I wasnt suggesting safety was being compromised on.. at all. Should have worded that sentence better.. I expect the vaccines passing the first 2Nothing is being done that will compromise safety. The speeding up of the process is largely doing later processes like starting manufacture ahead of stage 3 trials so they have enough to move straight to stage 3 if stage 2 is successful. If stage 3 is successful they then will be already in full swing manufacturing it so again no delay. None of this compromises safety but it does risk wasting lots of money if stage 3 trials fail.
We won't know until stage 3 trials are finished even if stage 2 looked good.
Yep. Detail is important.
Is this cause to be reasonably optimistic?I bow to your superior knowledge and research but are you saying there is a 1 in 3 chance a vaccine will make it market and a slightly more then 50/50 chance the current trials will produce a vaccine?
I seem to remember the Oxford vaccine produced antibodies in a very high % of test subjects in ohase 2 (90% and possibly higher with a booster I think) but phase 3 is where they test if that actually gives protection and with much bigger sample sizes. At least I think that is the case.I wasnt suggesting safety was being compromised on.. at all. Should have worded that sentence better.. I expect the vaccines passing the first 2stagesphases to be safe..
Was asking if they check for efficacy at those phases(1,2) and if there is an acceptable number.. and if we are lowering the bar to get more trials into phase 3 and testing on a larger scale ?
Sounds like that is not the case.. so all good.
I just read a few articles some weeks ago about them considering approving vaccines with 50% efficacy and that sounded low and was wondering if the bar was being lowered to rush something through.
I wasnt suggesting safety was being compromised on.. at all. Should have worded that sentence better.. I expect the vaccines passing the first 2stagesphases to be safe..
Was asking if they check for efficacy at those phases(1,2) and if there is an acceptable number.. and if we are lowering the bar to get more trials into phase 3 and testing on a larger scale ?
Sounds like that is not the case.. so all good.
I just read a few articles some weeks ago about them considering approving vaccines with 50% efficacy and that sounded low and was wondering if the bar was being lowered to rush something through.
Phase III trials are when you learn the most about efficacy and safety. Phase II just gives you a rough idea and is mainly about identifying the optimal dosing regimen.I seem to remember the Oxford vaccine produced antibodies in a very high % of test subjects in ohase 2 (90% and possibly higher with a booster I think) but phase 3 is where they test if that actually gives protection and with much bigger sample sizes. At least I think that is the case.
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I think the hope is for far higher than 50% effectiveness. But 50% effectiveness would still be a huge help.Is this cause to be reasonably optimistic?
It all sounds a bit 50/50 to me with any vaccine possibly only being effective in 50% of cases. The more I hear the more I think this could be around for years and not months.
Good luck mate, fingers crossed for youI'm doing a test tomorrow. I feel like crap, though wheter it's covid, well, guess I'll find out.
think there was a report on some city in brazil tht got hit twice? will try and find it.One of the most consistent patterns with this seems to be that on a local level, if you haven't been hit hard once you're still susceptible. But no locality has been hit hard twice within just the span of lets call it 2-3 months.
I was just thinking of the contrasting reactions around the world if the first cab off the ranked passed or failed phase 3. The later wouldn't be good especially with the stress most people are feeling at the moment.Phase III trials are when you learn the most about efficacy and safety. Phase II just gives you a rough idea and is mainly about identifying the optimal dosing regimen.
The 50% figure is what the regulators have set as the bar for approval. It’s one example of the rules being bent to get a vaccine to market much quicker than usual. There are other examples. I still think whatever does get approved will be safe and reasonably effective. It definitely won’t have been as rigorously evaluated as vaccines developed outside a pandemic. We are cutting corners but we don’t have much choice.I think the hope is for far higher than 50% effectiveness. But 50% effectiveness would still be a huge help.
https://theconversation.com/how-eff...p-the-pandemic-a-new-study-has-answers-142468
You might well need clonal antibodies and anti-virals to assist though (likely anyway as there will be vaccine resistance and an incomplete roll out).
