10 ms·

OK, someone tell me why this isn't the good news it sounds like

kalaido 6y ago
You mean because of the 2 deaths?
henearkr 6y ago
This IS good news. Now (soon, hopefully) people can acquire immunity through a vaccine, instead of through a virus that leaves long-lasting damage to the body (in particular, but not limited to, the brain).
- singemonkey 6y ago
  As well as acquiring immunity without being infectious. However, the efficacy of this vaccine (and all the other candidates) still needs to be clarified - ie is it like a measles vaccination (~90% efficacy) or the flu vaccines (~ 25% - 50% I believe).
  - viraptor 6y ago
    Sounds right for the flu. I was curious about the details - here's a good starting point. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/vaccines-work/vaccineeffect.htm?CDC_AA_refVal=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cdc.gov%2Fflu%2Fprevent%2Fvaccineeffect.htm#doe_flu_vax_effect_vary_by_type_subtype https://www.cdc.gov/flu/vaccines-work/vaccineeffect.htm?CDC_...
  - lbeltrame 6y ago
    For the FDA to even consider an emergency use authorization, they have put the following requirements: - Efficacy of at least 60% - Lower bound of efficacy (confidence interval) >= 30% - Minimum safety data for at least one or two months post vaccination (I don't remember if it's one or two) - At least five severe cases in the control arm - Requirements for the trials to go on even if efficacy is found for an additional year after the trial end (for most of the trials, this means two years in total)
- umanwizard 6y ago
  Do you have a source on how common severe long-term effects from Covid are? All I’ve seen are anecdotes.
  - mcintyre1994 6y ago
    There are some stats here for the UK, based on a symptom tracking app that's been active since about March. https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-long-covid-warning-as-study-finds-one-in-20-have-virus-symptoms-for-eight-weeks-or-more-12109990 https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-long-covid-warning-as... > One in 20 people with coronavirus are likely to have symptoms for eight weeks or more, according to a new study by King's College London. > The research, which uses data from the COVID Symptom Study App, suggested so-called "long COVID" affects around 10% of 18 to 49-year-olds who become unwell with coronavirus. Whole study is here: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/study-identifies-those-most-risk-long-covid https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/study-identifies-those-most-risk-...
    - umanwizard 6y ago
      From your first link: 10% had any symptoms lasting longer than four weeks. That’s not “severe long-term effects”. The actual study seems to say 1 in 20 have symptoms for eight weeks, which might be closer to what you could fairly describe as “long-term”, but says nothing about the severity (though I haven’t waded through the whole article). Anyway, the drop-off from 10% having symptoms at 4 weeks to 5% at 8 weeks is encouraging - it intuitively suggests that the negative symptoms aren’t permanent, even if they take a long time to go away.
      - breakfastduck 6y ago
        8 weeks certainly shouldn't be classified as 'long term'. Long term health effect claims are being made all over the show - if this is the measure that is outrageous reporting. Most people would worry about 'long term health effects' as they'd usually assume that it's going to go on for years.
        6y ago
- soulofmischief 6y ago
  > in particular, but not limited to, the brain Judging from our response to Covid-19, if this had actually been the collectively-feared zombie virus, the pandemic would have been far worse than any fictional account has manage to capture so far.
  - emiliobumachar 6y ago
    It can't get much worse than everybody dead except for a dozen people in a basement, can it?
  - uxcolumbo 6y ago
    How so? World War Z Walking Dead Shawn of the Dead * 28 Days Later The Last of Us What's worse than the above? * (ok maybe not this one)
    - soulofmischief 6y ago
      As science fiction is speculative, I do not fault any of those listed media however I feel none of them truly captured the sociopolitical insanity that would occur, the sheer level of ignorance and incompetence which causes anything that could go wrong, to go wrong.
    - TimPC 6y ago
      Also if there was a real zombie virus none of the movies so far have captured the sheer absolute terror of hard to defend transmission vectors like mosquitos, which would be likely to get the virus. Brings a whole new level of issues to not getting bit.
    - joe_momma 6y ago
      We are headed towards: Hunger Games, Children of Men, Demolition Man, Judge Dredd, Escape from NY/LA
  - mcv 6y ago
    Future zombie apocalypse stories need to include people who deny it as a hoax, blame it on foreign countries, claim it's just a mild flu, just continue partying as if there's no risk at all, claim it's caused by 5G technology, claim it's a conspiracy by the elite to accomplish whatever, and political parties split on the topic.
- cheph 6y ago
  > leaves long-lasting damage to the body (in particular, but not limited to, the brain). In what percentage of people who get COVID-19 is there long-lasting damage to the body? What other conditions did the people who get long-lasting damage to the body have? How does these numbers compare with other diseases? Would appreciate citations.
  - henearkr 6y ago
    Most people with COVID even with few symptoms have a loss of smell. If you like numbers, I read that around 80% of people with COVID report loss of smell. And this is one kind of neurological effect. This is a more global view of how the virus could affect the brain: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-we-know-so-far-about-how-covid-affects-the-nervous-system/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-we-know-so-f... And I'm not even touching the subjects of damage to the heart, clotting problems, etc.
    - jlokier 6y ago
      The loss of smell is thought to be sensory, not due to affecting the brain. However, those covid-induced strokes definitely affect the brain.
