Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!
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@dkf said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@GOG said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
We already had this conversation: we should've seen better testing for the existing COVID vaccines, too. Maybe they'd actually be effective at stopping the pandemic.
The fundamental problem is this question: How Long Should You Wait For Certainty? Waiting until you're 100% sure is very very likely to be waiting for far too long, resulting in a lot of otherwise-avoidable death and disablement. Then what level of uncertainty do you think it is acceptable to take a decision on?
There are multiple reasons here. Typically, it's more difficult to find study trial participants. Considering this is specifically targeted at children (RSV), I'd expect that to be true. With smaller testing cohorts, it takes longer to establish all the markers of efficacy and safety we've traditionally used for vaccine approval, which is usually measured in years rather than months.
It will hopefully be more difficult to convince anyone that flu / RSV / whatever is the super duper emergency that COVID was believed to be. So I think talking about 100% sure is really a strawman here. We really did rush COVID vaccines way beyond normal stuff, and while I think there's a decent argument for all that, I don't think it's completely airtight in hindsight, and that should definitely give us caution for those sorts of arguments going forward.
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@ixvedeusi said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Downvote mine. There's like 10'000 threads with these kinds of arguments on the other side of that there garage door, I'd appreciate if we could keep the flames low on this one.
Thanks for reminding me why I rarely step out of the garage.
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@dkf the problem with hypothetical avoidable deaths is that there are infinitely many of them, and you cannot even estimate them most of the time. For example, if we didn't fast-track the vaccines, less people would be skeptical of them - and by today we'd end up with many more vaccinated. How many lives could be saved? You can think up any number of scenarios like that.
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@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
It will hopefully be more difficult to convince anyone that flu / RSV / whatever is the super duper emergency that COVID was believed to be.
Here's where I'm less optimistic. It is close to an ironclad rule that things that seem nigh impossible suddenly become much easier once you've succeeded the first time. I suspect this is partly because they've been proven possible, partly because subsequent attempts can learn from what worked for their successful predecessors.
Registering a prediction right now, that this new flu vaccine will follow the covid vax playbook to the hilt.
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@Gąska said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@dkf the problem with hypothetical avoidable deaths is that there are infinitely many of them,
With a finite number of people alive?
and you cannot even estimate them most of the time. For example, if we didn't fast-track the vaccines, less people would be skeptical of them - and by today we'd end up with many more vaccinated.
No. By today we'd have precisely zero vaccinated outsides clinical trials, because the approval would be expected around 2025.
Most of the time savings in the fast-track process (aside from simply treating it as prio 1 in the bureaucracy of course) was from interleaving the trial phases, which is usually not done because you don't want to expose a large number of volunteers to something you haven't checked is safe. That interleaving has zero influence on the validity of the results. People who want to believe information™ from the likes of Marjorie Taylor "Jewish Space Lasers" Greene will hardly be convinced by following what they're usually the first to decry as rigid, bureaucratic, stifling government regulations.
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@LaoC said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@Gąska said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@dkf the problem with hypothetical avoidable deaths is that there are infinitely many of them,
With a finite number of people alive?
Yup! Many-worlds interpretation and all that. List all the things that we could hypothetically do slightly differently over the last two years, count the number of hypothetical avoided deaths for each of them, and sum them all up.
and you cannot even estimate them most of the time. For example, if we didn't fast-track the vaccines, less people would be skeptical of them - and by today we'd end up with many more vaccinated.
No. By today we'd have precisely zero vaccinated outsides clinical trials, because the approval would be expected around 2025.
Citation needed.
Most of the time savings in the fast-track process (aside from simply treating it as prio 1 in the bureaucracy of course)
This is the one thing that wouldn't change. This alone accounts for most of the speed up. Not tests. Not analyses. Simply not putting off application review for years for no particular reason, as is usually the case.
Novavax wasn't fast-tracked. And yet they're still expected to get regulatory approval this year.
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@Gąska said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@LaoC said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@Gąska said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@dkf the problem with hypothetical avoidable deaths is that there are infinitely many of them,
With a finite number of people alive?
