Vaccine Megathread No 2 - Read OP before posting

Yes it looks like the walk in clinics page from the hse website is going to be updated. I'm thinking this is for the 12 to 15 yr olds announcement tomorrow to allow them to attend. Well I'm hopeful anyway.

Thank you for the added info. I see what you're saying about PCR and acute infection, and infection versus disease, I see why I was confused earlier.

I'm still confused though because:

1) the primary efficacy objective they state is "to demonstrate the efficacy of mRNA-1273 to prevent COVID-19 [when compared to placebo]"

2) the primary efficacy assessment says that COVID-19 is denoted in the case that "the participant [has] at least one NP swab, nasal swab, or saliva sample (or respiratory sample, if hospitalized) positive for SARS-CoV-2 by RT-PCR"

A positive PCR implies infection, so the primary efficacy objective is to assess infection, not disease, according to its assessment. Therefore the test should compare PCR tests (infection) between placebo and vaccinated cohorts, with efficacy indicated by reduced infection, so regarding your statement:

"From the trial data you could not tell with any degree of confidence that all the difference between placebo and vaccine was due to outright infection prevention or if the difference came from the vaccine turning infected people asymptomatic"

It seems that the primary efficacy assessment should clearly describe infection prevention versus asymptomatic illness.

The only way in which it wouldn't be clear is if their statistical test only compares rates of positive PCR AND symptoms across cohorts, and did not include positive tests without symptoms, or negative tests with symptoms. They aren't clear about whether or not they do this, but they surely do not, because it could lead to the absurd situation in which all participants who receive a vaccine to prevent COVID-19 are never PCR tested for COVID-19 after being vaccinated. It would be a complete farce if the reason vaccinated people are now being infected, is because Moderna never actually tested the vaccine for infection prevention even though it's the stated primary objective of the trial.

Just came across this. You'd wonder why.

"Correct, that's how all trials tested for efficacy. If you had no symptoms but somehow managed to get a test that came back positive you were not included in the primary efficacy analysis. If you had symptoms but tested negative you were not included in the efficacy analysis as your symptoms could be caused by a myriad of other things."

So as crazy as that seems to me, this means also that an assessment for primary efficacy in a phase 3 trial (in this case a PCR test), which is derived from the primary objective of the trial (in this case to show that a vaccine works better than placebo), may never be performed even once on people who have undergone the treatment? I mean by logical implication the assessment is "performed" on everybody that doesn't report symptoms, but this seems absurd and ridiculous, especially given that we're seeing the effect of such a design, and especially if it's this is the norm for all trials as you say.

If anyone she "vaccinated" developed covid and died she should be charged with a more serious crime. I'm not sure where the legal road intersects as it's not "murder" by definition but something close.

Flu is not very infectious, in part because you only become infectious after you feel crap and at that stage you are in bed, Delta is 4 or 5 times as infectious as flu. As we have seen flu can be wiped out by public health measures. The vaccines reduce mortality and only people over 75 have a substantial mortality if they have a vaccine, and another booster might reduce this.

The problem is that Delta is infectious, and it can generate a lot of cases even with some care and measures in place. If you have Covid infection all over the place then it will reach the care homes etc and so have a significant rate of mortality. It isn't easy, the only obvious plan is to vaccinate as many as possible and reduce transmission that way.

https://slate.com/technology/2021/08/delta-variant-covid-masks-vaccines-boosters.html

Any info on how many children 15 to 18 are getting sick with covid in Ireland ,im a bit worried about getting my 15 year old jabbed, with info coming out of Israel about heart issues from vaccine.

There's legal precedent in Germany involving a case where someone was HIV positive and didn't disclose it to sexual partners. Might not be treated as attempted murder in Ireland but i think it might be considered "culpable homicide" under German law. Not an expert here but I suspect the nurse is facing serious jail time.

Yes, I should have said IFR. The actual number if flu infections is only a guess. Mind you, the term flu is widely misused in ordinary speech, there isn't quite as much of it as conversation would imply.

I assume the poster knows this, as the post started with "Any info on how many children 15 to 18 are getting sick with covid in Ireland" - you have to multiply the carditis risk by the probability of infection (0.?) or vaccination (1).

The answer to that question is in the most recent 14 day epidemiology report:

https://www.hpsc.ie/a-z/respiratory/coronavirus/novelcoronavirus/surveillance/covid-1914-dayepidemiologyreports/COVID-19_Interim%2014%20day%20report%20INTERIM_20210810%20-%20Website.pdf

13-18 yrs: 3289 cases, 16.3% of cases.

Annoyingly that age group doesn't line up with the CSO population estimates, which has the closest age group 15-19 years having 323.9k population.

If we simply divide the cases and population into yearly age groups, we get about 550 cases per year group of 65k kids, and divide by 14 to give a daily probability of becoming a case of 0.0006 (1 in 1655). So assuming every kid got it only once, each kid would get it once every 4.5 years.

As you can see, with a carditis risk six times higher from covid, the vaccination decision on that basis only is quite finely balanced. This is probably why different countries are taking different decisions on providing/promoting adolescent vaccination, it's easy to come down on one side or other depending on guesses about of case loads over the next year. Interestingly though, some like Canada have proceeded with adolescent vaccination despite having a fairly low case load, and perhaps that has helped prepared them better than the US for Delta.

Still, nobody can really say what the infection rate is going to be over the next few months, as on the one hand our vaccination coverage in adults still isn't maximized, and on the other it's still summer, and we know that respiratory diseases generally spread much faster in winter. Last winter we had no vaccinations and no delta, so it's not really that useful a comparison.

Not to let ignorance get in the way of a prediction, I guess the probability of my kids getting it this winter as around 1, which is why I'm choosing to vaccinate them. Actually, carditis from covid isn't my only concern, I don't really like the organ damage aspect either. I'd rather send them into battle with some armour on, and perhaps (for my son) help him manage his activity levels around vaccination so reduce further the admittedly minuscule risks from carditis, which I can do better with vaccination than with covid since we are in control of the timing.

Another factor for me is that I'd rather the kids didn't kill their grandmother by passing on covid over Christmas, and whilst vaccination in no way guarantees that, at least we'll have taken reasonable steps to prevent it.

Happy for my maths to be checked, I'm often wrong.

Andrew Pollard said that anyone who is unvaccinated will “meet” the Covid virus. It is only a matter of time.

https://www.ft.com/content/e73b150b-99f1-43d4-80b5-9aca10e58ff6

Anyone having problems registering their 12-15 year old ? They instruct that you use the Parent's id to set up the HSE account but then when you try to register the child, you can't override the year of birth, my birth year is prefilled and i can't override it.

Similar here. Got my 1st Pfizer on the 22nd of July and nothing yet. But I know at least 5/6 people who got it around the same time (2 days before/after) who've all gotten their second jab already or appointment for this week. Helpline to see if there's a delay or anything weird with my registration is no help at all.