Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[bucsfan333]

2 minutes ago, Deadpulse said:

pretty standard for vaccines. Like that graph though, what a stark difference. 

I posted it for the graph. You've put in great work in this thread. But there are people that need big graphs to help sell it.

[BobbyPhil1781]

25 minutes ago, Deadpulse said:

pretty standard for vaccines. Like that graph though, what a stark difference. 

Someone's MS Paint skills are on point!

[BobbyPhil1781]

Now AZ/Oxford are saying their vaccine is 90% effective which is up from the 70% reported a couple weeks ago............. someone smarter than me (90% of participants in this thread) tell me something came to light making this valid and not just them pulling numbers out of thin air.

[Shanedorf]

the bots are just getting warmed up

https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/12/04/get-ready-for-false-side-effects

Get Ready for False Side Effects

"We’re talking about treating very, very large populations, which means that you’re going to see the usual run of mortality and morbidity that you see across large samples. Specifically, if you take 10 million people and just wave your hand back and forth over their upper arms, in the next two months you would expect to see about 4,000 heart attacks. About 4,000 strokes. Over 9,000 new diagnoses of cancer. And about 14,000 of that ten million will die, out of usual all-causes mortality. No one would notice. That’s how many people die and get sick anyway.

But if you took those ten million people and gave them a new vaccine instead, there’s a real danger that those heart attacks, cancer diagnoses, and deaths will be attributed to the vaccine. I mean, if you reach a large enough population, you are literally going to have cases where someone gets the vaccine and drops dead the next day (just as they would have if they *didn’t* get the vaccine). It could prove difficult to convince that person’s friends and relatives of that lack of connection, though. Post hoc ergo propter hoc is one of the most powerful fallacies of human logic, and we’re not going to get rid of it any time soon. Especially when it comes to vaccines. The best we can do, I think, is to try to get the word out in advance. Let people know that such things are going to happen, because people get sick and die constantly in this world. The key will be whether they are getting sick or dying at a noticeably higher rate once they have been vaccinated."

 

[BobbyPhil1781]

Didn't see it posted but it looks like the FDA reviewed Pfizer's vaccine and deemed it safe. Great!

https://archive.is/SLMvE

[ramssuperbowl99]

18 minutes ago, Shanedorf said:

the bots are just getting warmed up

https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/12/04/get-ready-for-false-side-effects

Get Ready for False Side Effects

"We’re talking about treating very, very large populations, which means that you’re going to see the usual run of mortality and morbidity that you see across large samples. Specifically, if you take 10 million people and just wave your hand back and forth over their upper arms, in the next two months you would expect to see about 4,000 heart attacks. About 4,000 strokes. Over 9,000 new diagnoses of cancer. And about 14,000 of that ten million will die, out of usual all-causes mortality. No one would notice. That’s how many people die and get sick anyway.

But if you took those ten million people and gave them a new vaccine instead, there’s a real danger that those heart attacks, cancer diagnoses, and deaths will be attributed to the vaccine. I mean, if you reach a large enough population, you are literally going to have cases where someone gets the vaccine and drops dead the next day (just as they would have if they *didn’t* get the vaccine). It could prove difficult to convince that person’s friends and relatives of that lack of connection, though. Post hoc ergo propter hoc is one of the most powerful fallacies of human logic, and we’re not going to get rid of it any time soon. Especially when it comes to vaccines. The best we can do, I think, is to try to get the word out in advance. Let people know that such things are going to happen, because people get sick and die constantly in this world. The key will be whether they are getting sick or dying at a noticeably higher rate once they have been vaccinated."

 

We're hoping to avoid a repeat of the revusiran situation, and that this point we've given it to enough people that seems unlikely.

(For the unaware, this Phase 3 cancellation hurt: https://www.alnylam.de/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Revusiran-RNAi-Roundtable_FINAL2_08092017.pdf)

[Xenos]

4 hours ago, Shanedorf said:

the bots are just getting warmed up

https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/12/04/get-ready-for-false-side-effects

Get Ready for False Side Effects

"We’re talking about treating very, very large populations, which means that you’re going to see the usual run of mortality and morbidity that you see across large samples. Specifically, if you take 10 million people and just wave your hand back and forth over their upper arms, in the next two months you would expect to see about 4,000 heart attacks. About 4,000 strokes. Over 9,000 new diagnoses of cancer. And about 14,000 of that ten million will die, out of usual all-causes mortality. No one would notice. That’s how many people die and get sick anyway.

But if you took those ten million people and gave them a new vaccine instead, there’s a real danger that those heart attacks, cancer diagnoses, and deaths will be attributed to the vaccine. I mean, if you reach a large enough population, you are literally going to have cases where someone gets the vaccine and drops dead the next day (just as they would have if they *didn’t* get the vaccine). It could prove difficult to convince that person’s friends and relatives of that lack of connection, though. Post hoc ergo propter hoc is one of the most powerful fallacies of human logic, and we’re not going to get rid of it any time soon. Especially when it comes to vaccines. The best we can do, I think, is to try to get the word out in advance. Let people know that such things are going to happen, because people get sick and die constantly in this world. The key will be whether they are getting sick or dying at a noticeably higher rate once they have been vaccinated."

 

I’ll be sharing this on social media. Thanks Shane! 😊

[Xenos]

Biden seems to be heavily implying that teachers will get the second round of vaccines.

