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

Is there any talk of vaccines being available to children? I have a child in vulnerable group. He’s healthy but when he gets a virus it affects him much more than the rest of us. Eg last week his twin brother had sniffles while we were close to calling an ambulance ( before we got negative test result) for him. I’ll be happier when he has been vaccinated.

fits wrote: »

Is there any talk of vaccines being available to children? I have a child in vulnerable group. He’s healthy but when he gets a virus it affects him much more than the rest of us. Eg last week his twin brother had sniffles while we were close to calling an ambulance ( before we got negative test result) for him. I’ll be happier when he has been vaccinated.

Fauci in the US gave an interview yesterday where he discussed this (about 9 minutes in):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ygbo3_VQkmM

"It's going to be months" (for children & pregnant women) as safety trials specific to those groups will be required.

Tough situation to be in I sympathise. Hopefully as more and more people get vaccinated the risk of coming into contact with someone carrying the virus will decrease significantly.

fits wrote: »

Yes I think we are just going to have to be careful next year. Even more so than in 2020 I think.

For some of the year yes, but you'd expect people to continue to be wary anyway as something like this just doesn't get forgotten about. I imagine there will still be headlines about COVID outbreaks a few years down the road but it'll be a minor medical concern.

Moderna have submitted to FDA for EUA

funnydoggy wrote: »

Didn't they do a rolling review for it, or was that the EMA? Can't remember

There would be rolling reviews but now everything is submitted following phase 3 trials and its up to the regulators now.

Phase 3 data has shown effiency of 94%

This is new data - nearly double the number of cases since the first set of data they released. No severe cases in the vaccinated group and 30 in the placebo group. My shoulder is ready for the good stuff.

"The primary endpoint of the Phase 3 COVE study is based on the analysis of COVID-19 cases confirmed and adjudicated starting two weeks following the second dose of vaccine. Vaccine efficacy has been demonstrated at the first interim analysis with a total of 95 cases based on the pre-specified success criterion on efficacy. Today’s primary analysis was based on 196 cases, of which 185 cases of COVID-19 were observed in the placebo group versus 11 cases observed in the mRNA-1273 group, resulting in a point estimate of vaccine efficacy of 94.1%. A secondary endpoint analyzed severe cases of COVID-19 and included 30 severe cases (as defined in the study protocol) in this analysis. All 30 cases occurred in the placebo group and none in the mRNA-1273 vaccinated group. There was one COVID-19-related death in the study to date, which occurred in the placebo group."

Micky 32 wrote: »

It could be possible we could have a supply in this country ready to go once approved. It maybe just kept quiet so people don’t get too excited and then drop their guard because the vaccine is out there.

Not to mention Gemma O D and her mob arriving outside the HSE storage facilities doing what they do.

Micky 32 wrote: »

It could be possible we could have a supply in this country ready to go once approved. It maybe just kept quiet so people don’t get too excited and then drop their guard because the vaccine is out there.

The vaccines deals are with the EU, they'll make the allocations available.

Was chatting with a neighbour of mine who'll also 'wait and see'.

I get the hesitance, I really do, but there have been a f*ckload of people across the world who have been vaccinated in these trials already and they're grand.

Deleted User wrote: »

Do you know, or do they know, what kind of data they are waiting for? I mean it could be years before there is data of a more long term nature, that adds anything to that derived from the trials to date (that have involved many thousands of people). Data in, say, 12 months isn’t likely to show anything new, given the volume of people already vaccinated.

These are people who are not looking at any of that kind of data. They need to hear and see that the vaccine is very safe for huge numbers of people first.

paw patrol wrote: »

I am neutral on vaccines, i have taken some before but i won't be taking covid19 anytime soon as I feel it's been rushed and isn't safe. A few hundred punters in a rushed test doesn't mean it's safe for billions of hugely diverse people around the globe.

A certain doctor Mike Yeadon, former vice-CEO in Pfizer, says that there's no need of a vaccine to fight the pandemic. His opinion is a bit articulate, there are articles on the web and a video too.

Novavax now fully enrolled in the UK and South Africa.

The rather important bit in there:

More than 25 percent of enrollees in the trial are over the age of 65, while a large proportion of volunteers had underlying co-morbid medical conditions generally representative of the population.

https://ir.novavax.com/news-releases/news-release-details/novavax-announces-covid-19-vaccine-clinical-development-progress

Their candidate is a protein sub-unit based vaccine with a nano-particle scaffold to present more of the S proteins in a more organized state. The pre-clinical results were among the best so far, if not the best.

is_that_so wrote: »

Well most of us will not be added to vaccination lists till the summer anyway. There is a compelling argument that once we address the high risk categories, much of what we see now will begin to decline, hopefully quickly.

My parents are, at best "wait and see", and at worst, anti-vaxxers. They are in their 70's though and they have both said that they will take the vaccine when it is offered to them, hopefully early next year. While lots of people have an understandable hesitancy about taking the vaccine, many of those in the elderly and vulnerable groups will be happy to take it in order to get some kind of peace of mind and to be able to meet family and friends again.

By the time the vaccine makes it to Joe Punter (me) or indeed to your conspiracy addicted 20-something, there will be vast swathes of people worldwide who will have taken the vaccine. Hopefully the lack of any immediate side effects will encourage those sitting on the fence to go ahead and take the jab.

As is-that-so says, it may be the case that if we get HCWs and elderly/vulnerable vaccinated the hospital numbers will plummet, even as infection numbers rise. If that's the case, perhaps we don't need vaccination induced herd immunity. There will be a very small number of people who are immuno-compromised to the extent that they will be unable to take the vaccine, but I'm not sure where that is a proportionate argument for keeping restrictions.

The only thing I would say to that is yes, we do not know if there are any long term effects from taking a covid vaccine. However, we also don't know whether there are long term effects from catching a mild dose of covid. So that is something that the government would have to weigh up - if lots of healthy people do not take the vaccine, and covid spreads wildly through the community, are we storing up a public health problem in the future? In which case, will the government need to take steps in order to encourage vaccination amongst the healthy population?