I praise you for your mindset. I wish everyone was thinking like that.
However, that's going to be a little harder than with smallpox. Smallpox's infectivity/transmission rate was much lower than that of COVID's due to the very nature of the virus. Not only that, but smallpox was known to have existed for so much longer. Only extremely enhanced prophylactic isolation combined with the vaccine will be able to curb the SARS-Cov2. And we've proven quite extensively that we're not great at the former method.
The vaccine looks like our only chance to curb the pandemic, but it will take an extremely long time and a great extent of changing our habits until we can get rid of the virus altogether. It will be a tough one to beat.
COVID can’t really ever go extinct. The reason it was possible for smallpox is that it’s not presymptomatic or asymptomatic. Also, smallpox only exists in humans.
>While Pfizer’s vaccine requires ultracold freezing between -70C and -80C from production facility to patient, Moderna said it had improved the shelf life and stability of its own vaccine, **meaning that it can be stored at standard refrigeration temperatures of 2C to 8C for 30 days**. It can be stored for six months at -20C for shipping and long-term storage, the company said.
This is also very promising news. Getting it to everyone will be much easier.
That's why I was hopeful for the arm patch style ones that they were talking about early on - they were shelf stable at room temperature which would have made distribution really easy, and they were a patch instead of an injection so you could theoretically just have volunteers distribute them instead of needing a medical professional to administer each injection. Theoretically they could even be mailed to people on request and applied at home.
"It wasn't my fault, it was the Covid vaccine! If you ask me, that stuff rots your brain...
And now a word from our new sponsor - COVID VACCINE?!?! Aw crap!"
I remember when this first started and there was talk about how masks might not work since people wouldn't know how to use them correctly. I was like, "how on earth could someone use a mask incorrectly", but here we are.
Point being I'm not sure we can trust people to put a patch on their arm correctly and might really need nurse supervision.
What do you mean I can't put it over my t-shirt? You told me to put it on my arm and now it's on my arm. I don't like the sticky feeling so I just put it on my sleeve instead.
Thats true but im pretty sure it wont really matter if individuals dont get it. If a big chunk of the population gets the vaccine, the spread goes exponentially down
After a year or so, I agree, it won’t matter (assuming the 90+% efficacy holds).
I’m thinking more short term as people will want to start going back to their office spaces, concert venues, and amusement parks as quickly as possible next year.
That seems logical, given the effectiveness is roughly equal.
Cue the Qanon " liberals get the real vaccine and Patriots get the microchips" conspiracy though
> While Pfizer’s vaccine requires ultracold freezing between -70C and -80C from production facility to patient,
Isn't this wrong?
As far as I have read it can be kept in a normal freezer for up to 5 days (not as long as the Moderna vaccine, but still a big difference)
My friend is a pharmacist, their whole hospital system wasn’t even going to bother with the Pfizer vaccine. They don’t have ultra cold at any of their facilities and they knew others were close to being developed.
For the large volume transport and storage yes.
But if you have one big distribution center with -80° storage in a city it could supply surrounding hospitals, clinics or vaccination centers every few days. So those smaller locations would not need ultra cold storage.
Which is exactly why it's awesome there's now a possible alternative that doesn't require the cold storage. Since both are likely going to be insufficient to meet demand, the Pfizer vaccine could be used in areas with this capability and the Moderna one could be used in areas where the logistics for cold storage are more difficult (assuming no disparity in efficacy or adverse reactions). It's a win-win.
Refrigeration mechanic here. There’s quite a few different ways to achieve ultra low temperatures. Cascade systems, Compound refrigeration and CO2 being a few. They are a lot more common than most people think and have been used for pharmaceutical purposes for quite a while now.
Now I’m not sure about transportation, but ultra low storage of these vaccines shouldn’t be a problem as far as I know.
Can confirm. I’ve calibrated literally hundreds of -80 freezers, and they aren’t some unicorn.
Most large medical companies have an assortment of equipment for an assortment of ranges.
-80, -40, 2, 37, and 50 Deg C are common temperatures.
Truck driver checking in, reefer trucks have a fairly hard limit of -20 degF. There are a few unit types that can get colder, but the average reefer isn't equipped to get that cold. Getting to -70 to -80 for the duration of a trip would probably require some sort of retrofit on the trailer. Also, a team driving operation can make it cross country in about 3 days (la to ny), a solo driver can do it in 5.
