trueblue28
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No amount of money or people can test the impact a vaccine will have over time and the potential long term side effects. That will only be seen in time.
Covid vaccine uptake - poll
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trueblue28
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Exactly! It has not been tested!
1. Effectiveness - protection directly to prevent disease & indirectly to reduce transmission. This cannot be assessed this quickly with any certainty, this is a roll of the dice in the short term as there has not been sufficient time/surveillance to assess this aspect which is the most crucial. Nevermind how poorly powered these initial studies have been from a statistical perspective - when you rush and you limit subjects, the precision goes down. Then there is the matter of subgroup populations who differ greatly in terms of their risk profile (Either from comorbidities, ethnic differences, sex, age strata etc.). They have taken some attempts to address this in initial trials but statistically speaking, they are weak due to wide confidence intervals. From there, Phase III trials are intended to assess individual level efficacy, infection rates, viral shedding after smaller studies have been conducted. We also have no idea on indirect protection, whether it will prevent or reduce contagiousness. Those studies, btw, will happen but will occur in parallel to people around the globe using the vaccine, the results of which will take years to assess/address. Meanwhile? Take a guess but RCTs will go on for awhile to assess this
2. Efficacy - Even in observational studies you would need to address impact on infection rates among symptomatic & asymptomatic individuals but even with PCR you cannot address previous infect/shedding during an active infection in terms of viral load. You'd need to conduct regular testing (I read AstraZeneca's study does this) irrespective of symptoms. Of course, again ,this does not address viral shedding since that reltnship btwn load & infection rates is not defined
3. Side Effects - There is inadequate pharmacovigilance to ensure safety - particularly longterm when the M.O. are blinded studies for at least a year once an effective vaccine is developed. There are ethical issues not fully considered to even assess the duration of protection much less stratifying baseline viral load levels against protection or severe infxn/death
The idea that a magic cure has been generated in such short time would be a first in medical/science history. Bear in mind that even among existing vaccines, none have reduced risks of disease that eclipse 75% much less 90 or 94% as being reported. There's hope since the preliminary results have been so promising but there are many trials that initially demonstrate confidence of success that end in failure. The fact that these companies are insisting on not being held liable in terms of safety underscores that point - that much should be obvious to give people pause
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roubaixtuesday
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A couple of points.
Firstly, it's still not clear if there was a real impact on narcolepsy
A stubborn medical mystery: Was pandemic flu vaccine tied to an increase in narcolepsy cases?
Scientists have been trying to understand why some countries saw a rise in narcolepsy cases — and whether the spike was tied to the 2009 influenza pandemic.
www.statnews.com
Second, that even if there was, numbers are small, certainly far, far less than the impact of COVID.
Thirdly that there will be some risk with this vaccine, as with any other intervention, and also lack of intervention. We should be clear that anyone affected will be supported, and open about the fact that there are risks. But we shouldn't overstate them either - *most* vaccine side effects are short term, and none have anything like the long term risks we already know about from COVID infection. So the risk/benefit seems very clear.
SWP's back
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Of course it’s not been fucking tested and who cares!!!?!! If it needs to an annual vaccination for those at risk then it’s still 100x better than no vaccine and a doubling of expected daily deaths every winter.
SWP's back
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That’s absolute bollocks. For a start, it’s not a cure.
SWP's back
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There has never been a trial with over 130,000 participants (across the 3 vaccines) which showed such promise and went tits up at all. You’re either lying or don’t understand the faintest fucking thing of which you’re talking about.
Let’s get this straight, if you don’t want to have it then don’t. Whether you live, die or end up killing your parents or grandparents is of absolutely no consequence to me, but I’d personally ban cunts that talk shite about something which is most definitely a specialist subject if there’s a single percentage point possibility that they dissuade someone else from having a vaccine for a virus that has killed over 1.4m worldwide, half destroyed the world economy and completely changed our way of life.
I’m gonna side with, and trust, the (literally thousands of) experts on this one rather than some closeted Trump-plastic-Barca-fan from Switzerland.
I would hope everyone would hope for effective development of drugs or vaccines that adhered to the standards established over decades now. I am not speaking about anti-vaxxers either, just simple science
Ethically speaking, how practical will it be to inoculate everyone in the world when appropriate safety surveillance has not been done? We are in a very particular emergency situation, it likely should be considered in certain high risk subgroups first IMHO rather than blanket applied to everyone
trueblue28
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Clearly there are risks involved in everything we do and a balance needs to be struck as to what is the least risk. So yes vaccinate those most at risk, but for the rest who's risk is so small then why take the chance with an unknown vaccine?A couple of points.
Firstly, it's still not clear if there was a real impact on narcolepsy
A stubborn medical mystery: Was pandemic flu vaccine tied to an increase in narcolepsy cases?
Scientists have been trying to understand why some countries saw a rise in narcolepsy cases — and whether the spike was tied to the 2009 influenza pandemic.
Second, that even if there was, numbers are small, certainly far, far less than the impact of COVID.
Thirdly that there will be some risk with this vaccine, as with any other intervention, and also lack of intervention. We should be clear that anyone affected will be supported, and open about the fact that there are risks. But we shouldn't overstate them either - *most* vaccine side effects are short term, and none have anything like the long term risks we already know about from COVID infection. So the risk/benefit seems very clear.
Look at the figures below taken from a Sky news article :
The sample of 651 youngsters admitted to 138 hospitals across England and Wales between 17 January and 3 July shows that just 18% needed critical care.
Those children were most likely to be black, under a month old, or between the ages of 10 and 14, the study claims.
Only six of the 651 children monitored - 1% - died of coronavirus, but all of them had underlying conditions.
Calum Semple, professor of child health and outbreak medicine at the University of Liverpool, said "severe disease is rare and death is vanishingly rare" in children infected with COVID-19.
Based on this, why would you give a healthy child a vaccine? 6 died and all had underlying conditions.