I think the 50% figure people mention relates to flu vaccine which has a quite low effectiveness rate. However, that is mainly because influenza mutates far faster than a coronavirus does and has evolved into many strains that are so different as to need a different vaccine. So we have to guess ahead of time which strains to include in this year's vaccine and often guess wrong. At the moment that doesn't seem likely to be the case with SARS-CoV-2
People need to be less emotionally invested and accept that there will be disappointments ahead. Vaccine development programs fail all the time. I can guarantee that at least one of the big phase III’s won’t hit its primary endpoints and the product will be canned. That’s more or less inevitable.I was just thinking of the contrasting reactions around the world if the first cab off the ranked passed or failed phase 3. The later wouldn't be good especially with the stress most people are feeling at the moment.
I agree. Of the 11 in phase 3 4 failures would be about average. I just hope it isn't the first one that fails. The world needs some good news.People need to be less emotionally invested and accept that there will be disappointments ahead. Vaccine development programs fail all the time. I can guarantee that at least one of the big phase III’s won’t hit its primary endpoints and the product will be canned. That’s more or less inevitable.
Amen to that.I agree. Of the 11 in phase 3 4 failures would be about average. I just hope it isn't the first one that fails. The world needs some good news.
Yeah Manaus, I think it's still in play a bit there. Because after the story that is about 3 weeks old now, cases tracked down vs that in the weeks right after. Anecdotally I can tell you that on the ground here in Rio, distancing measures are much much less than in March/April, and cases have continued an overall trend of decline.think there was a report on some city in brazil tht got hit twice? will try and find it.
e - https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-brazil-manaus-idUSKBN26I0I4
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Don’t we only need one to work?I agree. Of the 11 in phase 3 4 failures would be about average. I just hope it isn't the first one that fails. The world needs some good news.
Really?!? I haven’t been following Brazil recently. Is it avoiding a European style second wave? I wonder if Brazil is getting the herd immunity Sweden never achieved. Perhaps having an incompetent moron in charge has its upsides?Yeah Manaus, I think it's still in play a bit there. Because after the story that is about 3 weeks old now, cases tracked down vs that in the weeks right after. Anecdotally I can tell you that on the ground here in Rio, distancing measures are much much less than in March/April, and cases have continued an overall trend of decline.
Is the testing still the same as before?Yeah Manaus, I think it's still in play a bit there. Because after the story that is about 3 weeks old now, cases tracked down vs that in the weeks right after. Anecdotally I can tell you that on the ground here in Rio, distancing measures are much much less than in March/April, and cases have continued an overall trend of decline.
I mean, we were originally 2-4 weeks behind Europe... so maybe its coming for us soon. But right now the 2 initial hotspots of Rio and São Paulo, or the country in aggregate aren't seeing an increase in the trend of daily cases. Our testing capacity also is still below that of developed countries, so we could be undercounting. But we're also definitely not seeing deaths anywhere near the level that happened in the first wave, detected or undetected.Really?!? I haven’t been following Brazil recently. Is it avoiding a European style second wave? I wonder if Brazil is getting the herd immunity Sweden never achieved. Perhaps having an incompetent moron in charge has its upsides?
Not great.Tweet
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I think I've been resigned to the idea we'll be living with this from now on for a while. It's about finding ways to live with it that allows people to live normal lives and minimises the amount of people it kills.I'm not overly optimistic about us finding a vaccine. I have only come to this realization in recent days. In fact I'm becoming less and less convinced science can bring this virus to an end by the day.
The head of the UK Covid-19 task force in this article today confirmed that any Vaccine that we find may only be 50% effective anyway.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-...coronavirus-update-latest-when-trial-news-uk/
The article leads me to believe that our best chance of killing the virus will come from a mixture of treatments, a potential vaccine and track and trace. Although the article doesn't mention it there is also the hope that the Virus will mutate to become less infectious or deadly.
I think many people are hoping the virus will become less prevalent before Christmas with it being eradicated in the spring. I was certainly of this view up until a few days ago and I'm slowly realizing this may run for all of next year and potentially longer than that. I have heard less optomistic views elsewhere.
Isn't it time the Government started talking tough on this? If only to make people take the whole danger more seriously.
When you look at the death and case numbers there per 1m, and the fact it's probably underplayed if anything, it's debatable if it was worth it even if that is the case.Really?!? I haven’t been following Brazil recently. Is it avoiding a European style second wave? I wonder if Brazil is getting the herd immunity Sweden never achieved. Perhaps having an incompetent moron in charge has its upsides?
Yeah, absolutely. I was being flippant. Certainly wouldn’t want any other country to go through what Brazil went through.When you look at the death and case numbers there per 1m, and the fact it's probably underplayed if anything, it's debatable if it was worth it even if that is the case.