      - henearkr 6y ago
        Yes you're right indeed, the Scientific American article even mentions what you say.
  - OJFord 6y ago
    Nobody had it long enough ago to answer that. SARS-CoV-1 (1) patients have suffered years afterwards, see e.g. this article from 2010: https://www.thestar.com/life/health_wellness/2010/09/02/sars_survivors_struggle_with_symptoms_years_later.html https://www.thestar.com/life/health_wellness/2010/09/02/sars...
    - anoncake 6y ago
fierarul 6y ago
AstraZeneca has agreements with all governments whereby they don't claim any responsibility for the vaccine. It's the national governments that will deal with any side effects.
- arethuza 6y ago
  That seems fair if they are being expected to rush the development of the vaccine?
  - jlokier 6y ago
    It's fair if the degree of disclaiming is proportionate to the need and the pace. They shouldn't be off the hook completely. They should still have to show they have conducted a responsible level of testing and checking for the circumstances, that they are continuing to refine that verification even after widespread deployment, and to motivate that to be done all levels requires some degree of moral hazard remains in place for them. In other words there should be some sharing of risk. Imho.
    - dageshi 6y ago
      I think they're mostly producing this on a break even/no profit basis for at least the initial roll out? If there is some sharing of risk, but no profit to be had (and ultimately profit is what buffers you against risk) then why would you be involved at all? Let some other company take the risk?
      - fierarul 6y ago
        You can nationalize companies.
    - celticninja 6y ago
      They are still going through clinical trials its just that getting to that stage has been accelerated. So this isn't like we are relying on AZ to create it, test it and sign it off. National agencies will ultimately sign off on whether it can be used or not. Given the high profile nature of this vaccine you can be sure that results will be widely studied, and the opportunity to hide results they don't like will be limited given we all know the trials are occurring.
benchaney 6y ago
It is extremely good news, but they haven't published their data yet. I will get excited when they do, and the data matches the PR (assuming it does).
erikrothoff 6y ago
“The programme is progressing well, (but) we’re not there yet,” Hancock said. Looking good, but still months away from rolling out.
- calvinv 6y ago
  if we're back to normalish by spring next year I think that would be a great outcome, if the messaging to the public would be, buckle down until then I think lockdown complaince could go up
  - shotta 6y ago
    That’ll be extra rough for folks in the depths of winter.
  - x87678r 6y ago
    I dont think any expert is predicting normalish by next spring, maybe in a years time if we're lucky. https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/the-who-says-healthy-young-people-may-not-receive-a-covid-19-vaccine-until-2022/ar-BB1a3hru https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/the-who-says-health...
    - Izkata 6y ago
      Meanwhile the general populace cares less and less, so we may be back to normal in the spring regardless.
      - claudeganon 6y ago
        Unfortunately, that’s not how a disease with a likely limited duration of immunity works. Also, the knock on effects of uncontrolled spread over the winter will almost guarantee that next year won’t be normal across many domains.
      - acdha 6y ago
        A disease isn’t something you can solve by pretending really hard that it doesn’t exist. People getting their news from irresponsible politicians get sick like everyone else, and that’s why it won’t get back to normal before there’s a vaccine or very effective treatment: it’ll be the same cycle of open-spike-close and businesses not having enough customers to be viable.
karma_fountain 6y ago
It is good news if true, but we are rushing the trials of a new vaccine and then potentially going to give it to a large number of people. What if the vaccine has long term negative effects?
- ageitgey 6y ago
  While long-term side effects are theoretically possible with any treatment, this vaccine is based on a platform that's been safety-tested repeatedly in experiment vaccines for prostate cancer, MERS, malaria, tuberculosis, influenza and chikungunya virus, so there's a lot of past safety data. In addition because the main effect of the vaccine is to trigger a strong immune response, you would typically see side effects in the short term related to that initial response (things like Guillain-Barré syndrome or Transverse myelitis), not over the long term as the effect wanes.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- ulfw 6y ago
  What if Covid-19 has long term negative effects?
  - anoncake 6y ago
    What if there's a teapot orbiting the sun?
aphextron 6y ago
>OK, someone tell me why this isn't the good news it sounds like The AstraZeneca vaccine is based on an adenovirus vector, which has never been approved for use in humans. It uses a weakened live virus that can (and apparently has, in the case of the J&J vaccine, which is using very similar tech) cause serious adverse systemic reactions. From what we've seen so far, the safety profile for these vaccines is far worse than the mRNA/lipid nanoparticle based vaccines coming from Moderna and Pfizer/Biontech. It's also not really news. We know that a vaccine will prompt an immune response. Dozens of others in progress have already shown this with phase 1 and phase 2 data. The question is how strong, how long lasting, and how safe is it, along with the question of real world efficacy data from placebo controlled trials.
- xiphias2 6y ago
  Thanks for your input! The worrying trend is the ,,signed contracts with governments'' part even though the clinical trial results are not out yet. It seems that vaccination gets highly political, just like how EU made a mistake of paying for Remdesivir even though we knew that it's not worth it at that point.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- MrAlex94 6y ago
