6 ms·

Why is everyone worried about blood clots, and not that the J&J vaccine has a crap-tastic efficiency of 66.3%? Would you want the chef at your local takeout to

by dheera 6y ago

Why is everyone worried about blood clots, and not that the J&J vaccine has a crap-tastic efficiency of 66.3%? Would you want the chef at your local takeout to be vaccinated to 66.3% efficiency? or 94%? Why was this vaccine even approved, instead of just having J&J produce the same vaccine Pfizer and Moderna are making, which would be in the best interest of the world? Is this some utterly idiotic capitalism bullshit that prevents J&J from making a 94% vaccine as well? Why can't we just take $100B out of the $1T military budget, throw it at Pfizer and Moderna to shut up their patent lawyers, and then hand the formula to J&J to become a 3rd factory for a good 94% mRNA vaccine? And then hand that formula to the rest of the world including Brazil, India, China, and other recent new COVID hotspots so that the virus doesn't boomerang back to the US in an evolved form? At least that's what I would do if I was president.

jackbrookes 6y ago
The percentage efficacy can be misleading, it is not a like-for-like comparison. https://www.vox.com/22311625/covid-19-vaccine-efficacy-johnson-moderna-pfizer https://www.vox.com/22311625/covid-19-vaccine-efficacy-johns...
e9 6y ago
This is not full story. 65% efficacy against symptomatic COVID-19 but 100% efficacy against death and hospitalization due to COVID-19. So there is real benefit to it.
- dheera 6y ago
  Yes, but 65% efficacy still means that 1/3 of the vaccinated people will continue to be spreaders, which doesn't sound great, especially if that allows the virus to spread and evolve into a harsher variety.
  - savanu 6y ago
    The different efficacy rates of the vaccines do not directly imply anything about spreading covid. A vaccinated person can have no symptoms of covid and still be spreading (This may or may not be true). Folks are still studying how effective the vaccines are at preventing spread.
    - kazinator 6y ago
      Keep in mind that a door handle is completely immune to Covid and can be spreading it.
      - dheera 6y ago
        Only for a few hours though, not 2 weeks+, and viruses don't mutate on a doorknob. Someone who got vaccine and falls in the ineffective category will likely not die but will be a spreader for a few weeks, with some nonzero probability of mutation, and that times 1/3 of the population that got the vaccine would give the virus a lot of opportunity to mutate.
        kazinator 6y ago
        According to some experts, Covid-19 can endure on certain surfaces for as long as six days.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    - dheera 6y ago
      Okay, but until they're done studying, maybe let's just make more of the 94% vaccine using J&J's facilities?
      - ghaff 6y ago
        You do realize that different manufacturing facilities are not interchangeable? They're not a rack of x86 servers.
    - cactus2093 6y ago
      > A vaccinated person can have no symptoms of covid and still be spreading Aren't the efficacy numbers from the phase 3 trials based on giving periodic PCR tests to everyone that was participating in the trials? And not just based on people self-reporting symptoms? It would be very surprising if there were a new kind of asymptomatic carrier that emerged only for people having taken certain vaccines in which they would never test positive on a PCR test but could still spread covid. The odds that this is how the vaccines work seems very small, relative to the number of times this argument that "we don't know yet" is getting repeated. It just seems strange to me that so many people are hung up on pointing out that this small possibility is still a possibility. It seems more likely that this will drive more people to skip the vaccine, since they're being told they can't even go back to normal once vaccinated, than anything else.
  - thelean12 6y ago
    At this stage, getting as many people to near 100% death avoidance and with some immunity is the goal. We're not at a stage yet when we can play favorites. It'll be a long time before we have the supply to prefer one over the other (except maybe in the US where there will be enough mRNA vaccines to go around).
  - M_bara 6y ago
    Not necessarily. Efficacy measures are about protection from hospitalisation or death if you contract COVID. It doesn’t imply loss of viral shedding. There’s a vox video on YouTube that explains this...
  - stjohnswarts 6y ago
    Lol if the people that don't get it and it's more or less a cold it's not a big deal. If you go to the hospital your chances of dying from it go up astronomically. How can you miss that most basic of points?
- TrevorJ 6y ago
  This is a leaky vaccine, which is actually a big health risk. You remove selection pressure for lack of virulence, so more fatal strains can spread more easily. Definitely not a good thing.
