COVID-19: Vaccine/antidote and testing procedures Megathread [Mod Warning - Post #1]

Gael23

big syke wrote: »

And tragically as you mentioned good for the overall study

How so? Not having a go at you just curious to the science behind thos?

XsApollo

Gael23 wrote: »

How so? Not having a go at you just curious to the science behind thos?

Basically if everybody in the placebo group died and nobody in the vaccine group caught COVID then it proves the vaccines Effectivness.

Hmmzis

Gael23 wrote: »

How so? Not having a go at you just curious to the science behind thos?

Numbers. Plain and cold.
The trials need to accumulate a certain number of infections among the two groups so that it's possible to rule out random chance.

Such sad news about the volunteer, did the right thing and so young as well.

Irish Stones

The most respected expert we have here (he was praised from all over the world back in March for his job on tracing and diagnosing) said that talking about a vaccine available within the next two months might be what people want to hear, but it is honestly unrealistic.

https://video.lastampa.it/cronaca/coronavirus-andrea-crisanti-dire-avremo-il-vaccino-fra-uno-o-due-mesi-e-irrealistico/122969/123093

Even if a vaccine is ready at the end of the year, he says several months will be necessary before rolling it out.

So far, this is the only specialist in this country who has never failed since the beginning of the pandemic, and I believe him.

Hmmzis

JimToken wrote: »

Did the right thing?

He died

He volunteered for a vaccine trial. That's doing the right thing in my book.

Gael23

Hmmzis wrote: »

He volunteered for a vaccine trial. That's doing the right thing in my book.

Do you know if it is a placebo patient or not?

Azatadine

Gael23 wrote: »

Do you know if it is a placebo patient or not?

https://twitter.com/BNODesk/status/1318987170959511556?s=09

marno21

Disappointing that Reuters published such an unverified story. Only provides massive fodder for the anti vaxxers

Hmmzis

Gael23 wrote: »

Do you know if it is a placebo patient or not?

News chanels are quoting anonymous sources saying he got the placebo.
Personally, I think that should be only revealed when assessing the results (interim or final). Dragging every single event, related or not, through the spotlights helps absolutelly nobody. I'd be surprised if AZ or Oxford would make any further comments on it.

By the speed at what they were able to determine that it's not related to the vaccine would also make me think that he was in the placebo group. If I'm not mistaken the Brazil trial was only single blind, so Oxford would have had that information readily available.

Thierry12

Hmmzis wrote: »

News chanels are quoting anonymous sources saying he got the placebo.
Personally, I think that should be only revealed when assessing the results (interim or final). Dragging every single event, related or not, through the spotlights helps absolutelly nobody. I'd be surprised if AZ or Oxford would make any further comments on it.

By the speed at what they were able to determine that it's not related to the vaccine would also make me think that he was in the placebo group. If I'm not mistaken the Brazil trial was only single blind, so Oxford would have had that information readily available.

Not even worth thinking about if he got the vaccine, 99% he didn't.

Thing is people can still die if they get the vaccine, its not a cure

mandrake04

sekond wrote: »

Some of the vaccines that are usually given in schools around this time (i.e. HPV vaccine for 1st years) are being given in the public health centres.

My daughter had hers yesterday. Drove up, made ourselves known to staff waiting outside, waited in car until we were phoned. She went inside for vaccination, while I waited outside. She got the vaccine, waited for 15 minutes inside and then came back out. Fairly efficient, and there seemed to be a relatively steady stream of people in and out.

Not quite as fast as drive through, but seemed pretty well organised and might well be a model that works as a next-best-thing.

Even when it comes to vaccines social distance and all precautions will still be in place, you don’t want the situation where you go to get the vaccine and catch covid at the same time. I’m assuming the vaccine takes a certain period to work.

