COVID-19: Vaccine and testing procedures Megathread Part 2 [Mod Warning - Post #1]

Water John

Water John wrote: »

Doubt if any of the mRNA vaccines would be licienced. The Oxford one is old style tech and so would be easier.

Contracted rather than licensed - Pfizer would retain ownership of the process and IP with ironclad agreements in place

lbj666

JMNolan wrote: »

This something I've been thinking about, how quickly should we see deaths reducing? The UK are a bit ahead so we should see a reduction in deaths there at some point due to the vaccine but will it be 2 weeks/1 month/2 months?

The vacine should have a major dent on people getting sick to begin with never mind deaths. So the best indicator will be of confirmed cases +65 group overall as a %tage of overall.

The current Post Christmas crisis is really going to muddy the waters a bit so i wouldnt expect to see any clear trends appearing for 2 months at least.

marno21

is_that_so wrote: »

I don't think there is an EU deal for Novavax just yet.

If it looks good and are ready to submit in January the EU won’t be long doing a deal with them

is_that_so

marno21 wrote: »

If it looks good and are ready to submit in January the EU won’t be long doing a deal with them

Just exploratory talks so far but looking at a contract for 100m with a possible further 100m.

antiskeptic

Doc07 wrote: »

I respect your right to be sceptical and to express it.
However, it’s a fairly obvious take for a reasonable person to assess that you are just trying to pretend/lie/suggest that the difference in infection rate observed in the trial is spurious.

It appears clear that informed consent is erroneous in what its being informed about in the matter of efficacy vs effectiveness. No so much a right to be skeptical as wise to be.

My motive is irrelevant. I ask a straightforward, fairly logical question that there ought to be a clear answer for.

The alternative is a faith-based decision.

Problematic that, given previous performance of pharma and statutory bodies. Purdue? Vioxx? And the government agencies that presided ober those disasters.

It may seem like a nice idea to you or important but we don’t need to see the variance in 100 groups to say with confidence that the efficacy was demonstrated with high,high,high statistical probability that the differences are real and not due to chance. It’s built into the statistical design. You can look all this up yourself.

That's boiler plate stuff. Efficacy is high. I'm not saying it isn't. What I'm asking is whether we can tell a darn thing from an efficacy figure thus arrived at.

I’ve answered some of your Qs in good faith , even the ones about ridiculous fantasy stats scenarios , so here’s one for you.
Find a scientist or statistician or even a reference paper that supports your theory that knowing variance if you did this 100 times matters a jot in determining if this trial has demonstrated efficacy.

A large trial has shown the reduction in proportion of infections between placebo and vaccine to be 90 odd percent (between similar large groups with similar risks and exposures)
If you think that is spurious fair play to you but it is not a position supported by facts or even any reasonable probability scenarios and certainly not a position that any reasonable person would maintain.

You seem reluctant to state whether you think tossing a coin 20000 times would result in 9 more heads than harps (or vice versa), if that exercise was carried out more than once.

9 was the result achieved one time.

Everytime though?

Call me a.lay statistician but I think that highly unlikely. There is going to be a range. A variance. And all the huff and puff about infection rates and large sample size sidesteps that issue not on jot. No matter how large the sample, it is just one sample. What I'm asking is, what happens when you compare samples.

is_that_so

https://twitter.com/KevDoyle_Indo/status/1341056715509424130

stephenjmcd

Pfizer & BioNTech say its an historical day for Europe and they stand ready to supply straight away.

Reports are saying that countries will get the same volume in the first delivery.

iamwhoiam

stephenjmcd wrote: »

Pfizer & BioNTech say its an historical day for Europe and they stand ready to supply straight away.

Reports are saying that countries will get the same volume in the first delivery.

Great news after a gloomy weekend .

titan18

I hope those consignments come fast and regular enough. Less than 10k at a time will take us forever

CIARAN_BOYLE

titan18 wrote: »

I hope those consignments come fast and regular enough. Less than 10k at a time will take us forever

The Pfizer numbers are relatively low. Moderna numbers would be lower still.

A lot of people are holding out hope for Oxford/Astra Zenaca as they have a good manufacturing base behind them but they have their own issues that could complicate approval.

is_that_so

titan18 wrote: »

I hope those consignments come fast and regular enough. Less than 10k at a time will take us forever

The HSE will get plenty of questions from our esteemed press on that!

