Chinghis

What makes me wonder about this vaccine is that they have never found a vaccine for any of the coronaviruses. OK, so for sars-cov-1 they may have been successful eventually, but they pretty much quit working on it when it subsided. I'm gonna have to look and see what allowed them to make this breakthrough. Remember that line in original Star Trek - they still don't have a cure for the common cold (a coronavirus) in the 23rd century.

Next question is, how lucky do you feel? 90% is pretty good, right? But I've played a lot of board games, and when you don't want to roll a certain percentage, you usually do. I have a feeling that if/when I get vaccinated and start going to crowded areas, I'm still going to wear a face mask. Ten percent is not an insignificant percentage chance. I also heard something to the effect that this vaccine apparently "prevents symptomatic cases" 90% of the time. So, in that case, people will still be carrying it and spreading it, just not getting sick, correct?

I dunno, I refuse to get my hopes up. I'm pretty much reconciled to the idea of wearing a mask for the rest of my life.

Hondo Gravel

I believe we can slow viruses and diseases down. But nature is cruel and there will always be something nasty and insidious trying to do us all in. We all have an expiration date .....

livedarklions

True, but the real issue with this virus is that the surge of infections can be so big that it overwhelms the entire medical system so that the fatality rates of all sorts of nasty things skyrocket.

The infection is a minor health event for the large majority of people who contract it, this could end with herd immunity through vaccination and/or treatment modalities that prevent it from being life threatening.

I agree we will continue to be mortals, I just want to be a mortal who doesn't have to consider eating at a restaurant a round of Russian roulette.

Hondo Gravel

Texas has a major spike especially in El Paso. Time to take this serious again after being distracted by the election. Long bike ride this afternoon to clear my mind will be good medicine.

Chinghis

OK, in answer to my own question ... It is a new technology that's being used in this virus, at least on humans:
(NYTimes, 11/9/20, if you can get there.)

So, that at least makes me feel better about how they've been able to develop this so quickly, when we've tried things for years with no results.

skookum

Why do people keep saying there has never been a vaccine against a coronavirus? There are vaccines against animal coronaviruses. A vaccine was developed against SARS, but the disease was suppressed and disappeared before the vaccine was fully tested. I don't know if it was tested in humans, I read some accounts that say yes it was tested for safety in China, others say it was only tested in animals. I can't be bothered to track it down further.
I don't know if anybody has ever tried to develop a vaccine against any of the corona viruses that cause the common cold. I suspect not as it wouldn't be worth the enormous cost.

As far as I understand this vaccine, it aims to develop antibodies against the spike protein of the coronavirus. Apparently all of the vaccines in development are targeting the spike protein, the difference is they are using different methods to achieve this. So the expectation is that most of them will probably work to some extent, as they are all targetting the same thing.

CycleryNorth81

Early Data Show Moderna’s Coronavirus Vaccine Is 94.5% Effective

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/16/h...a-vaccine.html

Seattle Forrest

I don't think anybody has been trying to make a vaccine for the common cold for years.

skookum

Here is an article on a potential common cold vaccine, from 2017.
https://www.sciencealert.com/a-scien...n-cold-vaccinehttps://www.verywellhealth.com/why-t...on-cold-770451

ropetwitch

I'm hoping that it will be a nationwide success without reporting any side-effetcs. Please let me be right.

skookum

An interesting article on the bigger picture of vaccine and other drug development and incentives for Big Pharma. Well worth reading.It had this to say about the SARS vaccine:Unherd

CycleryNorth81

Pfizer will seek FDA approval for COVID-19 vaccine in DAYS as final trial analysis shows it is 95% effective... days after Moderna's breakthrough

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...orization.html

79pmooney

My concern (prediction?) about the Pfizer vaccine is the cold storage and handling issue. Can we both get massive numbers of doses out over the entire country and keep it all below -112F. That is a lot to ask. I see the Moderna vaccine as a far more viable solution. 4F colder than my freezer sounds real world doable.

That said, we will need both in huge quantities. I just see a fair number of vaccinated people getting sick because the Pfizer vaccine saw too high a temperature. It is a given that many of those vaccinated are going to behave like they are immune and will scream when they get sick (or others will scream for them). This isn't going to be a cakewalk. We will get to see humanity at its worst.

CycleryNorth81

BREAKING NEWS: Pfizer will file for emergency FDA approval of its 95% effective vaccine TOMORROW - but Dr. Fauci warns Americans to keep wearing masks and says: 'If the cavalry is on the way, you don't stop shooting'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/a...n-vaccine.html

skookum

I read somewhere that emergency approval will take at least three weeks.

