Generic Virus Thread

[darrenm]

37 minutes ago, bickster said:

more middle aged people are getting the virus, their bodies can't handle covid without hospitalisation, but can handle it without icu

I think there might be a high prevalence of people going to hospital where they might not need it simply because of the anxiety of feeling unable to breathe or get enough oxygen. These people may not actually be that unwell but when you have pneumonia it's a horrible feeling. I suspect that the ratio of 'extremely unwell people at risk of dying' to 'unwell but didn't really need to be in hospital' is greater now.

[StefanAVFC]

This can't keep going, we can't be locked down for nearly a year. I was incredibly pro lockdown, every measure possible at the start, but if we never get a handle on it, or the vaccine isn't as effective as we thought, what should we go? Keep locking down? 1 year? 2 years?

[darrenm]

32 minutes ago, StefanAVFC said:

This can't keep going, we can't be locked down for nearly a year. I was incredibly pro lockdown, every measure possible at the start, but if we never get a handle on it, or the vaccine isn't as effective as we thought, what should we go? Keep locking down? 1 year? 2 years?

Everything rests on the vaccines.

[Genie]

3 minutes ago, darrenm said:

Everything rests on the vaccines.

Nobody dares suggest that they might not work.

[sidcow]

1 minute ago, Genie said:

Nobody dares suggest that they might not work.

Well no, because they've been proven by mass testing that they do work, and do work very well. 

Why would people then suggest they might not work? (other than the usual antivax nutters who have poisoned plenty of people's minds) 

[Genie]

6 minutes ago, sidcow said:

Well no, because they've been proven by mass testing that they do work, and do work very well. 

Why would people then suggest they might not work? (other than the usual antivax nutters who have poisoned plenty of people's minds) 

Just if with millions of people taking them rather than 10-20k they might not prove to be quite as effective. It’s unlikely but possible that a lot of people could still get the virus.

[bickster]

6 minutes ago, Genie said:

Just if with millions of people taking them rather than 10-20k they might not prove to be quite as effective. It’s unlikely but possible that a lot of people could still get the virus.

There is absolutely no logic in this. The more widespread the vaccine, the more effective they are because there's very few places for the virus to spread to

[sidcow]

1 minute ago, Genie said:

Just if with millions of people taking them rather than 10-20k they might not prove to be quite as effective. It’s unlikely but possible that a lot of people could still get the virus.

It's highly unlikely that a single vaccine will change from being highly effective to not effective when the sample size is massively extended.  It will probably change by fractions but it only needs to be 50% + to be effective.  We've currently got 2 at 90%+ and one at 62%.  There is zero chance that all. 3 are going to suddenly be ineffective. 

Also the Oxford Vaccine is apparently going to be approved in the next few days.  The chief exec said their final effectiveness figures in the final data pack they released to MHRA last week were actually looking more effective than the provisional data they released a couple of weeks ago. As the Oxford vaccine is based on the tried and tested flu vaccine technology there is again no reason to assume it will suddenly lose effectiveness when expanded. 

[darrenm]

4 minutes ago, sidcow said:

Well no, because they've been proven by mass testing that they do work, and do work very well. 

Why would people then suggest they might not work? (other than the usual antivax nutters who have poisoned plenty of people's minds) 

I think it's that they work now, and not just one type; multiple, diverging types, but they may not for very long.

Along with climate change and antibiotic resistance, a 'perfect virus' was always forecast to hit us hard. And along with climate change and antibiotic resistance, the capitalist world doesn't leave much provision for humanity to get its act together without a profit motive.

The perfect virus was always deadly enough to kill large numbers of people but not so deadly that it would kill them before they could transmit it to someone else. COVID-19 is the best one at that for a long time.

So we've taken 9 months with the benefit of a fair bit of hindsight to get a few variants of a weapon. But what happens if COVID-19 changes sufficiently so that all of the types of vaccine are ineffective? It's unlikely but possible. What happens if COVID-21 comes along, has a longer incubation period but is more effective at killing? Do we have to wait another 9 months or do we shorten testing schedules potentially causing unforeseen issues?

