30 ms·

Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% protection

• TomGullen 6y ago
  Great news and the markets are reacting very positively to the news as well which indicates to me this could be the beginning of the end!
  • ro-_-b 6y ago
    I remember that in March somebody posted here an entry saying that mutation of the virus will make vaccinations only useful in the short term. Were these concerns already addressed at this stage? We have seen mutations due to minks recently which could make the vaccinations ineffective. These mutations might have been controlled but similar situations may arise in the next years. For these reasons I am not entirely sure this is the beginning of the end.
    • carlmr 6y ago
      Considering Denmark is also one of the richest countries on earth we can neither expect other countries to a) detect such a mutation early and b) handle the issue promptly. So I think it's somewhat likely that we'll see mutations emerge all over the world. Whether this vaccine works depends on how early we get most people vaccinated. It may only be a short term patch, which we will see once it's rolled out, you can't really predict the long term without any measurements.
    • aphextron 6y ago
      >I remember that in March somebody posted here an entry saying that mutation of the virus will make vaccinations only useful in the short term. Were these concerns already addressed at this stage? Regardless of whether the mutations are significant enough to affect vaccine efficacy, it won't likely be a problem. These new mRNA vaccines have a development/production time measured in weeks and months, not years. It changes vaccines from a hardware problem to a software problem. Once the underlying delivery technology is proven safe and effective, reacting to new strains will be as swift as patching a codebase. It's hard to overstate what a massive advance in vaccine tech is happening here.
      • aj_g 6y ago
        Fascinating--do you have any links to further reading/watching about this?
        • aphextron 6y ago
          >"Fascinating--do you have any links to further reading/watching about this?" https://www.nature.com/articles/nrd.2017.243 https://www.nature.com/articles/nrd.2017.243 The basic idea is that now rather than needing to culture live viruses in chicken eggs, we can literally just encode the RNA for a specific antigen into a synthetic substrate and produce vaccines through a chemical process like any other drug. The RNA is then absorbed into your cells, and your own body creates the proteins which stimulate an immune response.
    • Wintamute 6y ago
      Coronaviruses like SARS-COV-2 mutate relatively slowly and minimally compared to others. So mutation isn't expected to be a huge concern, unlike say influenza which mutates relatively rapidly and requires an annual tweak to the vaccines. What's more, any new strains we do see spreading more widely will do so because their mutations confer a competitive advantage. In practice that usually means more drift towards higher infectiousness but less severe symptoms - the same mechanisms that have left us with 4 other endemic but mild common cold coroanviruses. The new SARS-COV-2 vaccines may be a useful tool to get us over this hump where the virus is still novel to a large proportion of the population, but are unlikely to be required indefinitely.
      • bipson 6y ago
        It was said (arguably in the news, so, nobody knows if true) that the mutation found in the mink populations in Denmark has a significantly different response to antibodies, in particular, they are less effective. This is why OP is asking and mentioning the minks in Denmark.
  • untog 6y ago
    The markets seem to wildly yo-yo with every piece of negative and positive news. Case in point: Zoom is currently down 10% but I’ll bet it will have rallied by the end of the day.
    • gustavf 6y ago
      I'll take the other side of that bet.
    • Zenbit_UX 6y ago
      It's more than zoom, everything that's gone up from the pandemic is dropping: amzn, meli, jmia, se, shop, sq. The markets had them valued at a premium due to their monopolies in the pandemic but retail stocks are now trending up premarket: bbby, etc.
      • untog 6y ago
        My point is that all of this is gut reaction to a headline, not a nuanced analysis of vaccine efficiency, roll out plans etc etc. Things could turn right around again once those details are resolved.
    • TomGullen 6y ago
      I don't think it's worth looking at individual stocks in this instance, and I think you're not understanding why Zoom would drop on good vaccine news.
      • untog 6y ago
        I am absolutely understanding why Zoom would drop on good vaccine news. It’s not a complicated connection! My point is that the market overreacts to every piece of good or bad news, then settles down as the full implications become clear. There are still a lot of unanswered questions about the vaccine, how we handle rollout, etc etc etc. That’s not really considered in immediate reactions like this, it’s all gut feeling.
  • input_sh 6y ago
    Except Zoom's, which fell from 514 to 410 in less than an hour. Really puts the nails in coffin of the whole "we're gonna work more remotely after the pandemic" narrative.
    • sethammons 6y ago
      Investor speculation doesn’t put nails into anything :)
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • randomsearch 6y ago
      Did it? I’m looking at ZOOM and it’s on 500
      • mettamage 6y ago
        https://www.google.com/search?q=zoom+stock+ticker&oq=zoom+stock+ticker&aqs=chrome..69i57.1642j0j7&client=ubuntu&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=zoom+stock+ticker&oq=zoom+st... ^ check the pre-trading price
      • iso1631 6y ago
        https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/ZM/ https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/ZM/ Zoom was 500 at close yesterday, in premarket trading it's dropped 13% to 435. Nasdaq open at 1430 GMT
    • strombofulous 6y ago
      I don't understand, aren't future events supposed to be already considered in the stock price? It's not like a vaccine was unpredictable
      • Cthulhu_ 6y ago
        Yeah, but investors seem to want to hold on to stocks for as long as possible (dividends? I don't know how that works, as far as I know holding stock for dividends is nowhere near as profitable as speculating)
  • skhm 6y ago
    There is another quite negative reading of this comment and I'm not sure which one you meant :)
  • coldpie 6y ago
    Yeah, setting aside all the politics and silliness, the science going on around this pandemic is remarkable. Going from nearly zero (yes, there was a bunch of research from SARS-Cov-1, MERS, and similar to build off of but nothing like this) to a functioning, tested, and mass manufactured vaccine in a year is absolutely jaw dropping. Even if it takes two years to distribute widely, three years to stomp out a pandemic is blindingly fast and a major credit to modern medical science, and the processes we have built up around it.
    • bipson 6y ago
      Although I want to agree, none of the companies started from zero. All these new technologies, the techniques, the principles were in development since years if not decades. Not trying to diminish the accomplishments achieved, great effort nontheless. Just saying nobody started from zero here, that would have been insane and frankly impossible.
      • lbeltrame 6y ago
        > All these new technologies, the techniques, the principles were in development since years if not decades. Yes, I first heard about intramuscular nucleic acid injection around the year 2000. At the time it was naked DNA and not RNA in a lipid nanoparticle suspension, but the principle was the same.
        • bipson 6y ago
          In particular BioNTech from the article was founded 2008. This is their first publicly available "product" - it applies their vision for cancer treatment to specific SARS-nCoV-2 proteins (arguably I don't know if they're working on other ideas as well). They might be working on this particular vaccine since 2020, but AFAIK they have been working on the specific principle the vaccine uses since 2008.
      • usrusr 6y ago
        True, but it's the first time we see those technologies in action. Some (many?) of the vaccine projects for example use paths that have previously been considered, played through in "toy" projects that never made it to production and so on, and now they are suddenly standing in the limelight, going live. For some sub-fields of biotech this must almost be like the mindboggling aviation had from roadshow curiosities to a major war factor in hardly more than a decade.
  • andrepd 6y ago
    The markets? Spare me. What are the markets, a handful of rich in banks and large corporations? They are neither wise nor competent, why should every news story be suffixed by how "the markets" (swt) react?
    • mrmonkeyman 6y ago
      Oh sweet summer child.
    • jdhzzz 6y ago
      > What are the markets, a handful of rich I'm not yet but hoping to be... > They are neither wise nor competent That's me again, but doesn't preclude my success... However this 1995 paper (1) indicates that the S&P 500 behavior does "Granger Cause" changes in USA GDP. i.e changes in S&P 500 does predict changes in GDP from 1 to 3 quarters out. So that's the one legitimate reason to be encouraged by rising markets. Perhaps the woman who cuts my hair will be able to get off food stamps by spring. 1. https://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?redir=1&article=1071&context=econ_honproj https://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?redir=1&a...
    • ploika 6y ago
      Since you asked, also the pension funds of almost everyone you know.
      • chasd00 6y ago
        and 401ks
      • zzbzq 6y ago
        retirement accounts--pensions are legacy technology
        • bluGill 6y ago
          Which is too bad. I'd rather have a pension and be assured of my income for however long I live than have to figure out how much to leave in my account for a future that I might not live to be old enough to enjoy.
  • cblconfederate 6y ago
    the markets? that would be bad news because the markets have had no touch with reality for a long time
    • TomGullen 6y ago
      That's the popular view but I don't think they've been as irrational as lots of people think.
      • cblconfederate 6y ago
        more random than irrational
  • aphextron 6y ago
    >Great news and the markets are reacting very positively to the news as well which indicates to me this could be the beginning of the end! I'd argue that has a lot more to do with the election uncertainty being over with. This is incredibly promising news, but probably not enough to account for SP500 jumping 400 points this morning.
    • 0xffff2 6y ago
      S&P 500 is only up 90 points right now, and I don't see any evidence it was up 400 at any point today. More generally, The DOW is way up, S&P up moderately, and NASDAQ only up a little bit. That looks like it may well be a result of vaccine news to me, which is less good for the big tech companies that make up the NASDAQ than the broader set of companies tracked by the DOW and S&P. I would expect an election related bump to have pretty equal effects on all three indices.
  • standardUser 6y ago
    I think the data is what indicates this is the beginning of the end. All of the leading Western vaccine candidates showed very strong Phase 2 results. Now, we have the first vaccine showing very strong initial Phase 3 results. This is basically the best case scenario.
  • bamboozled 6y ago
    The markets have been reacting positively for months, what’s new here ?
• codeulike 6y ago
  Great. This is the one that has to be kept ultra cold. Hoping for good news about some of the other vaccines in Phase 3 trials soon. The vaccine reportedly needs to be held in storage at -94° Fahrenheit (-70°c), and will last for only 24 hours at refrigerated temps between 35.6° and 46.4°. (about 2° to 8° c) from https://www.fiercepharma.com/manufacturing/pfizer-moderna-s-covid-19-shot-rollouts-could-be-ice-as-analysts-question-cold https://www.fiercepharma.com/manufacturing/pfizer-moderna-s-...