Clyde1820

Again, false.

Didn't make up a thing. Didn't propose a thing. Didn't claim anything was happening, or that any claim out there was what I was passing along.

Simply questioned how little is known about the survivability of this thing out in the wild. To my knowledge, there has been no clear indication of how far far enough away is. To the point we're getting edicts on not being outside at all, not being allowed by our governments to exercise, etc. Point being, they've no clue; they're grasping at straws, hoping it'll be enough. Based on not knowing.

As for survivability, just the other day there was a news short on the radio about viruses and bacteria that are found in the atmosphere, far above cities, in locales where such stuff clearly had traveled great distances. Hitching a ride with the water vapor/droplets in the atmosphere, on other particles, or seemingly unattached to anything else. No knowing how protected the covid thing might be, in such an environment, when other viruses and bacteria have been found to survive up there after floating along for however long.

Again, point being, that it is unclear just how survivable little critters such as covid can be, or how far they might be capable of going before expiring. It's far to novel to know.

I simply wondered out loud about how long something could survive in the wild, blown about. (Referenced the particles from Asia to the Americas as an example of how stuff can flow with the winds; not as a claim this could do the same thing for such distances.)

Surmising <> claiming.
Surmising = wondering, when so little is actually known for a fact about this thing.

Mischaracterizing it doesn't make it something it wasn't.

Unless wondering out loud is to be verboten and taboo on the forum. If you want that, ask management.

livedarklions

Sorry, but that's just stupid. Enough is known about this virus to say to an absolute certainty clouds of COVID aren't raining down from the sky.
​​​​
If you engage in stupid speculation in public, expect to have it criticized. That also is not verboten. If you want that to be forbidden, ask the management.

FBOATSB 

Think out loud all you want, follow forum guidelines. I suspect there is vastly more known by the scientific/medical community working around the clock fighting this pandemic than your short news clips might reveal, but you have to trust them. I truly wish you well.

CycleryNorth81

Oxford and AstraZeneca announce their vaccine is up to 90% effective and can be stored in a normal fridge - in boost for the government which has ordered 100million doses

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...effective.html

CliffordK

Is there any information about the long-term antibody titers of the various vaccines? I think most of them have been in testing for 3 or 4 months, and should be long enough to observe the changes in the titers over time.

skookum

This one is interesting in that they had two dosing regimes and the lower dose regime had greater efficacy.

62% would have seemed good two weeks ago, but now we are expecting 90% efficacy.

Derek Lowe speculates on the discrepancy

So still good news, but like so many things in life, more data makes things more confusing.


In the Pipeline

skookum

More comment on the AstraZeneca vax:Stat news

CycleryNorth81

Dosing ERROR by researchers in the AstraZeneca-Oxford University vaccine trial boosted its success rate to 90%, firm’s vice-president reveals

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...cess-rate.html

CycleryNorth81

Moderna's chief medical officer says that vaccine trial results only show that they prevent people from getting severely sick — not necessarily that recipients won't still be able to transmit the virus

https://www.businessinsider.com/mode...erview-2020-11

Clyde1820

Didn't say "clouds" of anything were raining down from the sky.

Just pointed out the simple fact that live viruses and bacteria have indeed been found in the air column great distances beyond apparent sources. And that bioaerosols have contained infectious agents for hours (ie, with measles) in air.

As for the stupidity or intelligence of the questions that exist, it's still quite open as to how long this specific thing lasts, how far it can travel, what the viral load needs to be in order to risk transmission. Stupidly or intelligently, some of the top scientists in the world are examining exactly these questions.

Last month (Aug. 26-27, 2020), for example, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine held a workshop to discuss much of the latest research and results known to-date on SARS-CoV-2. They've published the proceedings, along with a Proceedings in Brief for general release: click.

In short, according to them: To-date, at least as of the end of October of this year, it's still unknown how long this thing can survive in bioaerosols, and still unknown how far it can travel while still remaining viable and infectious. (Though, clearly, distance and a number of other variables can greatly impact it.)

All I suggested was exactly that. That it's simply unknown, even with as much study as SARS-CoV-2 has gotten in the past year.

One can believe it's all stupidity to continue such questions in a situation where what's known is still open, not fully understood (by their own admission), and being evaluated. The scientists in the field are continuing to explore and question, for all of those reasons, as evidenced above, for whatever that's worth. Which people can accept or disregard.