The best weapon we have against viruses is simply to stay the **** away from each other. But we've built our world in such a way that it's not possible to do this for longer periods of time. We could, if we wanted, eradicate COVID-19 and quite a few others simply by having a harsh global lockdown. We won't of course because the rules dictate that money has to be continued to be made and there will never be enough of an incentive to change these rules until the situation gets so dire that it's forced upon us. I worry about how dire that situation will have to be.

[Genie]

I still remain that it is unlikely to happen. But it is possible that when scaled up the effectiveness of one of the vaccines could be much less than was achieved in the trials. If this was the vaccine that was given to the majority of the population it may be a problem. 

[sidcow]

4 minutes ago, darrenm said:

I think it's that they work now, and not just one type; multiple, diverging types, but they may not for very long.

Along with climate change and antibiotic resistance, a 'perfect virus' was always forecast to hit us hard. And along with climate change and antibiotic resistance, the capitalist world doesn't leave much provision for humanity to get its act together without a profit motive.

The perfect virus was always deadly enough to kill large numbers of people but not so deadly that it would kill them before they could transmit it to someone else. COVID-19 is the best one at that for a long time.

So we've taken 9 months with the benefit of a fair bit of hindsight to get a few variants of a weapon. But what happens if COVID-19 changes sufficiently so that all of the types of vaccine are ineffective? It's unlikely but possible. What happens if COVID-21 comes along, has a longer incubation period but is more effective at killing? Do we have to wait another 9 months or do we shorten testing schedules potentially causing unforeseen issues?

The best weapon we have against viruses is simply to stay the **** away from each other. But we've built our world in such a way that it's not possible to do this for longer periods of time. We could, if we wanted, eradicate COVID-19 and quite a few others simply by having a harsh global lockdown. We won't of course because the rules dictate that money has to be continued to be made and there will never be enough of an incentive to change these rules until the situation gets so dire that it's forced upon us. I worry about how dire that situation will have to be.

Pretty much every manufacturer has said it's quick and easy to change the vaccine for new mutations, and that doesn't need redevelopment  or re submitting. All virus's mutate, you just change the formula and add the new variant into it. 

[darrenm]

1 minute ago, sidcow said:

Pretty much every manufacturer has said it's quick and easy to change the vaccine for new mutations, and that doesn't need redevelopment  or re submitting. All virus's mutate, you just change the formula and add the new variant into it. 

Yeah sure, I'm not saying this one will mutate so that the vaccine(s) don't work. It's like flu, it mutates all the time and the scientists just keep swapping the variant of deactivated virus out. I'm more thinking about the next one. I think the Oxford vaccine would work perfectly well for SARS/MERS with the correct virus in there but would it need to be retested from scratch? 

[bickster]

46 minutes ago, Genie said:

But it is possible that when scaled up the effectiveness of one of the vaccines could be much less than was achieved in the trials.

What is your basis for this thought?

[sidcow]

43 minutes ago, darrenm said:

Yeah sure, I'm not saying this one will mutate so that the vaccine(s) don't work. It's like flu, it mutates all the time and the scientists just keep swapping the variant of deactivated virus out. I'm more thinking about the next one. I think the Oxford vaccine would work perfectly well for SARS/MERS with the correct virus in there but would it need to be retested from scratch? 

If you do some Google searches on universal vaccines you will find a few reports about universal vaccines, they think they are very close to one for flu anyway. 

I think this will have scared many governments around the world and you will see a lot more research into Vaccines.  These ones were already developed in record times.  

The UK is about to open its first vaccine R & D facility. I suspect we will be better placed to develop vaccines quicker in future pandemics.  I think I saw that especially these new RNA vaccines like the Pfizer ones, once the concept is proven (as it now seems to be) can be very quickly developed. 

[Genie]

35 minutes ago, bickster said:

What is your basis for this thought?

Just a small possibility. Because you get heads 4 times out of 5 coin flips it doesn’t mean you’ll always get heads 80% of the time if you do it a million times.