  • msamwald 6y ago
    On the other hand: "BioNTech CEO expects vaccine can be fridge-stored for two weeks" "Speaking at an online media briefing on the purchase of an additional German production site, Chief Executive Ugur Sahin said tests have recently confirmed the genetic compound remains stable at 2 to 8 degrees Celsius for five days but he expects storability at those conditions to be two weeks or longer." https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-biontech-storage-int/biontech-ceo-expects-vaccine-can-be-fridge-stored-for-two-weeks-idUSKBN2681BW https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-biontech-...
  • londons_explore 6y ago
    While it's a minor logistical challenge, it's simple enough to ship this in a liquid nitrogen dewar. Even very small cities will have liquid nitrogen facilities. Shipping from the nearest city to most of the population sounds very doable in 24 hours. Remember you only need to get most of the population to halt the spread. If there's some tiny village 3 days hike away in the rainforest, you can skip them.
    • refurb 6y ago
      Shipping hundreds of thousands of doses of vaccine at -80C is more than a “minor logistical challenge”. First, you’d never ship in a liquid nitrogen dewar. It would be a massive logistics bottleneck considering the weight of dewars and the volume you'd be shipping (Pfizer already has deals secured for hundreds of millions of doses). And plus, these are packaged vaccines - a glass vial with a label, in a paper box, with a folded product info sheet inside. You can't submerge the whole thing in liquid nitrogen. Shipping at -10C is a major logistical challenge. Mentally it doesn't sound like like much, but that's envisioning a single vial to a single patient. Multiply that by one million and deliveries to not only NYC but to Booneville, Louisiana. Temperature excursions mean spoiled product - product that gets thrown out. -80C is way harder than -20C (there are no vaccines today that require -80C). You can’t just throw it on dry ice and say “we’re good”. Even just packing it is complicated. You have a pallet sized box with 20,000 doses. You put it in a box and surround it with dry ice. Are all the vials the same temperature after 2 hours? Are you sure? You need temperature monitoring at multiple points in the package so you know when it’s been spoiled. Your delivery gets held up for 12 hours at customs, are all the vials still -80C? Are you sure? What do you do when you deliver to hospital and find out they don’t have -80C storage, even though they said they did? Do you have an intermediary storage facility you can bring it to until you figure out a solution? Do you have monitoring after it’s been delivered so it doesn’t spoil before administration? Correct thawing procedures? What happens if a dose is thawed and the patient doesn’t show up and it sits at room temp for an hour? Just throw it out? Or is it still good? Are you sure? And to add on top of all this - you (as the manufacturer) might have all this figured out, but you need to make sure everyone along the logistics chain does too. Guaranteed you'd send emails and letters in advance, and have massive yellow stickers all over the shipment that says "Must be stored at -80C" and you'll have a customer call you a week later asking if the product that's been sitting at -10C is still good. Here is a document from WHO that will tell you way more than you’d ever want to know about cold chain distribution. There is an entire section on how to appropriately stack the vaccine vials in the freezer so they stay the right temperature. Yeah, it's that complicated. https://www.who.int/immunization/documents/IIP2015_Module2.pdf https://www.who.int/immunization/documents/IIP2015_Module2.p... Even cold chain for today’s products is really fucking hard. Derek Lowe had a good quote on this: "Pfizer has provided these details to the CDC about shipping and storage of their candidate: the vaccine can be shipped in “dry ice pack” boxes, but that dry ice will need to be replenished within 24 hours of receipt. The shipping carton needs to be closed within one minute of opening, and not opened more than twice per day. Vaccine vials, once removed, can be kept at refrigerator temperatures for up to 24 hours or at room temperature for no more than 2 hours after thawing. So this is going to take a very organized approach to make sure that the vaccine is handled properly without wastage. We’re looking at a lot of dry ice and a lot of orders for ultra-cold freezers if this is the candidate that gets heavy nationwide distribution. And mind you, I’m talking about organized distribution in Little Rock and Long Beach. What about La Paz and Lahore? What about Lubumbashi? Even back inside the US, what’s the nearest source of dry ice in Shiprock, New Mexico or Oceana, West Virginia?" https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/08/31/cold-chain-and-colder-chain-distribution https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/08/31/co...
• tonetheman 6y ago
  I am blown away at how quickly the world/science/this company produced this. Clearly this is not the end of it but this is something positive.
  • Cthulhu_ 6y ago
    They produced it within months; it's the clinical trials to prove its efficiency and safety that took a while. I wonder if this experience has led to developments to speed up the development process (without compromising on safety); I hope so, because this is not the first and will not be the last time we see a worldwide pandemic like this.
    • m12k 6y ago
      I'm not sure it's fully possible to not compromise on safety one way or another when doing something like this quickly. Let's say a side effect is that 1% of women become sterile half a year after getting the vaccine - how would we possibly know that after testing for 3 months? All we can do is say it's very unlikely based on other vaccines with similar approaches, and monitor for effects on the reproductive system (or anything else unusual in the body) that is know to potentially lead to something like that down the line. In the end, we can (and probably must) decide that taking the time to disprove there being any long term negative effects, is more likely to cause more harm (because more covid-infections will happen in the meantime) than the good it is likely to do us. But it is still a higher risk than the usual approach where we test for longer.
• 3dbrows 6y ago
  At the time of writing (2020-11-09 12:04 UTC) the article uses "90% of people" and "90% protection" interchangeably. I assume it means "90% of individuals achieve immunity", rather than "individuals achieve 90% immunity". EDIT: See child comment re: Pfizer press release. EDIT 2: See [1] for said press release, which has more detailed information than the BBC article. [1] https://investors.pfizer.com/investor-news/press-release-details/2020/Pfizer-and-BioNTech-Announce-Vaccine-Candidate-Against-COVID-19-Achieved-Success-in-First-Interim-Analysis-from-Phase-3-Study/default.aspx https://investors.pfizer.com/investor-news/press-release-det...
  • refurb 6y ago
    From Pfizer's press release, they use "vaccine efficacy" which has a very specific definition. "Vaccine efficacy is the percentage reduction of disease in a vaccinated group of people compared to an unvaccinated group" So basically a 90% reduction in Covid infection.
    • 3dbrows 6y ago
      Thank you, do you happen to have a link?
      • shakna 6y ago
        https://investors.pfizer.com/investor-news/press-release-details/2020/Pfizer-and-BioNTech-Announce-Vaccine-Candidate-Against-COVID-19-Achieved-Success-in-First-Interim-Analysis-from-Phase-3-Study/default.aspx https://investors.pfizer.com/investor-news/press-release-det...
    • st1x7 6y ago
      Can't that be interpreted as either of the options in the parent comment?
      • kgwgk 6y ago
        90% of the time it works every time. :-)
• WhoIsSatoshi 6y ago
  UK already ordered 30M out of the 50M avail for this year. So no going on winter break to Thailand just yet! Wondering who will grab the next 20M, and how much this vaccine is being sold per dose. (edit: PFE is currently trading +13% pre-market on the NYSE)
  • krzyk 6y ago
    And what are the side effects.
    • tomrod 6y ago
      My thought exactly.
  • refurb 6y ago
    At least in the US "Pfizer and BioNTech will sell their mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine to the U.S. government at an estimated cost of $19.50 per shot..." https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/pfizer-biontech-s-u-s-supply-deal-price-tag-leaves-room-for-decent-profit-covid-19-shot https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/pfizer-biontech-s-u-s-su...
    • WhoIsSatoshi 6y ago
      => projected cost to the customer seem to be ~ 80/100 per shot with 2 shots needed (if we go with a $20 base + $80 premium)
      • crispyporkbites 6y ago
        isn't the customer the government? are people on the street actually going to have to pay for this?
        • bluGill 6y ago
          Hard to say. What is in the contract? I don't know (I assume it is public but I don't know how to look this up). Different countries may have different contracts. I wouldn't be surprised if the contract was only that X doses would be provided to the US market (as opposed to shipping to the market in Mexico...). In this case the government is only buying a spot in the shipping queue, and not any doses. It could be that the doses were bought by the government only for the government (military and politicians), and the rest of us are on our own. (this seems unlikely - doctors should be first in line, but an obvious extension is the doses are for doctors/nurses and the leftover for the above) It could be the government is buying all doses for their country and will distribute them for no extra charge. This is probably what Europe has done/will do - because they tend to have government health care for anything considered essential. I wouldn't be surprised if all 3 of the above were in use by different countries. There is disagreement as to which is best on a political level.
• Jughashvili 6y ago
  >The developers - Pfizer and BioNTech False. The first vaccine was developed in Russia.
• refurb 6y ago
  It might be more helpful to link to Pfizer's press release versus a media summary of it. https://investors.pfizer.com/investor-news/press-release-details/2020/Pfizer-and-BioNTech-Announce-Vaccine-Candidate-Against-COVID-19-Achieved-Success-in-First-Interim-Analysis-from-Phase-3-Study/default.aspx https://investors.pfizer.com/investor-news/press-release-det...
• krm01 6y ago
  By not knowing how long the immunity/protection lasts, it could mean people would have take the vaccine every 6months?12months?
  • ComodoHacker 6y ago
    Yes. Or try another vaccine.
    • hestefisk 6y ago
      I suspected quite similar to how people are vaccinated against the flu every year.
  • tgv 6y ago
    We'll have to find out. If the virus is suppressed for 6-12 months, it's basically eradicated, and vaccination would only have to start once it starts spreading again. The rate of spreading will depend on factors such as international travel and how much people will have learned from this period. I expect/fear that everyone will try to get life as before as soon as possible, so the extra delay after the vaccine wears off might be negligible.
  • garmaine 6y ago
    There literally aren’t going to be able to make that many doses, so no.