  - narrator 6y ago
    I know about Marek's disease in chickens, but has a leaky vaccine ever caused a virus to evolve like that in humans?
    - TrevorJ 6y ago
      Would there be anything in particular about the study of that case which would not be valid in humans? I've seen articles/studies from before Covid that suggest this sort of thing could be a concern in humans, but no reported cases of it happening. On the other hand, we don't exactly have a control group, so there's not a good way to tell.
Exmoor 6y ago
The limits of mRNA vaccine manufacturing are that it's a new process and the technology and supply chain required to produce it are very hard to get right. Derek Lowe does an excellent job of debunking the simplistic "Why don't they share the design" argument here: https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/02/02/myths-of-vaccine-manufacturing https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/02/02/my...
morpheuskafka 6y ago
> And then hand that formula to the rest of the world including Brazil, India, China, and other recent new COVID hotspots so that the virus doesn't boomerang back to the US in an evolved form? Such a vaccine would also have two doses and require intense refrigeration which are the primary issues blocking it... additionally many of those jurisdictions might not accept a US vaccine. China, maybe, since they admitted their own vaccines aren't working super well. Russia doesn't have anything wrong with its vaccine but the Kremlin admitted no one is taking it, apparently because they don't believe in covid.
- happycube 6y ago
  It's kinda funny how Sputnik-V felt like a rushed publicity stunt... and later on it turned out it might actually work.
- DiogenesKynikos 6y ago
  > China, maybe, since they admitted their own vaccines aren't working super well. Despite what the press has reported, that's not really what happened. In a conference talk on vaccines, the head of China CDC made a general statement about what to do about "low vaccine efficacy." That's been blown up in the Western media into an "admission" that all Chinese vaccines supposedly have low efficacy. It doesn't even make sense to talk about the efficacy of "Chinese vaccines." Chinese vaccines run the gamut, from inactivated whole virus to protein subunit to adenovirus vectors. There's even a Chinese partner to Biontech, which is going to manufacture the latter's mRNA vaccine.
happycube 6y ago
If nothing else, the logistics of transporting J&J make it a lot better in a lot of cases. Pfizer in particular needs to be transported super-cold, and Moderna needs to be frozen as well. J&J can be handled much more like a flu shot. That said, I'm smarting a bit (even though I understand why) that the fully vaccinated guidelines cover 2 weeks after J&J, while it's looking likely the mRNA vaccines give you better protection even 2 weeks after the first shot. (You really do want the second... the 6-month Moderna study shows you get about 10x the antibodies from the second one, which means the protection lasts much longer if nothing else.)
Reason077 6y ago
> "Why is everyone worried about blood clots, and not that the J&J vaccine has a crap-tastic efficiency of 66.3%?" The J&J vaccine is marketed as a single-dose vaccine, unlike the others which all require two doses to reach their reported efficacy. Single-dose is a massive advantage which will greatly speed up vaccination progress, especially in developing countries. And 66% seems pretty good for a single dose.
stjohnswarts 6y ago
Do your research dude. It basically results in essentially 100% non-hospitalization which is the big deal, not whether you get a fever and cough a bit. I can't imagine how anyone would miss that little factoid if they read at all about the J&J vaccine before saying it's useless. Again do a little reading.
frashelaw 6y ago
> Why was this vaccine even approved, instead of just having J&J produce the same vaccine Pfizer and Moderna are making, which would be in the best interest of the world? Is this some utterly idiotic capitalism bullshit that prevents J&J from making a 94% vaccine as well? Exactly. There should be no place for vaccine profiteering, especially now that we have two extremely good vaccines. But in the interest of pharma profits, instead of cooperatively manufacturing the best vaccines, unburdened by patent hurdles, instead we have massive amounts of public funding going to pharma corps so that they can make profits off this medical crisis. Truly shameless.
ebruchez 6y ago
> Why is everyone worried about blood clots, and not that the J&J vaccine has a crap-tastic efficiency of 66.3%? See "Why you can't compare Covid-19 vaccines": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3odScka55A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3odScka55A You're welcome.