Always thought the issue with herd immunity wasn't just whether it would work or not. It's what it would do to our overall health care system in the process. We'd have had people literally dying in hospital hallways, in their homes, etc. and not just from covid.
Don't know what your timeframe for "before" is. In the main daily reporting of the national stats they don't talk about positivity rate which is a big flaw. I'm not sure they're compiling that. So I'm left with anecdotes from living in metropolitan Rio. In March/April you couldn't get a test if you weren't in hospital basically, now its widely available at your existing health labs if you have insurance or will pay, as well as quick tests at a few pharmacy chains. But again, don't know what the situation is in our state-operated health system which includes hospitals and clinics. Haven't read any reports of them being impossible to get either though.Is the testing still the same as before?
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I thought we would get a vaccine and the world would open up immediately but I'm beginning to think differently. I feel sorry for my daughter who had saved up for and had been looking forward to a gap year for about 3 three years. She was due to fly to the Philipines on 23rd March 2020 and the whole trip has been put on hold. She hopes to go in the spring but I can't see that now.I think I've been resigned to the idea we'll be living with this from now on for a while. It's about finding ways to live with it that allows people to live normal lives and minimises the amount of people it kills.
50% effectiveness sounds rubbish but actually that's a potential game changer. If you can give a majority of vulnerable people a vaccine that gives them a 50% chance of being immune to the virus then you can imagine the difference that makes. If you can find a way to give that vaccine to a majority of people in general, then even the vulnerable people who the vaccine doesn't work for will be far less likely to catch it off someone else in the first place.
If you couple that with treatments and preperation getting better, and the hope (admittedly that's what it is at the moment) the virus will become less dangerous, then you are into the realms of being able to let people function and live out their lives without covid being a factor at every single corner.
I think my bigger scepticism with vaccines is how effectively they'll be distributed and how willing people will be to have them. Longer term carrying on as things have been this year will go out of the window one way or another, so it's all about bringing down the risk factor to normal day to day life I think. The idea of getting rid of the virus as a threat completely doesn't really add up to me. If people can catch it, recover and then catch it again it's unlikely to go away.
Sack Greenwood, sell Foden?Their population is so low it probably only takes one cluster to put them in the red. Still a surprise seeing them there. You’d wonder if they had any visitors from a Uk hot spot that evaded quarantine?
Derry has a significantly sized Uni for a city the size of DerryIt's notable how the "so everything's alright in London, eh?" conspiracy theories and general claims of unfairness haven't really transpired in NI's case. Probably helped by the Republic being a bit more stringent in similar scenarios anyway. It equally doesn't make sense to them why Derry went from ticking along rightly to an explosion of cases without any significant changes in behaviour, or a big uni to blame it on, but the majority just accept that's part of the random nature of virus transmission.
I actually just saw a tweet from someone in Iceland saying their outbreak has been traced back to a bar on September 11th. Do the dates match?!Sack Greenwood, sell Foden?
Water cannons full of anti-bacterial wash would be a good startAny realistic manner of dealing with a crowd of that size would be deemed unethical.
Yup. Outrage over a government spending loads of money to try and contain a pandemic. Outrage gonna outrage though.Consultants are always highly paid. Its not a full time contract.
I have no idea what the going rate is, but the tweet reads as something designed to create outrage.
Donnelly is a gowl and I have absolutely no doubt the schools are contributing far more than they think.Tweet
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Interesting data from schools in Ireland.
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Usually it would be fine but Boston Consulting Group are one of the Tories' backers so it's clearly fecked up.Consultants are always highly paid. Its not a full time contract.
I have no idea what the going rate is, but the tweet reads as something designed to create outrage.
Of course they will contribute to the spread but science is implying they’re less of a concern than the rest of the community right now. From what I hear the threshold for being considered a close contact is higher in school than community which makes the lower positivity rate even more reassuring.Donnelly is a gowl and I have absolutely no doubt the schools are contributing far more than they think.
This is a repeat of "the masks dont do anything" stuff from early in the pandemic. We don't know enough to know schools contribute to the spread yet - but common sense and science would indicate they will.
The game was a week earlier I think.I actually just saw a tweet from someone in Iceland saying their outbreak has been traced back to a bar on September 11th. Do the dates match?!