  • lettergram 6y ago
    If you get the virus, you only appear to be immune for a short time (6months, would have to look it up). This matches other coronavirus and how you can get colds multiple times a year. In reality, a vaccine is probably going to offer a lower (but if this study is true, acceptable) level of protection. I wouldn’t be surprised if the protection drops exponentially after 2 months. Similar to the live virus
    • aphextron 6y ago
      >In reality, a vaccine is probably going to offer a lower (but if this study is true, acceptable) level of protection. I wouldn’t be surprised if the protection drops exponentially after 2 months. Similar to the live virus Serology reports for the Moderna vaccine (very similar technology) are showing 4-5 times higher levels of antibodies than those who actually contracted the virus. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2028436 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2028436
• y7 6y ago
  Pfizer's press release with more information: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201109005539/en/ https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201109005539/en/ - Vaccine candidate was found to be more than 90% effective in preventing COVID-19 in participants without evidence of prior SARS-CoV-2 infection in the first interim efficacy analysis - Analysis evaluated 94 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in trial participants - Study enrolled 43,538 participants, with 42% having diverse backgrounds, and no serious safety concerns have been observed; Safety and additional efficacy data continue to be collected - Submission for Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) planned for soon after the required safety milestone is achieved, which is currently expected to occur in the third week of November - Clinical trial to continue through to final analysis at 164 confirmed cases in order to collect further data and characterize the vaccine candidate’s performance against other study endpoints
  • collyw 6y ago
    "diverse backgrounds" What does that mean exactly? Surely a random sample of people will have diverse backgrounds.
    • turing_complete 6y ago
      I found that strange too. Diverse is a relative term, not an absolute one.
    • rimliu 6y ago
      Random sample of women aged 19-30 would be less diverse than random sample from anybody.
    • lbeltrame 6y ago
      It means that it includes people from different ethnicity, ages (also younger and older people) and some immunocompromised people.
      • cblconfederate 6y ago
        shouldnt they be focusing on older people? in fact if they are first to be vaccinated the fatality would drop very very significantly
• zpeti 6y ago
  Seems like a good time to buy shares in whoever manufactures industrial sized extra cold freezers.
  • tyingq 6y ago
    Maybe also manufacturers of liquid nitrogen dewars.
    • bluGill 6y ago
      this is the only investment I find possibly useful. Liquid nitrogen is so common in industry that I don't think there will be a problem sourcing enough just from spare capacity.
  • himlion 6y ago
    So which company benefits the most here? From a cursory googling the following seem decent: - The Whirlpool Corporation - Electrolux AB - LG Electronics Inc. problem is these companies have a lot of exposure to other sectors as well of course.
    • jefe_ 6y ago
      Thermo Fisher Scientific has freezers that hit these temps. About $10-20k per unit it appears. https://www.fishersci.com/us/en/browse/90106033/ultra-low-temperature-freezers https://www.fishersci.com/us/en/browse/90106033/ultra-low-te...
      • jeffal 6y ago
        Yes, I've been in biotechs that had 100s of these freezers in a room.
      • pvitz 6y ago
        Pfizer mentioned them already in May and their stock has already seen an increase of more than 50%...
      • 6y ago
• bpizzi 6y ago
  Also interesting to note that this is a mRNA vaccine, where the production of antigen within the cell is induced by injecting a RNA sequence instead of a disabled virus.
  • andy_ppp 6y ago
    What extra does a virus have over and above some RNA? Is it just a spike protein for injection into a cell or does it depend?
    • empthought 6y ago
      The RNA is read by human cells and the spike protein antigen is created by human cells; it’s not particularly viral RNA.
      • andy_ppp 6y ago
        Okay pretty terrifying! How long does this random RNA stay in your cells?
        • Eric_WVGG 6y ago
          There’s nothing random about it. Here’s a good layperson rundown: https://www.phgfoundation.org/briefing/rna-vaccines https://www.phgfoundation.org/briefing/rna-vaccines
        • bpizzi 6y ago
          I fail to see what is terrifying, exactly? Care to elaborate?
          • andy_ppp 6y ago
            If I dumped some random code into a computer program you were building, would you expect things to still work correctly? I’d love to know if that is wildly inaccurate...
• salex89 6y ago
  Great news, but I think the importance of the -80 degrees centigrade storage requirement is underestimated. Serbia, where I live, has ordered this vaccine. And our medical system is far from world-class, but leaps and bounds from less developed countries, and I honestly think logistics here will not be able to match those requirements. I've seen tetanus vaccines just being kept in regular, commercial, refrigerators. There have been cases where they have been switched off because they were not on UPSs or not up to standards. Vehicles equipped for transport are an issue by itself.
  • ClumsyPilot 6y ago
    In Uk I have recently recieved a vaccine, and it was in a commercial refrigirator. I don't know if they have a UPS, but it appears like a normal thing to do.
  • grishka 6y ago
    > Vehicles equipped for transport are an issue by itself. What about putting it into liquid nitrogen?
    • icegreentea2 6y ago
      They could do that, but it's far more likely to be just dry ice. -80 being a class of freezers is a thing because that's what dry ice can provide. -80 transport often consists of good insulation and a good chunk of dry ice instead of active measures.
    • salex89 6y ago
      I'm not sure it can be used, since it is much colder than -80. I actually hope it can be, because there is quite a few liquid nitrogen facilities, usually near big medical facilities. Dry ice, quite rare. I've seen some for special effects, but declared at a higher temperature than -80.
  • _Microft 6y ago
    Germany is planning to establish centers for vaccination exactly to avoid problems with the continous cold chain. (People travel without issue at ambient temperature. They even prefer that to other temperatures;) I would assume that other nations will adopt similiar solutions for vaccines that have ultra-cold storage requirements.
• luka-birsa 6y ago
  November is the month that doesn't stop giving. Bitcoin over 15k, the old Yello on its way out and now Covid vaccine. Quite the November surprise.
  • djsumdog 6y ago
    Convenient how it all just happens to be at once.
• nsoonhui 6y ago
  Just curious, why the reaction towards this and the ones from Russia/China are different ?
  • shanehoban 6y ago
    It's made in Germany IRRC, could be why
  • refurb 6y ago
    https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/08/11/the-russian-vaccine https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/08/11/th...
  • ripdog 6y ago
    Because this is a phase 3 trial, which has not been completed by any other vaccine.
  • pjc50 6y ago
    Trust.
  • a_humean 6y ago
    They have only done phase 1/2 trials and this one is phase 3. Also, people trust US/EU research more. They have not been very forthcoming with data. The data that has been made available has been lacking in detail or has patterns that indicate either fabrication or sloppiness. Both countries appear to be moivated by domestic and geopolitical political purposes. The US has also being doing that, but the medical establishment and regulatory bodies in the US are seen to be more independent of government than in China or Russia. Also, this is a German result, and people trust Germany more.
    • ahoka 6y ago
      "Also, this is a German result, and people trust Germany more." Like with the diesel emissions?
      • 6y ago
• camhart 6y ago
  Interesting timing here with regards to the US election. Edit/Update: "She said she learned of the results from the outside panel of experts shortly after 1 p.m. on Sunday, and that the timing was not influenced by the election." https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2020/11/09/health/covid-vaccine-pfizer.amp.html https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2020/11/09/heal... Edit2: I failed to realize that it was necessary to point out that the timing of this press release is interesting. I wasn't intending to imply the vaccine would be held back for any political reason.
  • IgorPartola 6y ago
    Hey I got decent aluminum foil hats I can sell you for $500/each. They are the only way to protect against deep state mind control rays :)
    • GhostVII 6y ago
      I don't think it's totally unbelievable that they waited until after the election to release preliminary results. Waiting a week or two wouldn't hurt the timeline, and would significantly damage Trump's campaign. If I worked at Pfizer that's what I would do.
      • SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
        It’s just such a fundamentally bizarre idea that I think it needs a lot more support than just “not totally unbelievable”. Most people don’t warp all their decisions around partisan politics.
      • bluGill 6y ago
        It is - even if the company is 90% blue, that is still 10% that is red and will ensure this leaks early.
      • yokaze 6y ago
        At the risk of damaging Pfizers bottom-line, if someone manages to produce results before them, and at the risk of getting fired and sued for doing so.
• 5thOfNovember 6y ago
  Oh, just in time for Kamalas presidency. Where have I seen this before. I mean honestly, it's too eerily similar.
  • YarickR2 6y ago
    One just have to wonder would Biden win without Covid-XIX . Talk about conspiracies
  • scotty79 6y ago
    Where have you seen this before?
    • 5thOfNovember 6y ago
      Different from the comic, but still pretty accurate turn of events :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_for_Vendetta_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_for_Vendetta_(film)
• dragonsh 6y ago
  Hopefully there is more better scientific data on this vaccine before rushing it to top of HN and judgement. I am not sure how to explain 90% immunity from a disease in scientific language, because there are only two states a person get infected with COVID-19 or does not get infected with COVID-19. Not sure how this vaccine will make a person 10% infected and 90% not infected with COVID-19. This is one of the vaccine Trump referred to in his debate, not sure how much it’s really useful or its another one like Sputnik and Coronavac. I think the best details for Corona related vaccine efforts are from WHO. [1] [1] https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/draft-landscape-of-covid-19-candidate-vaccines https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/draft-landscape-of-c...
  • mattzito 6y ago
    It’s a 90% reduction in cases in a vaccinated population vs unvaccinated. Basically how good is the vaccine at preventing symptomatic infection upon exposure
    • lettergram 6y ago
      Real question I have is how well the study was conducted AND how long immunity lasts. Even if both were good here... we won’t have the vaccine widely available until mid to late next year.
  • rsynnott 6y ago
    This was developed by a German company and will be widely distributed in the EU if approved, so will have to be approved by both the FDA and EMA. Now, if the FDA passes it and the EMA says 'no', that would be reason for concern, potentially, but assuming both bodies pass it that should be good enough for most people.