Yup! Many-worlds interpretation and all that. List all the things that we could hypothetically do slightly differently over the last two years, count the number of hypothetical avoided deaths for each of them, and sum them all up.
and you cannot even estimate them most of the time. For example, if we didn't fast-track the vaccines, less people would be skeptical of them - and by today we'd end up with many more vaccinated.
No. By today we'd have precisely zero vaccinated outsides clinical trials, because the approval would be expected around 2025.
Citation needed.
I'm taking the lower limit here, but feel free to cite historical counterexamples.
Vaccine Research & Development - Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center
How can COVID-19 vaccine development be done quickly and safely?
Most of the time savings in the fast-track process (aside from simply treating it as prio 1 in the bureaucracy of course)
This is the one thing that wouldn't change. This alone accounts for most of the speed up. Not tests. Not analyses. Simply not putting off application review for years for no particular reason, as is usually the case.
Citation needed.
Novavax wasn't fast-tracked. And yet they're still expected to get regulatory approval this year.
In what sense were they not fast-tracked? In mine, i.e. they didn't interleave trials? I'm quite sure they were doing that, otherwise how could they have gone from zero to phase III in 12 months? Or in your sense, that their application was put on review for years? Doesn't look like it, does it?
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Small victory for sanity. The Czech minister, the one using big words about it before even becoming the minister, tweeted today that he is indeed going to cancel the vaccine mandates set by the previous minister just before he left the office.
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@LaoC said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
In what sense were they not fast-tracked? In mine, i.e. they didn't interleave trials? I'm quite sure they were doing that, otherwise how could they have gone from zero to phase III in 12 months? Or in your sense, that their application was put on review for years? Doesn't look like it, does it?
One of the ways in which it was significantly easier than usual to get the trials done was that it was quick to recruit patients for the Phase 3 trials and obtain a statistically significant result, as that's usually one of the slowest bits of any medical research. Something to do with this being a pandemic (and thus there were an abundance of infections) might have had something to do with it.
The reason it is not normal to overlap trials is that it makes a failure far more expensive, and those are really quite frequent. However, if the initial safety and efficacy data is good, there's no real reason not to do so. More risk is carried, but the risks relating to being slow to deploy (in the environment that was the case a couple of years ago; it's not quite the same now) are non-trivial too.
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@LaoC said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@Gąska said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@dkf the problem with hypothetical avoidable deaths is that there are infinitely many of them,
With a finite number of people alive?
and you cannot even estimate them most of the time. For example, if we didn't fast-track the vaccines, less people would be skeptical of them - and by today we'd end up with many more vaccinated.
No. By today we'd have precisely zero vaccinated outsides clinical trials, because the approval would be expected around 2025.
Most of the time savings in the fast-track process (aside from simply treating it as prio 1 in the bureaucracy of course) was from interleaving the trial phases, which is usually not done because you don't want to expose a large number of volunteers to something you haven't checked is safe. That interleaving has zero influence on the validity of the results.
Except we'd could have had more data on the medium term effects, i.e., the waning efficacy.
People who want to believe information™ from the likes of Marjorie Taylor "Jewish Space Lasers" Greene will hardly be convinced by following what they're usually the first to decry as rigid, bureaucratic, stifling government regulations.
Yeah, and we've also got the masking / lockdown nutjobs continuing have their way and causing a lot more damage than anything she's done.
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@GOG said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@dkf The problem is that "otherwise-avoidable death and disablement" sounds a like lot "we need to cut corners".
In fact, no, you don't need to cut corners. If you do cut corners, chances are good you'll wind up with something neither safe, nor effective.
The testing/approval procedure exists for a reason. It might not be a good reason, but in that case you need to make the argument for why this is so. If you can't make such an argument, except by appealing to emergency, you should stay silent and let people get on with it.
We know what happens when people get emotional, and go all in on stuff that's bound to work; it's stands to reason it must. We're living that scenario right now. Not one of the problems we are currently facing is in any way surprising. People were predicting that this was exactly what was gonna happen since early 2020.
What exactly is "this"?
