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note there is not a claim this vaccine prevents infection, only lessens symptoms, meaning you are still contagious. "We all expect an effective vaccine to prev

note there is not a claim this vaccine prevents infection, only lessens symptoms, meaning you are still contagious. "We all expect an effective vaccine to prevent serious illness if infected. Three of the vaccine protocols—Moderna, Pfizer, and AstraZeneca—do not require that their vaccine prevent serious disease only that they prevent moderate symptoms which may be as mild as cough, or headache." "Prevention of infection is not a criterion for success for any of these vaccines. In fact, their endpoints all require confirmed infections and all those they will include in the analysis for success, the only difference being the severity of symptoms between the vaccinated and unvaccinated." https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamhaseltine/2020/09/23/covid-19-vaccine-protocols-reveal-that-trials-are-designed-to-succeed/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamhaseltine/2020/09/23/cov...

refurb 6y ago
Right, but are there any vaccines out there that protect against disease but don’t prevent transmission? I thought that’s what herd immunity was all about.
- harambae 6y ago
  You're asking if there are vaccines that do not lead to sterilizing immunity? Yes. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7296151/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7296151/
  - refurb 6y ago
    As per the article, the flu vaccine looked at didn’t provide sterilizing immunity, but did significantly lower viral titre in the lungs. So I guess the question is - even if not sterilizing immunity, would these vaccines significantly reduce (but not eliminate) transmission?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
jaywalk 6y ago
With this being the case, how does it even make sense for companies like Ticketmaster and Quantas to announce that they'll require their customers to be vaccinated? Yeah, 90-95% of your customers won't have symptoms if they get infected. But they'll still have the ability to pass on that infection to someone who wasn't vaccinated, or falls into the 5-10% of people who the vaccine isn't effective for. Obviously the vaccines have benefits, especially for high risk populations. But I see very little benefit to these corporations requiring their customers to have it, since their customers can still be infected and spread the virus.
- totony 6y ago
  >With this being the case, how does it even make sense for companies like Ticketmaster and Quantas to announce that they'll require their customers to be vaccinated? This is such a weird take imo. There is no need to vaccine non-risk people afaik. I thought the whole deal with covid is how mild it is for the general population but deadly for a subset of it.
  - estebank 6y ago
    We don't know a priori who will have very adverse reactions. Comorbities and old age increase your chances, but those are categorically not the only variables at play.
    - totony 6y ago
      I'll admit I'm not super well informed on covid, so my opinion on this is weakly held, but isnt that an insanely small percentage of people? I was under the impression that vaccine + immunity will just lead to herd immunity and the disease to go away on its own.
      - estebank 6y ago
        US population: ~330 million people Confirmed cases: 13.4 million people Confirmed deaths: 267 thousand people deaths / confirmed: ~2% 2% of the US dead (assumes homogeneous 2% death rate, which is incorrect but an upper bound): 6.6 million people Distribution of deaths by age bracket, including population distribution: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm About half the population is over ~45 years old. Anything we do now to reduce the R0 of this disease will disproportionally enable people to live long enough for herd immunity to be attained, courtesy of the exponential growth curve. The amount of people that has to get sick to overwhelm hospitals is smaller than you might think. When hospitals get overwhelmed people die of other preventable cases due to reduced resources, tired physicians, lack of time to see patients at all and people being scared of even going to the hospital in the first place. Old people are not "disposable" and for younger people that happen to have the genetic (or other) predisposition to bad or fatal cases it will be hard to tell them "sucks to be you" when the preventive steps are well understood by now: interact with people as little as possible and when you do, do so outside while wearing masks. Also, the death rate among poorer people is a multiple of that of the general population, among other reasons because they are working essential jobs to not starve. Those of us that can isolate and don't are saying that these people's lives (essential workers, including health care workers) have no value, they are just meat for the meat grinder.
codeulike 6y ago
That forbes article is quite weird. The trials have obviously been designed to find out if the vaccine helps prevent serious illness, as fast as possible. Questions like 'can vaccinated people still spread covid' are much harder to answer in a trial. Perhaps they'll look at that later.
justinc8687 6y ago
It is true that for these initial protocols, they are only testing becoming symptomatic versus prevention of transmission. That said, all the trials (at least in phase 1/2) are also looking at antibody levels[1][2], which would indicate less likelihood of transmission. Remember, all these vaccines aren't yet applying for full approval, but an EUA (Emergency Use Authorization). I fully expect that the FDA would want to see data on transmission before full approval; but that is harder to acquire, so it makes sense they wouldn't wait for that specific data. As someone in the AZD12222 (AstraZeneca/Oxford) trial, I can confirm that they are following all participants for a full 2 years. In this time (versus the ~3 months each Phase 3 trial has run for), there will be much more time to see if these vaccines prevent transmission, not just prevent symptoms. With all that said, many thousands of live will be saved by getting these vaccines out now, even if they are only partially effective. After all, someone who can't get sick can return to a more normal life, since they won't have issues if they were to get SARS-COV-2 infection later on. [1] https://biology.mit.edu/undergraduate/current-students/subject-offerings/covid-19-sars-cov-2-and-the-pandemic/ https://biology.mit.edu/undergraduate/current-students/subje... [Lecture 10, with a NIH researcher who worked on the Moderna vaccine] [2] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)32466-1/fulltext#fig5 https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... [Phase 2/3 study of AstraZeneca vaccine, figure shows neutralizing antibody levels]

refurb 6y ago

Right, but are there any vaccines out there that protect against disease but don’t prevent transmission? I thought that’s what herd immunity was all about.