FrogmanBegins

Irish Stones wrote: »

The most respected expert we have here (he was praised from all over the world back in March for his job on tracing and diagnosing) said that talking about a vaccine available within the next two months might be what people want to hear, but it is honestly unrealistic.

https://video.lastampa.it/cronaca/coronavirus-andrea-crisanti-dire-avremo-il-vaccino-fra-uno-o-due-mesi-e-irrealistico/122969/123093

Even if a vaccine is ready at the end of the year, he says several months will be necessary before rolling it out.

So far, this is the only specialist in this country who has never failed since the beginning of the pandemic, and I believe him.

I do notice that there's a bit of a schism forming between the people on the ground working on creating/manufacturing/distributing the vaccine and other experts on the outside looking in. Would anyone read anything into this ?

Gael23

Thierry12 wrote: »

Not even worth thinking about if he got the vaccine, 99% he didn't.

Thing is people can still die if they get the vaccine, its not a cure

No it’s not but it’s meant to stop severe illness and death

ddarcy

Hmmzis wrote: »

News chanels are quoting anonymous sources saying he got the placebo.
Personally, I think that should be only revealed when assessing the results (interim or final). Dragging every single event, related or not, through the spotlights helps absolutelly nobody. I'd be surprised if AZ or Oxford would make any further comments on it.

By the speed at what they were able to determine that it's not related to the vaccine would also make me think that he was in the placebo group. If I'm not mistaken the Brazil trial was only single blind, so Oxford would have had that information readily available.

If the study hasn’t stopped, he got the placebo. A death in the test group automatically stops the trial. There would have to be an investigation to determine if the test drug had any reason for it. If he was in the test group it would be at least 3-6 months investigation minimum.

It’s a bit of a pain to unseal the randomisation, but does happen. All studies are double blind, so the only people who know are the statisticians who created the randomisation, but even then you’re only numbers (eg patient 1 gets test drug, patient 3 gets placebo, etc)

tobefrank321

CIARAN_BOYLE wrote: »

We sent need herd immunity for a vaccine. Life will start to go back to normal when a vaccine that lessens the risk of severe symptoms and death is released.

If you vaccinate everyone with a comorbidities and everyone over 65 and its 50% effective ( and reducing covid below the level needing hospitalisation) you can sustain much more cases a day without needing restrictions.

The first generation of vaccines don't look like providing a functional level of immunity.

Good post. The effectiveness of the annual flu vaccine is about half in the elderly what it is in the young. There is no reason to believe a cv vaccine will do much better, certainly not a first generation one. As you say in a best case scenario, hospitalisations and deaths will be reduced, maybe by half, but won't be eliminated. At that stage we will be left with a choice of regular lockdowns or not.

marno21

The flu vaccine is not relevant here. The flu vaccine is a guess at which strains will be prevalent in the forthcoming winter, and it's only efficacious against these strains, hence why the efficacy varies from year to year. Influenza has a completely different mutation profile to SARS-CoV-2

tobefrank321

marno21 wrote: »

The flu vaccine is not relevant here. The flu vaccine is a guess at which strains will be prevalent in the forthcoming winter, and it's only efficacious against these strains, hence why the efficacy varies from year to year. Influenza has a completely different mutation profile to SARS-CoV-2

Its got nothing to do with strains. Its to do with an immune response which vaccines depend on. The weaker the immune system, the weaker the response and protection. A 100% effective vaccine in the healthy may only have half that in the elderly. That is the worry.

Hego Damask

The problem is , once the elderly are vaccinated and hospitals not as busy - will NPHET /Govt's stop using case numbers as the metric to decide on restrictions??

stockshares

stephenjmcd wrote: »

If your going to post 1 tweet post both at least.
Would suggest this person may have been in the placebo group as there's no stop.

https://twitter.com/BNODesk/status/1318972813554995201?s=19

The second tweet had not been posted when I posted the first tweet.

Thierry12

stockshares wrote: »

The second tweet had not been posted when I posted the first tweet.

Second tweet weird anyway

Since when is a meningitis vaccine a placebo

Why did they give them that?

dominatinMC

tobefrank321 wrote: »

Its got nothing to do with strains. Its to do with an immune response which vaccines depend on. The weaker the immune system, the weaker the response and protection. A 100% effective vaccine in the healthy may only have half that in the elderly. That is the worry.