The number of people who took part in the clinical trials was as large as for other vaccines / medicines. The vaccines are safe and effective. Way safer than contracting covid, with side effects in the range of "happened once or twice in the whole clinical study group". They are very effective against the original variant they were designed for, with effectiveness continously decreasing with newer variants (which isn't even too surpising), but still effective against delta and omicron. Effectiveness of protecting against severe illness, that is. Effectiveness against infection / stopping the spread was higher originally but seems to have dropped to basically zero now. And the immune reaction seems to wane faster than we expected.
But what really is the huge problem with that? If the alternatives are either having a vaccine, which is a net positive even if not the silver bullet we wish it was, or not having one / waiting so we can say "the vaccine is not perfect", I really don't see any advantage in the latter.
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@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Except we'd could have had more data on the medium term effects, i.e., the waning efficacy.
What would that help you?
Then we would've known that it wanes. And would've still approved it, because something is better than nothing. As mentioned above, the flu vaccines are also only ever good for one winter season, and they're still approved.
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@topspin said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Except we'd could have had more data on the medium term effects, i.e., the waning efficacy.
What would that help you?
Then we would've known that it wanes. And would've still approved it, because something is better than nothing. As mentioned above, the flu vaccines are also only ever good for one winter season, and they're still approved.
In this pandemic, probably nothing, because people have been burning their credibility since the beginning, so I'm not really sure it would have mattered. But it could have set some more reasonable expectations.
For instance, one of the ways this was marketed was, "Get vaccinated and go back to normal life." Obviously that didn't come even close to happening in most places. But a more normal process probably would have increased people's understanding and confidence in the whole affair.
Though again, given the dominance of panic over reason I'm not sure it would have actually mattered one way or the other.
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In this lost
thread, the only violence available is unsupported scare phrasing. Now remain quiet, please, so as not to startle them.
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@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
For instance, one of the ways this was marketed was, "Get vaccinated and go back to normal life." Obviously that didn't come even close to happening in most places.
I want to hammer in on this, because in plenty of the US, the message was "Force everyone else to get vaccinated and you can go back to normal life."
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@topspin said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
The number of people who took part in the clinical trials was as large as for other vaccines / medicines.
At this point definitely.
The vaccines are safe and effective.
Can't argue with that.
Way safer than contracting covid
This, on the other hand...
They are very effective against the original variant they were designed for
Don't you find it suspicious that the new variant exploded right at the same time the vaccine became widespread - and the overall impact of vaccines on COVID cases stats was negligible? I'm not saying they were lying about efficacy, but, you know... you can't prove from data they weren't.
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@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
I don't think it's completely airtight in hindsight
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@HardwareGeek said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
I don't think it's completely airtight in hindsight
That's probably a better mask than a bandana.
edit: because I can hurt somebody with it.
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@Gąska said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
They are very effective against the original variant they were designed for
Don't you find it suspicious that the new variant exploded right at the same time the vaccine became widespread - and the overall impact of vaccines on COVID cases stats was negligible? I'm not saying they were lying about efficacy, but, you know... you can't prove from data they weren't.
Yes, obviously they ordered a new variant before the vaccines came out to cover this up. This time from the UK because we know Chinese crap has low quality.
Wait, since they’re still effective, no I don’t think so.
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Covid: Face mask rules and Covid passes to end in England
Working from home guidance is also ending as England reverts to "Plan A", Boris Johnson says.
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The PM said England was reverting to "Plan A" due to boosters and how people had followed Plan B measures.
I mean ... if they're going by how people followed the Plan B measures, they should rather be looking at a Plan C.
On the other hand, the booster effort seems to have gone comparatively well.
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@cvi Plan A was basically the Swedish way, wasn't it? Seems like the right move.
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@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@cvi Plan A was basically the Swedish way, wasn't it? Seems like the right move.
It's basically just testing and vaccination.
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@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@cvi Plan A was basically the Swedish way, wasn't it? Seems like the right move.
Ok with me.
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@topspin said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Wait, since they’re still effective, no I don’t think so.
How they know it's effective? Do they breed the original variant in a lab and spray it on random passersby? Because looking at infection numbers v. last year, either the new variants completely displaced the old variants or the vaccines don't work all that well.
