COVID-19 — Coronavirus

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Scotland 3 wks ago v 2 wks v last wk v today

Deaths 0 v 1 v 6 v 0 today

Cases 951 v 912 v 717 v 949 today - frustratingly flat as has been the case for a while in Scotland but not really rising.

8.6% positive this week v 8.3% last Monday.

Patients 1225 v 1226 v 1227 v 1208 today - speaks for itself. Again plateau.

ICU ventilators 93 v 105 v 98 v 84 today - yes lots of deaths = reduction - BUT still a reduction that is starting to look like a real turnaround after peaking. Hopefully.
 
I don't see why they'd be surprised when the other mRNA vaccines put up numbers over 90% also.

Also I don't see why the regulators would use the 70% esitmate. When they apply for use, they will have to apply for a specific method - the half dose/full dose. Regulators aren't going to include results from people who didn't get that treatment.

The director of the Oxford Vaccine Institute was just on Radio 4 and he's only talking about 90%.

“These findings show that we have an effective vaccine that will save many lives. Excitingly, we’ve found that one of our dosing regimens may be around 90% effective and if this dosing regime is used, more people could be vaccinated with planned vaccine supply.

I think 'surprise' relates to the low-high option outstripping the high-high option, and isn't related to any other vaccine.

It may be that there isn't enough data for the low-high option to be regulated at the moment.
 
I don't see why they'd be surprised when the other mRNA vaccines put up numbers over 90% also.

Also I don't see why the regulators would use the 70% esitmate. When they apply for use, they will have to apply for a specific method - the half dose/full dose. Regulators aren't going to include results from people who didn't get that treatment.

The director of the Oxford Vaccine Institute was just on Radio 4 and he's only talking about 90%.

“These findings show that we have an effective vaccine that will save many lives. Excitingly, we’ve found that one of our dosing regimens may be around 90% effective and if this dosing regime is used, more people could be vaccinated with planned vaccine supply.
He's not got as much commercial interest in it though.

Of course it's exciting to think it might be 90% but all language and evidence so far suggests that's not likely. Just speaking from experience.
 
Fantastic news from Oxford/Astrazeneca. Good enough is good enough - slightly lower efficacy than reported for Pfizer/Moderna doesn't matter.

Hopefully sufficient supplies to get our whole population vaccinated by the middle of next year, and to make a decent start on the entire world. This vaccine is cheap enough for any country (being provided at cost initially, 5-10x cheaper than Pfizer/Moderna)

Need our blues to improve quickly, 'cos we might just, if everything goes perfectly and with a following wind, see a full crowd for the FA cup final the way this is going now.

Rejoice! The end is in sight!

[and FFS keep up the social distancing. A lot of people could die yet in the next six months]
Do you think we might be able to persuade the FA to postpone the Carabao final by a few months?
 
He's not got as much commercial interest in it though.

Of course it's exciting to think it might be 90% but all language and evidence so far suggests that's not likely. Just speaking from experience.

Which part of the language where they say explicitly its 90% in this format makes you think its not 90%?
 
There was an interesting article in the Guardian yesterday talking about the various developments on COVID vaccines and other treatments.

Both the pfizer and Moderna vaccines are both pretty similar and work in similar ways: they are injected into the muscle and from there they work their way into the bloodstream and stimulate the production of antibodies. But both have question marks though, for example how long such antibody resistance would last. Also the extent to which a heathy, but infected vaccinated person can still infect someone else.

Something which had not really occurred to me is that other types of treatment are also being researched, which potentially could be a whole lot better. Coronavirus gets in to your system through your mucous membrane, and therefore if we could kill it there, then for the virus it's game over. It never gets to make it further into your body.

There's research going on into such treatments which could take the form of a simple nasal spray or inhaler. And the advantages of these - as well as not having to arrange millions of injections - would be that people didn't carry the infection around and would not infect other people, so the disease would die out much more quickly.
The problem with these sort of treatments is they often attempt to kill the virus but end up killing everything else too resulting in side effects. Another problem is unless you can guarantee killing every single viral particle (impossible) then it's pointless because the key to all viruses is they can replicate within a host.

In effect a viral infection is a bucket filling with water (viral load) but as the bucket fills the rate at which it fills increases (replication). The only limiter on stopping the bucket filling is the bodies immune system but immune systems have never seen this virus before and so infections occur very easily and they hit people hard.

The Pfizer vaccine modifies the RNA of cells to make cell entry/replication more difficult by giving instructions on the protein spike of the virus. Less replication equals less viral load and the immune system deals with the rest meaning upon encountering the virus people are infected but the virus doesn't make them sick or infectious. The same thing happens with HIV treatments which target replication (and prevent eventual AIDS later down the line).

COVID-19 isn't dangerous to the vast majority of people but attacking infectivity is key in order to stop the spread to vulnerable people. Most healthy people below 60 have no need for a vaccine but they will need a vaccine if only to protect everyone else around them.
 
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Which part of the language where they say explicitly its 90% in this format makes you think its not 90%?
From the press release:

Professor Andrew Pollard, Chief Investigator of the Oxford Vaccine Trial at Oxford, said: “These findings show that we have an effective vaccine that will save many lives. Excitingly, we’ve found that one of our dosing regimens may be around 90% effective and if this dosing regime is used, more people could be vaccinated with planned vaccine supply. Today’s announcement is only possible thanks to the many volunteers in our trial, and the hard working and talented team of researchers based around the world.”

may be around 90%. Like mentioned previously, if everyone involved felt this would be the end result for efficacy they'd be talking about this only.

There's a distinct lack of confidence in this number from the people I know who are extremely close to the project. This should not be misunderstood to be a lack of confidence in the product, it's just that these things are highly sensitive in the commercial space and you are taught to temper your excitement.

I hope it is 90% effective, I suspect it's about 70% effective and I'm more than fine with that.
 
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