by dheera 6y ago

jackbrookes 6y ago

The percentage efficacy can be misleading, it is not a like-for-like comparison. https://www.vox.com/22311625/covid-19-vaccine-efficacy-johnson-moderna-pfizer https://www.vox.com/22311625/covid-19-vaccine-efficacy-johns...

e9 6y ago

This is not full story. 65% efficacy against symptomatic COVID-19 but 100% efficacy against death and hospitalization due to COVID-19. So there is real benefit to it.

dheera 6y ago
Yes, but 65% efficacy still means that 1/3 of the vaccinated people will continue to be spreaders, which doesn't sound great, especially if that allows the virus to spread and evolve into a harsher variety.
- savanu 6y ago
  The different efficacy rates of the vaccines do not directly imply anything about spreading covid. A vaccinated person can have no symptoms of covid and still be spreading (This may or may not be true). Folks are still studying how effective the vaccines are at preventing spread.
  - kazinator 6y ago
    Keep in mind that a door handle is completely immune to Covid and can be spreading it.
    - dheera 6y ago
      Only for a few hours though, not 2 weeks+, and viruses don't mutate on a doorknob. Someone who got vaccine and falls in the ineffective category will likely not die but will be a spreader for a few weeks, with some nonzero probability of mutation, and that times 1/3 of the population that got the vaccine would give the virus a lot of opportunity to mutate.
      - kazinator 6y ago
        According to some experts, Covid-19 can endure on certain surfaces for as long as six days.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - dheera 6y ago
    Okay, but until they're done studying, maybe let's just make more of the 94% vaccine using J&J's facilities?
    - ghaff 6y ago
      You do realize that different manufacturing facilities are not interchangeable? They're not a rack of x86 servers.
  - cactus2093 6y ago
    > A vaccinated person can have no symptoms of covid and still be spreading Aren't the efficacy numbers from the phase 3 trials based on giving periodic PCR tests to everyone that was participating in the trials? And not just based on people self-reporting symptoms? It would be very surprising if there were a new kind of asymptomatic carrier that emerged only for people having taken certain vaccines in which they would never test positive on a PCR test but could still spread covid. The odds that this is how the vaccines work seems very small, relative to the number of times this argument that "we don't know yet" is getting repeated. It just seems strange to me that so many people are hung up on pointing out that this small possibility is still a possibility. It seems more likely that this will drive more people to skip the vaccine, since they're being told they can't even go back to normal once vaccinated, than anything else.
- thelean12 6y ago
  At this stage, getting as many people to near 100% death avoidance and with some immunity is the goal. We're not at a stage yet when we can play favorites. It'll be a long time before we have the supply to prefer one over the other (except maybe in the US where there will be enough mRNA vaccines to go around).
- M_bara 6y ago
  Not necessarily. Efficacy measures are about protection from hospitalisation or death if you contract COVID. It doesn’t imply loss of viral shedding. There’s a vox video on YouTube that explains this...
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  Lol if the people that don't get it and it's more or less a cold it's not a big deal. If you go to the hospital your chances of dying from it go up astronomically. How can you miss that most basic of points?
TrevorJ 6y ago
This is a leaky vaccine, which is actually a big health risk. You remove selection pressure for lack of virulence, so more fatal strains can spread more easily. Definitely not a good thing.
- narrator 6y ago
  I know about Marek's disease in chickens, but has a leaky vaccine ever caused a virus to evolve like that in humans?
  - TrevorJ 6y ago
    Would there be anything in particular about the study of that case which would not be valid in humans? I've seen articles/studies from before Covid that suggest this sort of thing could be a concern in humans, but no reported cases of it happening. On the other hand, we don't exactly have a control group, so there's not a good way to tell.

