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

Masala

Today being Paddy Day 2020... when do you think we will have a ‘flu jab’ / pill / syrup that we can take to make us immune/ les likely to catch this 19 virus?.

Mod: The purpose of this thread is baked into the title - COVID-19: Vaccine/antidote and testing procedures - it's not a platform to push an anti vaccination agenda. If posters wish to discuss the perceived cons of vaccinations, or push various theories regarding 'the agenda' (whatever that is supposed to mean), open a thread elsewhere on it.

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TomSweeney

ShineOn7 wrote: »

Ok Boards, I think that's enough of you for today

This thread used to be a sane beacon amongst all the shíte elsewhere

Some absolute loons on it today though

Again, vaccine hesitant != anti vax.

In fact i'd even be less hesitant now after reading some of the good posts on here.

Remember just like someone that says its a good idea to control immigration isn't a far right nazi bigot ...
Someone who is hesitant to take a brand new vaccine isn't an anti vaxxer "Bill Gates is a eugenicist" tin foil hat loon either.

Jesus, what is it with the fecking straw manning!

JacksonHeightsOwn

polesheep wrote: »

And you're calling people eejits?

It's not like I was drinking turps, its a vaccine.

The point we're making is nobody questioned the science before, but now every Tom, dick and Harry is an armchair epidemiologist.

braychelsea

Can the people who want to argue about the pros and cons of getting a vaccine set up their own thread and we just keep this one to discuss vaccine progress/rollout?

plodder

TomSweeney wrote: »

Again, vaccine hesitant != anti vax.

In fact i'd even be less hesitant now after reading some of the good posts on here.

Remember just like someone that says its a good idea to control immigration isn't a far right nazi bigot ...
Someone who is hesitant to take a brand new vaccine isn't an anti vaxxer "Bill Gates is a eugenicist" tin foil hat loon either.

Jesus, what is it with the fecking straw manning!

I'd agree with that. You can't write off nearly half the country (12% said they wouldn't take it, 33% were unsure). The 33% will have to be persuaded and maybe some of the 12% will as well.

There were some very good posts here yesterday putting previous vaccine issues in context and I hope that kind of information will be used in any information campaign. I'd also hope that it would appeal to people's better nature to protect their friends and family, rather than purely personal motivations related to foreign travel (though I think it's reasonable that there will be conditions put on some aspects of life, like foreign travel only on proof of vaccination).

giveitholly

Could someone here with the expertise give a quick laymans explanation the difference between the Oxford vaccine and the Pfizer/Moderna vaccines

tom1ie

chrisbonnie wrote: »

Super post, I went to Thailand about 15 years ago and had to get a fair few vaccinations. Not bloody once did I ever think twice about their safety data, efficiency rating etc......

Now you hear all these scaremongering eejits going on like they've spent the last 20 years studying infectious disease and immunology.

Why the need to call people eejits because they are asking questions about a brand new vaccine?

Yours is the kind of post that causes people to double down on their views and what causes this one way or the other arguments. There’s no middle ground with people like you.

tom1ie

chrisbonnie wrote: »

It's not like I was drinking turps, its a vaccine.

The point we're making is nobody questioned the science before, but now every Tom, dick and Harry is an armchair epidemiologist.

No one questioned the science before because it was established science!
This is a brand new vaccine that we don’t know the long term effects of.

However in saying that I’m sure the chances of adverse effects from it are tiny.

ixoy

I didn't see this posted before - the BBC have a good article here about the development of the Oxford vaccine and how they developed it so fast without cutting corners. It includes how it built on existing research, how ten years for a vaccine should not be treated a a benchmark, parallel phases, quality control, etc. Well worth a read for those who have had a few questions about the topic.

[Deleted User]

giveitholly wrote: »

Could someone here with the expertise give a quick laymans explanation the difference between the Oxford vaccine and the Pfizer/Moderna vaccines

Pfizer and Moderna are mRNA vaccines. Your body uses mRNA to instruct cells to create proteins. What the vaccines do is use a synthetic piece of mRNA to create a specific protein. In this case the spike protein found on the virus. Your body then recognizes this as an invader and begins an immune response.

The Oxford vaccine uses a viral vector. They used an Adenovirus which is one of the many common cold viruses. They specifically used one taken from chimps to avoid any issues with preexisting immunity in the population. They altered the virus so it can't replicate and encoded it with the RNA to create a specific protein. Once again the spike protein which your body begins an immune response to.

That's a gross oversimplification obviously but that's the gist of it.

Irish Stones

Hardyn wrote: »

Highly unlikely. We know from past experience with vaccines that a vast majority of side effects are known within the first two months. That's why the FDA required a two month observation period after the final dose.