harambae 6y ago
You're asking if there are vaccines that do not lead to sterilizing immunity? Yes. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7296151/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7296151/
- refurb 6y ago
  As per the article, the flu vaccine looked at didn’t provide sterilizing immunity, but did significantly lower viral titre in the lungs. So I guess the question is - even if not sterilizing immunity, would these vaccines significantly reduce (but not eliminate) transmission?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

jaywalk 6y ago

With this being the case, how does it even make sense for companies like Ticketmaster and Quantas to announce that they'll require their customers to be vaccinated? Yeah, 90-95% of your customers won't have symptoms if they get infected. But they'll still have the ability to pass on that infection to someone who wasn't vaccinated, or falls into the 5-10% of people who the vaccine isn't effective for. Obviously the vaccines have benefits, especially for high risk populations. But I see very little benefit to these corporations requiring their customers to have it, since their customers can still be infected and spread the virus.

totony 6y ago
>With this being the case, how does it even make sense for companies like Ticketmaster and Quantas to announce that they'll require their customers to be vaccinated? This is such a weird take imo. There is no need to vaccine non-risk people afaik. I thought the whole deal with covid is how mild it is for the general population but deadly for a subset of it.
- estebank 6y ago
  We don't know a priori who will have very adverse reactions. Comorbities and old age increase your chances, but those are categorically not the only variables at play.
  - totony 6y ago
    I'll admit I'm not super well informed on covid, so my opinion on this is weakly held, but isnt that an insanely small percentage of people? I was under the impression that vaccine + immunity will just lead to herd immunity and the disease to go away on its own.
    - estebank 6y ago
      US population: ~330 million people Confirmed cases: 13.4 million people Confirmed deaths: 267 thousand people deaths / confirmed: ~2% 2% of the US dead (assumes homogeneous 2% death rate, which is incorrect but an upper bound): 6.6 million people Distribution of deaths by age bracket, including population distribution: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm About half the population is over ~45 years old. Anything we do now to reduce the R0 of this disease will disproportionally enable people to live long enough for herd immunity to be attained, courtesy of the exponential growth curve. The amount of people that has to get sick to overwhelm hospitals is smaller than you might think. When hospitals get overwhelmed people die of other preventable cases due to reduced resources, tired physicians, lack of time to see patients at all and people being scared of even going to the hospital in the first place. Old people are not "disposable" and for younger people that happen to have the genetic (or other) predisposition to bad or fatal cases it will be hard to tell them "sucks to be you" when the preventive steps are well understood by now: interact with people as little as possible and when you do, do so outside while wearing masks. Also, the death rate among poorer people is a multiple of that of the general population, among other reasons because they are working essential jobs to not starve. Those of us that can isolate and don't are saying that these people's lives (essential workers, including health care workers) have no value, they are just meat for the meat grinder.

codeulike 6y ago

That forbes article is quite weird. The trials have obviously been designed to find out if the vaccine helps prevent serious illness, as fast as possible. Questions like 'can vaccinated people still spread covid' are much harder to answer in a trial. Perhaps they'll look at that later.

justinc8687 6y ago

It is true that for these initial protocols, they are only testing becoming symptomatic versus prevention of transmission. That said, all the trials (at least in phase 1/2) are also looking at antibody levels[1][2], which would indicate less likelihood of transmission. Remember, all these vaccines aren't yet applying for full approval, but an EUA (Emergency Use Authorization). I fully expect that the FDA would want to see data on transmission before full approval; but that is harder to acquire, so it makes sense they wouldn't wait for that specific data. As someone in the AZD12222 (AstraZeneca/Oxford) trial, I can confirm that they are following all participants for a full 2 years. In this time (versus the ~3 months each Phase 3 trial has run for), there will be much more time to see if these vaccines prevent transmission, not just prevent symptoms. With all that said, many thousands of live will be saved by getting these vaccines out now, even if they are only partially effective. After all, someone who can't get sick can return to a more normal life, since they won't have issues if they were to get SARS-COV-2 infection later on. [1] https://biology.mit.edu/undergraduate/current-students/subject-offerings/covid-19-sars-cov-2-and-the-pandemic/ https://biology.mit.edu/undergraduate/current-students/subje... [Lecture 10, with a NIH researcher who worked on the Moderna vaccine] [2] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)32466-1/fulltext#fig5 https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... [Phase 2/3 study of AstraZeneca vaccine, figure shows neutralizing antibody levels]