I do believe a scientific study could find very high effectiveness of vaccines in preventing infections. Just remember that another study found dewormer to be very effective at treating COVID.
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@Gąska said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@topspin said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Wait, since they’re still effective, no I don’t think so.
How they know it's effective? Do they breed the original variant in a lab and spray it on random passersby? Because looking at infection numbers v. last year, either the new variants completely displaced the old variants or the vaccines don't work all that well.
I do believe a scientific study could find very high effectiveness of vaccines in preventing infections. Just remember that another study found dewormer to be very effective at treating COVID.
I misread that you were talking about infections only.
Since the vaccines are still effective against severe sickness in other variants, it seems more likely that the effectiveness against infection actually just reduced in newer variants, maybe even that that original effectiveness was slightly lower than estimated, than that they ordered new variants to cover up their partial lie about one aspect of the study that the effectiveness was zero to begin with.
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@topspin said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
they
orderedbrought to public attention new variants to cover up their partial lie about one aspect of the study that the effectiveness was zero to begin with.Because I kinda doubt there was only one variant all year long in 2020 and then suddenly we've got 10, one after another.
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@Gąska said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@topspin said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
they
orderedbrought to public attention new variants to cover up their partial lie about one aspect of the study that the effectiveness was zero to begin with.Because I kinda doubt there was only one variant all year long in 2020 and then suddenly we've got 10, one after another.
Over here we had two waves of the original strain, one for alpha, one for delta, and a new one for omicron. Beta and gamma didn’t do shit. Since alpha (at least, that’s when I started to look at the numbers) the strains are also statistically sampled. So the only reasonable possibility is that the second wave already was a different variant from the first but didn’t get noticed.
Which really wouldn’t change much at all.
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@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@LaoC said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@Gąska said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@dkf the problem with hypothetical avoidable deaths is that there are infinitely many of them,
With a finite number of people alive?
and you cannot even estimate them most of the time. For example, if we didn't fast-track the vaccines, less people would be skeptical of them - and by today we'd end up with many more vaccinated.
No. By today we'd have precisely zero vaccinated outsides clinical trials, because the approval would be expected around 2025.
Most of the time savings in the fast-track process (aside from simply treating it as prio 1 in the bureaucracy of course) was from interleaving the trial phases, which is usually not done because you don't want to expose a large number of volunteers to something you haven't checked is safe. That interleaving has zero influence on the validity of the results.
Except we'd could have had more data on the medium term effects, i.e., the waning efficacy.
What could possibly have been the consequence of having this data?
a) go ahead and use the vaccine anyway
b) decide it's no good, wait without any vaccinations until we have developed something better and let it go through the multi-year approval process againAny other possibilities?
Edit:
by 
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Starbucks pauses plan to require vaccination or weekly testing after Supreme Court ruling
Starbucks has suspended its plan to require baristas to get vaccinated or receive weekly testing.
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@dkf said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@GOG said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
We already had this conversation: we should've seen better testing for the existing COVID vaccines, too. Maybe they'd actually be effective at stopping the pandemic.
The fundamental problem is this question: How Long Should You Wait For Certainty? Waiting until you're 100% sure is very very likely to be waiting for far too long, resulting in a lot of otherwise-avoidable death and disablement. Then what level of uncertainty do you think it is acceptable to take a decision on?
Higher than the estimated base survival rate of the disease, at least. So, if we were allowed to replay history, I'd like to test until we have achieved certainties higher than these:
Nobody was ever against making the vaccine available to older people ASAP. It's the vaccination of the <65yo population that all the fighting broke out over.
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@topspin said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Effectiveness against infection / stopping the spread was higher originally but seems to have dropped to basically zero now. And the immune reaction seems to wane faster than we expected.
This is an assumption not grounded in evidence. The vaccine acceptance studies didn't screen the participants regularly for infection. So we know exactly nothing on the effectiveness against infection overall.
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@LaoC said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Any other possibilities?
Limit use to places where it'll do the most good anyway? Like, say, old people?
Less pressure on the virus to start evading vaccines that way.
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@acrow said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@LaoC said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Any other possibilities?
Limit use to places where it'll do the most good anyway? Like, say, old people?