[mission27]

20 hours ago, Deadpulse said:

If we were to only vaccinate the at risk (which doesn't mean they are immune, I will touch on this later), and then open up our hospitals would be completely overwhelmed.

I think this is a bit of a stretch tbh.

There are 330m people living in the USA.  100m at risk + 20m healthcare workers would be 120m Americans vaccinated.  Latest estimates say about a third of Americans will have naturally occurring immunity by spring, or 70m of the remaining 210m.  So 100m + 20m + 70m, or 190m of 330m, or 58% of the population would be protected even if we only vaccinated at risk folks and healthcare workers.  58% may or may be enough to reach herd immunity by itself but it certainly slows the spread and gets us in that ballpark.  And by vaccinating the at risk population, those that do continue to contract COVID are much much less likely to need hospitalization, effectively eliminating the risk of our hospitals becoming overwhelmed.  Realistically, the 58% is going to be higher, because a lot of not at risk people will still choose to get the vaccine, and we probably reach a high degree of community immunity by the middle of next year (if the supply chain holds up as predicted).

Don't get me wrong, the MoL strongly supports the vaccine and @TLO and I will be getting vaccinated as soon as the vaccine is available for folks in our category (young, strong, and fertile) - we'd even be happy to do so on video or on a radio show (@Shady Slim?) if it would help to raise awareness and confidence in the vaccine.  But life is going to return to normal even if a lot of younger, healthy people make the misguided decision to not get vaccinated.  @ramssuperbowl99 made a similar point a couple weeks ago but as usual the MoL would like to put some numbers behind it to inform the public and ease some folks understandable concerns. 

[mission27]

6 hours ago, BobbyPhil1781 said:

Now AZ/Oxford are saying their vaccine is 90% effective which is up from the 70% reported a couple weeks ago............. someone smarter than me (90% of participants in this thread) tell me something came to light making this valid and not just them pulling numbers out of thin air.

I think its still very much an open question tbh.  My understanding is that 70% was the total effectiveness across the trial but a bunch of people were given a half dose by mistake and the vaccine was ostensibly 90% effective in the group with the dosing error.  However, as far as I know, nobody has been able to describe why the half dose would be more effective and AZ/Oxford haven't released enough data to show that the 90% was a statistically significant sample.

[mission27]

9 hours ago, bucsfan333 said:

 

amazing 

[Deadpulse]

39 minutes ago, mission27 said:

I think this is a bit of a stretch tbh.

There are 330m people living in the USA.  100m at risk + 20m healthcare workers would be 120m Americans vaccinated.  Latest estimates say about a third of Americans will have naturally occurring immunity by spring, or 70m of the remaining 210m.  So 100m + 20m + 70m, or 190m of 330m, or 58% of the population would be protected even if we only vaccinated at risk folks and healthcare workers.  58% may or may be enough to reach herd immunity by itself but it certainly slows the spread and gets us in that ballpark.  And by vaccinating the at risk population, those that do continue to contract COVID are much much less likely to need hospitalization, effectively eliminating the risk of our hospitals becoming overwhelmed.  Realistically, the 58% is going to be higher, because a lot of not at risk people will still choose to get the vaccine, and we probably reach a high degree of community immunity by the middle of next year (if the supply chain holds up as predicted).

Don't get me wrong, the MoL strongly supports the vaccine and @TLO and I will be getting vaccinated as soon as the vaccine is available for folks in our category (young, strong, and fertile) - we'd even be happy to do so on video or on a radio show (@Shady Slim?) if it would help to raise awareness and confidence in the vaccine.  But life is going to return to normal even if a lot of younger, healthy people make the misguided decision to not get vaccinated.  @ramssuperbowl99 made a similar point a couple weeks ago but as usual the MoL would like to put some numbers behind it to inform the public and ease some folks understandable concerns. 

These would be great numbers if Americans spread out evenly 

[mission27]

26 minutes ago, Deadpulse said:

These would be great numbers if Americans spread out evenly 

The good news is the places that are most skeptical of the vaccine will have the highest level of naturally acquired immunity

Unfortunately, there will be unneeded deaths between now and then

[Xenos]

Some counties in CA have already reached their ICU capacity 😢

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-12-08/overwhelmed-by-covid-cases-fresno-county-first-in-california-to-reach-0-icu-capacity%3f_amp=true

[ramssuperbowl99]

8 hours ago, mission27 said:

There are 330m people living in the USA.  100m at risk + 20m healthcare workers would be 120m Americans vaccinated.  Latest estimates say about a third of Americans will have naturally occurring immunity by spring, or 70m of the remaining 210m.  So 100m + 20m + 70m, or 190m of 330m, or 58% of the population would be protected even if we only vaccinated at risk folks and healthcare workers.  58% may or may be enough to reach herd immunity by itself but it certainly slows the spread and gets us in that ballpark. 

Conceptually, I think we consider herd immunity a black and white threshold we hope to eventually reach, but really it's a sliding scale and the first few steps make the biggest practical difference. If someone would go out and infect 3 people of a naive population, with 58% vaccinated that number drops to only 1.26 people. Even at 30% vaccinated/immune, you're talking about infecting only 2.1 people instead of 3. 

And when you're talking exponential growth, the impact of that shift down a few tenths could be tens of thousands of cases a day in the short term. And, maybe more importantly, stopping us from getting to a million cases/day.