  > It uses a weakened live virus that can (and apparently has, in the case of the J&J vaccine, which is using very similar tech) cause serious adverse systemic reactions. There is no evidence to prove the vaccine has caused any serious adverse effects so far. If that were the case, it is unlikely the Data Safety and Monitoring Board (DSMB) and U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) would recommend resuming the trial. > After a thorough evaluation of a serious medical event experienced by one study participant, no clear cause has been identified. There are many possible factors that could have caused the event. Based on the information gathered to date and the input of independent experts, the Company has found no evidence that the vaccine candidate caused the event. https://www.jnj.com/our-company/johnson-johnson-prepares-to-resume-phase-3-ensemble-trial-of-its-janssen-covid-19-vaccine-candidate-in-the-us https://www.jnj.com/our-company/johnson-johnson-prepares-to-...
viraptor 6y ago
Likely long-term results are not known yet. We've already had one vaccine potentially causing side effects that stopped the human trials for a while. (I think it was the Russian one. Please correct me if not)
- bigbizisverywyz 6y ago
  It was the UK trials of the Oxford and AstraZeneca vaccine after 1 person experienced an adverse reaction - but that's the whole point of the trials and not uncommon so no major worry there, and they were restarted soon after. [nature.com] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02633-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02633-6 On a separate note - the voting on this thread at the moment seems pretty wild with some seemingly innocuous comments being downvoted. I don't get it.
  - ffdjjjffjj 6y ago
    It’s just a political thing. You see the same behavior in threads about climate change. A seemingly innocuous comment to you is a firebrand political statement to someone who thinks the virus is a hoax or whatever.
lbeltrame 6y ago
Glass half full: We can measure an immune response also in populations where it's more difficult to get a decent one. An immune response means that the immune system actually is taking action against the viral antigen. Glass half empty: We don't know how the immune response measured relates to protection from or lessening of the infection. This is what the ongoing trial is trying to find out. This is, IIRC, the second report of successful immunogenicity in older people. There was a (small) cohort of > 65 year old people tested with Pfizer / BioNTech's vaccine in the Phase 1 trial, and even there immune responses were found and measured.
- treeman79 6y ago
  I have at least one autoimmune disorder. There are tests that can be run to show an immune response. One thing I’ve learned is it’s extremely hard to get doctors to run the tests. AND there are a whole lot of them. AND I’ve run into many doctors that are 10-20 years out of date with treatment and diagnosis protocols. As in, current recommendations are that test X isn’t reliable. Use test Y. Doctor refuses to run any test because you’re the wrong gender. AND The moment you see someone in a practice your banned from seeing anyone else in the practice. So second opinion means going to 20 miles to another center. Oh, and it’s 3 months+ to get a single appointment. You may need two dozen appointments until they narrow in on the issue. That something is possible still leaves a massive gap of getting it done.
refurb 6y ago
It is good news, but it's not earth shattering. This vaccine produced an immune response (the the vaccine antigen), which many of the other candidates have as well. The real question is, will it prevent infection? Those are two different questions.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
faitswulff 6y ago
Well, it's still good news, but an injected vaccine may not lead to sterilizing immunity - i.e. vaccinated persons might still be able to transmit the disease: > Without a strong mucosal response, injected vaccines may be less likely to produce so-called sterilizing immunity, a phenomenon in which a pathogen is purged from the body before it’s able to infect cells, Dr. Durbin said. Vaccinated people might be protected from severe disease, but could still be infected, experience mild symptoms and occasionally pass small quantities of the germ onto others. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/health/coronavirus-nasal-vaccines.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/health/coronavirus-nasal-...
- RobertDeNiro 6y ago
  There's never been any belief among the scientific community that any of the vaccine candidates would provide sterilizing immunity. That was just a pipe dream.
- mcv 6y ago
  Even so, reducing the severity would be great. Even if a patient doesn't die, Covid-19 can have devastating and long-lasting effects. If a vaccine could reduce it to just a mild flu, I think that's good enough. You just have to inject everyone and probably add it to the standard child vaccination set.
  - Devils-Avocado 6y ago
    Why would you vaccinate children for something which is less deadly than the flu? This is the case even up to 60 years old.
    - Bud 6y ago
      Because it's substantially more deadly than the flu. (That's not counting the survivors who suffer permanent organ damage.) Please update your facts before posting in public on this topic again. I suggest sources other than Fox News. If you're about repost right-wing canards about how it's less deadly for children, please review salient facts about infectious diseases, such as the fact that they are infectious. The goal of vaccinating younger people is to protect those whom they might infect.
hannob 6y ago
It's a surrogate outcome. "Prompts immune response" means "we hope it prevents infections". It doesn't necessarily mean it will. This is still good news. But it should be put in perspective, this does not automatically translate to "this vaccine will work fine in both young and old". It just means we can have some higher hopes that it will. Only RCT results of the real infections will show if it really works. (RCT for the vaccine is running and first results are expected soon.)
