition for Mild COVID-19
|
| * A SARS-CoV-2 positive RT-PCR or molecular test result from
| any available respiratory tract sample (eg, nasal swab
| sample, sputum sample, throat swab sample, saliva sample) or
| other sample;
|
| AND at any time during the course of observation:
|
| * One of the following symptoms: fever (>=38.0degC or
| >=100.4degF), sore throat, malaise (loss of appetite,
| generally unwell, fatigue, physical weakness), headache,
| muscle pain (myalgia), gastrointestinal symptoms, cough,
| chest congestion, runny nose, wheezing, skin rash, eye
| irritation or discharge, chills, new or changing olfactory or
| taste disorders, red or bruised looking feet or toes, or
| shaking chills or rigors._
|
| You will find equivalently precise definitions of moderate
| and severe disease, as well. And if you care to look, you can
| find the same thing for all of the other FDA-approved
| vaccines. They're similar, but not identical. In general,
| "mild disease" is what most reasonable people would consider
| to be mild disease, but there are minor differences in terms
| of which specific symptoms/thresholds are used. For this
| vaccine specifically, you can see that having _two or more_
| of the above symptoms will bump you into the "moderate
| disease" category. So they're pretty strict.
|
| > The question is if one is better than the other and the
| answer seems like yes.
|
| Given that you clearly haven't read the data, I don't know
| how you can possibly make such a speculation.
|
| I don't mean to pick on you specifically, but this entire
| affair has been defined by people who are way too willing to
| _speculate_ after reading a few news articles.
| fossuser wrote:
| Thanks - that makes me feel better about how they define
| mild, and thanks for the direct reference. Earlier in the
| pandemic mild was being used to mean only not hospitalized.
|
| > "I don't know how you can possibly make such a
| speculation."
|
| I don't mean to come across as overconfident, is my
| understanding of efficacy wrong? Or the purpose of control
| groups? I'm happy to be wrong or corrected.
|
| The speculation comes from the efficacy numbers and the
| results in Israel - is there a reason to dismiss those?
|
| Edit: Reading the Pfizer results from here
| (https://www.fda.gov/media/144245/download) it seems like
| fewer moderate/severe cases of covid in the vaccinated
| population when compared to J&J (taking into account both
| of their placebo groups)? I'm not sure if I'm reading these
| correctly, but the docs don't seem to contradict my
| impression that the mRNA vaccines are better.
| starik36 wrote:
| I am not sure that it's a good explanation. Just the opposite.
|
| J&J's excuse for 66% effectiveness is that they were tested
| when there was more Covid going around? That's exactly when the
| vaccine is supposed to protect you. Not when there isn't an
| opportunity to catch the disease.
|
| And if we then take this claim on its face, then Pfizer and
| Moderna vaccine stated effectiveness is pointless, since it
| wasn't tested during the worst times.
|
| Finally, the claim that no one in the study group that did
| catch the virus ended up in the hospital is also based on self-
| selective bias. I am assuming people in the study were younger
| people who needed the money and not older folks who are at a
| higher risk. I am not saying that it's not true - just that the
| biases need to be taken into account in any study.
| quantgenius wrote:
| There are 2 reasons for JNJ's lower top line numbers.
|
| 1) There were more of the variants going around, not more of
| the original strain going around when JNJ was tested and all
| the vaccines are less effective against the variants. PFE and
| MRNA were tested when only the original strain was going
| around. All the vaccines were designed to combat the original
| strain.
|
| 2) JNJ doesn't protect as well against mild Covid. But the
| symptoms from this mild Covid are comparable to the side
| effects from the second dose of PFE/MRNA which affect 30-40%
| of people and based on anecdata from people I know nearly
| everyone.
| bluGill wrote:
| 1 is false - this article's 91% includes data from before,
| during, and after the J&J trial. So it covers times when
| the variants were more active as well.
| quantgenius wrote:
| My original comment referred to the 95% effectiveness in
| PFE top line numbers from when we got the clinical trial
| readout rather than the 91% in the article. I was
| responding to the parent comment.
|
| Further, the JNJ clinical trial data was from a
| population where the Brazilian variant, the most serious
| of the variants, was likely more widespread than this PFE
| data which seems to focus more on the relatively less
| dangerous South African variant.