• danpalmer 6y ago
  Fascinating logistics problem here - distributing a vaccine that needs to be stored at -80C. This is significantly colder than the standard cold logistics chain. I believe Pfizer are working on a special transport box that can, unpowered, stay at the right temperature for a week as long as the box is only opened for something like 1 minute a day. That's a good thing, but with a capacity of I believe 10k vaccine doses, anywhere with fewer than 10k people to vaccinate, or anywhere that can't keep the demand level for the vaccine at the right level each hour/day as they progress through their vaccine stock, will have a hard time. This is going to disproportionately affect small communities and developing countries. We've got hard logistical challenges ahead regardless of these details, but they make this even harder. Given this it's probably important that we continue to develop more vaccines and diversify our strategy for immunity.
  • anoncake 6y ago
    You don't have to deliver the vaccine into every community. People can travel to nearest next place that has it.
    • danpalmer 6y ago
      This may be true for urban/suburban US/Europe/China/India, but this is not true for large parts of the world. There are parts of rural US/Australia for example where despite people having cars, they may need to take a plane to get to a vaccine treatment centre with enough density to get stock. They may not be able to afford that travel even if the vaccine is free. Much of the African population is spread over small communities where roads may not be reliable, let alone car access. If your minimum distributable unit is 10k vaccines, as it looks like it could be to begin with, that rules out a significant number of the population.
      • dbbk 6y ago
        There are still other vaccines in testing that will be more suitable for those parts of the world.
• charliebrownau 6y ago
  Also if anyone gets the China Convid This is the actual Cure without a magic needle: * Hrdroxy chloroquine (HCQ) and Azithromycin for 6 days cures a person Take 2 200mg HCQ chloroquine pills per day, along with Azithromycin 500g once a day, + Zinc Supplments 200mg once a day Also supplment that with Vit C+D Above is 100% cure rate no magic needle
• anoncake 6y ago
  I wonder if the people scared of permanent damage caused by Covid (for which there is no evidence) will be equally scared of the permanent damage caused by this experimental vaccine (for which there is no evidence either).
  • jusssi 6y ago
    > I wonder if the people scared of permanent damage caused by Covid (for which there is no evidence) According to Google, 1.26M deaths and counting. If dying is not permanent damage, I'm not sure what is.
    • anoncake 6y ago
      You know exactly what I meant so don't pretend otherwise. By the way, 1.26 million is less than 0.02% of the world's population.
      • jusssi 6y ago
        No, I don't. Please explain.
        • anoncake 6y ago
          Apologies. I meant the myth of "Long Covid" – people being permanently disabled after they had Covid.
          • nicoburns 6y ago
            In what way does thousands of people self-reporting new and ongoing medical issues after a positive COVID diagnosis not constitute evidence that this is happening? Clinical trials are not the only form of evidence.
            • collyw 6y ago
              The vast majority of serve cases had co-morbidities before covid. Of course they are going to have problems after.
• m12k 6y ago
  "However, there are logistical challenges as the vaccine has to be kept in ultra-cold storage at below minus 80C." Does anyone know how many of the other vaccine candidates have this limitation? It seems to me that a vaccine with easier logistics might still end up having a bigger impact overall, despite not being the first - although that of course needs to be combined with the ease of production too (I don't know how easy it is to mass produce these new RNA vaccines compared to more traditional ones).
  • grumple 6y ago
    I know that several of the vaccine candidates require similarly cold storage for their entire distribution cycle until they are being used. Disclaimer: I work for big pharma.
    • ByteJockey 6y ago
      How long, exactly, are they good for once they warm up? I assume you aren't injecting people with something at -80C. How big of a window is there for injections?
      • nicoburns 6y ago
        Other comments here are saying something between 24 hours and a week at standard refrigerator temperatures.
        • ByteJockey 6y ago
          Thanks for the summary, I must have missed that.
    • zzzeek 6y ago
      medical freezers of this grade seem to be pretty pricey, in the $6000 range https://www.labrepco.com/product-category/cold-storage-products/laboratory-medical-freezers/medical-freezers-for-clinical-labcomma-pharmacy-doctors-offices/page/2/?paged=1&pg=2&s&facet%5Bproduct_cat_taxonomy_id%5D%5B0%5D=6619&facet%5Bpa_temperature_taxonomy_str%5D%5B0%5D=-70%C2%B0C%2F-94%C2%B0F+%7C+COVID-19&solr_tax_id=6619 https://www.labrepco.com/product-category/cold-storage-produ...
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• isp 6y ago
  Nature (from August) for the Phase 1/2 trial results of this vaccine (Pfizer/BioNTech): https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2639-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2639-4
• rq1 6y ago
  The virus is (heavily) mutating folks. Heavy mutations likely related to recombination with rhino-viruses. This vaccine will likely be outdated when generally available.
  • rq1 6y ago
    Did you buy some shares to downvote without explanation?
  • howlgarnish 6y ago
    The mutations seen so far are minor and don't appear to impact our ability to vaccinate against them.
    • rq1 6y ago
      There are reported cases of people who built up immunity against the Chinese strain and got infected with the European strain while still having antibodies for the first one. Danish are killing 17M minks because of a novel mutation that infected 12 people (reported).
      • snovv_crash 6y ago
        Everybody also produces different antibodies, potentially targeting different aspects of the virus. Having a vaccine means you can make sure everyone gets the 'right' antibodies that generalize the best.
    • woofie11 6y ago
      Rate of mutations is directly proportional to number of viruses out there. We're having exponential growth in the amount of COVID19 (with a slow exponent, with social distancing, but exponential none-the-less). That we've seen mutations back when there was a tiny fraction of the cases we have today is a very bad sign. If it jumps species, as we saw with mink, we may have a reservoir in nature with no control. It will mutate and periodically jump back to humans.
  • cecja 6y ago
• sergioisidoro 6y ago
  > The data released by Pfizer Monday was delivered in a news release, not a peer-reviewed medical journal. It is not conclusive evidence that the vaccine is safe and effective, and the initial finding of more than 90 percent efficacy could change as the trial goes on. The title is quite sensationalistic for such preliminary results. Especially when they have only been reviewed by an "outside panel of experts" [1] who sometimes have undisclosed conflict of interests. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/09/health/covid-vaccine-pfizer.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/09/health/covid-vaccine-pfiz...
  • svara 6y ago
    It's a highly formalized clinical trial, it would be nonsensical to misrepresent or exaggerate the results. The preliminary analysis is based on 94 cases; not a huge number, but totally reasonable to draw conclusions from.
    • sergioisidoro 6y ago
      My point was the validation and peer-review. There are many possible confounding factors, including isolation and mask use. Also I might have misread the protocol, since I'm no medical scientist, but wasn't the efficacy of the vaccine measured only in a 1 month timespan? Are we even sure the effects are long lasting? I just don't want to get the hopes too high too soon. The crash after a positivity high can be quite bad. Reuters is even live streaming Wall Street because of this announcement!
• m12k 6y ago
  I wonder if any of the other vaccine candidates offer 100% protection, or near it at least? Still, if everyone got this vaccine, then the infectiousness of the virus would be decimated, so if currently every infected person infects 5 people, in a vaccinated population they would instead infect 0.5 people, causing the pandemic to decline instead of accelerate exponentially like it does now.
  • bluGill 6y ago
    We don't know that. It might be that your body just doesn't become symptomatic, but you are still able to spread. In this case everyone vaccinated should be considered a super-spreader because they will continue to do what they were before. Note, the above scenario seems very unlikely. However we don't have enough data to rule it out.
• drchiu 6y ago
  I read this with a lot of hope. The -80 degree cold storage part won’t be easy. Most vaccines stored at medical offices are nowhere near that and are only around ~0 degrees C. Freezer temps are only ~18 deg C. Possibly will only be able to be administered at special sites or if they find a way to stabilize it at warmer temp.
  • sojuz151 6y ago
    Or just keep it in liquid nitrogen. Its is cheap and cold enough.
• tata4 6y ago
  How is there a vaccine for mutants?
• lumberjack 6y ago
  I wonder what will happen with the vaccine deals that governments have been doing. Like, what if they pre-ordered from one manufacturer whose vaccine proves inferior to the other ones?
  • bluGill 6y ago
    There are not enough per-orders to vaccinate everyone even if they all pass trials, and nobody has the ability to manufacture enough to vaccinate the world alone in a reasonable time period anyway. If all the early vaccines pass trails we can start opening up the world in 6 months. If they is the only one we are more than a year away. That said, all the deals are contingent on being effective. With this being 90% effective that sets a bar for the others. The FDA has previously said they need your vaccine to be 50% effective to approve it. However with this being 90% effective they are unlikely to approve one that is only 50% effective. Unlikely doesn't mean they won't: different allergic reactions; usefulness in different age groups; ability to ship to remote groups; difference in effectiveness to some minority: all are factors that may make some vaccine approved even if it is clearly the worse one to get overall.
• benlumen 6y ago
  I'm feeling a deep-seated wave of relief that I never thought possible. Like waking up from a year-long nightmare. Thank God.
  • adrianN 6y ago
    It will still take a long time before a sufficient number of people have been vaccinated that life can return back to normal.
    • athenot 6y ago
      True. But seeing a potential path towards making a sifnificant dent to the uncontrolled spread of the virus is a welcomed respite from nearly a year of darkness. EDIT: I upvoted you because you make a valid point. Things will not recover overnight. But at the same time, we can still celebrate the hope of a promising solution.
    • bluGill 6y ago
      depends. If this provides spread prevention as well, then places can start opening up in about 6 months as enough locals get vaccinated as to slow the spread to the rest. On the other hand if this provides only some immunity but you are more infectious (ie the body doesn't fight the virus off, just makes it less dangerous - I don't think this is possible but....) we can't open up for years as anyone vaccinated is a risk to everyone else. Of course there are other vaccines in development. If any other them pass trails that changes things too. we can only speculate as to how. No matter what though, there is now a real light at the end of the tunnel.