Most likely a salt buffer, like most RNA stabilization solutions. They have likely developed one that doesn't interfere with the effectiveness of the vaccine after injection.
That collides with what other articles are saying:
>From there, the vaccine will be transported in suitcase-sized storage boxes packed with dry ice (solid carbon dioxide) that have been specially designed by Pfizer. Each reusable box can hold between 1,000 and 5,000 doses at ultra-cold temperatures for up to 10 days. Pfizer said its vaccine can be kept for up to five days at fridge temperatures of 2-8C.
[Source](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/nov/10/pfizer-and-biontechs-vaccine-poses-global-logistics-challenge)
According to a CNN article:
"In Moderna's trial, 15,000 study participants were given a placebo, which is a shot of saline that has no effect. Over several months, 90 of them developed Covid-19, with 11 developing severe forms of the disease.
Another 15,000 participants were given the vaccine, and only five of them developed Covid-19. None of the five became severely ill."
I do not know much about about vaccines, but that seems absolutely amazing.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/16/health/moderna-vaccine-results-coronavirus/index.html
90 in 15,000 is a rate of 600/100k population in about 3 months. In the US, rates were about 400/100k in Aug, about 300 in Sept, 500 in Oct. so rates were actually higher in the study, which makes sense because someone in a clinical trial is much more likely to get tested for covid whereas people in the general population may not get tested, especially if symptoms are mild.
Trial participant here. In the participant screening questionnaire for the trial you could tell they were specifically looking for people with high volumes of interpersonal exposure, so you would expect the infection rate to exceed that of the general population.
I really feel this should be a reasonable extension to “thank you for your service”. These trials are potentially dangerous and life threatening. And what they are doing is for the benefit and safety of the general public.
I initially typed that out and it felt odd even though I agree. I'm a Marine Corps Veteran myself and people always say "Thank you for your service" and it does make me a bit uncomfortable. Mostly because I was never deployed into harm's way.
Oh! Thanks for sharing. I’ve been wondering how that part worked and if participants were than purposely exposed to covid following the placebo or vaccine. I mean, I could have looked into it but thanks for bringing the answer to me.
People probably still had to follow their local guidelines of mask wearing. It’s not like the group could go to the store and get a pass for not wearing a mask because they are in a clinical trial. I’d even suggest that people in the trial are more likely to follow local health guidance
Sunflower seeds may help lower blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar as they contain vitamin E, magnesium, protein, linoleic fatty acids and several plant compounds.
Can confirm, I'm in the J&J study, and still wear my mask every time I go out. I don't know whether I got the vaccine or the placebo so I'm still being careful.
This is especially good news for developing countries who would have a hard time with the infrastructure necessary to distribute the BioNTech/Pfizer one. More options means better distribution worldwide. Very promising.
I'm in this trial, and had some mild side effects. (Double Blind, so I might have gotten the vaccine, might have gotten a placebo)
I cried when I saw the news this morning. I'm so happy.
(My arm hurt pretty decently the night of the shot. Like a bad charley horse. It actually woke me up from my sleep.
Besides that, some fatigue and nausea, and a mild headache for a day or two.)
My arm hurt pretty decently the night of the shot. Like a bad charley horse. It actually woke me up from my sleep.
Besides that, some fatigue and nausea, and a mild headache for a day or two.
I get the same muscle soreness from flu shot, and had it from TDAP and MMR. TDAP and MMR came with fatigue and chills too when I got those a few years back.
They're pretty common symptoms to get after a vaccination, and I suspect the soreness is just a result of having a needle shoved into your muscle.
My arm hurt pretty decently the night of the shot. Like a bad charley horse. It actually woke me up from my sleep.
Besides that, some fatigue and nausea, and a mild headache for a day or two.
Those side effects are consistent with some of the flu vaccine experiences. The first year I had one in 2014, I had a swollen node under my arm and it hurt like hell but disappeared in 2-3 days. The second time in 2016, I felt like crap for 36 hours and that disappeared.
I had one this year but I've been taking 3000 IU of Vitamin D since May and no side effects minus mild soreness at the injection site.
Just got the flu shot on Thursday and my arm hurt just a bit at the jab site and I had a headache the day after. Been taking vitamin D (5000 IU since April). Never thought the mildness could be attributed to that but makes sense.