With effective results of about 62% on the trial population it might end up being lower (or higher) when the sample size is dramatically increased.

The UK could give 50m people the Oxford vaccine and remove all social distancing restrictions and still get quite a few people getting the virus. Over time you’d expect it to phase out. 

It’s a possible scenario, albeit unlikely.

[bickster]

10 minutes ago, Genie said:

Just a small possibility. Because you get heads 4 times out of 5 coin flips it doesn’t mean you’ll always get heads 80% of the time if you do it a million times.

With effective results of about 62% on the trial population it might end up being lower (or higher) when the sample size is dramatically increased.

The UK could give 50m people the Oxford vaccine and remove all social distancing restrictions and still get quite a few people getting the virus. Over time you’d expect it to phase out. 

It’s a possible scenario, albeit unlikely.

This is nonsense, the efficacy of a vaccine is not comparable to tossing a coin. You can't compare a pseudo random event over 5 cycles to the testing of a vaccine (not pseudo random) using tens of thousands of subjects

The reasons for "failure" in the vaccine tests will not be random chance

[Genie]

15 minutes ago, bickster said:

This is nonsense, the efficacy of a vaccine is not comparable to tossing a coin. You can't compare a pseudo random event over 5 cycles to the testing of a vaccine (not pseudo random) using tens of thousands of subjects

The reasons for "failure" in the vaccine tests will not be random chance

The point being they could have been fortunate (or unfortunate) in the population used for the trial and the conditions (lockdown, social distancing etc) may also alter the effectiveness.

For the Oxford vaccine there’s several effectiveness figures 59%, 62%, 70%, 90%. Even at the bottom end it should be enough but it is not impossible that the virus could still spread for some time if half as many people got the virus who were vaccinated versus not having it. It’s still a lot of people catching and spreading it.

Edited December 27, 2020 by Genie

[sidcow]

31 minutes ago, Genie said:

The point being they could have been fortunate (or unfortunate) in the population used for the trial and the conditions (lockdown, social distancing etc) may also alter the effectiveness.

For the Oxford vaccine there’s several effectiveness figures 59%, 62%, 70%, 90%. Even at the bottom end it should be enough but it is not impossible that the virus could still spread for some time if half as many people got the virus who were vaccinated versus not having it. It’s still a lot of people catching and spreading it.

Even at 50% I am half as likely to catch it from someone and then half as likely to pass it on to someone. 

The transmission rate will plummet. 

You're really worrying unnecessarily about this. 

[Genie]

9 minutes ago, sidcow said:

Even at 50% I am half as likely to catch it from someone and then half as likely to pass it on to someone. 

The transmission rate will plummet. 

You're really worrying unnecessarily about this. 

I do agree, it’s probably a needless concern... but if the entire population was vaccinated with a drug which caused half as many people to catch the virus versus if they hadn’t had anything it’s still a lot of transmissions. With a pretty severe restriction on our current lives we’re getting around 35,000 to 40,000 new infections a day.

If it was back to business, shops, concerts, sports, swinging, office working, bars, nightclubs, etc the number would sky rocket... would a 50% reduction be enough for it to phase out?

[sidcow]

3 minutes ago, Genie said:

I do agree, it’s probably a needless concern... but if the entire population was vaccinated with a drug which caused half as many people to catch the virus versus if they hadn’t had anything it’s still a lot of transmissions. With a pretty severe restriction on our current lives we’re getting around 35,000 to 40,000 new infections a day.

If it was back to business, shops, concerts, sports, swinging, office working, bars, nightclubs, etc the number would sky rocket... would a 50% reduction be enough for it to phase out?

All you need to do is to get the R number below 1.  Even now it's only just 1.1 to 1.3 they think.  Below 1 and it's shrinking.  

When you get to 60% unlikely to catch it and 60% less likely to find someone who can catch it, that's going to lead to a rapid reduction. 

60% is the current worse case for Oxford (as I said earlier the Pfizer bod has hinted their latest data is higher than that)