Good news and good sense of humour.
The vaccines | vaxxed boosted unvaxxed? New poll
- Thread starter Badunk
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Not peer reviewed yet but looks like an incredibly promising line of research.
It's from UNC. The long and somewhat questionable New Yorker piece alleging a lab leak and worse in China also named some UNC labs (and Fauci) as being part of the dangerous research into viral diversity. I wonder if it's one of those labs.
It's thought that we'll be able to switch vaccines. They're trialling switching between dose 1 and 2 at the moment. They'll trial the same thing with boosters, first to check for safety, then for what happens to the antibodies.
What they're hoping to find is that we can switch brands/types and that we only need one booster jab per year.
Today was my vaccine trial visit #6 - I'm now officially fully vaccinated with Novavax. Over the past 6 months in the trial, I've also had two PCR covid tests, a couple of medical checkups, lots of blood pressure, temperature and pulse O2 checks and they've got 4 batches of blood for antibody testing.
I either received both doses of vaccine in November, and two doses of placebo this month - or I got the placebo in November and the real thing now. I think I had the vaccines in November, and that a bit of tenderness near the injection point was the only symptom I experienced - but that's a guess, I won't know until I get unblinded.
So where does that leave me on the vaccine passport game? Well, I've got an A4 certificate that lists all 4 jab dates and says that I've had a complete course of the vaccine. But it's a certificate for a vaccine that so far has no regulatory approval (not anywhere in the world) and it doesn't specify the real vaccination dates or give batch numbers (both of which are needed for my NHS record).
Assuming the vaccine gets MHRA approval, I'm told they're looking for a way to give us what we need for any sort of official app. That might mean them unblinding all of the trialists, or unblinding us as we request it, or something else - they haven't worked that bit out yet. They have asked us to stay blinded for "a couple more weeks at least" - so they can get the safety/reactions data while we're still in the blinded trial.
Vamos a ver.
I either received both doses of vaccine in November, and two doses of placebo this month - or I got the placebo in November and the real thing now. I think I had the vaccines in November, and that a bit of tenderness near the injection point was the only symptom I experienced - but that's a guess, I won't know until I get unblinded.
So where does that leave me on the vaccine passport game? Well, I've got an A4 certificate that lists all 4 jab dates and says that I've had a complete course of the vaccine. But it's a certificate for a vaccine that so far has no regulatory approval (not anywhere in the world) and it doesn't specify the real vaccination dates or give batch numbers (both of which are needed for my NHS record).
Assuming the vaccine gets MHRA approval, I'm told they're looking for a way to give us what we need for any sort of official app. That might mean them unblinding all of the trialists, or unblinding us as we request it, or something else - they haven't worked that bit out yet. They have asked us to stay blinded for "a couple more weeks at least" - so they can get the safety/reactions data while we're still in the blinded trial.
Vamos a ver.
Still very good news. I should be able to get an AZ shot in the next month so hanging out for them to open up for my age group.
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The calculations he does there are nonsense.
You can only do that efficacy maths assuming you’re comparing two randomised, equally matched cohorts with the variant widely and equally distributed across the whole country. Which isn’t the case here at all. The numbers are tiny and it’s possible that every single vaccinated person exposed to the new variant became infected. We’ve absolutely no way of knowing based on these numbers alone.
I hate the way Twitter seems to promote tweets from the most obviously biased covid “experts” from both extremes. Really shines a light on how it promotes political extreme and completely distorts reality. Unlesss you’re extremely careful about who you follow (and 90% of people won’t be well informed enough about the issue to spot these biases)
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I agree. Which is why I've stopped quoting percentages to my patients when they come in for jabs or to family members. There's so much variation between trial and real world data. But misunderstanding of efficacy percentages, statistical power etc in reporting I put aside at first as laziness but its less excusable now.
Currently reading Tom Chivers' book around this topic, which is great
https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Read-Numbers-Statistics-Knowing/dp/1474619967
No they aren't nonsense. They are the calculations that can be done with the information provided, obviously more info would allow for better calculations. And he is hardly extreme in any way.
They are nonsense though. Even the act of doing that calculation is stupid when you’re talking about a tiny number of cases and a variant that has only recently arrived in the country. For all we know all those positive cases are a single outbreak where everyone exposed was fully vaccinated. Or not one of those cases is from someone who got the vaccine. To try and spin that into an actual 92% figure for efficacy is ludicrous.
Don’t know about extreme but based on his twitter feed he only ever seems to be interested in presenting information that reassures or minimises the threat of the pandemic. It’s a constant theme on Twitter. So many accounts have risen to prominence during covid based on carefully curated content to either minimise or exaggerate the danger.
There’s also a hell of a lot of good/balanced content on there - if you dig for it - but it’s the “agenda tweeters” that the algorithms seem to promote the most consistently.