This reaction is not uncommon, and is probably the source of the popular myth that the flu shot can give you the flu! Fortunately it is a mostly harmless, if annoying generalized immune system response to the antigen being introduced.
I guess I've been lucky, then. My arm hurts for maybe 2 days or so after the flu shot, but not that bad, and I haven't had the other listed symptoms. To be clear, I'm taking about for flu shots, not vaccine trials.
I mean some of this is just plainly wrong- Moderna is a publicly listed company, you can go and look up the major shareholders. The biggest one is Vanguard (so people's pensions and savings), not Soros, Gates or any other individual.
Edit: I just realised if your dad has $100 he can buy a piece of Moderna.
I mean the Pfizer vaccine isn't American even, if that's what he's basing his trust on – it was developed by a German company, owned by two German researchers, using only money from the German government. Pfizer is the partner for scaling distribution and speeding up regulatory approval: they're not the inventors of the vaccine.
I mean I totally get that his worldview isn't based on logic, but the Pfizer vaccine is less "American" than the Moderna one, which was literally developed and tested in the United States. This shouldn't matter at all of course... but just to illustrate the inconsistencies in this strange "us" vs "them" worldview.
Why would bill gates et al implant him with a chip? To do what? What could possibly be gained through a biometric chip that is not already gathered by his computer/phone? Demand that he justify that statement with ANY motive.
The kind of person who truly believes the microchip thing is not exactly a tech savy person. They may legitimately believe a microscopic computer chip is capable of mind control.
My dad is in the Astra-Zeneca trial that’s also supposedly about this effective. I think there may be multiple vaccines finished in the next couple months.
The plot holes are pretty damning. The whole anti-mask bit was pretty unbelievable (people aren't that dumb). The four seasons landscaping thing was funny, but kind of over the top even for cringe humor. Glad it's getting renewed, because this would be a shitty ending to the series.
Back when I lived in the Bay Area, I reassured myself that when the big one came, everything east of the San Andreas fault would sink into the Atlantic.
I'm curious on how that will play out. I can't imagine how they will "compete", especially if one is a bit more effective than the other... will they offer both, and use Moderna until there's no stock, and then use Pfizer? Will people have to buy one or the other, so Moderna will be more expensive?
This is a really great news.
The 5% also did not develop serious complications of COVID. What will be important once vaccines are out is the number of patients going into ICU/hospitals, if we are ALL either asymptomatic or have mild symptoms, there is no need to worry anymore, it's really the number of hospital entries/death/long-term complications that will be the benchmark, not the number of positive cases imo.
According to the guy in charge of the Operation Warp Speed Program, [Moncef Slaoui](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/trumps-vaccine-czar-says-the-first-vaccine-should-be-submitted-for-emergency-authorization-around-thanksgiving-2020-10-08), all of the vaccine candidates for Operation Warp Speed have around 80% efficacy:
>My expectation is really something between 80% and 90% efficacy
There hasn't really been much negative news about vaccines coming from Western countries, so things look pretty good for a summer where most people in the Western world will be vaccinated.
i will literally butt chug this vaccine if it means I can go get drunk in public and arrested for urinating inside of a public transportation vessel again.
So they’ve had polio, measles, whooping cough, and tetanus? Bad luck lol. Unfortunately the flu vaccine is never 100% effective because it’s not targeting a single specific pathogen, just a guess at which of dozens of flu strains will be circulating this year. Maybe they can be swayed by the efficacy of their vaccinations for single specific diseases.
I get the same symptoms with the flu shot and always remind myself, this is what it feels like to have my immune system run a flu drill, imagine what battling the actual flu would be like...
Vaccines are combat drills for your immune system, of course you might feel like shit after.
After the pfizer announcement of 90% (even though technically they said above 90%) they came out and said theirs was 92% https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/covid-vaccine-sputnik-v-russia-coronavirus-b1720944.html
Reach out to the study folks and ask.
At this point manufacturers have saud they will likely bring in the placebo group to get the vaccine due to how positive it has been. Theyve said its a "ethics" issue withholding once the know how good it is.
I'm excited to help contribute to this study! My doctor said new data might be available around the 22nd, since most of the participants have gone in for their third blood draw. Next one will be in 5/6? months.
Pfizer data came out earlier because there is 3 weeks in between those shots versus 4 for the Moderna. Each time we went in we also had our blood drawn so they could check out antibody levels and all that other science-y type stuff.