CrabRevolution

PTH2009 wrote: »

Were all patiented little boys and girls and can wait

Typical Irish generosity ****e

Ireland's population is just over 1% of the EU's population. What's so bad about getting 1% of the first batch?

Micky 32

antiskeptic wrote: »

It appears clear that informed consent is erroneous in what its being informed about in the matter of efficacy vs effectiveness. No so much a right to be skeptical as wise to be.

My motive is irrelevant. I ask a straightforward, fairly logical question that there ought to be a clear answer for.

The alternative is a faith-based decision.

Problematic that, given previous performance of pharma and statutory bodies. Purdue? Vioxx? And the government agencies that presided ober those disasters.





That's boiler plate stuff. Efficacy is high. I'm not saying it isn't. What I'm asking is whether we can tell a darn thing from an efficacy figure thus arrived at.



You seem reluctant to state whether you think tossing a coin 20000 times would result in 9 more heads than harps (or vice versa), if that exercise was carried out more than once.

9 was the result achieved one time.

Everytime though?

Call me a.lay statistician but I think that highly unlikely. There is going to be a range. A variance. And all the huff and puff about infection rates and large sample size sidesteps that issue not on jot. No matter how large the sample, it is just one sample. What I'm asking is, what happens when you compare samples.

So your post roughly translates to that your delighted of the approval and you’re looking forward to getting normality back? Exciting stuff isn’t it?:D

polesheep

A lot of people were giving out that the EMA was taking too long, but the fact that it did not allow itself to be rushed into making a decision has blown away a lot of my hesitancy.

Duke of Url

Brilliant that the Pfizer vaccine is approved.

A bit surprised the the first batch available to the EU is only 975k

CIARAN_BOYLE

Duke of Url wrote: »

Brilliant that the Pfizer vaccine is approved.

A bit surprised the the first batch available to the EU is only 975k

It's been known for sometime that our initial allocation would be tiny. This is one reason why those who have followed the issue haven't really been concerned about when it gets approved.

Approving a week or two early won't increase the number of doses available.

We had a discussion in October where we determined that the allocation for Ireland upto the end of January was going to be about 30,000 doses (3 million for Europe).

Yes the initial amounts are tiny. Anyone who says we will be back to normal in March or May is placing bets on 3 or 4 more vaccines approved.

Moderna numbers will be less than Pfizer. There are hopes that astra Zenaca will have good numbers but they have trial issues that may delay approval.

ACitizenErased

US just administered the first dose of the Moderna vaccine to a nurse in Connecticut.

titan18

CIARAN_BOYLE wrote: »

It's been known for sometime that our initial allocation would be tiny. This is one reason why those who have followed the issue haven't really been concerned about when it gets approved.

Approving a week or two early won't increase the number of doses available.

We had a discussion in October where we determined that the allocation for Ireland upto the end of January was going to be about 30,000 doses (3 million for Europe).

Yes the initial amounts are tiny. Anyone who says we will be back to normal in March or May is placing bets on 3 or 4 more vaccines approved.

Moderna numbers will be less than Pfizer. There are hopes that astra Zenaca will have good numbers but they have trial issues that may delay approval.

Weren't Pfizer aiming for 50m doses being manufactured before year end. Surely the EU get more than 3m of that

Seweryn

Duke of Url wrote: »

Brilliant that the Pfizer vaccine is approved.

Yeah, great news.

Also the report published by the UK Government seems promising after the first 100k+ doses distributed:

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/meetings/downloads/slides-2020-12/slides-12-19/05-COVID-CLARK.pdf

See the page "V-safe Active Surveillance for C..." and then the Health Impact Events to Registrants with recorded 1st dose ratio, which is, to my very rough calculation, about 2.8%, which is only one per 35 Registrants.

So... if we serve the life saving doses (when the juice gets finally approved) to, say, 3.5 mln people of this country, less than 100k citizens will become ill, statistically. Not bad for the start, is it?

AutoTuning

The Irish Times seemed to be suggesting we'd only be getting an initial 5000 doses, which seems really small.

Canada seems to have preordered ludicrous numbers of doses, works out at 9 per person.

I'm just wondering how vaccine nationalism is going to play out.

Germany is already going outside the EU arrangement:

https://www.ft.com/content/4c33d9bf-5ed9-43d4-b907-4d79d71599cf and cutting deals directly with BioNTech.

Duke of Url

AutoTuning wrote: »

The Irish Times seemed to be suggesting we'd only be getting an initial 5000 doses, which seems really small.

Canada seems to have preordered ludicrous numbers of doses, works out at 9 per person.