    • amb23 6y ago
      One of the lead doctors in the UK is saying life will start to look normal in Spring 2021 (albeit, I assume he was referring to the UK alone). There's good reason for cautious optimism & patience. Science has done its job; now we need to push for coordination between infrastructure, government, and business to finish it.
      • 6y ago
• tuna-piano 6y ago
  For those wondering how their vaccines will be distributed among countries during the next year when supply is constrained... it seems complicated. Pfizer is a US company, but has at least one key ingredient from Austria, is made with technology from Germany, has manufacturing in US+Europe, etc. Pfizer's CEO answered this question this morning on CNBC. Pfizer has two separate manufacturing divisions- one in the US (Massachusetts, Missouri, Michigan) and one in Europe (Germany+Belgium). They will be producing in parallel and he seemed to imply Europe manufactured->Europe distributed and US manufactured->US distributed initially (but didn't explicitly say this). But he then stated that it's important to share the vaccine across the world - "I hope that we will be able to ship to the entire world from these manufacturing sites without problems". They have signed contracts with multiple governments in the world and in most cases have defined their monthly quantities distributed to those countries through 2021. I would guess these are public and am curious about the quantities and timelines for the various countries. They are estimating to have 1.2 billion doses by the end of 2021 (enough for 600 million people, as each person needs two doses). EDIT: US: 100 million doses of this Pfizer vaccine (enough for 50 million people) by December 2020[1], but Pfizer now says they are only producting 50 million doses globally this year[2] [1]https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/22/us/politics/pfizer-coronavirus-vaccine.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/22/us/politics/pfizer-corona... [2]https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-detail/pfizer-and-biontech-announce-vaccine-candidate-against https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-deta...
  • romanovcode 6y ago
    Why not share the knowledge make the vaccine in all three countries? AFAIK for the last 2-3 days EU and US are partners again, not enemies.
    • bluGill 6y ago
      I would assume that the countries are the only ones with a factory that is capable of making this. Give me a few billion dollars and a year and I can set up another factory, but it would have been too risky an investment 1 year ago (before COVID), or even 3 months ago . Even now it is too risky an investment as the current factories can produce a lot of vaccine, and there are other candidates that also have factories, so odds are the world will be vaccinated before my 1 year factory comes online. A 1 year factory build is extremely fast - freely trading money for time. A more reasonable schedule would be several years (a lot cheaper)
• praveenperera 6y ago
  Super neat timing
  • vaccinator 6y ago
    Why? Are you going on a trip? Will you be able to get it in time?
  • justforyou 6y ago
    Pfizer stated it's intention to delay release of findings until after the election. This is not a surprise.
    • 317070 6y ago
      Do you have a source for this? I am curious if this is true.
      • stu2b50 6y ago
        Quick Google seems to indicate it's true. >Pfizer said it will wait until after the US election to file its COVID-19 vaccine with the US regulator, as it awaits important safety data to become available. https://pharmaphorum.com/news/pfizer-to-wait-until-after-election-to-file-covid-19-vaccine-in-us/ https://pharmaphorum.com/news/pfizer-to-wait-until-after-ele...
        • 317070 6y ago
          Yes, but if you read the source [0], they will wait until after the US election, but not for reasons related to the US election. Just because they expect their results to arrive after the US elections. It's like saying that I will wait to have a baby until after the holiday period. Factually correct, but that baby will arrive in January irregardless of the holiday period. The holiday period is for sure not the reason for the baby to arrive in January. [0] https://www.pfizer.com/news/hot-topics/an_open_letter_from_pfizer_chairman_and_ceo_albert_bourla https://www.pfizer.com/news/hot-topics/an_open_letter_from_p...
• anovikov 6y ago
  So, out of 43538 participants, 94 got sick in both groups (who got vaccine and who got placebo) together, and this translates to "at least" 90% immunity, with 95% confidence interval. Who remembers statistics well enough to reverse the calculation and find out how many people got sick in both groups? There is a definite integer answer here.
  • tomerico 6y ago
    Assuming 50% split between placebo and vaccine group, it's a 9:1 ratio - so 85 : 9 for Placebo : Vaccine COVID case.
    • anovikov 6y ago
      That would be middle point - that is 50% chances that actual reliability is better than 90% reliable, 50% that it's worse. But we have 95% confidence interval. This is what my question was about. On infinitely large number of cases, the numbers will be the same. But we only have 94. I think it's about 2 to 3 cases that they actually got from the group that got vaccine, but not sure.
• jason0597 6y ago
  Why are people in the comments so interested in the reactions of stock markets? I don't understand. These are the same markets that cheer when job cuts and redundancies are announced. These are the same markets that cheer when horrible working conditions are enforced (see Tesla, Uber, Deliveroo, etc.) Why should I take the markets seriously? It's just a bunch of rich people in the end.
  • tinus_hn 6y ago
    You should take the markets seriously if you want to make a lot of money. That’s why rich people are rich.
    • gilrain 6y ago
      That and not caring who is hurt along the way and from whom their hoarded wealth was exploited.
      • frockington1 6y ago
        There are several sustainable investing funds if you want to focus on that.
    • Witoso 6y ago
      I would add some clarifying quantifiers to your statement as not all rich people are rich because of markets knowledge. Inheritance of wealth is also an important contributor.
    • jason0597 6y ago
      The greatest predictor of wealth is your family background, not your knowledge/interest of the stock market: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/01/economists-your-parents-are-more-important-than-ever/283301/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/01/economi...
    • bluntfang 6y ago
      most rich people are rich because they were never not rich
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• tomohawk 6y ago
  Not stated in the article: this was part of the Trump Administration DHHS's Project Warp Speed, which funded 6 different vaccines concurrently. https://www.hhs.gov/coronavirus/explaining-operation-warp-speed/index.html https://www.hhs.gov/coronavirus/explaining-operation-warp-sp...
  • codeulike 6y ago
    Warp Speed didn't contribute to the development of this one; they have allocated funds to buy the vaccine though Operation Warp Speed, the federal effort to rush a vaccine to market, has promised Pfizer $1.95 billion to deliver 100 million doses to the federal government, which will be given to Americans free of charge. But Dr. Jansen sought to distance the company from Operation Warp Speed and presidential politics, noting that the company — unlike the other vaccine front-runners — did not take any federal money to help pay for research and development. “We were never part of the Warp Speed,” she said. “We have never taken any money from the U.S. government, or from anyone.” https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/09/health/covid-vaccine-pfizer.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/09/health/covid-vaccine-pfiz...
    • tomohawk 6y ago
      I see your point, but it seems to be overstated as having a promised $2B out there surely had a positive impact.
      • rsynnott 6y ago
        That's just normal pre-purchasing, though, which would have happened regardless of that particular program. They also have a few hundred million doses ordered by the EU.
    • mlindner 6y ago
      Having a guaranteed $1.95 billion as a result of development causes companies to invest additional money.
  • mal10c 6y ago
• jakozaur 6y ago
  Good: + ~90% of individuals achieve immunity. + no significant side-effects. Not so good: - two doses needed, 3 weeks apart, immunity after one month from first dose. Slow rollout. - -80C storage and transport needed. Challenging, but doable in developed countries, but still may slow down mass rollout. Not feasible in many developing countries. I still wonder about long-term immunity. Anyone can share any insight?
  • selectodude 6y ago
    The Ebola vaccine required -80 C storage as well and they got it into literal war zones. It’s a difficult problem, but a solved one.
    • FiReaNG3L 6y ago
      Depends on the scale - we are talking mass vaccination of the whole planet here.
      • foolmeonce 6y ago
        Not really, if every airport runs a vaccination program that takes 2 months before someone can fly there's very little need for more global infrastructure. The problem with lockdowns, etc is reinfection mostly by air travellers.
        • rocgf 6y ago
          How could that possibly be the problem? This maybe _was_ the problem in the beginning of the pandemic. Now, it's in the general population and will spread even if you ban all airplanes and repurpose airports into petting zoos.
          • foolmeonce 6y ago
            We already know how to drop the R value in a given place. It is pointlessly expensive to do so for long enough to eliminate the virus in any place that is going to be reconnected to the air network until travellers have a very low chance of infection. Sure some places will find total vaccination the best option, but places with out the infrastructure and money can simply do one lockdown that isn't compromised again by air travel. China is an example that would have left the pandemic if not for the need to resume Air travel.
• mwexler 6y ago
  Besides the 90% protection, does the research or testing imply a reduced severity should one actually catch the disease by rolling a 92 on the dice? I'm presuming the white blood cells and t-cells can act as de-escalators but I don't really know.
  • rocha 6y ago
    This is a nice thread on the subject: https://twitter.com/nataliexdean/status/1310613702476017666?s=19 https://twitter.com/nataliexdean/status/1310613702476017666?...
• cft 6y ago
  Here come the vaccine right on cue as planned. No more covid
• cblconfederate 6y ago
  More details: https://www.statnews.com/2020/11/09/covid-19-vaccine-from-pfizer-and-biontech-is-strongly-effective-early-data-from-large-trial-indicate/ https://www.statnews.com/2020/11/09/covid-19-vaccine-from-pf... - Statistically strong - There are some mild side effects - 50M doses initially - billions in 2021
• lgleason 6y ago
  Of course, introduced right after the US election...
  • TgXYTFZd9Nrx 6y ago
    http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
• Waterluvian 6y ago
  Any sense if this is going to become an annual or a one-time vaccine?
• The_rationalist 6y ago
  So why shouldn't I buy stock??
  • jillesvangurp 6y ago
    If you rely on other people telling you what to do; don't.
    • The_rationalist 6y ago
      Oh well let's not benefit from others brains knowledge, experience and computing power, let's instead think in isolation and cultivate our blind spot bias
  • redisman 6y ago
    A bit late now isn't it?
