The Race for a Vaccine. The Road to Demaskus

[Fat_Pox]

Vampire Weekend - Oxford Comma

[mikehunt]

Oh Tim, I never said they used the report to base their initial let it rip approach. You were promoting Gupta as some kind of sage on this pandemic. Understandable that you’d get it wrong. I would question Gupta’s motive though.

[Tierneevin1979]

@mikehunt

While there is a bit to play out in this yet it’s apparent and has been since the summer that those who have suffered the most avoidable fatalities were in countries like the UK, US and Brazil. These countries were all happy to let it rip through, the approach promoted by Gupta. The vaccine will hopefully quieten dangerous people like her who are happy for people to die so they can go to the theatre.

More verbal diarrhea from the site’s resident clown. I live in the US, we had earlier and stricter lockdown than Ireland or most of Europe, and still have severe restrictions and high cases 8 months later. The death rates in Spain and Italy are higher than the UK and the US, statistically there is no difference in death rate between western Europe and the US. You’re just making stuff up to suit your death fetish argument.

No country was happy to “let it rip”, all of the commentators you reference like Gupta promoted aggressive measures to protect the vulnerable and sensible measures like social distancing and banning large gatherings (Sweden). There isn’t one country on the planet that “let it rip”, you keep repeating this lie which just confirms you’re a simpleton.

What has been proven is that severe lockdowns of a healthy population for months don’t work, as all they did was maintain a high population of susceptible who were always going to get infected once there was any attempt to lift restrictions, or once the young decided they had had enough and got on with their lives.

[Tim_Riggins]

@mikehunt

Oh Tim, I never said they used the report to base their initial let it rip approach. You were promoting Gupta as some kind of sage on this pandemic. Understandable that you’d get it wrong. I would question Gupta’s motive though.

You said this explicitly.

@mikehunt

UK government used this as expert opinion when the authors are not considered experts on the pandemic amongst their peers.

You were wrong.

[Lazarus]

Oooft

[Tassotti]

oooft, someone pick Maori mike up off the ground

[mikehunt]

Your comprehension skills are as flawed as your understanding of how the pandemic would turn out. I didn’t say they used it for the initial let it rip approach. The authors were brought in by Boris during lockdown V1 in an attempt to cover their arse after having to back track on their initial strategy. Glad to have clarified your misunderstanding.

[Tim_Riggins]

@mikehunt

For a non peer reviewed report it got a lot of unmerited attention. You can understand the uninformed being taken in by dangerously inaccurate guesswork but the the UK government used this as expert opinion when the authors are not considered experts on the pandemic amongst their peers.

For full context, yes you did. You directly referenced it as informing policy.

For the record. “Herd Immunity” was kicked around as a policy in early March up until March 17th, when a model by Neil Ferguson (which btw, had just as much guesstimates and scenarios) was provided.

Their model was put out after this date, on the last week of March.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.24.20042291v1

[balbec]

Straight back under the bed.

[mikehunt]

I did not Tim, I didn’t think I needed to spell it out for you but I overestimated your comprehension skills. The let it rip brigade got plenty of unmerited airtime. Johnson, Trump and Bolsonaro promoted this kind of uninformed opinion because it suited their needs, knowing full well their knuckle dragging followers would swallow it hook, line and sinker. For once they were right, people believed it and funnily enough some still do even though the facts are staring them in the face.

[Tim_Riggins]

@mikehunt

I did not Tim, I didn’t think I needed to spell it out for you but I overestimated your comprehension skills. The let it rip brigade got plenty of unmerited airtime. Johnson, Trump and Bolsonaro promoted this kind of uninformed opinion because it suited their needs, knowing full well their knuckle dragging followers would swallow it hook, line and sinker. For once they were right, people believed it and funnily enough some still do even though the facts are staring them in the face.

You’ve just posted a paragraph there for no reason. The quoted post is above.

You were wrong. Just move on with your argument.

[BruidheanChaorthainn]

He needs to go outside and do the Haka

[mikehunt]

That may be your interpretation but your interpretation is wrong. I said he used her report and I stand by that, he did. I didn’t say when he used it which is where you likely got confused. Gupta and the report only came to prominence during the summer. You were the one that posted the clip of her, it was the one where she suggested the worst had past and that herd immunity had possibly been reached or was well on its way.

[mikehunt]

Now I know this may be mindblowing for someone who thinks only one vaccine can possibly work… the haka can be performed inside too.

[Tim_Riggins]

@mikehunt

That may be your interpretation but your interpretation is wrong. I said he used her report and I stand by that, he did

What interpretation? You are denying a statement you made but now are claiming that you stand over it?

The paper came out after Herd Immunity was abandoned. It never mentioned herd immunity as a policy decision.