I'm just wondering how vaccine nationalism is going to play out.

Germany is already going outside the EU arrangement:

https://www.ft.com/content/4c33d9bf-5ed9-43d4-b907-4d79d71599cf and cutting deals directly with BioNTech.

Canada received 30k Pfizer vaccines in there first order with a population of 37m

hmmm

Seweryn wrote: »

So... if we serve the life saving doses (when the juice gets finally approved) to, say, 3.5 mln people of this country, less than 100k citizens will become ill, statistically. Not bad for the start, is it?

This isn't the thread for twisting information.

We know that the side effects of vaccines for this disease will in some cases be stronger than people will normally have experienced. Some people might have to take a day off work. I remember having the Yellow fever vaccination and feeling unwell for a few days after - still better than getting Yellow fever.

Duke of Url

AutoTuning wrote: »

The Irish Times seemed to be suggesting we'd only be getting an initial 5000 doses, which seems really small.

Canada seems to have preordered ludicrous numbers of doses, works out at 9 per person.

I'm just wondering how vaccine nationalism is going to play out.

Germany is already going outside the EU arrangement:

https://www.ft.com/content/4c33d9bf-5ed9-43d4-b907-4d79d71599cf and cutting deals directly with BioNTech.

Can’t open the link. Please quote the paragraph

Seweryn

hmmm wrote: »

This isn't the thread for twisting information.

"The purpose of this thread is baked into the title - COVID-19: Vaccine/antidote and testing procedures".

The link shows post vac. testing results. However, if Moderators believe this is against the rules, please feel free to remove my post.

AutoTuning

Duke of Url wrote: »

Can’t open the link. Please quote the paragraph

Better again, here's an open article

"Germany Looks Beyond EU Deal to Secure Covid Vaccine Doses
Germany is conducting direct negotiations with domestic Covid-19 vaccine developers to obtain more doses than would be allocated through the shared European Union plan, Health Minister Jens Spahn said.
...
The country is in talks with BioNTech SE, Pfizer Inc.’s partner on the first vaccine approved in a Western country against the virus, as well as CureVac NV and IDT Biologika GmbH, Spahn said Wednesday. All three German companies received funding through a government program to support Covid vaccine development."

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-02/germany-seeks-covid-vaccine-doses-beyond-eu-deal-allocation

JacksonHeightsOwn

AutoTuning wrote: »

Better again, here's an open article

"Germany Looks Beyond EU Deal to Secure Covid Vaccine Doses
Germany is conducting direct negotiations with domestic Covid-19 vaccine developers to obtain more doses than would be allocated through the shared European Union plan, Health Minister Jens Spahn said.
...
The country is in talks with BioNTech SE, Pfizer Inc.’s partner on the first vaccine approved in a Western country against the virus, as well as CureVac NV and IDT Biologika GmbH, Spahn said Wednesday. All three German companies received funding through a government program to support Covid vaccine development."

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-02/germany-seeks-covid-vaccine-doses-beyond-eu-deal-allocation

If it was an Irish company that developed three vaccine and the Irish government helped fund it, being honest you'd want a few extra doses wouldn't you.

AutoTuning

chrisbonnie wrote: »

If it was an Irish company that developed three vaccine and the Irish government helped fund it, being honest you'd want a few extra doses wouldn't you.

You might, but if we're not careful, you could well end up with EU countries bidding against each other.

There was a complete mess at the start of the pandemic, with several countries, including France and Germany, just blocking exports and grabbing PPE.

antiskeptic

Micky 32 wrote: »

So your post roughly translates to that your delighted of the approval and you’re looking forward to getting normality back? Exciting stuff isn’t it?:D

That's the great thing about a vaccine: if your delighted you take it, if you're not, you don't. It's very democratic.

Necro

Seweryn wrote: »

Yeah, great news.

Also the report published by the UK Government seems promising after the first 100k+ doses distributed:

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/meetings/downloads/slides-2020-12/slides-12-19/05-COVID-CLARK.pdf

See the page "V-safe Active Surveillance for C..." and then the Health Impact Events to Registrants with recorded 1st dose ratio, which is, to my very rough calculation, about 2.8%, which is only one per 35 Registrants.

So... if we serve the life saving doses (when the juice gets finally approved) to, say, 3.5 mln people of this country, less than 100k citizens will become ill, statistically. Not bad for the start, is it?