That's "a) go ahead and use the vaccine anyway". But how is limiting the population to vaccinate related to data on waning efficacy?
Less pressure on the virus to start evading vaccines that way.
And more opportunities for spontaneous mutations, cf. Omicron.
@acrow said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Of course that scenario includes vaccination.
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@acrow said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@topspin said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Effectiveness against infection / stopping the spread was higher originally but seems to have dropped to basically zero now. And the immune reaction seems to wane faster than we expected.
This is an assumption not grounded in evidence. The vaccine acceptance studies didn't screen the participants regularly for infection. So we know exactly nothing on the effectiveness against infection overall.
I’ve linked the studies that mentioned it before, at least twice. I won’t search it again.
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@LaoC said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@acrow said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@LaoC said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Any other possibilities?
Limit use to places where it'll do the most good anyway? Like, say, old people?
That's "a) go ahead and use the vaccine anyway". But how is limiting the population to vaccinate related to data on waning efficacy?
Because then you can actually time your vaccinations to the start of the flu season, when most of the infections and deaths happen?
Less pressure on the virus to start evading vaccines that way.
And more opportunities for spontaneous mutations, cf. Omicron.
You assume that the vaccines limit infection. For which there is no evidence.
@acrow said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
The older the population, the more severe the fatality, you mean? Yes, I think we can all agree on that. Hence I'd allow the old people to take anything they see fit, to stave off their more-likely death.
Of course that scenario includes vaccination.
And wehere, in your linked paper, does it state that this scenario includes vaccination?
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@topspin said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@acrow said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@topspin said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Effectiveness against infection / stopping the spread was higher originally but seems to have dropped to basically zero now. And the immune reaction seems to wane faster than we expected.
This is an assumption not grounded in evidence. The vaccine acceptance studies didn't screen the participants regularly for infection. So we know exactly nothing on the effectiveness against infection overall.
I’ve linked the studies that mentioned it before, at least twice. I won’t search it again.
I've seen many studies mention that they assume there to be such an effect. I've seen little hard evidence to back it up. In theory, it should exist, which is why it's assumed. That is, people spread less when they sneeze less.
Unfortunately, that seems to not have panned out as a negative correlation between infection rates and vaccination rates. (It seems to matter less than peoople's behavior patterns.) So making follow-up deductions leaning on it is fruitless.
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@acrow said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@LaoC said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@acrow said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@LaoC said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Any other possibilities?
Limit use to places where it'll do the most good anyway? Like, say, old people?
That's "a) go ahead and use the vaccine anyway". But how is limiting the population to vaccinate related to data on waning efficacy?
Because then you can actually time your vaccinations to the start of the flu season, when most of the infections and deaths happen?
I don't understand. If you have data on waning efficacy, you can limit vaccine use to old people and time it to the start of the flu season, which you cannot do if you don't have this data?
Less pressure on the virus to start evading vaccines that way.
And more opportunities for spontaneous mutations, cf. Omicron.
You assume that the vaccines limit infection. For which there is no evidence.
Besides, they'd only have to reduce transmission, as a mutation that doesn't get transmitted might as well not exist.
If you don't believe they reduce either, what do you think casues this pressure on the virus to start evading vaccines?Of course that scenario includes vaccination.
And wehere, in your linked paper, does it state that this scenario includes vaccination?
"All parameter values are based on current COVID-19 surveillance data
and scientific knowledge". Obviously "current COVID-19 surveillance data" is relative to a population with current levels of vaccination.
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@LaoC said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@acrow said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@LaoC said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@acrow said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@LaoC said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Any other possibilities?
Limit use to places where it'll do the most good anyway? Like, say, old people?
That's "a) go ahead and use the vaccine anyway". But how is limiting the population to vaccinate related to data on waning efficacy?
Because then you can actually time your vaccinations to the start of the flu season, when most of the infections and deaths happen?
I don't understand. If you have data on waning efficacy, you can limit vaccine use to old people and time it to the start of the flu season, which you cannot do if you don't have this data?
As it happened, governments started vaccinating middle-aged and younger people in the middle of the summer. VAERS data is still being processed, but the side-effects weren't exactly non-existent. For little actual benefit.