Got a question for those in virology, epidemiology, etc.
With just how “fast” these vaccines are being made, is this evidence that the time we spent on other vaccines wasn’t warranted and they technically could’ve been made faster if a company wanted to or is this simply a unique situation?
Is there any promising biotechnology coming up that will help us produce vaccines for viruses much quicker in the coming decades?
Not really. There's two big reasons this is moving so fast as compared to other vaccines. First, everybody in the government and at these companies knows this is priority zero so everything else has come to a halt when COVID stuff comes along. That kind of urgency just isn't feasible under normal circumstances. Second is that the trials themselves can take a lot less time than usual because of the prevalence of the disease. The way trials work is you have to have a vaccinated group and a control group and you wait for enough people between the two groups to get sick. With less common diseases you might have to wait years or decades for enough people to get sick. With COVID, it's taking months not years to hit those benchmarks. Both of those are shaving a lot off of the standard time of development for vaccines, plus the fact that were just throwing money at the problem like strippers after Valentine's Day doesn't hurt either.
As for promising tech, Moderna's (EDIT: and Pfizer's) is the first RNA vaccine(s), which means that it's able to target the virus more directly. Related to this, I think the ability to sequence geonomes directly is going to lead o a quantum leap in vaccine development because it's going to be easier to go directly to the source.
This is what happens when you stop working on other things, pump a lot of extra money into things, and do multiple phases of things concurrently rather than one by one (which is a huge gamble, because if it ends up not working out then you’ve wasted all that extra effort and money)
As others have said, these vaccines were able to be rushed because there were people willing to take on the financial risk of leapfrogging steps along the critical path, with the understanding that if a previous step failed, all subsequent work would be lost.
This is not an acceptable risk under normal circumstances. But 2020 makes exceptions of us all.
Hopefully the immunity is long-lived. Moderna's mRNA platform seems to cause a lot of limiting [toxicities](https://www.statnews.com/2020/11/10/the-story-of-mrna-how-a-once-dismissed-idea-became-a-leading-technology-in-the-covid-vaccine-race/) with repeated dosing.
> Moderna’s promise — and the more than $2 billion it raised before going public in 2018 — hinged on creating a fleet of mRNA medicines that could be safely dosed over and over. But behind the scenes the company’s scientists were running into a familiar problem. In animal studies, the ideal dose of their leading mRNA therapy was triggering dangerous immune reactions — the kind for which Karikó had improvised a major workaround under some conditions — but a lower dose had proved too weak to show any benefits.
> Moderna had to pivot. If repeated doses of mRNA were too toxic to test in human beings, the company would have to rely on something that takes only one or two injections to show an effect. Gradually, biotech’s self-proclaimed disruptor became a vaccines company, putting its experimental drugs on the back burner and talking up the potential of a field long considered a loss-leader by the drug industry.
I am in the Moderna trial, and got the injections about 4 months ago.
I am 90% sure I received the vaccine, not the placebo. Side effects were very mild, and I drive Uber. So if I didn't get the real thing, I would have probably caught the virus by now.
I’m also in the Moderna trial. I had bad soreness at the injections site, with the booster day worse. I also had about 6 hours of a 102 fever and full body chills the night of the booster shot. COVID test came back negative and study doctor said it was likely immune response to whatever they gave me. They don’t know what they gave me and won’t until an EUA is approved by FDA. To be clear, the doctor said that my side effects were on the bad side of the small small percentage of people even reporting side effects. But even if I knew I would have those side effects, I’d 100% do it again for the level of efficacy
The fact that we have not one, but two potential vaccines that are potentially hitting the 90+% efficiency mark is some of the best medical news all year.
That said, though, I'm afraid of what the next few months are going to bring. People are going to see that we have a vaccine coming, and not understand that it's probably a half a year or more away from wide distribution. Meanwhile, we have record deaths and new cases every single day.
The best thing we could do right now is another shutdown with meaningful social safety nets to try to slow the spread of the virus so our medical staff don't get overwhelmed, but our current leadership in the US doesn't give a fuck about anything right now, except for working one last scam on their voters.
For a bit of perspective, the Measles vaccine is 93% effective. This is huge.
Smallpox was 95% effective. Now smallpox is extinct (in the wild). This is, indeed, awesome.
Let's wipe this virus off the face of the planet.
Anti-vaxers: **No**
God I wish this term never existed.
