Vaccine Megathread - See OP for threadbans

Lumen

Irish Stones wrote: »

Is it "preventing hospitalisation AND death" or is it "preventing hospitalisation AND/OR death"?

There have been a few cases of people in my country who received both shots of Pfizer, and about 3 to 4 weeks later they ended up in a hospital, in the ICU, and one of them seems unresponsive to all treatments.
So maybe it isn't 100% effective?

It takes a several weeks to go from infection to hospital so it's likely they were infected before the second dose took effect, or even before they'd received the second dose.

Pandiculation

Irish Stones wrote: »

Is it "preventing hospitalisation AND death" or is it "preventing hospitalisation AND/OR death"?

There have been a few cases of people in my country who received both shots of Pfizer, and about 3 to 4 weeks later they ended up in a hospital, in the ICU, and one of them seems unresponsive to all treatments.
So maybe it isn't 100% effective?

It doesn’t claim to be 100% effective. It’s in the >90% range in Pfizer’s case so, you will get outlying cases for many reasons why some people will have poor immunity, despite being vaccinated.

You’ll also have people with generally low immunity who’ll ultimately be relying on high uptake of vaccines in the general population as, even if they are vaccinated, their immune system may mount a very weak response.

None of that means the vaccine doesn’t work, but no vaccine is ever 100% effective, but the kinds of 90%+ results for the mRNA vaccines is a really remarkably high level, probably one of the best results ever seen in any vaccine.

You’ll *always * find outlying cases in a population wide rollout. If you link those few cases together, it still doesn’t change the fact that they’re obscure and outlying. That’s just the reality of anything that’s being done on this scale.

eoinbn

Strazdas wrote: »

Irish Times reports that the plan is to try and move through the over 50s at pace by offering every vaccine going and that people in their 40s could be offered AZ and J & J if no other vaccine is available at that point (which is allowed by NIAC).

Here the IT reported that NIAC said that J&J can be given to people under 50 if nothing else is available. AZ isn't included in that.

NIAC recommendation is a complete copout. Why say something is only recommended for people over 50 and then say it can be used for people under 50 if nothing else is available? Everyone is limited by supply, of course there will be nothing else available. It is clearly an exercise of washing their hands of any responsibility. They should be stood down and replaced with people that are willing to give clear guidance.

Irish Stones

Pandiculation wrote: »

It doesn’t claim to be 100% effective.

The post I quoted in my message says "All the approved vaccines are 100% effective in preventing hospitalisation and death from COVID."
I didn't say that vaccines are 100% effective, the quoted message did.

Danzy

JPup wrote: »

It’s a commonly used phrase to be fair.

Among people with chronic low self esteem.

Irish Stones

Lumen wrote: »

It takes a several weeks to go from infection to hospital so it's likely they were infected before the second dose took effect, or even before they'd received the second dose.

Well, actually there are cases when one ends up in hospital within a week or so. A friend of mine 8 days from infection to ICU. A person I was told about took less than a week, his wife three days more.

is_that_so

EU vaccination rate beginning to shift and it seems the supply problem has finally gone.

EU now confident that supply – the biggest problem in early months of year – should not be an obstacle to further acceleration

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/03/covid-vaccine-rollout-rapidly-gathering-pace-across-europe

Pandiculation

It takes around 21 days for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines to be effective and, at least from what I read, it’s not a linear scale where you get a bit more immunity with each day, rather the effect may increase in spurts and more towards the end of that 21 day timeframe.

It’s also different for different vaccines and you’ll get difference in individuals too.

So all anyone can do is provide an average timeframe for generating immune response and take a conservative view of it.

Chris_5339762

Ficheall wrote: »

IHME not as optimistic as they have been accused of being heretofore! Well, for some vaccines/variants anyway...



http://www.healthdata.org/covid/covid-19-vaccine-efficacy-summary


Edit: well, I guess just AZ jumped out at me, since that's what the parents will be getting. And most likely quite a few more of us..

Two things that pop out at me:
1) They included that (rubbished) South African study on that variant and AZ, which was a very poor study, with tiny numbers and was overall utter crap.


2) If I wrote a paper in my field with such lack of data in a table I'd be hung. I know its not all available but the emptiness of the Pfizer column is shocking.

Zipppy

Got my Pfizer jab yesterday at my GPs..as a person with some health vulnerabilities I must say it's a great feeling.
No side effects as yet...finger crossed I get none..

Pandiculation

At least with the mix and match approach looking like it might be safe and effective, if there are any variants escaping one or other or the vaccines, it’s looking entirely feasible that you could get a booster shot later in the year with one that is effective.

The mRNA vaccines in particular are easily tweaked to deal with potential problematic variants too and there’s scale in EU based production and supply chains for that tech now.

pc7

Zipppy wrote: »

Got my Pfizer jab yesterday at my GPs..as a person with some health vulnerabilities I must say it's a great feeling.
No side effects as yet...finger crossed I get none..

Anecdotally from friends who had Pfizer some felt a bit off after second dose, nothing panadol didn't fix. Delighted you got sorted.

Pandiculation

pc7 wrote: »

Anecdotally from friends who had Pfizer some felt a bit off after second dose, nothing panadol didn't fix. Delighted you got sorted.

In general that’s what I’m hearing too. Two people I know said Pfizer-BioNTech caused them far less reaction than they have had with seasonal flu jabs, so I think for the vast majority it seems to be extremely uneventful.

I also know plenty of U.K. based people who had AstraZeneca without any issues either.

I know personally, I tend to get a fairly rough few days after the flu jab so, with any vaccine I’m just prepared with Panadol and keeping the diary lightly loaded.