Less pressure on the virus to start evading vaccines that way.
And more opportunities for spontaneous mutations, cf. Omicron.
You assume that the vaccines limit infection. For which there is no evidence.
That infection rate figure is rather hopeful. It's not based on solid evidence. there's been no population screening. The hospitalization and death rate I'll buy, sure. But if that infection rate reduction were real, we'd be seeing large differences between nations based on vaccine coverage.
Besides, they'd only have to reduce transmission, as a mutation that doesn't get transmitted might as well not exist.
If you don't believe they reduce either, what do you think casues this pressure on the virus to start evading vaccines?Finally a good question. It's a double-edged sword:
- If the vaccine reduces infections enough to be relevant on population level, but does not enough to potentially eradicate the virus in short order, then the virus will mutate to evade it.
- If the vaccine doesn't reduce infections, then vaccinating those with little or no chance of bad outcomes from the virus makes no sense, as there are always some side effects even if we were jabbing plain saline.
So vaccinating whole populations is basically a recipe for making the vaccine less useful w.r.t saving lives.
Of course that scenario includes vaccination.
And wehere, in your linked paper, does it state that this scenario includes vaccination?
"All parameter values are based on current COVID-19 surveillance data
and scientific knowledge". Obviously "current COVID-19 surveillance data" is relative to a population with current levels of vaccination.Which at that point wasn't a very large part of the population. And the data comes with a delay. Unless specifically meantioned, I'm inclined to assume that the report sums up all death certificates to that date, including from before vaccination.
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@acrow said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
If the vaccine doesn't reduce infections, then vaccinating those with little or no chance of bad outcomes from the virus makes no sense, as there are always some side effects even if we were jabbing plain saline.
Your arguments hinge on you saying that covid basically poses no risk for people under 65, but the rare vaccine side effects are a huge deal. If you look at them side by side, that's not true.
You could say something like "for under 20 both are basically a No-Op", but that's not quite the same.
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@topspin said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@acrow said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
If the vaccine doesn't reduce infections, then vaccinating those with little or no chance of bad outcomes from the virus makes no sense, as there are always some side effects even if we were jabbing plain saline.
Your arguments hinge on you saying that covid basically poses no risk for people under 65, but the rare vaccine side effects are a huge deal. If you look at them side by side, that's not true.
Risk for younger people with no co-morbidities approaches statistical zero the younger you get. This was known rather early. My argument for the discussion on vaccine approvals is that it could have been approved for those at most risk, and for the rest we'd continue testing until we have some solid data.
Especialy the data that we now lack, and have to try to scrape up from other statistics afterwards.
You could say something like "for under 20 both are basically a No-Op", but that's not quite the same.
For under 20 the effects of both are lost in the statistical noise floor.
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@acrow said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@topspin said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@acrow said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
If the vaccine doesn't reduce infections, then vaccinating those with little or no chance of bad outcomes from the virus makes no sense, as there are always some side effects even if we were jabbing plain saline.
Your arguments hinge on you saying that covid basically poses no risk for people under 65, but the rare vaccine side effects are a huge deal. If you look at them side by side, that's not true.
Risk for younger people with no co-morbidities approaches statistical zero the younger you get. This was known rather early.
And risk for everyone except those specifically excluded for the vaccine "approaches statistical zero".
My argument for the discussion on vaccine approvals is that it could have been approved for those at most risk, and for the rest we'd continue testing until we have some solid data.
We had that data though. Side effect numbers low enough that you only notice them in the roll-out to millions only show up in the roll-out, how would you change that?
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@topspin said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
We had that data though. Side effect numbers low enough that you only notice them in the roll-out to millions only show up in the roll-out, how would you change that?
The trial not only didn't screen for COVID infection, it also didn't screen for changes is blood chemistry markers. So we only know of the cardiac side-effects due to cases serious enough to die of. Whereas the phenomena itself could have been caught by proper screening in the group that was tested on. It is assumed that side-effects are low. But because healthcare has been in disarray, we don't know that. The shortness of the study was not the only problem it had. it's just indicative of the quality standard.