Mod:

I'd advise you read the OP before posting again. Thanks

namloc1980

chrisbonnie wrote: »

If it was an Irish company that developed three vaccine and the Irish government helped fund it, being honest you'd want a few extra doses wouldn't you.

Sure but it undermines the whole idea of the EU-wide procurement process. To be honest our government should be out there doing the same thing as Germany. No point in being left behind.

Micky 32

Jaysus that Lorraine Nolan ever smile? Must be fun at xmas in her house. Doesn’t seem too happy about the upcoming vaccines either. Do these people just revell in doom and gloom or what.

AutoTuning

namloc1980 wrote: »

Sure but it undermines the whole idea of the EU-wide procurement process. To be honest our government should be out there doing the same thing as Germany. No point in being left behind.

That's the problem. If you end up with say France doing a deal with Sanofi or other companies, Sweden perhaps demanding easier access to the AstraZenica vaccine and so on.

Or, you get countries just cutting deals with large amounts of money up front, the result will be overall higher prices in Europe and serious damage to trust in EU institutions.

Doc07

Seweryn wrote: »

"The purpose of this thread is baked into the title - COVID-19: Vaccine/antidote and testing procedures".

The link shows post vac. testing results. However, if Moderators believe this is against the rules, please feel free to remove my post.

The doc you shared is US data not UK.
The 2.8 % side effects with impact you equated to ‘100,000’ becoming ill here if we vaccinated is nonsense.
There will always be side effects in any mass vaccination campaign, some rare more serious ones but most of them are mild and even most of those reported as serious relate to a day off work or college etc.

Water John

Micky 32 wrote: »

Jaysus that Lorraine Nolan ever smile? Must be fun at xmas in her house. Doesn’t seem too happy about the upcoming vaccines either. Do these people just revell in doom and gloom or what.

Are you not concerned that the three lads don't smile either?

AutoTuning

AutoTuning wrote: »

Better again, here's an open article

"Germany Looks Beyond EU Deal to Secure Covid Vaccine Doses
Germany is conducting direct negotiations with domestic Covid-19 vaccine developers to obtain more doses than would be allocated through the shared European Union plan, Health Minister Jens Spahn said.
...
The country is in talks with BioNTech SE, Pfizer Inc.’s partner on the first vaccine approved in a Western country against the virus, as well as CureVac NV and IDT Biologika GmbH, Spahn said Wednesday. All three German companies received funding through a government program to support Covid vaccine development."

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-02/germany-seeks-covid-vaccine-doses-beyond-eu-deal-allocation

There's a bit of disquiet in Germany about the EU procurement process, slow to conclude deals and turned down an early option for 500m doses of Pfizer as didn't want it to look like favoring a German option over the French one (Sanofi). The 100m option for extra Pfizer doses will be executed but won't be available til July 2021.

ACitizenErased

Micky 32 wrote: »

Jaysus that Lorraine Nolan ever smile? Must be fun at xmas in her house. Doesn’t seem too happy about the upcoming vaccines either. Do these people just revell in doom and gloom or what.

They seem intent on downplaying the vaccine as much as possible, it really is a bizarre mindset/tactic.

stephenjmcd

ACitizenErased wrote: »

They seem intent on downplaying the vaccine as much as possible, it really is a bizarre mindset/tactic.

Really is strange. Its way down the list on the likes of rte now as well. Strange for a country that's about to get its first set of vaccines

Micky 32

Water John wrote: »

Are you not concerned that the three lads don't smile either?

I gave up on them long ago

antiskeptic

Doc07 wrote: »

The doc you shared is US data not UK.
The 2.8 % side effects with impact you equated to ‘100,000’ becoming ill here if we vaccinated is nonsense.
There will always be side effects in any mass vaccination campaign, some rare more serious ones but most of them are mild and even most of those reported as serious relate to a day off work or college etc.

I think many folk would be as concerned about long term consequence (which are much harder to pin on a particular vaccine) as they are about shorter term affects. Mercury and aluminium adjuvants would be the kind of thing that would have anything thinking person at least consider before deciding to have them injected into their bodies.

Remember those aluminium saucepans that were once so common? Scratched to bits from scraping scrambled eggs off of the bottom of them with a steel spoon. Yummy!

You don't really see them around much anymore.

hmmm

Deleted User wrote: »

There's a bit of disquiet in Germany about the EU procurement process, slow to conclude deals and turned down an early option for 500m doses of Pfizer as didn't want it to look like favoring a German option over the French one (Sanofi). The 100m option for extra Pfizer doses will be executed but won't be available til July 2021.