- The_rationalist 6y ago
  What's RCT? You mean voluntarily injecting the covid on vaccined very young humans (so negligible risk of death) ?
  - jhfdbkofdcho 6y ago
    Randomized Control Trial
  - dewey 6y ago
    Randomized Controlled Trial: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randomized_controlled_trial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randomized_controlled_trial
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - benchaney 6y ago
    RCT means a randomized controlled trail. GP is confused. This announcement is about an RCT. Injecting a disease into volunteers is called a human challenge trial. It is a type of RCT, but it is not what is being discussed here.
  - marksomnian 6y ago
    Randomised Controlled Trial - essentially, take a population, give half of them the vaccine, and half a placebo, and study the reaction. What you're referring to (voluntarily infecting people) are challenge trials, which are also being discussed, but are still somewhat ethically dubious.
Anka33 6y ago
The IQ lowering serum is soon ready for deplyment,Trump and Brexit may never be allowed to happen again.
jlokier 6y ago
It's definitely good news. Though, sometimes people think vaccines just prevent someone getting a disease. Stop it completely in its tracks. That's true for some, but it's not that simple for others. Unfortunately a measured immune response does not ensure: - That the virus can't be transmitted to others - That you are less likely to catch and replicate the virus - That you can't get ill from the virus - That you can't get "long covid" symptoms - That you can't die from covid - That the immune response lasts for more than a few months (this is why we keep getting some of the same cold viruses; our immunity to them doesn't last) - That the R number goes down (if it doesn't prevent transmission) - That the R number doesn't go up (if people change behaviour in response to knowing they or other are vaccinated) - That the virus won't evolve a workaround in response, like the rapidly mutating flu viruses An immune response certainly suggests those things. But we can't be certain from immune response alone. Consequences need to be measured as well. We'll have a real solution when those sorts of things can be demonstrated, but it will take much longer to find out unfortunately. Probably we have to deploy a vaccine on a large scale somewhere before we can even find out how effective it is in the ways that ultimately matter. Still, if a vaccine combined with uptake and people's behaviour reduces R below 1.0 at scale, that's enough to be a breakthrough. The greater the reduction the better, but 1.0 is the magic number. Even if there's one good vaccine, having multiple good vaccine types in the world will be better. The virus is less likely to evolve a defence against multiple vaccines than against a single type deployed everywhere. The fact this vaccine targets the spike protein is also good news, because even if the virus evolves, there's evidence that the spike protein is key to its harmfulness, so any evolved strains that keep it will likely trigger an immune response, and evolved strains that change the spike protein seem likely to be less harmful too.
- dogma1138 6y ago
  The virus cannot replicate, the genetic material inside the virus cannot create new viruses as in there are no instructions inside the payload to replicate and assemble new virions. To make the virus for the vaccine you need to use a different virus that when it replicates it creates copies of the actual virus used in the vaccine. Think about it as a self extracting archive that creates copies of an uncompressed file (the actual vaccine) the file that it outputs doesn't have the information to reconstruct the self extracting archive itself.
barry-cotter 6y ago
Because by the time this passes clinical trials the Chinese vaccine will have been in mass production for months. The FDA will delay adoption of any vaccine in the US for many months in order to keep to the same standards they use when the world isn’t on fire.
- Neil44 6y ago
  It's already in production pending approval, which is set to be fast tracked to "save christmas" Personally I would argue that the standards should be kept to even when the world is on fire, I mean they do exist for a reason.
RobertDeNiro 6y ago
The bad news is that we can't really have one vaccine candidate released to the general public much before the others, as that will impact the results of other vaccines that are still in Phase 1/2/3.
Bombthecat 6y ago
Do we know it keeps working after a year or two? Or do you need a yearly shot?
- jessaustin 6y ago
  s/year/month/g
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
dmurray 6y ago
Because a vaccine that provokes an immune response isn't the hard part. It's making sure it doesn't make people sick, and then scaling it to producing and distributing hundreds of millions of doses. I mean, its better news than the alternative, but I think "Oxford vaccine produces zero immune response" would be a far less likely outcome.
- bufferoverflow 6y ago
  Billions of doses. There are only a few vaccines that will be approved any time soon. 7.8 billion people on the planet.
zzzeek 6y ago
hundreds of thousands of people died preventable deaths.
standardUser 6y ago
It's great news, though at first I thought they had released Phase 3 results, which would be earth-shattering news. They are still the leading vaccine candidate and the one most likely to get approval this year (though the US press tends to ignore it in favor of covering the various US-originated vaccines that are also in Phase 3 trials).
- bluGill 6y ago
  I care about what I can personally get for my family. We are low on the list (able to stay home almost entirely unlike health care or retail). We are tired of this, and no end is in site. The US origin vaccines (some of them are one shot or require less care in handling seem like the ones that we need)