Zipppy

pc7 wrote: »

Anecdotally from friends who had Pfizer some felt a bit off after second dose, nothing panadol didn't fix. Delighted you got sorted.

Yes, I feel a little bit 'meh' this morning but not sure if that's last nites wine or the jab

is_that_so

https://twitter.com/HSELive/status/1389278582220812290

podgeandrodge

Pandiculation wrote: »

The problem with this is the difficulty we all have in making risk assessments based on this kind of data, and what might happen if you get a few prominent cases of clots.

I don’t think Ireland is all that vaccine hesitant, but given some countries like Denmark, have dropped it entirely, I think they’ll be an uphill battle on the PR front with this.

It's a lot more difficult to tell people they are being stupid not to want Astra or J&J, when an EU country states that the "benefits of using the Covid-19 vaccine from Johnson & Johnson do not outweigh the risk of causing the possible adverse effect in those who receive the vaccine”.

And that "taking the present situation in Denmark into account, what we are currently losing in our effort to prevent severe illness from Covid-19 cannot outweigh the risk of causing possible side effects in the form of severe blood clots in those we vaccinate,” the health authority said".

With hospital numbers plummetting right now, if we followed suit, I wonder what the impact would be in terms of extra weeks? Denmark are saying 4 weeks for them. Will we get to a point where we have enough MRNA vaccines to ditch the others.

Pablo Escobar

Irish Stones wrote: »

Well, actually there are cases when one ends up in hospital within a week or so. A friend of mine 8 days from infection to ICU. A person I was told about took less than a week, his wife three days more.

It's highly unlikely that they did. The average time from infection to symptoms is 5 days. Then the rough time from first symptoms to hospitalization 7-10 days. Generally ICU takes a bit longer but can happen at any time. But your time of 8 days from infection to ICU would seem unlikely.

JPup

Danzy wrote: »

Among people with chronic low self esteem.

In my experience it’s amongst Irish people over the age of 65 which might amount to the same thing!

They also say god bless a lot

dashoonage

is_that_so wrote: »

https://twitter.com/HSELive/status/1389278582220812290

Apologies for the stupid question but would the intention be to open registration for the 40-49 group on the 14th or how does it work ?

is_that_so

dashoonage wrote: »

Apologies for the stupid question but would the intention be to open registration for the 40-49 group on the 14th or how does it work ?

There will probably be a delay of at least a week or so based on how they've done it to date. My guess would be closer to the end of this month. That said quite a few of the over 60s haven't registered yet.

https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/concern-as-220000-people-aged-60-to-69-fail-to-register-for-vaccine-1119442.html

SusanC10

If the intention all along was to use all 4 Vaccines for both 50+ and under-50, then why announce at all that AZ is not recommended for use in under-50s and J&J should only be used in under-50s if no other available?

Panrich

SusanC10 wrote: »

If the intention all along was to use all 4 Vaccines for both 50+ and under-50, then why announce at all that AZ is not recommended for use in under-50s and J&J should only be used in under-50s if no other available?

A few weeks ago the AZ was not recommended for under 60’s so they seem to be taking a view that a vaccine of any sort is better than none at all and are extending the age ranges to suit their existing and expected stocks.

Gile_na_gile

Following discussions between health officials and Ministers in recent days it is expected that the same approach will apply to under-50s as to over-50s – meaning that some people in their 40s could be offered the Johnson & Johnson or AstraZeneca shots.

From the updated IT piece. So people in that (and my) cohort may be offered AZ or Janssen. I would expect that the devil is in the detail, as if they start age 49 on May 14th, then they would be running in parallel anyway, and also there is the plan for the less predictable subgroups to have these two in any case.

Following that, probably a 30% chance of a 40-49 person getting an adenovirus vaccine, increasing as we get closer to July.

stephenjmcd

They're playing with the "If no other vaccine is available" clause in the recommendations. Can't say I blame them but there was / is better ways to work it.

Where they could fall down is trying to say to large numbers of u50s for example your apointment is for J&J or AZ while people have it in their head that neither vaccine are recommended for u50s currently.

This could get quite messy if I'm honest. Far from ideal.

iamwhoiam

stephenjmcd wrote: »

They're playing with the "If no other vaccine is available" clause in the recommendations. Can't say I blame them but there was / is better ways to work it.

Where they could fall down is trying to say to large numbers of u50s for example your apointment is for J&J or AZ while people have it in their head that neither vaccine are recommended for u50s currently.

This could get quite messy if I'm honest. Far from ideal.

Have to say the communication over the vaccine rollout and which used for whom has been woeful . I cant blame people getting annoyed with it. Still not one word about finishing or even starting Cohort 7
Many now getting anxious and upset and lack of clarity in those groups

Lucas Hood

12,756 vaccines done Sunday.

iguana

I fully believe the plan is that insomuch as possible, J&J will be used for groups of people who are deemed less likely to return for their booster vaccine. It's why the "if no other vaccine is available" clause is included.

stephenjmcd

iguana wrote: »

I fully believe the plan is that insomuch as possible, J&J will be used for groups of people who are deemed less likely to return for their booster vaccine. It's why the "if no other vaccine is available" clause is included.

No that's separate, it's approved for use in marginalised and hard to reach communities, the if no other vaccine clause is separate

Tony H

I have my AZ jab in the City Hall in Cork on Friday and my reluctant wife has come around after many reassuring conversations with myself and others to take the AZ on her Saturday appointment ,
she has stopped listening to the news and we are both delighted to be getting any vaccine ,

I could have pushed with my gp and consultant for pfizer due to numerous ailments , but quickest shot for me is the best shot for me .

stephenjmcd

Morning after the father's AZ vaccine yesterday. Sore arm around injection site but apart from that all good so far.