• known 6y ago
  There is no specific antiviral treatment recommended for COVID-19, and no vaccine is currently available. https://www.doctoralerts.com/covid-19-coronavirus-disease/ https://www.doctoralerts.com/covid-19-coronavirus-disease/
• arethuza 6y ago
  Usually comments on BBC articles are pretty horrible. However, I'm very pleased to see that the top comment on that article is: "This is the power of science. Step aside celebrities- these people are who should be famous." Edit: I should also point out that I am, of course, in complete agreement
  • cm2187 6y ago
    How much do you bet though that in 6 months Biden will claim: you see, I got elected and I solved Covid!
  • barumi 6y ago
    I agree that these people should be lauded for their achievements, but nowadays fame comes at the expense of 24h/day scrutiny of everything they ever done or did or said, which just fuels the fire of all those Cardinal Richelieus who are hell-bent on persecuting what they perceive as threats and reactionaries. I wouldn't wish that upon anyone.
    • ImaCake 6y ago
      Yep, scientists at this level are far too busy and obsessed with their work to have any interest in celebrity. I‘m sure there are a few exceptions, but I suspect they would rather be left in “peace“. They already have enough undergrads and unemployed post docs bothering them without the public‘s attention!
• linuxftw 6y ago
  > show 90% protection is achieved seven days after the second dose. What is 90% 'protection'? Need to see the data, I don't think the hospitalization rate is above 10% of positive tests, vaccines often conflate 'reduction in symptoms/duration' with 'immunity'.
• xyst 6y ago
  Assuming the trials will go as expected and peer reviews verify their claims, this is amazing news.
• leoplct 6y ago
  I wonder if this will be valid for the mutated coronavirus recently found the Denmark's minks (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24990724 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24990724) If there are several variations of coronavirus, how effective a vaccine will be ?
• blargmaster42_8 6y ago
  No thanks
• beervirus 6y ago
  Time for some challenge trials.
• hairytrog 6y ago
  90% protection... Let's see what this really means - because I'm pretty sure we already have something on order of 80+% protection without a vaccine. I'd like to see % protection vs age.
  • w0utert 6y ago
    >> because I'm pretty sure we already have something on order of 80+% protection without a vaccine I think the way these studies are set up already accounts for that. In these trials they don't vaccinate just one group and then check how many people still got sick ('only 10% got sick so it 90% effective'), but instead they split the participants into a 'vaccinated' group and a 'placebo' group (double blind), then wait until X people in the total of all participants get sick, then compare how many of them got the vaccin and how many got the placebo. Since the total group is large, this should average out pretty much all variability in susceptibility to infection (assuming the participants are selected to include a wide range of attributes, of course). I don't know how the maths work exactly but I think the 90% claim here means that if you take the vaccine you are 90% less likely to get sick from covid compared to someone else with comparable attributes.
  • thehappypm 6y ago
    Take a look at one of the many articles describing what the results mean, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised
• k__ 6y ago
  A friend of mine (who is a nutjob), said a few months ago that even if the vaccine doesn't work, they can say it would work 80-90%, because that's the amount of people who don't show symptoms anyway. I don't know anything about this, but now it happened in a way he said, so what do professional here think about this?
  • TulliusCicero 6y ago
    > because that's the amount of people who don't show symptoms anyway. I don't think this is accurate. A large majority of people show no or relatively mild symptoms comparable to a seasonal flu or cold, yes, but that's not the same thing as no symptoms at all for a large majority.
  • rsynnott 6y ago
    Essentially no vaccines are 100% effective, and 90% is actually much better than expected for covid vaccines. The people in the trial are being actively tested, so symptoms are largely irrelevant. To be clear, these trials work by giving the vaccine to a bunch of people and seeing how many catch COVID. They're not challenge trials, where people are deliberately infected; your friend's conspiracy theory could kind of work with those (assuming that for some reason not everyone in the group was being regularly tested).
  • krajzeg 6y ago
    The number in this specific trial is a 90% reduction in cases when comparing a vaccinated group to an unvaccinated one. So, if for example 10% of the unvaccinated got COVID in the trial timeframe, 90% effectiveness would mean only 1% of the vaccinated people did. So no, they can't do what you described.
  • thehappypm 6y ago
    The 90% is more like this. You have a twin who lives exactly the same life as you. You get vaccinated but anti-vax Andy doesn't. Andy is 10x more likely to get Covid than you are now.
• bloak 6y ago
  According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_vaccine#Clinical_trials_started_in_2020 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_vaccine#Clinical_tria...) there are 8 COVID-19 vaccines in phase 3 trials. A week or so ago I read about an experiment in Brazil that compared 5 of them. So this Pfizer press release doesn't seem terribly exciting to me. I already knew it was very likely that at least one vaccine will be available to some people in a month or so. I know a couple of people who are experimental subjects in COVID-19 vaccine trials (meaning that they may or may not have received a COVID-19 vaccine: it's double-blind, of course). It's an interesting question what happens to those people if they become elligible for real vaccination before the trial they are participating in has come to an end.
  • bluGill 6y ago
    Everyone expected/hoped that there would be a vaccination within a month. However until now it was just hope: there was always the risk when all 8 of those ran their data they discover they don't work at all.
    • bloak 6y ago
      There were already some positive preliminary results from the five vaccines being tested in Brazil, so "don't work at all" was already ruled out, I think. Obviously the press release from Pfizer isn't going to mention the other vaccines, but a diligent journalist might look up the details and do some kind of comparison. Perhaps the diligent journalists need a bit more time to write their articles. Perhaps we should wait a day or two and consult a better source than the BBC.
      • bluGill 6y ago
        I haven't heard about those other results so I cannot comment on them. I agree a journalist should know about them (unless they are so flawed in some way as to not be worth my time, which a good journalist should know but most don't).
• jerkstate 6y ago
  Is 90% protection better or worse than wearing a mask?
  • tatersolid 6y ago
    Way better unless you’re wearing a well-fitted N95 with proper medical training on when and how to take it on and off.
• htnsao 6y ago
  Has no one watched Resident Evil?
• squarefoot 6y ago
  I'm currently recovering from Covid-19 and hopefully won't need it, however this line sounds a bit strange: "It uses a completely experimental approach - that involves injecting part of the virus's genetic code - in order to train the immune system." I did my flu (not Covid) vaccine shot about 3 weeks ago, just before catching the nastier one, and according to the doctors it works exactly that way, although this one of course doesn't contain parts of SARS-Cov2 but rather various other winter flu virii (H1N1-pdm09,CNIC1909,H3N2,IVR-208, etc). So if the approach is the usual one, testing is likely where the most time is spent; that should speed up production a lot.
  • comicjk 6y ago
    What they mean is that instead of injecting viral proteins or deactivated virus (as in a flu vaccine), they are injecting mRNA which causes your own cells to make a section of viral protein, which then triggers a strong immune response. This COVID vaccine will be the first major mRNA vaccine. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2770485 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2770485
    • djsumdog 6y ago
      The software engineer in me makes me very weary of this. All of our historic vaccines came from very bad circumstances and they were tested on people without any real guards, starting with Jenner's famous Horsepox treatments. I'm fine with this vaccine being available for people who want it, but as someone who is low risk, I really hope this doesn't become mandatory. A lot of people aren't old enough to remember the Swine Flu vaccine and all the complications from that. No one is talking about the safety here and that's disturbing. I don't see how a vaccine can be listed as safe with less than a year of testing. Traditionally it's an 8~12 year process.
    • squarefoot 6y ago
      Thanks for the correction and good news! Would the pandemic situation ease the access to it for everyone, or market laws (high prices) will prevail as usual?
• svikashk 6y ago
  Still plenty of challenges considering you need to store in -80C. Possible in developed countries, but I doubt if it’s doable in developing countries. Definitely a step in the right direction though
• EverydayBalloon 6y ago
  Right after the election all this news gets widespread distribution? Hmmm....
• FrancisOfAssisi 6y ago
  So Trump was right (again), after all!
  • kumarvvr 6y ago
    Science has nothing to do with politics. Also, cherry picking one statement, from literally hundreds of false ones, does not make any one right. It just shows that if you throw a lot of stuff, something will eventually stick.
    • ghthor 6y ago
      You're high if you think science has nothing to do with politics.
      • kp98 6y ago
        to add onto this, one of my entire classes at NYU "Covid and economic policy" we've literally just looked at science and how its effected the political and economic landscape. Yet, you say stuff like what you did here on hacker news and you get reported / flagged / greyed out. That is why I dont contribute here anymore, it's basically like reddit-lite
        • ghthor 6y ago
          Yes. The most frustrating topic for me is to bring up is the evidence that dis-agrees with the man-made climate change hypothesis. Source, Weathermans Guide to the Sun by Ben Davidson. But I cant even get my long time friends to explore that evidence, let alone anyone on internet forums.
• The_rationalist 6y ago
  So what does being injected an mRNA vaccine means ? My DNA will be permanently altered and permanently create fake covid proteins ? will this add overhead to my biological processes, am I becoming less optimized ? Will my body consume more sugar ? will those generated proteins accelerate my ageing ? What could go wrong ? (I don't think anything will go wrong but what does the science says ?)
  • lbeltrame 6y ago
    > My DNA will be permanently altered and permanently create fake covid proteins ? No, in fact, mechanisms in cells are in places so that "heteroduplexes" (meaning one filament of RNA and one of DNA paired together) are quickly degraded. Secondly, the RNA doesn't even need to get to the nucleus, where the DNA is. All it needs is to land in the cytoplasm, where it will get processed by the protein synthesis machinery (ribosomes in primis) to produce the antigen. RNA in the cell isn't that stable as well, so it will be ultimately get degraded.
    • antgiant 6y ago
      That is all true as long as the RNA doesn’t replicate itself and only produces antigens. However, I couldn’t find any papers at all that discussed if any of the current mRNA vaccine candidates self replicate their RNA to amplify the antigen production. I’d love some good references that address that.
      • lbeltrame 6y ago
        This doesn't replicate, AFAICS. The one in Phase I by Imperial College is instead self-replicating.