You mean because of the 2 deaths?

This IS good news. Now (soon, hopefully) people can acquire immunity through a vaccine, instead of through a virus that leaves long-lasting damage to the body (in particular, but not limited to, the brain).

singemonkey 6y ago
As well as acquiring immunity without being infectious. However, the efficacy of this vaccine (and all the other candidates) still needs to be clarified - ie is it like a measles vaccination (~90% efficacy) or the flu vaccines (~ 25% - 50% I believe).
- viraptor 6y ago
  Sounds right for the flu. I was curious about the details - here's a good starting point. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/vaccines-work/vaccineeffect.htm?CDC_AA_refVal=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cdc.gov%2Fflu%2Fprevent%2Fvaccineeffect.htm#doe_flu_vax_effect_vary_by_type_subtype https://www.cdc.gov/flu/vaccines-work/vaccineeffect.htm?CDC_...
- lbeltrame 6y ago
  For the FDA to even consider an emergency use authorization, they have put the following requirements: - Efficacy of at least 60% - Lower bound of efficacy (confidence interval) >= 30% - Minimum safety data for at least one or two months post vaccination (I don't remember if it's one or two) - At least five severe cases in the control arm - Requirements for the trials to go on even if efficacy is found for an additional year after the trial end (for most of the trials, this means two years in total)
umanwizard 6y ago
Do you have a source on how common severe long-term effects from Covid are? All I’ve seen are anecdotes.
- mcintyre1994 6y ago
  There are some stats here for the UK, based on a symptom tracking app that's been active since about March. https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-long-covid-warning-as-study-finds-one-in-20-have-virus-symptoms-for-eight-weeks-or-more-12109990 https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-long-covid-warning-as... > One in 20 people with coronavirus are likely to have symptoms for eight weeks or more, according to a new study by King's College London. > The research, which uses data from the COVID Symptom Study App, suggested so-called "long COVID" affects around 10% of 18 to 49-year-olds who become unwell with coronavirus. Whole study is here: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/study-identifies-those-most-risk-long-covid https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/study-identifies-those-most-risk-...
  - umanwizard 6y ago
    From your first link: 10% had any symptoms lasting longer than four weeks. That’s not “severe long-term effects”. The actual study seems to say 1 in 20 have symptoms for eight weeks, which might be closer to what you could fairly describe as “long-term”, but says nothing about the severity (though I haven’t waded through the whole article). Anyway, the drop-off from 10% having symptoms at 4 weeks to 5% at 8 weeks is encouraging - it intuitively suggests that the negative symptoms aren’t permanent, even if they take a long time to go away.
    - breakfastduck 6y ago
      8 weeks certainly shouldn't be classified as 'long term'. Long term health effect claims are being made all over the show - if this is the measure that is outrageous reporting. Most people would worry about 'long term health effects' as they'd usually assume that it's going to go on for years.
      - 6y ago
soulofmischief 6y ago
> in particular, but not limited to, the brain Judging from our response to Covid-19, if this had actually been the collectively-feared zombie virus, the pandemic would have been far worse than any fictional account has manage to capture so far.
- emiliobumachar 6y ago
  It can't get much worse than everybody dead except for a dozen people in a basement, can it?
- uxcolumbo 6y ago
  How so? World War Z Walking Dead Shawn of the Dead * 28 Days Later The Last of Us What's worse than the above? * (ok maybe not this one)
  - soulofmischief 6y ago
    As science fiction is speculative, I do not fault any of those listed media however I feel none of them truly captured the sociopolitical insanity that would occur, the sheer level of ignorance and incompetence which causes anything that could go wrong, to go wrong.
  - TimPC 6y ago
    Also if there was a real zombie virus none of the movies so far have captured the sheer absolute terror of hard to defend transmission vectors like mosquitos, which would be likely to get the virus. Brings a whole new level of issues to not getting bit.
  - joe_momma 6y ago
    We are headed towards: Hunger Games, Children of Men, Demolition Man, Judge Dredd, Escape from NY/LA
- mcv 6y ago
  Future zombie apocalypse stories need to include people who deny it as a hoax, blame it on foreign countries, claim it's just a mild flu, just continue partying as if there's no risk at all, claim it's caused by 5G technology, claim it's a conspiracy by the elite to accomplish whatever, and political parties split on the topic.
cheph 6y ago
> leaves long-lasting damage to the body (in particular, but not limited to, the brain). In what percentage of people who get COVID-19 is there long-lasting damage to the body? What other conditions did the people who get long-lasting damage to the body have? How does these numbers compare with other diseases? Would appreciate citations.
- henearkr 6y ago
  Most people with COVID even with few symptoms have a loss of smell. If you like numbers, I read that around 80% of people with COVID report loss of smell. And this is one kind of neurological effect. This is a more global view of how the virus could affect the brain: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-we-know-so-far-about-how-covid-affects-the-nervous-system/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-we-know-so-f... And I'm not even touching the subjects of damage to the heart, clotting problems, etc.
  - jlokier 6y ago
    The loss of smell is thought to be sensory, not due to affecting the brain. However, those covid-induced strokes definitely affect the brain.
    - henearkr 6y ago
      Yes you're right indeed, the Scientific American article even mentions what you say.
- OJFord 6y ago
  Nobody had it long enough ago to answer that. SARS-CoV-1 (1) patients have suffered years afterwards, see e.g. this article from 2010: https://www.thestar.com/life/health_wellness/2010/09/02/sars_survivors_struggle_with_symptoms_years_later.html https://www.thestar.com/life/health_wellness/2010/09/02/sars...
  - anoncake 6y ago