True, that's something of a concern. However, given the economic and societal fallout from social distancing/restrictions, I think that governments will begin to unwind restrictions once the vaccine begins to be distributed, regardless of efficacy. From a political perspective, introducing the vaccine, will satisfy the government remit of protecting it's people. Now, as you say, it's likely that protection won't be perfect, but not so imperfect to warrant continuous cyles of lockdowns.

Polar101

Thierry12 wrote: »

Second tweet weird anyway

Since when is a meningitis vaccine a placebo

Why did they give them that?

If they just inject salt water, then it's pretty obvious to the person who received it that they got the placebo. But if it's an actual vaccine, then they don't know if they got the Covid vaccine, or something else.

Happy to be corrected, of course.

padjocollins

open up a private browser window in order to read this https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/science/coronavirus-vaccine-tracker.html , 6 vaccines approved for early or limited use. None approved for full use yet. Still, encouraging.

CIARAN_BOYLE

We could be a situation where we get a poor vaccine in early 2021 a better one in late 2021 and one that provides some level of true immunity in 2022 sometime.

If so I wonder how many people would go for all 3 vaccines. Or would it be the case that people feel vaccine one reduces the effect of symptoms somewhat and that covered them.

Irish Stones

An article on "Nature" warns that obese and overweight persons might not benefit from the vaccine fully, just like people with a higher than normal BMI have a higher chance to die from the virus.

opinionated3

Rte news now with another negative article this morning referencing a professor doshi from university of Maryland basically saying the vaccines that are coming are going to fall well short of what people are hoping they will do. Between rte and CNN, it's just utterly hopeless....

begbysback

opinionated3 wrote: »

Rte news now with another negative article this morning referencing a professor doshi from university of Maryland basically saying the vaccines that are coming are going to fall well short of what people are hoping they will do. Between rte and CNN, it's just utterly hopeless....

Step away from the tv, seriously.

CIARAN_BOYLE

opinionated3 wrote: »

Rte news now with another negative article this morning referencing a professor doshi from university of Maryland basically saying the vaccines that are coming are going to fall well short of what people are hoping they will do. Between rte and CNN, it's just utterly hopeless....

People are expecting vaccines to wave their arms and fix the world.

It won't happen. It will improve things significantly. Don't forget there are more vaccines in progress. If improving things significantly isn't enough to get things back to normal one of the follow up vaccines will be better.

If vaccine one halves the hospitalisation rate we can afford twice as many cases without restrictions.

Gael23

CIARAN_BOYLE wrote: »

People are expecting vaccines to wave their arms and fix the world.

It won't happen. It will improve things significantly. Don't forget there are more vaccines in progress. If improving things significantly isn't enough to get things back to normal one of the follow up vaccines will be better.

If vaccine one halves the hospitalisation rate we can afford twice as many cases without restrictions.

A rational mind thinks like that but I doubt our government will

Bit cynical

Gael23 wrote: »

A rational mind thinks like that but I doubt our government will

I was just about to make this point too.

The problem is that daily case numbers have become a sort of fixation. It is politically unacceptable to have rising case numbers. This is likely to continue into the vaccine period.

stephenjmcd

opinionated3 wrote: »

Rte news now with another negative article this morning referencing a professor doshi from university of Maryland basically saying the vaccines that are coming are going to fall well short of what people are hoping they will do. Between rte and CNN, it's just utterly hopeless....

Its on their website too, one of the top articles of course.

There's percentages being quoted by someone who wouldn't have seen any efficency data.

Everyone knows (or they should at this stage) that a vaccine isn't a sliver bullet but that 1 or more start to pave the way to a return to normal. A vaccine that reduces / stops serious infection getting to the lungs reduces hospitalisation rates and hence death rates.

I wouldn't be paying any attention to something that is essentially an opinion piece, its 4 pages long and not reviewed from what I can see.