Exmoor 6y ago

The limits of mRNA vaccine manufacturing are that it's a new process and the technology and supply chain required to produce it are very hard to get right. Derek Lowe does an excellent job of debunking the simplistic "Why don't they share the design" argument here: https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/02/02/myths-of-vaccine-manufacturing https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/02/02/my...

morpheuskafka 6y ago

> And then hand that formula to the rest of the world including Brazil, India, China, and other recent new COVID hotspots so that the virus doesn't boomerang back to the US in an evolved form? Such a vaccine would also have two doses and require intense refrigeration which are the primary issues blocking it... additionally many of those jurisdictions might not accept a US vaccine. China, maybe, since they admitted their own vaccines aren't working super well. Russia doesn't have anything wrong with its vaccine but the Kremlin admitted no one is taking it, apparently because they don't believe in covid.

happycube 6y ago
It's kinda funny how Sputnik-V felt like a rushed publicity stunt... and later on it turned out it might actually work.
DiogenesKynikos 6y ago
> China, maybe, since they admitted their own vaccines aren't working super well. Despite what the press has reported, that's not really what happened. In a conference talk on vaccines, the head of China CDC made a general statement about what to do about "low vaccine efficacy." That's been blown up in the Western media into an "admission" that all Chinese vaccines supposedly have low efficacy. It doesn't even make sense to talk about the efficacy of "Chinese vaccines." Chinese vaccines run the gamut, from inactivated whole virus to protein subunit to adenovirus vectors. There's even a Chinese partner to Biontech, which is going to manufacture the latter's mRNA vaccine.

happycube 6y ago

If nothing else, the logistics of transporting J&J make it a lot better in a lot of cases. Pfizer in particular needs to be transported super-cold, and Moderna needs to be frozen as well. J&J can be handled much more like a flu shot. That said, I'm smarting a bit (even though I understand why) that the fully vaccinated guidelines cover 2 weeks after J&J, while it's looking likely the mRNA vaccines give you better protection even 2 weeks after the first shot. (You really do want the second... the 6-month Moderna study shows you get about 10x the antibodies from the second one, which means the protection lasts much longer if nothing else.)

Reason077 6y ago

> "Why is everyone worried about blood clots, and not that the J&J vaccine has a crap-tastic efficiency of 66.3%?" The J&J vaccine is marketed as a single-dose vaccine, unlike the others which all require two doses to reach their reported efficacy. Single-dose is a massive advantage which will greatly speed up vaccination progress, especially in developing countries. And 66% seems pretty good for a single dose.

stjohnswarts 6y ago

Do your research dude. It basically results in essentially 100% non-hospitalization which is the big deal, not whether you get a fever and cough a bit. I can't imagine how anyone would miss that little factoid if they read at all about the J&J vaccine before saying it's useless. Again do a little reading.

frashelaw 6y ago

> Why was this vaccine even approved, instead of just having J&J produce the same vaccine Pfizer and Moderna are making, which would be in the best interest of the world? Is this some utterly idiotic capitalism bullshit that prevents J&J from making a 94% vaccine as well? Exactly. There should be no place for vaccine profiteering, especially now that we have two extremely good vaccines. But in the interest of pharma profits, instead of cooperatively manufacturing the best vaccines, unburdened by patent hurdles, instead we have massive amounts of public funding going to pharma corps so that they can make profits off this medical crisis. Truly shameless.

ebruchez 6y ago

> Why is everyone worried about blood clots, and not that the J&J vaccine has a crap-tastic efficiency of 66.3%? See "Why you can't compare Covid-19 vaccines": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3odScka55A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3odScka55A You're welcome.