Is someone that gets an adverse reaction from a med/vaccine asked/obligated to report any bad symptom after taking that medication?

zuutroy

They can just put it on Facebook I guess.

plodder

I see the half dose regimen of the AZ vaccine wasn't tested in the US. So, they do have to run a new trial before it can be used there, which I guess means more of it for the rest of the world until then.

tom1ie

Hardyn wrote: »

Pfizer and Moderna are mRNA vaccines. Your body uses mRNA to instruct cells to create proteins. What the vaccines do is use a synthetic piece of mRNA to create a specific protein. In this case the spike protein found on the virus. Your body then recognizes this as an invader and begins an immune response.

The Oxford vaccine uses a viral vector. They used an Adenovirus which is one of the many common cold viruses. They specifically used one taken from chimps to avoid any issues with preexisting immunity in the population. They altered the virus so it can't replicate and encoded it with the RNA to create a specific protein. Once again the spike protein which your body begins an immune response to.

That's a gross oversimplification obviously but that's the gist of it.

If someone has low white blood cell count will this have any bearing on if they will be allowed take the Pfizer vaccine?
As in, will the persons immune system be able to fight off the protein that gets produced if their immune system is low in white blood cells?
Or am I misunderstanding this?

Stark

The protein itself is harmless as far as I'm aware.

seamie78

plodder wrote: »

I see the half dose regimen of the AZ vaccine wasn't tested in the US. So, they do have to run a new trial before it can be used there, which I guess means more of it for the rest of the world until then.

surely they would use the data from the other trails, I don't think where in the world the trials took place has any bearing on that

[Deleted User]

tom1ie wrote: »

If someone has low white blood cell count will this have any bearing on if they will be allowed take the Pfizer vaccine?
As in, will the persons immune system be able to fight off the protein that gets produced if their immune system is low in white blood cells?
Or am I misunderstanding this?

It's basically a copy of the spike protein found on the virus. It's completely harmless. The important part is that your immune system still recognizes it as the real thing and responds to it.

tom1ie

Hardyn wrote: »

It's basically a copy of the spike protein found on the virus. It's completely harmless. The important part is that your immune system still recognizes it as the real thing and responds to it.

Ok, so the actual spike protein on the virus is harmless?
The spike protein is what the virus uses to attach to healthy cells in your body is that correct?

iguana

ixoy wrote: »

I didn't see this posted before - the BBC have a good article here about the development of the Oxford vaccine and how they developed it so fast without cutting corners. It includes how it built on existing research, how ten years for a vaccine should not be treated a a benchmark, parallel phases, quality control, etc. Well worth a read for those who have had a few questions about the topic.

I put an awful lot of blame for the vaccine hesitancy at the feet of our government. (And many governments worldwide.) Instead of treating their populaces as people capable of understanding that we were in an unknown situation and being able to understand a need to act in the present regardless of of what might change in a few months. They paternalistically took the line that a vaccine was probably years and years away so we needed to act as if we'd never have one. Instead of saying, yes there is a very good chance we'll have a vaccine within a year but obviously there are no guarantees. Either way, we don't have one now so have to live with restrictions.

We had people like Simon Harris speaking authoritatively on the radio, in his role as minister for health, saying that we might never have a vaccine as scientists had never been able to make a vaccine for the other 18 coronaviruses. And while everyone laughed at Silly Simon for not knowing the 19 was for 2019 not because it was the 19th, many, many, many people still internalised the message that we'd never had a coronavirus vaccine before.

Yet back in February, Oxford, Moderna, GSK, J&J, all already announced they were working on vaccines, with Moderna and Oxford already planning human trials. In February. Back when the majority of people in this country were still oblivious to what was coming, human trials of vaccine testing were being planned. Obviously, there was no guarantee back then they would work. But I was a complete lay person sitting at home wondering if I was going mad because it was increasingly obvious to me that we were about to experience a global pandemic. But I was also working out that restrictions would probably last 12-18 months and end when enough of a vaccine had rolled out. I didn't think efficacy would be as good as it appears. I assumed we'd be much more reliant on herd immunity than it now appears we will be, as I didn't think we'd see anything like the efficacy the mRNA vaccines are showing in elderly people.

And I know, that a certain degree of my confidence in a vaccine came from a protective instinct. The whole situation was much easier to get through when I was mentally focussed on how this all would end. I know we are all inclined to see what we want to see. But with every month that passed it was increasingly obvious that vaccination was realistically very likely this winter. And we still had government experts spouting off about how it had never happened before. So when I'd talk to friends about the coming vaccines, they would immediately say they wouldn't get it and parroting absolute nonsense about rushed vaccines.

[Deleted User]

tom1ie wrote: »

Ok, so the actual spike protein on the virus is harmless?
The spike protein is what the virus uses to attach to healthy cells in your body is that correct?

The spike protein is the part of the virus that binds to the cell receptors.