It is quite clearly better to do those calculations than just to look at raw info from the article. His point obviously isn't that the efficacy is exactly 92%
Reading that series of tweets that’s exactly the point you would conclude. He didn’t include any caveats and doesn’t acknowledge the obvious holes in his logic when they’re highlighted in the replies.
Doing those calculations is definitely worse than looking at the raw data, shrugging your shoulders, and concluding “not enough data to tell us anything useful “. Which is the only reasonable response.
No it isn't. Just like nobody should have read the vaccine press releases as exact numbers.
Heh, no.
Well, exactly.
And those figures might as well be set in fecking stone compared to the nonsensical calculations in that tweet.
I’ve no dog in this fight other than to say the idea of working out vaccine effectiveness based on the numbers in that news article is utterly pointless. So everyone should be just as dismissive of his tweets about these data as he seems to want them to be about the news article that first presented them.
2nd Moderna shot due on 27th May. Text this morning from the hospital. Can’t wait to be fully done 
The beat vaccine is the one in your arm.
Fingers crossed I should be able to get the AZ in the next month now that they have restricted its use to the over 50s
It is a math exercise, so therefore can't be pointless
The ranking below is more complete and recent, indicating the following big 4: Malta, UK, Hungary and Serbia with a rate superior to 50%
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1196071/covid-19-vaccination-rate-in-europe-by-country/
Touché!It is a math exercise, so therefore can't be pointless
Excellent news GB. At least now you can really put some dates to meeting & travelling.2nd Moderna shot due on 27th May. Text this morning from the hospital. Can’t wait to be fully done
What about your wife; does she have hers scheduled too?
She got hers the day before me!
for the 2nd she goes the day after me so I guess I’ll be vaccinated before her
This is a decent read and shows how important getting as many people vaccinated as possible is and how the effectiveness % is misunderstood i.e. 95% effectiveness doesn't mean 1 in 20 people will get covid. The bit I especially liked was " 88 out of 87 million fully vaccinated people in the US had been reported dead as of April 20, and 11 of those were unrelated to Covid. That’s a death rate of less than one in a million. "
https://english.aawsat.com/home/art...il/how-good-are-vaccines-try-999999-effective
https://english.aawsat.com/home/art...il/how-good-are-vaccines-try-999999-effective
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She got hers the day before me!
for the 2nd she goes the day after me so I guess I’ll be vaccinated before her
I'm getting my second Moderna shot on 14 May. Friendly reminder though, that won't mean we are invincible. Singapore recently have an outbreak at a hospital, and several staff who were vaccinated still caught it.2nd Moderna shot due on 27th May. Text this morning from the hospital. Can’t wait to be fully done
Stay safe my friend!
Denmark is opening up the AstraZeneca vaccine to whoever wants it, apparently there are around 450k doses. To get vaccinated, there is a video consultation with a doctor, who explains the risk involved and then one needs to provide consent.
Must be a Europe wide thing because Italy has just started talking about re-assessing it's use in under 60s.
Still too many people not vaccinated, need to get needles in arms!
I suspect this is mainly driven by hesitancy in the over 60s. If you have doses sitting unused in fridges that changed the risk benefit for society as a whole.
Got my first jab tomorrow. Slightly nervous. Doesn’t help that a couple of tin hatters have flooded my social media of late.
Turned 30 last month, got my jab this weekend. AZ. Not entirely sure how NI has been so efficient but the person giving it to me said she expected her kids, in their 20s, to be getting one in a couple of weeks.
Felt great for the first 10hrs, then started getting the chills. It’s a bit freaky getting them without fever, just feels like your body’s seizing, after it lasts for a few mins you start to think...hmm, I bet this is what the early onset of Guillain-Barré feels like, muscle spasms, limited control over movement. Lasted for a few hours in waves, then just got the usual fatigue and headache for the next day, now back to normal other than a deadly dead arm.
Felt great for the first 10hrs, then started getting the chills. It’s a bit freaky getting them without fever, just feels like your body’s seizing, after it lasts for a few mins you start to think...hmm, I bet this is what the early onset of Guillain-Barré feels like, muscle spasms, limited control over movement. Lasted for a few hours in waves, then just got the usual fatigue and headache for the next day, now back to normal other than a deadly dead arm.
I thought I was being a bit of a puss about my arm but it was certainly very noticeable
Aye it definitely packs more of a punch than any other vaccine I can remember!I thought I was being a bit of a puss about my arm but it was certainly very noticeable
That's OK I'd probably only miss out on maybe 2 sessions in the 3 months between jabs
God you’re lucky
I read that this morning too. Depressing.
One of the comments mentioned the 30% that are anti-vaccers, 30% think the 2020 election was stolen, 30% are Trump supporters = no coincidence, it's the same 30%.
It makes sense as once they'll believe any old thing, vaccination conspiracies aren't a reach for them.
You think?