Is this based on reports like the Spiegel article?

I thought that article was a bit captain hindsight. No-one believed the mRNA vaccines would get the spectacular results they did, and they had a high risk of failure, so blaming the EU for not pre-purchasing hundreds of millions of doses I thought was a bit unfair. We could be sitting here with a couple of billion committed to vaccines which no-one really wanted.

The EU took big bets on Sanofi & GSK, which made lots of sense as they looked like a banker with decades of vaccine experience, and they screwed up. They also took a big bet on Astra Zeneca/Oxford, which was new technology but which looked more solid than the mRNA stuff. That bet will still pay off in January hopefully. And another big bet with J&J because, well, they're J&J and know what they're doing.

Where the Americans seem to be doing better on their Operation Warp Speed is that they are providing logistical help to the manufacturers. If Pfizer says they're short on glass vials, the US military will go get them. Europe is lacking this at the moment, and I don't think the EU has the power - individual countries will have to do this.

plodder

antiskeptic wrote: »

I think many folk would be as concerned about long term consequence (which are much harder to pin on a particular vaccine) as they are about shorter term affects. Mercury and aluminium adjuvants would be the kind of thing that would have anything thinking person at least consider before deciding to have them injected into their bodies.

Remember those aluminium saucepans that were once so common? Scratched to bits from scraping scrambled eggs off of the bottom of them with a steel spoon. Yummy!

You don't really see them around much anymore.

Neither the Pfizer nor the Moderna vaccines have mercury or aluminium in them. Don't know about the others.

Necro

antiskeptic wrote: »

I think many folk would be as concerned about long term consequence (which are much harder to pin on a particular vaccine) as they are about shorter term affects. Mercury and aluminium adjuvants would be the kind of thing that would have anything thinking person at least consider before deciding to have them injected into their bodies.

Remember those aluminium saucepans that were once so common? Scratched to bits from scraping scrambled eggs off of the bottom of them with a steel spoon. Yummy!

You don't really see them around much anymore.

Mod:

Please read the OP before posting again and stay on topic.

I'm not posting any more warnings in relation to this.

afatbollix

Uk has vaccinated 500k so far.

That is a fantastic amount in 2 weeks!

We may give out about the Brits but fair play.

namloc1980

afatbollix wrote: »

Uk has vaccinated 500k so far.

That is a fantastic amount in 2 weeks!

We may give out about the Brits but fair play.

EU hasn't covered itself in glory with this vaccine approval and rollout. US and UK approved earlier and are rolling out large scale vaccinations already. Meanwhile we got approval today and looking at tiny numbers vaccinated over the next couple of weeks. EU bureaucracy hard at work.

hmmm

Good to see. I think we'll see a far more active US response from inauguration day (anything would be better than the current response).

https://twitter.com/CNN/status/1341122566174384128

MerlinSouthDub

I would have expected final readout from the AstraZeneca trial by now. Would be good if efficacy had crept upwards since the interim data.

J & J vaccine should read out very soon too, given how high infection rates are in the US.

landofthetree

https://mobile.twitter.com/Coronavirusgoo1/status/1340046698505244680


200,000 to be vaccinated a day in the UK by next week.

Oxford vaccine approval very soon (latest by 29th Dec).

Millions of people to be vaccinated a week by January.

AdamD

landofthetree wrote: »

https://mobile.twitter.com/Coronavirusgoo1/status/1340046698505244680


200,000 to be vaccinated a day in the UK by next week.

Oxford vaccine approval very soon (latest by 29th Dec).

Millions of people to be vaccinated a week by January.

They may have bungled up in other areas but they're going to be miles ahead in terms of vaccinating their population.

Gile_na_gile

namloc1980 wrote: »

EU hasn't covered itself in glory with this vaccine approval and rollout. US and UK approved earlier and are rolling out large scale vaccinations already. Meanwhile we got approval today and looking at tiny numbers vaccinated over the next couple of weeks. EU bureaucracy hard at work.

Yes, too slow, and now we may fall well behind US and UK. We would be waiting another week with our amazing solidarity were it not for pressure from Germany and Spain. That said, the joint procurement is a good thing.

ixoy

stephenjmcd wrote: »

Really is strange. Its way down the list on the likes of rte now as well. Strange for a country that's about to get its first set of vaccines

Bugged me earlier. In big capitals is "Third Wave", "Cases above 700" and, buried more, is the fact we've now the greenlight to begin stopping this damn thing.