13 ms·
I'm feeling a deep-seated wave of relief that I never thought possible. Like waking up from a year-long nightmare. Thank God.
by 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 agoIt will still take a long time before a sufficient number of people have been vaccinated that life can return back to normal.
- athenot 6y agoTrue. 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 agodepends. 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 agoOne 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.
- deeeeplearning 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. I'm sure they have no incentives to say that right. The reality is that the UK and many others are in the middle of a massive surge of cases. The idea that life will be "normal" a few months from now in Spring seems farcical.
- adrianN 6y agoI guess it depends on what they mean by "start". Lead doctors in Germany say that it'll probably take until 2022 to vaccinate most people.
- criddell 6y agoSame here. Congratulations and thanks to everybody who worked so hard on this.
- collyw 6y agoScrew the media for pushing this and lockdown as the only possible solution. This will still take ages to be rolled out.
- chadash 6y agoNo, it won't. they are projecting 50 million doses to be ready in 2020 and 1.1 billion next year. That means that mom and dad and grandma are likely to get it within the next few months and that by mid next year, you'll probably have access to it if you are a healthy thirty year old.
- funcDropShadow 6y agoThose 1.1 billion doses are not for the US alone. The vaccine was actually developed by Biontech in Germany before Pfizer was involved. Pfizer is the partner to scale up the studies and production. But you can assume that those doses are not US only. And then I'd doubt that a healthy 30 year old will get it in summer of 2021.
- rsynnott 6y agoI believe 300M of them are accounted for by the EU vaccine purchase program. That said, it looks like those doses will be made in Europe; Pfizer seems set up to make it this in multiple facilities, which is a good sign.
- refurb 6y agoIndeed. If you're in a low-risk group - no comorbidities, under 35 years old, not working in a front line role that exposes you to Covid, it's going to be a long time before you get the vaccine.
- 6y ago
- kylnew 6y agoThank Science! :p
- tuna-piano 6y agoFeel the same. Can't stop smiling. Never felt like a more accurate time to use the phrase "light at the end of the tunnel". The US government is paying like $20 for each dose. I'd pay 100x that without batting an eye. Thank you thank you thank you to everyone working on this vaccine and related Covid treatments. Can't wait to get the needle in the arm!
- aphextron 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. Moderna is also only weeks behind Pfizer/Biontech here with a very similar technology and manufacturing capability of hundreds of millions of doses. We'll be seeing the first EUA's by December, and shots in the arm before the end of the year. Pretty incredible that we can just science our way out of things like this. Humans are awesome.
- charlesdm 6y agoThis is great and all, and I'm not against vaccinations, but is this safe long term? Am I the only one here who doesn't want to get inoculated in basically the first batch?
- TulliusCicero 6y agoHave there historically been issues with vaccines causing problems for the long term that didn't show initially? I've never heard of such a thing, but then again I have only a surface understanding of vaccines.
- charlesdm 6y agoI have no idea, that's why I am asking. I'm hoping someone could clarify with decent knowledge on the matter. I vaguely remember this story (from years ago) about a drug or vaccine during the 70s, where apparently everything was fine but then kids (or kids of kids, can't remember) ended up with birth defects.
- _Microft 6y agoYou might be thinking of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide_scandal The name of the drug was "Contergan" in german which german-speaking readers might recognize more easily.
- 6y ago
- bryanlarsen 6y agoSeeing the light at the end of the tunnel means it's more important than ever to isolate and stop this third wave ASAP. It's hard enough to see loved ones die or to suffer life long side effects if lockdowns only delay it. But to have it happen just a couple months before a vaccine was available would be incredibly hard. The prospect of a vaccine should make isolation much more bearable mentally. We're past halfway, folks!
- matz1 6y agoI wake up long time ago when I realized the virus is not as dangerous as the media reported it. You too should wake up right now and live your life. Stop being afraid.
- MichaelApproved 6y agoHow dangerous did you assess it to be?
- matz1 6y agoVast majority of the cases are asymptomatic or only have mild symptoms.
- jere 6y agoThe vast majority of single rounds of Russian Roulette are won too.
- anoncake 6y agoOnly 83.3%.
- TulliusCicero 6y agoI don't think anybody disputes this. But each new person who gets it is a potential spreader, which increases the likelihood of an at-risk person getting it. Someone who may be elderly or immunocompromised, who can be seriously hurt or killed by it.