        • antgiant 6y ago
          Did some more searching today and this one does in fact amplify just like the Imperial College one
• 6d6b73 6y ago
  Tin-foil hat ON mode enabled: - not released before the elections on purpose - released right before Trump's team is about to try and change the results with their legal challenges Market will go up like crazy. People in the known will sell their stocks. Big crash on Thursday/Friday. Of course just speculating, but if I was part of the NWO that what I would do :)
  • thehappypm 6y ago
    I think that they may have not released right before the election, but that's kind of the right thing to do. You shouldn't jolt voters with news like this, especially if there's no medical/public health benefit to doing so. That's exactly what Comey did in 2016 and it contributed to people being worried about voting for HRC.
• _prototype_ 6y ago
  Perfect timing, right before Biden is elected.
• JoeCoo7 6y ago
  Pfizer and BioNTech say they will have enough safety data by the third week of November to take their vaccine to regulators. Until then it is not possible for countries to begin their vaccination campaigns. Can't wait to see what happens next.
• 02020202 6y ago
  no one gives a shit about flu shots, no one will give two shits about yet another flu shot.
• steve76 6y ago
  A week after the election of a US politician who took millions from China, and a day after calling it, the virus from a few blocks besides a Level 4 communist military bio lab has now ended. Now we can look forward to yellow vest protests, ISIS beheading school teachers, and millions of smiling taxpayer funded immigrants under performing their hefty taxpayer funded paychecks while leaving a trail of dead bodies in their wake. Is this why you burnt down hundreds of cities, and covered for murderers? Thief. Crook. Liar. Coward. Traitor.
• tu12 6y ago
  Trolling isn't welcome on this site.
  • Tepix 6y ago
    Trolling isn't welcome on this site.
    • tu12 6y ago
      Then delete this post. The linked article is about Pfizer trolling the whole country.
• bitL 6y ago
  90% among serious COVID-19 progression-susceptible population or in general population?
  • pageandrew 6y ago
    90% of the 94 Covid cases that had been confirmed within the pool of vaccinated participants of the study.
    • mortehu 6y ago
      90% is the lower bound of the efficacy, not the expected or observed rate. The observed protection rate must have been higher.
• essence16 6y ago
  mrna vaccine... ok...
• essence16 6y ago
  prefer novavax
• mrozbarry 6y ago
  No significant side effects so far tested. I'm always curious what the long term side effects will be, and we won't know that for years.
  • tinus_hn 6y ago
    Well that settles it then. We’ll just wait for a few more years to see what the long term side effects are.
    • mrozbarry 6y ago
      I know you say that in mockery, but I'd rather be in isolation for longer and have a better idea what the long term of this looks like. Most other vaccines have the same process.
      • tinus_hn 6y ago
        Feel free to do so, as long as you don’t expect someone else to pay the price.
      • otherme123 6y ago
        Long term effects of covid seems awful though. This, as with any vaccine or medicament out there (or actual living for that matter) is a quest to hit a sweet balance: - Yes, you can avoid covid and potential long effects of vaccine by living in a cave for the next 10 years. - You can "gamble" on a 0.01% chance of getting any long-term effects from the vaccine in exchange of getting 90% safe from covid. I take this "gamble" every year with a flu shot, because to me it sounds safer than getting flu followed by pneumonia. If everybody waits for the other 99% of people to get vaccined before them, so we can a free-ride on the herd immunity, we would never reach herd immunity. I don't know of any drug that is 100% safe. Heck, even a tampon could send you to the grave. For this kind of vaccinations, we should have a margin of confidence that, being similar to other vaccines in composition but just changing the viral load, long term effects should be similar. The Moderna vaccine is a different animal.
      • tachyonbeam 6y ago
• mariojv 6y ago
  Does anyone have data on how many Moderna vaccines will be produced by the end of the year with Operation Warp Speed? I've read somewhere that the vaccine uses similar tech to Pfizer, so I'm wondering how many vaccines will actually be available by end of year if both are this effective.
  • mchusma 6y ago
    I have running notes that said 20M doses by end of year, so 10M people. Oxford/Astrazeneca are the only ones who have alluded to 100M doses in 2020. Everyone else won't get phase III results until 2021: johnson and johnson, merck, novavax, sanofi
• slothtrop 6y ago
  Even though this hasn't been surmised yet from data, my impression is that vitamin D supplementation blunts the deadliness of the virus sufficiently enough to get back to normal, or near-normal (just wearing masks). If that's true it should be fast tracked way ahead of vaccination.
• T3RMINATED 6y ago
  Russia has a vaccine with 100% effectivity.
• tannhaeuser 6y ago
  Anybody knows what's up with China-based Tosun, BioNTech's other partner next to Pfizer? Is it known whether Tosun will produce the vaccine, or is just not that much of a deal in China anymore?
  • bigpumpkin 6y ago
    https://www.caixinglobal.com/2020-10-21/in-blow-to-fosun-pharma-its-german-partner-to-make-covid-19-vaccine-for-china-market-101617276.html https://www.caixinglobal.com/2020-10-21/in-blow-to-fosun-pha...
• ffggvv 6y ago
  i’m sure ire just a coincidence they got this data in late october but decided to hold onto it until after the election. how many lives did they sacrifice for that cause?
• ffggvv 6y ago
  is the vaccine even worth getting or only for high risk groups?
  • thehappypm 6y ago
    Honestly? I think if you're not sure, you probably don't need it. I'm young, work from home, healthy. I have friends who are nurses -- they yearn for a vaccine. My grandparents and my parents know that they are at risk and would line up for one. I have a friend with diabetes who would feel like his life was back. I'd gladly take a vaccine if it became available -- would love to not worry about giving it to my parents, and contribute to herd immunity -- but for me personally the virus has never really scared me on a personal health level.
    • topranks 6y ago
      Worry about the old, the frail, the immunosuppressed. Vaccines only work if a high enough proportion of the entire population get them. Obviously the vulnerable will get it first - but please don’t skip it just because you’re young and strong.
      • thehappypm 6y ago
        Oh, I have no intention of skipping the vaccine (you can see if you read my comment to the end). I was commenting more on the desire to get a vaccine early.
• sabujp 6y ago
  you can be sure that even with the vaccine that I'm going to be wearing my mask around everywhere for a long time
  • Vecr 6y ago
    I'm not sure that's really needed, but if you want to I'd suggest getting something you can clean, like a silicone surgical respirator, as a cloth or paper mask would get pretty nasty after a while.
• briandear 6y ago
  Is it not suspicious that they announce this right after the election? Pfizer gave more to Biden than any other political candidate. https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/pfizer-inc/summary?id=D000000138 https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/pfizer-inc/summary?id=D0000...
• abuehrle 6y ago
  How will it work if multiple vaccines are approved and similarly effective? Does that allow us to roll out vaccinations more quickly, or are there shared bottlenecks in the supply chains? Would individuals get whichever is available in their city first, or are there other factors at play? Apologies if this is answered somewhere else in the comments!
• christkv 6y ago
  Any information about the efficiency in elderly? A lot of vaccines are less efficient in generating a robust immune response in older people.
• mandeepj 6y ago
  Looks like Pfizer waited to release these news after election is called for a candidate
  • vermontdevil 6y ago
    They also did not take $ from Operation Speed Warp so I think they waited till now to keep this apolitical.
    • mandeepj 6y ago
      Right. But, I think it's double-sided. Would they started the research without US govt's contract of almost $2B to buy their vaccine? https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-detail/pfizer-and-biontech-announce-agreement-us-government-600 https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-deta...
      • hm10 6y ago
        Of course, do you think they would be hurting for money once they have a vaccine developed? The demand will always be there. They just took the risk with their own money. They have been in the business for decades and they know how to sell a prized drug - with or without a buyer already lined up. A commitment to purchase doesn't mean much in a "seller's market". It will be profitable for the company either way - with or without a pre-contract.
        • usaphp 6y ago
          Not necessarily, even if another company beats them to market and has a better vaccine - they will still get $2bln, it's easier to work when you are not under time pressure to beat the market.
      • redisman 6y ago
        Of course yes. Every person on earth will want this vaccine eventually. If the US wants to play games, they have tens of billions of units to sell elsewhere.
• donio 6y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BNT162 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BNT162 sounds like it's this one
• credit_guy 6y ago
  Can some explain why Pfizer insists they were not part of the Operation Warp Speed ([1] “We were never part of the Warp Speed”), despite the fact that both Warp Speed [2] and Pfizer itself [3] had press releases in July that stated the opposite? [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/09/health/covid-vaccine-pfizer.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/09/health/covid-vaccine-pfiz... [2] https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2020/07/22/us-government-engages-pfizer-produce-millions-doses-covid-19-vaccine.html https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2020/07/22/us-government-enga... [3] https://investors.pfizer.com/investor-news/press-release-details/2020/Pfizer-and-BioNTech-Announce-an-Agreement-with-U.S.-Government-for-up-to-600-Million-Doses-of-mRNA-based-Vaccine-Candidate-Against-SARS-CoV-2/default.aspx https://investors.pfizer.com/investor-news/press-release-det...
  • arn 6y ago
    Looks like the government “pre ordered” vaccine from Pfizer but Pfizer didn’t actually accept funding for development: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-election-2020/mike-pence-covid-vaacine-pfizer-b1719698.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-electio...
    • credit_guy 6y ago
      So the US Government gave them a put option for 100 million doses (or 50 million vaccines) with a strike of about $20 per dose. And they took that put option. This is a very valuable option that removes a lot of R&D risk. They didn't get an upfront cash amount, but saying they "were never part of the operation Warp Speed" sounds quite disingenuous to me.
• akhilcacharya 6y ago
  Between this and the Biden win I’m feeling optimistic about the future of this country again.
• jjd33 6y ago
  Does it prevent the presumed IQ loss? If not then it's not useless but not very relevant either way.
• notananthem 6y ago
  Given we can't even get people to wear masks, regardless of efficacy I think we mainly have an education issue and half the country voted for "fuck that let's die." I think we need to spend as much time/money on a social campaign with mask mandates, social distancing, quarantine, contact tracing.