| cma wrote:
| > That's exactly when the vaccine is supposed to protect you.
| Not when there isn't an opportunity to catch the disease.
|
| Are they saying the other vaccines were tested when you had
| lower chance of multiple exposures, and they were tested when
| there was higher chance, and it isn't controlled for in
| coming up with that number?
| starik36 wrote:
| Correct. That's what the video states.
| tzs wrote:
| > I am assuming people in the study were younger people who
| needed the money and not older folks who are at a higher
| risk.
|
| That may be true in the earlier phases, when you are just
| trying to show that the vaccine isn't too harmful and works
| in at least some cases.
|
| It's not true for the large phase 3 trials. For those you try
| for a study group that matches the demographics of the people
| who will be getting the vaccine in the wild.
|
| For the J&J phase 3 trial, 34% of the participants were over
| 60. 41% had comorbidities associated with an increased risk
| for progression to severe COVID. Race was 74% white, 13%
| black, 6% Asian, and 1% Native American. Ethnicity was 15%
| Hispanic.
|
| Pfizer was 45% age 56-85, Moderna was 16% over 65. Race for
| both was about 80% white, 10% black, 4-5% Asian, 1% Native.
| Ethnicity was 26% Hispanic for Pfizer, 20% for Moderna. I
| don't know what percent had comorbidities.
| lol768 wrote:
| > I am assuming people in the study were younger people who
| needed the money and not older folks who are at a higher
| risk.
|
| I'm a participant in one of the J&J Ensemble trials. There is
| no payment associated with my participation.
| rafram wrote:
| No payment? You're getting ripped off! In my area, it's
| $150 per appointment.
| starik36 wrote:
| Thanks. Good to know. Might I find out why you signed up?
| bluGill wrote:
| I would have signed up myself for free - a 50% chance to
| get a promising vaccine now instead of waiting? They
| weren't doing studies in my area, so I had to wait until
| after the study for a vaccine to be offered to me.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| Genuinely asking: What happens if you are vaccinated but then
| exposed to a variant of COVID your vaccine doesn't support? Is
| it the same as having no vaccine at all?
|
| > The only logical thing to do is get what is offered to you as
| soon as possible.
|
| Is there any reason to be skeptical of the vaccine? Long term
| effects, etc. I don't normally get a flu shot or go to the
| doctor or anything like that. I'm pretty nervous. I used to
| date an anti-vaxxer who swore some kind of shot gave her
| brother autism... Obviously that's material to get downvoted
| and laughed at here on HackerNews but... just thought I'd bring
| my "atypical" perspective to the table.
| blub wrote:
| Of course citizen. All of them are excellent and equal, but
| some are more excellent and equal than the others.
| treme wrote:
| This is same thing that happened with CDC and "masks aren't
| needed". A white lie with good intent but nevertheless just
| false info.
|
| I'm sure if we polled all the bio-phd's with option between the
| vaccines, they will all choose mRNA based ones because they
| have higher protection %'s, and significantly lower side effect
| risks.
|
| Most countries don't have the luxury of giving their citizens
| the choice, so they resort to making up a lie to calm people
| from "bank run" on mRNA vaccines.
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/mh7wtw/astrazeneca...
|
| "It was mentioned by Emer Cooke during the press conference.
|
| "For the AZ vaccine based on spontaneous reporting in the EEA
| it's 4.8 cases per million, for the Biontech vaccine, based on
| the same criteria it was 0.2 cases per million and for the
| Moderna vaccine, based on the same criteria, 0 cases per
| million"
|
| So ~25 fold compared to the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine. 0.2 cases
| per million is in line with the expected number of cases in the
| general population. The Moderna vaccine probably hasn't been
| used enough in the EEA for such rare events to occur.
|
| It's also worth keeping in mind that these numbers are based on
| older data. It is based on 62 reported cases (of which 44 are
| in the EEA). Germany alone has reported 31 cases and they
| aren't all included here. So expect these numbers for the AZ
| vaccine to go up a bit when they announce their updated
| recommendations at the plenary meeting next week."
| krona wrote:
| You're mixing statistics from different testing protocols.
| Apples and oranges.
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