fierarul 6y ago

AstraZeneca has agreements with all governments whereby they don't claim any responsibility for the vaccine. It's the national governments that will deal with any side effects.

arethuza 6y ago
That seems fair if they are being expected to rush the development of the vaccine?
- jlokier 6y ago
  It's fair if the degree of disclaiming is proportionate to the need and the pace. They shouldn't be off the hook completely. They should still have to show they have conducted a responsible level of testing and checking for the circumstances, that they are continuing to refine that verification even after widespread deployment, and to motivate that to be done all levels requires some degree of moral hazard remains in place for them. In other words there should be some sharing of risk. Imho.
  - dageshi 6y ago
    I think they're mostly producing this on a break even/no profit basis for at least the initial roll out? If there is some sharing of risk, but no profit to be had (and ultimately profit is what buffers you against risk) then why would you be involved at all? Let some other company take the risk?
    - fierarul 6y ago
      You can nationalize companies.
  - celticninja 6y ago
    They are still going through clinical trials its just that getting to that stage has been accelerated. So this isn't like we are relying on AZ to create it, test it and sign it off. National agencies will ultimately sign off on whether it can be used or not. Given the high profile nature of this vaccine you can be sure that results will be widely studied, and the opportunity to hide results they don't like will be limited given we all know the trials are occurring.

benchaney 6y ago

It is extremely good news, but they haven't published their data yet. I will get excited when they do, and the data matches the PR (assuming it does).

erikrothoff 6y ago

“The programme is progressing well, (but) we’re not there yet,” Hancock said. Looking good, but still months away from rolling out.

calvinv 6y ago
if we're back to normalish by spring next year I think that would be a great outcome, if the messaging to the public would be, buckle down until then I think lockdown complaince could go up
- shotta 6y ago
  That’ll be extra rough for folks in the depths of winter.
- x87678r 6y ago
  I dont think any expert is predicting normalish by next spring, maybe in a years time if we're lucky. https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/the-who-says-healthy-young-people-may-not-receive-a-covid-19-vaccine-until-2022/ar-BB1a3hru https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/the-who-says-health...
  - Izkata 6y ago
    Meanwhile the general populace cares less and less, so we may be back to normal in the spring regardless.
    - claudeganon 6y ago
      Unfortunately, that’s not how a disease with a likely limited duration of immunity works. Also, the knock on effects of uncontrolled spread over the winter will almost guarantee that next year won’t be normal across many domains.
    - acdha 6y ago
      A disease isn’t something you can solve by pretending really hard that it doesn’t exist. People getting their news from irresponsible politicians get sick like everyone else, and that’s why it won’t get back to normal before there’s a vaccine or very effective treatment: it’ll be the same cycle of open-spike-close and businesses not having enough customers to be viable.

karma_fountain 6y ago

It is good news if true, but we are rushing the trials of a new vaccine and then potentially going to give it to a large number of people. What if the vaccine has long term negative effects?

ageitgey 6y ago
While long-term side effects are theoretically possible with any treatment, this vaccine is based on a platform that's been safety-tested repeatedly in experiment vaccines for prostate cancer, MERS, malaria, tuberculosis, influenza and chikungunya virus, so there's a lot of past safety data. In addition because the main effect of the vaccine is to trigger a strong immune response, you would typically see side effects in the short term related to that initial response (things like Guillain-Barré syndrome or Transverse myelitis), not over the long term as the effect wanes.
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ulfw 6y ago
What if Covid-19 has long term negative effects?
- anoncake 6y ago
  What if there's a teapot orbiting the sun?

aphextron 6y ago

>OK, someone tell me why this isn't the good news it sounds like The AstraZeneca vaccine is based on an adenovirus vector, which has never been approved for use in humans. It uses a weakened live virus that can (and apparently has, in the case of the J&J vaccine, which is using very similar tech) cause serious adverse systemic reactions. From what we've seen so far, the safety profile for these vaccines is far worse than the mRNA/lipid nanoparticle based vaccines coming from Moderna and Pfizer/Biontech. It's also not really news. We know that a vaccine will prompt an immune response. Dozens of others in progress have already shown this with phase 1 and phase 2 data. The question is how strong, how long lasting, and how safe is it, along with the question of real world efficacy data from placebo controlled trials.