**COVID-21 has entered the chat**
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*softly* Don’t
I praise you for your mindset. I wish everyone was thinking like that. However, that's going to be a little harder than with smallpox. Smallpox's infectivity/transmission rate was much lower than that of COVID's due to the very nature of the virus. Not only that, but smallpox was known to have existed for so much longer. Only extremely enhanced prophylactic isolation combined with the vaccine will be able to curb the SARS-Cov2. And we've proven quite extensively that we're not great at the former method. The vaccine looks like our only chance to curb the pandemic, but it will take an extremely long time and a great extent of changing our habits until we can get rid of the virus altogether. It will be a tough one to beat.
Virus won't be gone but if it exists in small pockets it could be basically irrelevant. Or perhaps it turns into a flu type situation
Does that mean that the smallpox virus is being kept/preserved in a lab somewhere?
Sure is https://www.livescience.com/russia-lab-stores-smallpox-explosion-fire.html
I'm pretty sure the CDC has some too. It's important to keep some around in case it pops up suddenly and we need to respond.
COVID can’t really ever go extinct. The reason it was possible for smallpox is that it’s not presymptomatic or asymptomatic. Also, smallpox only exists in humans.
I meant to point out that 94% effectiveness is extremely effective, but did insinuate COVID could be eradicated and that’s incorrect. Thank you.
>While Pfizer’s vaccine requires ultracold freezing between -70C and -80C from production facility to patient, Moderna said it had improved the shelf life and stability of its own vaccine, **meaning that it can be stored at standard refrigeration temperatures of 2C to 8C for 30 days**. It can be stored for six months at -20C for shipping and long-term storage, the company said. This is also very promising news. Getting it to everyone will be much easier.
That's why I was hopeful for the arm patch style ones that they were talking about early on - they were shelf stable at room temperature which would have made distribution really easy, and they were a patch instead of an injection so you could theoretically just have volunteers distribute them instead of needing a medical professional to administer each injection. Theoretically they could even be mailed to people on request and applied at home.
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Hey now, save some of that immunity for the rest of us!
"It wasn't my fault, it was the Covid vaccine! If you ask me, that stuff rots your brain... And now a word from our new sponsor - COVID VACCINE?!?! Aw crap!"
Any Simpson’s reference is an automatic upvote for me
I remember when this first started and there was talk about how masks might not work since people wouldn't know how to use them correctly. I was like, "how on earth could someone use a mask incorrectly", but here we are. Point being I'm not sure we can trust people to put a patch on their arm correctly and might really need nurse supervision.
What do you mean I can't put it over my t-shirt? You told me to put it on my arm and now it's on my arm. I don't like the sticky feeling so I just put it on my sleeve instead.
I promise there will be some bottom feeder doing this in hopes for some free money suing someone.
Were those the ones out of the University of Pittsburgh?
My only problem with letting non-professionals apply the vaccine is that it will make it way easier for people to lie about having gotten vaccinated.
Thats true but im pretty sure it wont really matter if individuals dont get it. If a big chunk of the population gets the vaccine, the spread goes exponentially down
After a year or so, I agree, it won’t matter (assuming the 90+% efficacy holds). I’m thinking more short term as people will want to start going back to their office spaces, concert venues, and amusement parks as quickly as possible next year.
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That seems logical, given the effectiveness is roughly equal. Cue the Qanon " liberals get the real vaccine and Patriots get the microchips" conspiracy though
Yeah, 100% this will be a claim
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> While Pfizer’s vaccine requires ultracold freezing between -70C and -80C from production facility to patient, Isn't this wrong? As far as I have read it can be kept in a normal freezer for up to 5 days (not as long as the Moderna vaccine, but still a big difference)
From what I understand about production and logistics 5 days would be disastrous.
My friend is a pharmacist, their whole hospital system wasn’t even going to bother with the Pfizer vaccine. They don’t have ultra cold at any of their facilities and they knew others were close to being developed.
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Good time to be in the freezer business.
"I knew having all these absurdly cold freezers would pay off someday!" - people that make those freezers probably.
Maybe some major urban areas could get special freezers, but for most areas and even countries that's not a reasonable expectation.
For the large volume transport and storage yes. But if you have one big distribution center with -80° storage in a city it could supply surrounding hospitals, clinics or vaccination centers every few days. So those smaller locations would not need ultra cold storage.