  • frankish 6y ago
    I think one of the reasons people won't wear masks is because they're mandated. Many are worried in the short-term about the spread of COVID-19, but after we come out of it the government has more power. I think it's important to understand and respect that other people have different priorities. In this case, the US was born out of fighting tyranny and that is a bigger concern to some because a tyrannical government could lead to more suffering and death than caused by COVID-19. I liken it to the war on drugs, which used fear-mongering and propaganda to convince people that drugs are bad and that we need to lock up people that are making decisions regarding their own bodies and minds. Instead of educating people on the unbiased pros/cons of recreational and medical drug use, so that people are actually informed about the decisions they're making. Instead, we have a war on drugs that is fueled by corruption and labels non-violent offenders as criminals. When it comes to the pandemic, there is a similar approach of fear-mongering and forced coercion. Those that refuse to wear a mask may just be people that have everyone's interest in mind because they believe they are rebelling against government trying to get more power, which they think is worse in the long-term. I respect the mask requirements when, for example, entering the grocery story, but I also feel uncomfortable by the forced coercion, re-goalposting, and increase in government power. I believe the best approach forward is setting a good example and informing people on all aspects of the facts without bias.
    • hcknwscommenter 6y ago
      It's just a mask. The "power" the government is applying to "coerce" you into wearing a mask must be weighed against the burden being imposed (extremely low, less than asking you to at least wear underwear in public/near schools) and the benefits (extremely high, masks work).
• calebm 6y ago
  No significant short-term side-effects. Long term effects unknown (obviously).
• tinus_hn 6y ago
  In the Netherlands the dismissals are in already: we need to test longer to make sure it’s safe, we won’t be able to deliver it, etc etc.
  • pageandrew 6y ago
    Who is dismissing it like this? Politicians, people, scientists?
    • tinus_hn 6y ago
      Scientists and the media, thus the general population. I don’t doubt politicians will follow tomorrow.
      • pageandrew 6y ago
        Seems suspect. Do they not trust Pfizer and Oxford University? Seems the best minds in the world are on this problem, and they feel confident.
        • sabas123 6y ago
          Reading some comments myself it seems to be more akin to: "Yes it is nice, but not perfect", citing the concerns of that testing isn't complete yet and the duration is quite short.
• tleb_ 6y ago
  Let's not forget to complain about the back button hijacking.
  • Skunkleton 6y ago
    I imagine its to do with the per-country redirect? I wonder if people coming in from a UK IP address are getting hijacked as well?
• 734129837261 6y ago
  I'm 100% for vaccines and I trust in the scientific process more than anything else. That said, how weird is it for someone like myself (late thirties, healthy, no direct contact with any human being) to just... wait it out? I am not too eager to be among the first humans to take a rushed vaccine. So, how rushed is this vaccine? Is there any precedent with other vaccines that were developed this quickly? Is there a known risk, or is the risk simply unknown?
  • ttul 6y ago
    The vaccine was tested on 44,000 people and they will spend two more months watching for adverse effects. If it is shown to be safe after that period, it's extraordinarily safe for you to take.
  • m-ee 6y ago
    There's a very good chance you will never be able to wait this out, SARS-CoV-2 could easily become another endemic coronavirus. In that situation you're getting to get exposed eventually unless you become a recluse, and you'll be better off with the vaccine than without it.
  • coob 6y ago
    You're going to be last in line anyway: https://twitter.com/jkottke/status/1325854372077707264 https://twitter.com/jkottke/status/1325854372077707264
• just-juan-post 6y ago
  For those who feel a sense of relief I would like to remind you that Joe Biden and the Democrats are the ones who put the fear into the American people. Over and over and over and over. Joe Biden, Kamala Harris Got a Big Social Media Boost from Indian Troll Farms https://www.newsweek.com/joe-biden-kamala-harris-got-big-social-media-boost-indian-troll-farms-1544047 https://www.newsweek.com/joe-biden-kamala-harris-got-big-soc... PS: Isn't it a strange coincidence that we haven't see an hourly deluge of covidtoes/long covid/it hurts your heart stories? What happened to those? I saw those hourly in months past. What gives? Is it possible that Joe's trolls were the ones driving that?
  • ghthor 6y ago
    This forum isnt the place to be posting this type of information, it will not be well received.
• dang 6y ago
  All: don't miss that there are now multiple pages of comments in this thread. To get there, click 'More' at the bottom of the earlier pages. Or like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25033844&p=2 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25033844&p=2 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25033844&p=3 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25033844&p=3 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25033844&p=4 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25033844&p=4 (Once we've rolled out some long-suffering performance improvements, all of this should blissfully disappear, including this sort of comment. Thanks for your patience.)
• kebman 6y ago
  How would you calculate bayesian probability on that percentage? Any takers?
  • Kortaggio 6y ago
    Take a look at https://www.metaculus.com/questions/3860/when-will-a-vaccine-targeted-at-the-2019-novel-coronavirus-covid-19-be-administered-to-at-least-10m-people/ https://www.metaculus.com/questions/3860/when-will-a-vaccine...
• m0zg 6y ago
  But I thought "nobody should trust the vaccine developed this quickly". What has changed in a week?
  • rmk 6y ago
    A democrat is President. Science will triumph from now onward.
    • m0zg 6y ago
      But that's the democrat narrative as of a week ago: vaccine by EOY is too dangerous. Suddenly, a week later the same exact vaccine is perfectly OK and it's a scientific triumph. Is the attention span of the public _this_ short?
• peter303 6y ago
  The Pfizer press release says they 57% the way to statistical desired significance. They want the 164 of the placebos to catch covid, and 94 have done so far.
  • gmm1990 6y ago
    I thought it was 94 total not just the placebos. if it’s 90% effective 8 or 9 people who got the vaccine would catch it. Unless there’s some more statistics to the 90% figure
• saiadarsh99 6y ago
  Ah, great
• Konohamaru 6y ago
  This is only a superficial solution to the cause of these zoonotic diseases, which is overpopulation. The problem is that with 7bil people disease will spread with increasing frequency, and areas of super population growth like Africa and India will suffer the most. But because no vaccine for any coronavirus had ever been invented, this new vaccine and the new techniques used to make it must be celebrated as a technological breakthrough. Possibly the greatest medical breakthrough since the 19th century. Possibly Nobel prize winning material.
• martinknapic 6y ago
  How many vaccines are in the last stage?
• koolba 6y ago
  What are the chances this data was available to report prior to the election?
  • ufo 6y ago
    Apparently the company only received the information yesterday. It actually came sooner than expected, because of the excellent results. https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/09/business/pfizer-covid-vaccine/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/09/business/pfizer-covid-vac... > But Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla says the timing had nothing to do with politics. In an interview with CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Sanjay Gupta, Bourla said he first learned about the results of the trial Sunday and he has yet to see the data, throwing cold water on the idea that there was any political motivation behind releasing the news after voters in the United States chose their candidate for president. Pfizer took several interim looks at the data during its vaccine trial, but it did not have enough infections in its test group to gain any meaningful data -- until Sunday, Gupta reported. If anything, the data came earlier than expected: In October, Bourla made a comment in an open letter on Pfizer's website, saying, "Based on our current trial enrollment and dosing pace, we estimate we will reach this milestone in the third week of November."
• ineedasername 6y ago
  -80C storage requirement may really complicate distribution logistics even in developed countries. We'd really need special locations to be setup to administer the vaccine, unless it's viable for some reasonable period of time at higher temperatures. Even something like 24-48 hours, so it can be transported on demand from centralized locations to doctors offices, pharmacies, etc. Otherwise, medical cryo storage is highly specialized and expensive equipment. Definitely not what you'd find in a doctors office or pharmacy. It might be a more convenient option if the vaccine remains viable at much colder temperatures. Somewhat cheaper (though still not cheap) LN2 transport containers ~180C could be used to deliver it to locations, provide a supply of LN2 to keep it cold, and then warm on demand. The point is, this isn't going to be a rollout that can be done without a lot of infrastructure planning way up front. If the data here is validated and it looks like it's going to get FDA approval, we need to begin planning that stage ASAP.
• bArray 6y ago
  Hopefully this is rolled out to the most vulnerable people first (the 80+ category, or underlying health conditions). I assume there are so far zero repercussions from an ineffective vaccine (i.e no sudden resulting flu)?
• jamez1 6y ago
  They've made a terribly flawed assumption which drives that 90% number. VE is modeled using a beta binomial model with a fixed prior of an infection rate of 1.5% per year. Obviously this number is going to vary a lot depending on the sample. [1] By putting a fixed point vs the appropriate wide ranging distribution as the prior, the model scores the results far higher than otherwise. This is a non-result and it was wildly inappropriate to publish this as proof of any finding. [1] https://pfe-pfizercom-d8-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/2020-11/C4591001_Clinical_Protocol_Nov2020.pdf https://pfe-pfizercom-d8-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/2020-11/C4591... Page 15
  • laGrenouille 6y ago
    I don’t think that’s what the report is saying: The 1.5% is used to determine how long the trial will take to reach the required number of cases. Not sure what prior they were using, but my guess is that it’s conservative.
  • sanxiyn 6y ago
    As far as I can tell attack rate assumption is there only to calculate desired sample size, and statistical analysis of vaccine efficacy is independent of attack rate assumption. It seems to me exact prior is unspecified in protocol. The usual choice is uniform prior.
  • awillen 6y ago
    I have no idea what this means, but it sure sounds like a legitimate concern. Can anyone who actually understands this confirm?
• corona-research 6y ago
  Lol. I am immune because of my immune system. Just like almost everybody...
• hikerclimb 6y ago
  Hopefully this doesn’t work
• hikerclimb 6y ago
  I hope a billion people on earth die of coronavirus
• originhunter 6y ago
  I cant believe no one here is worried about this vaccine going into their bloodstream
• cullinap 6y ago
  anybody know how vaccine effectiveness is measured?