xiphias2 6y ago
Thanks for your input! The worrying trend is the ,,signed contracts with governments'' part even though the clinical trial results are not out yet. It seems that vaccination gets highly political, just like how EU made a mistake of paying for Remdesivir even though we knew that it's not worth it at that point.
- deleted 6y ago
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MrAlex94 6y ago
> It uses a weakened live virus that can (and apparently has, in the case of the J&J vaccine, which is using very similar tech) cause serious adverse systemic reactions. There is no evidence to prove the vaccine has caused any serious adverse effects so far. If that were the case, it is unlikely the Data Safety and Monitoring Board (DSMB) and U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) would recommend resuming the trial. > After a thorough evaluation of a serious medical event experienced by one study participant, no clear cause has been identified. There are many possible factors that could have caused the event. Based on the information gathered to date and the input of independent experts, the Company has found no evidence that the vaccine candidate caused the event. https://www.jnj.com/our-company/johnson-johnson-prepares-to-resume-phase-3-ensemble-trial-of-its-janssen-covid-19-vaccine-candidate-in-the-us https://www.jnj.com/our-company/johnson-johnson-prepares-to-...

viraptor 6y ago

Likely long-term results are not known yet. We've already had one vaccine potentially causing side effects that stopped the human trials for a while. (I think it was the Russian one. Please correct me if not)

bigbizisverywyz 6y ago
It was the UK trials of the Oxford and AstraZeneca vaccine after 1 person experienced an adverse reaction - but that's the whole point of the trials and not uncommon so no major worry there, and they were restarted soon after. [nature.com] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02633-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02633-6 On a separate note - the voting on this thread at the moment seems pretty wild with some seemingly innocuous comments being downvoted. I don't get it.
- ffdjjjffjj 6y ago
  It’s just a political thing. You see the same behavior in threads about climate change. A seemingly innocuous comment to you is a firebrand political statement to someone who thinks the virus is a hoax or whatever.

lbeltrame 6y ago

Glass half full: We can measure an immune response also in populations where it's more difficult to get a decent one. An immune response means that the immune system actually is taking action against the viral antigen. Glass half empty: We don't know how the immune response measured relates to protection from or lessening of the infection. This is what the ongoing trial is trying to find out. This is, IIRC, the second report of successful immunogenicity in older people. There was a (small) cohort of > 65 year old people tested with Pfizer / BioNTech's vaccine in the Phase 1 trial, and even there immune responses were found and measured.

treeman79 6y ago
I have at least one autoimmune disorder. There are tests that can be run to show an immune response. One thing I’ve learned is it’s extremely hard to get doctors to run the tests. AND there are a whole lot of them. AND I’ve run into many doctors that are 10-20 years out of date with treatment and diagnosis protocols. As in, current recommendations are that test X isn’t reliable. Use test Y. Doctor refuses to run any test because you’re the wrong gender. AND The moment you see someone in a practice your banned from seeing anyone else in the practice. So second opinion means going to 20 miles to another center. Oh, and it’s 3 months+ to get a single appointment. You may need two dozen appointments until they narrow in on the issue. That something is possible still leaves a massive gap of getting it done.

refurb 6y ago

It is good news, but it's not earth shattering. This vaccine produced an immune response (the the vaccine antigen), which many of the other candidates have as well. The real question is, will it prevent infection? Those are two different questions.

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faitswulff 6y ago

Well, it's still good news, but an injected vaccine may not lead to sterilizing immunity - i.e. vaccinated persons might still be able to transmit the disease: > Without a strong mucosal response, injected vaccines may be less likely to produce so-called sterilizing immunity, a phenomenon in which a pathogen is purged from the body before it’s able to infect cells, Dr. Durbin said. Vaccinated people might be protected from severe disease, but could still be infected, experience mild symptoms and occasionally pass small quantities of the germ onto others. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/health/coronavirus-nasal-vaccines.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/health/coronavirus-nasal-...

RobertDeNiro 6y ago
There's never been any belief among the scientific community that any of the vaccine candidates would provide sterilizing immunity. That was just a pipe dream.
mcv 6y ago
Even so, reducing the severity would be great. Even if a patient doesn't die, Covid-19 can have devastating and long-lasting effects. If a vaccine could reduce it to just a mild flu, I think that's good enough. You just have to inject everyone and probably add it to the standard child vaccination set.
- Devils-Avocado 6y ago
  Why would you vaccinate children for something which is less deadly than the flu? This is the case even up to 60 years old.
  - Bud 6y ago
    Because it's substantially more deadly than the flu. (That's not counting the survivors who suffer permanent organ damage.) Please update your facts before posting in public on this topic again. I suggest sources other than Fox News. If you're about repost right-wing canards about how it's less deadly for children, please review salient facts about infectious diseases, such as the fact that they are infectious. The goal of vaccinating younger people is to protect those whom they might infect.

hannob 6y ago

It's a surrogate outcome. "Prompts immune response" means "we hope it prevents infections". It doesn't necessarily mean it will. This is still good news. But it should be put in perspective, this does not automatically translate to "this vaccine will work fine in both young and old". It just means we can have some higher hopes that it will. Only RCT results of the real infections will show if it really works. (RCT for the vaccine is running and first results are expected soon.)