- matz1 6y agoSure but how about the risk/damage due to lockdown?
- tsimionescu 6y agoGiven the level of lockdowns we've seen so far, that is minimal. Especially if the government is smart enough to simply pay the wages of people who are forced to not work (which would also give a massive boost to the economy).
- thatwasunusual 6y ago> Thank God. God also gave us this virus, if we stick to the religious logic.
- swalsh 6y agoHey man, some people have multiple gods.
- benlumen 6y agoIt was a figure of speech.
- InterMilan 6y agoI thought it was bush meat. So human decided to eat something that they shouldn't. Geniuinly asking.
- grecy 6y agoDid god put warning labels on things we should and shouldn't eat? How do I use God's wisdom to decide if if a certain pig is "safe" to eat or not?
- hajile 6y agoIf you go by the Koran or Bible, pork is forbidden. If you go by the Bible, most (if not all) bush meat would also be forbidden.
- djrogers 6y ago> If you go by the Koran or Bible, pork is forbidden. Correction - if you go by the Old Testament, pork is forbidden.
- BHSPitMonkey 6y agoIs this really a "correction"? It's not as though other parts of the Bible (or Koran) explicitly repeal said forbiddance (even though the most popular interpretations prefer to see it that way)
- deeeeplearning 6y agoThis is not a panacea, it will still take time to fully vet the data and it will likely be months before doses start going out and even more months after that until sufficiently large numbers of people have been inoculated before we can even approach normality.
- standardUser 6y ago"it will likely be months before doses start going" Where do you get that it will take "months" between emergency approval and actual vaccinations? The communications out of the leading vaccine teams clearly state otherwise.
- deeeeplearning 6y ago>Where do you get that it will take "months" between emergency approval and actual vaccinations Because this is a press release from a corporation with a vested interest in being "first" and not an approval by the FDA.
- standardUser 6y agoOh, so just blanket cynicism with no evidence, got it.
- deeeeplearning 6y agoOh because you have lot's of evidence that vaccines will be available to the public in a few weeks? https://news.yahoo.com/hhs-secretary-coronavirus-general-vaccination-125944388.html https://news.yahoo.com/hhs-secretary-coronavirus-general-vac... HHS expecting availability for the public in March. Let me see 1..2..3... ah yes that appears to be MONTHS away.
- hinkley 6y agoI'm glad we are going to have a vaccine, but I'm not so happy about 90% I have built up in my head the idea of all the things I'm going to do 'once I get vaccinated', but at 90% that gets pushed off to "once most people get vaccinated". If it were by myself, I might push my luck. But I want to do those things with friends, or family. .9^n is pretty shitty odds once n gets to around 5. There's a sort of rhetoric that's pointed out by 'Thinking, Fast and Slow' as a warning sign for agendas, and I've seen a bunch of them used by both sides this election cycle. But at the same time one of the defenses against these rhetorical devices is reframing: rephrase the bargain from another context and see if you'd still accept it. They don't seem to reconcile that in public discourse this reframing happens in public. "If I go out for steak, I'm probably okay at 90%," versus, "If we have our family reunion at Disney World, there's a 50% chance we're all going to be attending a funeral in a month, even if everybody got the vaccine." You could call the latter shrill, sure, but "there's a 50% chance everything will work out fine," is self-deception. You're trying really hard not to look at all of the potential, statistically significant outcomes.
- djrogers 6y ago> "If I go out for steak, I'm probably okay at 90%," versus, "If we have our family reunion at Disney World, there's a 50% chance we're all going to be attending a funeral in a month, even if everybody got the vaccine." How in the heck do you arrive at a 50% chance of someone dying? You might argue that there's a 50% chance of someone getting the virus (that's really debatable, it's not highly contagious), but even if someone did, their chance of survival is several orders of magnitude higher than 50% unless they are in a high-risk group...
- ulrikrasmussen 6y ago0.9^n are the odds where you all go and get exposed simultaneously. When a large enough portion of the population is vaccinated, that prior probability goes way down.
- hinkley 6y agoWhich is why I said, > but at 90% that gets pushed off to "once most people get vaccinated"
- redisman 6y ago> Thank God. Wait who developed this vaccine again?