Roger_007

I just heard that the Minister for Health has committed to hold an inquiry into the licensing and use of the anti-epilepsy drug, Epilim, (sodium valproate). It seems that this drug has been linked to birth defects in babies where the mothers used this drug during pregnancy. There are echoes of thalidomide in this story.
In view of the above, there will be questions as to what testing has been done with these new vaccines on pregnant women. I suspect that no such testing has been done as there is an understandable reluctance to include pregnant women in such tests.
I expect that pregnant women will not be offered the vaccine.

plodder

seamie78 wrote: »

surely they would use the data from the other trails, I don't think where in the world the trials took place has any bearing on that

I don't know, but if the protocol for the trial (in the US) said that this was testing the actual formulation that would be used in the US, it wouldn't look good to go back on that. It's just another thing that some people would latch onto "oh look they moved the goalposts..." type of thing.

lawrencesummers

Am I right in saying that there are a lot of unanswered questions about the different vaccines?( As with a lot of medicines)

Long term effect being the main one.

Long term effectiveness being the other one, is this vaccine looking more like a annual flu jab than the early years vaccines that everyone is given? If so can you change vaccines?

Are we expecting people who are not at risk from the effects of COVID to get this vaccine?

Also when they say 90 / 95% effective what does that mean?

I couldnt find information anywhere about the trial. Does that mean that the people in the trial didn’t get Covid, if they were exposed to it or not? Or were they exposed to it and it didn’t infect them?

ACitizenErased

Sputnik V is 95% effective.
https://www.rte.ie/news/coronavirus/2020/1124/1180158-coronavirus-vaccine-russia/

Hmmzis

The Russian Sputnik 5 2nd interim analysis is out:

https://sputnikvaccine.com/newsroom/pressreleases/second-interim-analysis-of-clinical-trial-data-showed-a-91-4-efficacy-for-the-sputnik-v-vaccine-on-d/

Interestingly, it looks like the efficacy goes up if they look at a further point in time after the 2nd dose. With only 7 days after the boost it's still over 90%, but at 21 days past the boost it's going up to 95%. The caveat here is that it's only from 39 confirmed cases, but the confidence intervals are getting a bit more reasonable.

Edit: btw. this could be good news for the AZ/Oxford half/full dosage regime as well, since the Ad5 vector would have lots of antibodies against it in the population effectively diminishing the overall response to the vaccine in the prime. The Ad26 vector would have very few people with antibodies against it, so would be acting like a stronger boost. Our immune systems can be a bit odd at times.

Thierry12

Roger_007 wrote: »

I just heard that the Minister for Health has committed to hold an inquiry into the licensing and use of the anti-epilepsy drug, Epilim, (sodium valproate). It seems that this drug has been linked to birth defects in babies where the mothers used this drug during pregnancy. There are echoes of thalidomide in this story.
In view of the above, there will be questions as to what testing has been done with these new vaccines on pregnant women. I suspect that no such testing has been done as there is an understandable reluctance to include pregnant women in such tests.
I expect that pregnant women will not be offered the vaccine.

True

A bit of blind faith might be needed with these vaccine's

We know they are safe short term from the trial's

Long term?

Would I want my mother or father to take the vaccine, yes

Would I let my wife or myself take the vaccine if we were trying for a baby or she was pregnant, I wouldn't.

funnydoggy

Thierry12 wrote: »

True

A bit of blind faith might be needed with these vaccine's

We know they are safe short term from the trial's

Long term?

Would I want my mother or father to take the vaccine, yes

Would I let my wife or myself take the vaccine if we were trying for a baby or she was pregnant, I wouldn't.

This was discussed loads here recently though. Long term effects are rare. They're 'vaccines causes autism' rare.

ShineOn7

Thierry12 wrote: »

Heh

You the one that posted that 0.0092% IFR for Covid on 20-49 year olds study

Your figures and the berries are not far off ;-)

That study that was done by the most respected in this field, the Lancet?

And it was linked by one of the best posters in this forum when it comes to information?

That one? ;-)

Thierry12

ShineOn7 wrote: »

That study that was done by the most respected in this field, the Lancet?

And it was linked by one of the best posters in this forum when it comes to information?

That one? ;-)

You didn't get my reasoning did you?

I didn't say it was a poor study, I know its legit

That 0.0092% IFR for 20 - 49 year olds proved my point that those backpackers in Thailand had a better chance of dieing eating wild berries in the bush than Covid

You said it was mad stuff, it wasn't

92 people out of 1 million death rate

Is like being hit by lightning this year or eating something bad in the jungle in Thailand

Thierry12

funnydoggy wrote: »

This was discussed loads here recently though. Long term effects are rare. They're 'vaccines causes autism' rare.

Yeah its 99.999% going to be perfectly safe, but still that 00.001%

zuutroy

So to summarise your two posts, the virus probably isn't dangerous for certain age groups, therefore they shouldn't take a vaccine which also probably isn't dangerous?