The_rationalist 6y ago
What's RCT? You mean voluntarily injecting the covid on vaccined very young humans (so negligible risk of death) ?
- jhfdbkofdcho 6y ago
  Randomized Control Trial
- dewey 6y ago
  Randomized Controlled Trial: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randomized_controlled_trial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randomized_controlled_trial
- deleted 6y ago
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- benchaney 6y ago
  RCT means a randomized controlled trail. GP is confused. This announcement is about an RCT. Injecting a disease into volunteers is called a human challenge trial. It is a type of RCT, but it is not what is being discussed here.
- marksomnian 6y ago
  Randomised Controlled Trial - essentially, take a population, give half of them the vaccine, and half a placebo, and study the reaction. What you're referring to (voluntarily infecting people) are challenge trials, which are also being discussed, but are still somewhat ethically dubious.

Anka33 6y ago

The IQ lowering serum is soon ready for deplyment,Trump and Brexit may never be allowed to happen again.

jlokier 6y ago

It's definitely good news. Though, sometimes people think vaccines just prevent someone getting a disease. Stop it completely in its tracks. That's true for some, but it's not that simple for others. Unfortunately a measured immune response does not ensure: - That the virus can't be transmitted to others - That you are less likely to catch and replicate the virus - That you can't get ill from the virus - That you can't get "long covid" symptoms - That you can't die from covid - That the immune response lasts for more than a few months (this is why we keep getting some of the same cold viruses; our immunity to them doesn't last) - That the R number goes down (if it doesn't prevent transmission) - That the R number doesn't go up (if people change behaviour in response to knowing they or other are vaccinated) - That the virus won't evolve a workaround in response, like the rapidly mutating flu viruses An immune response certainly suggests those things. But we can't be certain from immune response alone. Consequences need to be measured as well. We'll have a real solution when those sorts of things can be demonstrated, but it will take much longer to find out unfortunately. Probably we have to deploy a vaccine on a large scale somewhere before we can even find out how effective it is in the ways that ultimately matter. Still, if a vaccine combined with uptake and people's behaviour reduces R below 1.0 at scale, that's enough to be a breakthrough. The greater the reduction the better, but 1.0 is the magic number. Even if there's one good vaccine, having multiple good vaccine types in the world will be better. The virus is less likely to evolve a defence against multiple vaccines than against a single type deployed everywhere. The fact this vaccine targets the spike protein is also good news, because even if the virus evolves, there's evidence that the spike protein is key to its harmfulness, so any evolved strains that keep it will likely trigger an immune response, and evolved strains that change the spike protein seem likely to be less harmful too.

dogma1138 6y ago
The virus cannot replicate, the genetic material inside the virus cannot create new viruses as in there are no instructions inside the payload to replicate and assemble new virions. To make the virus for the vaccine you need to use a different virus that when it replicates it creates copies of the actual virus used in the vaccine. Think about it as a self extracting archive that creates copies of an uncompressed file (the actual vaccine) the file that it outputs doesn't have the information to reconstruct the self extracting archive itself.

barry-cotter 6y ago

Because by the time this passes clinical trials the Chinese vaccine will have been in mass production for months. The FDA will delay adoption of any vaccine in the US for many months in order to keep to the same standards they use when the world isn’t on fire.

Neil44 6y ago
It's already in production pending approval, which is set to be fast tracked to "save christmas" Personally I would argue that the standards should be kept to even when the world is on fire, I mean they do exist for a reason.

RobertDeNiro 6y ago

The bad news is that we can't really have one vaccine candidate released to the general public much before the others, as that will impact the results of other vaccines that are still in Phase 1/2/3.

Bombthecat 6y ago

Do we know it keeps working after a year or two? Or do you need a yearly shot?

jessaustin 6y ago
s/year/month/g
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dmurray 6y ago

Because a vaccine that provokes an immune response isn't the hard part. It's making sure it doesn't make people sick, and then scaling it to producing and distributing hundreds of millions of doses. I mean, its better news than the alternative, but I think "Oxford vaccine produces zero immune response" would be a far less likely outcome.

bufferoverflow 6y ago
Billions of doses. There are only a few vaccines that will be approved any time soon. 7.8 billion people on the planet.

zzzeek 6y ago

hundreds of thousands of people died preventable deaths.

standardUser 6y ago

It's great news, though at first I thought they had released Phase 3 results, which would be earth-shattering news. They are still the leading vaccine candidate and the one most likely to get approval this year (though the US press tends to ignore it in favor of covering the various US-originated vaccines that are also in Phase 3 trials).

bluGill 6y ago
I care about what I can personally get for my family. We are low on the list (able to stay home almost entirely unlike health care or retail). We are tired of this, and no end is in site. The US origin vaccines (some of them are one shot or require less care in handling seem like the ones that we need)