You need to just admit to being wrong.

[Fagan_ODowd]

After Admitting Mistake, AstraZeneca Faces Difficult Questions About Its Vaccine

Some trial participants only got a partial dose of AstraZeneca’s vaccine. Experts said the company’s spotty disclosures have eroded confidence.

Image
AstraZeneca and Oxford “get a poor grade for transparency and rigor when it comes to the vaccine trial results they have reported,” said Natalie Dean, a biostatistician at the University of Florida.
AstraZeneca and Oxford “get a poor grade for transparency and rigor when it comes to the vaccine trial results they have reported,” said Natalie Dean, a biostatistician at the University of Florida.Credit…Andrew Testa for The New York Times
By Rebecca Robbins and Benjamin Mueller
Published Nov. 25, 2020
Updated Nov. 26, 2020, 7:04 a.m. ET
The announcement this week that a cheap, easy-to-make coronavirus vaccine appeared to be up to 90 percent effective was greeted with jubilation. “Get yourself a vaccaccino,” a British tabloid celebrated, noting that the vaccine, developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford, costs less than a cup of coffee.

But since unveiling the preliminary results, AstraZeneca has acknowledged a key mistake in the vaccine dosage received by some study participants, adding to questions about whether the vaccine’s apparently spectacular efficacy will hold up under additional testing.

Scientists and industry experts said the error and a series of other irregularities and omissions in the way AstraZeneca initially disclosed the data have eroded their confidence in the reliability of the results.

Officials in the United States have noted that the results were not clear. It was the head of the flagship federal vaccine initiative — not the company — who first disclosed that the vaccine’s most promising results did not reflect data from older people.

The upshot, the experts said, is that the odds of regulators in the United States and elsewhere quickly authorizing the emergency use of the AstraZeneca vaccine are declining, an unexpected setback in the global campaign to corral the devastating pandemic.

“I think that they have really damaged confidence in their whole development program,” said Geoffrey Porges, an analyst for the investment bank SVB Leerink.

Michele Meixell, a spokeswoman for AstraZeneca, said the trials “were conducted to the highest standards.”

In an interview on Wednesday, Menelas Pangalos, the AstraZeneca executive in charge of much of the company’s research and development, defended the company’s handling of the testing and its public disclosures. He said the error in the dosage was made by a contractor, and that, once it was discovered, regulators were immediately notified and signed off on the plan to continue testing the vaccine in different doses.

Asked why AstraZeneca shared some information with Wall Street analysts and some other officials and experts but not with the public, he responded, “I think the best way of reflecting the results is in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, not in a newspaper.”

AstraZeneca was the third company this month to report encouraging early results on a coronavirus vaccine candidate. At first glance on Monday morning, the results looked promising. Depending on the strength at which the doses were given, the vaccine appeared to be either 90 percent or 62 percent effective. The average efficacy, the developers said, was 70 percent.

Almost immediately, though, there were doubts about the data.

The regimen that appeared to be 90 percent effective was based on participants receiving a half dose of the vaccine followed a month later by a full dose; the less effective version involved a pair of full doses. AstraZeneca disclosed in its initial announcement that fewer than 2,800 participants received the smaller dosing regimen, compared with nearly 8,900 participants who received two full doses.

The biggest questions were, why was there such a large variation in the effectiveness of the vaccine at different doses, and why did a smaller dose appear to produce much better results? AstraZeneca and Oxford researchers said they did not know.

Crucial information was also missing. The company said that the early analysis was based on 131 symptomatic Covid-19 cases that had turned up in study participants. But it did not break down how many cases were found in each group of participants — those who received the half-strength initial dose, the regular-strength initial dose and the placebo.

“The press release raised more questions than it answered,” said John Moore, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Weill Cornell Medical College.

Image
The AstraZeneca vaccine, which was developed with the University of Oxford, uses an approach involving a chimpanzee virus to provoke an immune response to the coronavirus.

[Tierneevin1979]

It’s a bit worrying. The half initial dose was a mistake, but the conclusion that they may have stumbled on a fortunate result may be mistaken. Apparently the smaller group who received the half dose were all under 50, who are more likely not to get seriously ill anyway.

At this point you would have to say US with a 2-1 lead over the UK.

[BruidheanChaorthainn]

I’ve a theory there is no vaccine. We will all be vaccinated with nothing. There’ll be a global Corona/vaccine party on the 1st of may which In reality will be a massive super spreading event which will achieve herd immunity much quicker than anything else.

[POTUS]

everyone will get it eventually

[peddlerscross]

What happens in the Vaccine Trials?

Once you are dosed are you encouraged to go around meeting as many people as possible to see if you get infected or not?

Shur if you took a vaccine and hid under the bed for a month after, it wouldn’t really prove anything?