Also, e.g. Pfizer's 94% efficiency number was based on 1 vs 18 cases of COVID-19 (the syndrome, not the virus), which is not statistically rigorous. And those 18 were from a group of 44,000 people, so baseline lethality in the test group wasn't much above, say, traffic statistics depending on the locale.
And, again, I'm not against offering the vaccine to anyone who wants to use it now. I'm only against forced vaccinations in an effort to create a "herd immunity".
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@topspin said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Risk for younger people with no co-morbidities approaches statistical zero the younger you get. This was known rather early.
And risk for everyone except those specifically excluded for the vaccine "approaches statistical zero".
It doesn't. Unless you think that 1/1000 for mild side effects and 1/2500 for serious ones, including death, is approaching zero.
That's from VAERS, statistics from some other systems look even worse.
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@MrL said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@topspin said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Risk for younger people with no co-morbidities approaches statistical zero the younger you get. This was known rather early.
And risk for everyone except those specifically excluded for the vaccine "approaches statistical zero".
It doesn't. Unless you think that 1/1000 for mild side effects and 1/2500 for serious ones, including death, is approaching zero.
That's from VAERS, statistics from some other systems look even worse.
I'm using the same "definition" as the one used in the quote.
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@topspin said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@MrL said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@topspin said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Risk for younger people with no co-morbidities approaches statistical zero the younger you get. This was known rather early.
And risk for everyone except those specifically excluded for the vaccine "approaches statistical zero".
It doesn't. Unless you think that 1/1000 for mild side effects and 1/2500 for serious ones, including death, is approaching zero.
That's from VAERS, statistics from some other systems look even worse.
I'm using the same "definition" as the one used in the quote.
I have no doubt you think that.
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@acrow said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Also, e.g. Pfizer's 94% efficiency number was based on 1 vs 18 cases of COVID-19 (the syndrome, not the virus), which is not statistically rigorous.
What is the statistically rigorous number then?
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@LaoC said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@LaoC said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@Gąska said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@dkf the problem with hypothetical avoidable deaths is that there are infinitely many of them,
With a finite number of people alive?
and you cannot even estimate them most of the time. For example, if we didn't fast-track the vaccines, less people would be skeptical of them - and by today we'd end up with many more vaccinated.
No. By today we'd have precisely zero vaccinated outsides clinical trials, because the approval would be expected around 2025.
Most of the time savings in the fast-track process (aside from simply treating it as prio 1 in the bureaucracy of course) was from interleaving the trial phases, which is usually not done because you don't want to expose a large number of volunteers to something you haven't checked is safe. That interleaving has zero influence on the validity of the results.
Except we'd could have had more data on the medium term effects, i.e., the waning efficacy.
What could possibly have been the consequence of having this data?
a) go ahead and use the vaccine anyway
b) decide it's no good, wait without any vaccinations until we have developed something better and let it go through the multi-year approval process againAny other possibilities?
Edit:
by Also there could have been more focus on therapeutics. Aside from a governor or two here, it's been all about the vaccines. I get the impression that they believed that focusing on anything but the vaccines would make people care less about them. Instead they went crazy about the vaccines and freaked people out even more.
There's been a lot of noble lying on public health. If nothing else these people could have kept some credibility for the future.
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@topspin said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@acrow said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Also, e.g. Pfizer's 94% efficiency number was based on 1 vs 18 cases of COVID-19 (the syndrome, not the virus), which is not statistically rigorous.
What is the statistically rigorous number then?
If we're expecting two meaningful digits in the results, then I want to see at least two digits in both test groups.
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@topspin said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@MrL said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@topspin said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Risk for younger people with no co-morbidities approaches statistical zero the younger you get. This was known rather early.
And risk for everyone except those specifically excluded for the vaccine "approaches statistical zero".
It doesn't. Unless you think that 1/1000 for mild side effects and 1/2500 for serious ones, including death, is approaching zero.
That's from VAERS, statistics from some other systems look even worse.
I'm using the same "definition" as the one used in the quote.
So you're claiming that side-effects from the vaccine get less frequent the younger the recipient? Fascinating. I'd like to see your data for this.