We'll have efficiency data in hopefully just a few weeks now so people can draw conclusions after that

ixoy

opinionated3 wrote: »

Rte news now with another negative article this morning referencing a professor doshi from university of Maryland basically saying the vaccines that are coming are going to fall well short of what people are hoping they will do.

Putting that up there, on the same day that tens of thousands of people are being put of work and tough restrictions being put into play, is shockingly poor given it's not even a new piece that couldn't have held off until next week (or even never published since it makes no difference to the trials being carried out). It's just going to make people more anxious / depressed to no real benefit.

CIARAN_BOYLE

Bit cynical wrote: »

I was just about to make this point too.

The problem is that daily case numbers have become a sort of fixation. It is politically unacceptable to have rising case numbers. This is likely to continue into the vaccine period.

The rising case numbers are fixated on by policymakers as a prediction of future hospital numbers not as their own thing at all.

Sure some individuals are fixated but most aren't.

Golfman64

That RTE article and their decision to publish is astounding. It's the view of 1 person, albeit qualified but not involved with any of the trials. Talk about click-bait! (and we are all falling for it and generating hits on the RTE website)

JimToken

Bit cynical wrote: »

I was just about to make this point too.

The problem is that daily case numbers have become a sort of fixation. It is politically unacceptable to have rising case numbers. This is likely to continue into the vaccine period.

The media need to shut down their hard on for case numbers

hmmm

That BMJ article seems to me to forget we are in a pandemic which is having huge economic and social impact worldwide. We can't be waiting years for vaccine trials to get data, and getting some data now is better than having complete data in 10 years time.

The trial approach of testing it on one group of people, reporting results in that group and giving the regulators a chance to approve the vaccine for these groups, seems to me to be the correct approach. The trial can then be extended into other groups (e.g. children as Pfizer is now doing). This is being done for multiple vaccines and there are only so many trials which can be run.

Similarly there is a big deal made in the article that the trials are looking for people who become infected and not those who go on to develop serious disease. The writer themselves makes the point that one of the reasons for this is that because of the relatively small number of people with Covid who go on to develop very severe illness, the trial would need to have vastly more than 30,000 people enrolled. Again we come back to cost and how long we are willing to wait (and how many people are going to die) before we get data from trials.

Deeper Blue

ixoy wrote: »

Putting that up there, on the same day that tens of thousands of people are being put of work and tough restrictions being put into play, is shockingly poor given it's not even a new piece that couldn't have held off until next week (or even never published since it makes no difference to the trials being carried out). It's just going to make people more anxious / depressed to no real benefit.

I've read it and I'd describe it as a speculative opinion piece at best. There are probably a lot of positive opinion pieces out there too. But of course RTE would pick up on this one. Like you said it's fairly disgraceful considering the day that's in it but that's par for the course with them.

seamus

Hego Damask wrote: »

The problem is , once the elderly are vaccinated and hospitals not as busy - will NPHET /Govt's stop using case numbers as the metric to decide on restrictions??

They don't use case numbers now, they look at hospital numbers.

But yes, to answer the thrust of your question. If we had 15,000 cases a day and just five people being admitted to hospital, there would be little or no restrictions.

The idea that we won't be able to reopen until the entire population is vaccinated, is not the reality.

Once there is widespread vaccination among at-risk groups, there will be no functional need for restrictions.

That will probably mean everyone over 55, healthcare workers and the immunocompromised.

Some additional controls/guidelines may also remain in place for babies.

begbysback

There should be an enforced regulation on the media in this country that when they report rates they are obliged to also give new cases/deaths as a % rate for context, if we have 5000 new cases in a week and 5 deaths then mortality rate needs to be reported as .001 %

There’s people now going on national radio believing this is “Russian roulette” - they need help.

leahyl

I actually came on to post about this article - absolutely so depressing and no need whatsoever for it, especially with the day that's in it :mad:

Golfman64

leahyl wrote: »

I actually came on to post about this article - absolutely so depressing and no need whatsoever for it, especially with the day that's in it :mad:

Exactly, not to mention the fact that most of what has happened to date in the pandemic has been unprecedented (in terms of the impact etc.).....I expect the solutions to be unprecedented also, hopefully!

Marhay70

Far be it from me to be a cheerleader for RTE, or any media, but a few months ago people were screaming blue murder because thy were not getting detailed, minute data about how many cases there were, where they were, even who they were. Even at the time of the meat plant scandal, we were up in arms because we weren't being told where these people lived.
So, while I think that some media do focus on sensationalism, I don't think there is ever such a thing as too much information. Absorb what interests you or what is relevant to you and shelve the rest for future reference or not, as you like. Talk about regulating what the media report is a very dangerous route to take.

dominatinMC

One would have to seriously question RTEs journalistic integrity at this stage. I'm not going to go down the road of conspiracy theories and agendas, but their fixation on doom and gloom can't be ignored. Yes, their duty is to inform the public and to maintain realism. But to cherry pick that one story from all the others out there stinks of clickbait negativity. Thank god we have this thread.

TomSweeney

Gael23 wrote: »

Would any of consider booking a holiday for summer 2021 yet?

Should be fine .. but depends on the country and their take on it, For example Norway are taking the piss, they have a stupidly high benchmark of 20/100,000 cases per pop to decide whether or not to put you in quarantine.
I was supposed to go July 2021, but It'll be summer 2022 earliest before I go I think ... unless they cop on and stop using case numbers as a basis.






Spain/Greece etc should be grand they rely more on tourism.

Hector Savage

begbysback wrote: »

Step away from the tv, seriously.

^^this 100%

Hector Savage

stephenjmcd wrote: »

Its on their website too, one of the top articles of course.

There's percentages being quoted by someone who wouldn't have seen any efficency data.

Everyone knows (or they should at this stage) that a vaccine isn't a sliver bullet but that 1 or more start to pave the way to a return to normal. A vaccine that reduces / stops serious infection getting to the lungs reduces hospitalisation rates and hence death rates.

I wouldn't be paying any attention to something that is essentially an opinion piece, its 4 pages long and not reviewed from what I can see.

We'll have efficiency data in hopefully just a few weeks now so people can draw conclusions after that

Imagine though, RTE is the only source of info for a lot of older people, it's a disgrace the way they are fear mongering.

FintanMcluskey

seamus wrote: »

They don't use case numbers now, they look at hospital numbers.

But yes, to answer the thrust of your question. If we had 15,000 cases a day and just five people being admitted to hospital, there would be little or no restrictions.

The idea that we won't be able to reopen until the entire population is vaccinated, is not the reality.

Once there is widespread vaccination among at-risk groups, there will be no functional need for restrictions.

That will probably mean everyone over 55, healthcare workers and the immunocompromised.

Some additional controls/guidelines may also remain in place for babies.

I was under the impression that the R0 number was the metric for the review on December 1st?

I could be wrong, but from what I read cases numbers are just as important to NPHET as hospital numbers

CIARAN_BOYLE

FintanMcluskey wrote: »

I was under the impression that the R0 number was the metric for the review on December 1st?

I could be wrong, but from what I read cases numbers are just as important to NPHET as hospital numbers

Theres a relatively stable link between case numbers and hospital numbers. You just get the hospital numbers earlier.

If the cases are x and the r number is y then in a weeks time the cases will be a and the hospital numbers will be h.

The call for level 5 a few weeks ago was based on the case numbers being x and the icu numbers being y by a certain date and this creating problems for the non covid health service.

They look at a lot of things.

Stark

CIARAN_BOYLE wrote: »

They look at a lot of things.

I bet they don't look at the boards.ie threads though :pac:

Micky 32

leahyl wrote: »

I actually came on to post about this article - absolutely so depressing and no need whatsoever for it, especially with the day that's in it :mad:

Don’t worry about it. I’m quite confident the vaccine will be a game changer.