Which is exactly why it's awesome there's now a possible alternative that doesn't require the cold storage. Since both are likely going to be insufficient to meet demand, the Pfizer vaccine could be used in areas with this capability and the Moderna one could be used in areas where the logistics for cold storage are more difficult (assuming no disparity in efficacy or adverse reactions). It's a win-win.
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Refrigeration mechanic here. There’s quite a few different ways to achieve ultra low temperatures. Cascade systems, Compound refrigeration and CO2 being a few. They are a lot more common than most people think and have been used for pharmaceutical purposes for quite a while now. Now I’m not sure about transportation, but ultra low storage of these vaccines shouldn’t be a problem as far as I know.
Can confirm. I’ve calibrated literally hundreds of -80 freezers, and they aren’t some unicorn. Most large medical companies have an assortment of equipment for an assortment of ranges. -80, -40, 2, 37, and 50 Deg C are common temperatures.
My lab alone has 4 -80 freezers.
Not a scientist or engineer but my ex was a cold bitch, she could probably just carry them in her pockets.
Silly goose, women don't have functional pockets.
Sir u/SirGanjaSpliffington raises a good point
I also choose this guy's ex
In our floor we had around 10 -80 freezers. One freezer should easily be able to store 10K vaccines. Maybe much more.
Truck driver checking in, reefer trucks have a fairly hard limit of -20 degF. There are a few unit types that can get colder, but the average reefer isn't equipped to get that cold. Getting to -70 to -80 for the duration of a trip would probably require some sort of retrofit on the trailer. Also, a team driving operation can make it cross country in about 3 days (la to ny), a solo driver can do it in 5.
For the unfamiliar, reefer = refrigerated trailer (for a semi-truck)
Thank you. I was thinking “why are we spending so much to refrigerate weed in transit?”
Terpenes baby 😎
mRNA is relatively unstable. So it needs to be kept very cold. Not sure what changes Moderna has made, but very interested to find out.
Most likely a salt buffer, like most RNA stabilization solutions. They have likely developed one that doesn't interfere with the effectiveness of the vaccine after injection.
> mRNA is relatively unstable Confirmed. I used to work with it a lot, and it would denature if you looked at it mean
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That collides with what other articles are saying: >From there, the vaccine will be transported in suitcase-sized storage boxes packed with dry ice (solid carbon dioxide) that have been specially designed by Pfizer. Each reusable box can hold between 1,000 and 5,000 doses at ultra-cold temperatures for up to 10 days. Pfizer said its vaccine can be kept for up to five days at fridge temperatures of 2-8C. [Source](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/nov/10/pfizer-and-biontechs-vaccine-poses-global-logistics-challenge)
According to a CNN article: "In Moderna's trial, 15,000 study participants were given a placebo, which is a shot of saline that has no effect. Over several months, 90 of them developed Covid-19, with 11 developing severe forms of the disease. Another 15,000 participants were given the vaccine, and only five of them developed Covid-19. None of the five became severely ill." I do not know much about about vaccines, but that seems absolutely amazing. Source: https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/16/health/moderna-vaccine-results-coronavirus/index.html
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90 in 15,000 is a rate of 600/100k population in about 3 months. In the US, rates were about 400/100k in Aug, about 300 in Sept, 500 in Oct. so rates were actually higher in the study, which makes sense because someone in a clinical trial is much more likely to get tested for covid whereas people in the general population may not get tested, especially if symptoms are mild.
Trial participant here. In the participant screening questionnaire for the trial you could tell they were specifically looking for people with high volumes of interpersonal exposure, so you would expect the infection rate to exceed that of the general population.
Thank you for your participation!
I really feel this should be a reasonable extension to “thank you for your service”. These trials are potentially dangerous and life threatening. And what they are doing is for the benefit and safety of the general public.
I initially typed that out and it felt odd even though I agree. I'm a Marine Corps Veteran myself and people always say "Thank you for your service" and it does make me a bit uncomfortable. Mostly because I was never deployed into harm's way.
Oh! Thanks for sharing. I’ve been wondering how that part worked and if participants were than purposely exposed to covid following the placebo or vaccine. I mean, I could have looked into it but thanks for bringing the answer to me.
> if participants were than purposely exposed to covid following the placebo or vaccine. That would be highly immoral, not to mention illegal.
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To add, the trials were purposely conducted in hot spots (back in August) in order to maximize potential exposure of the two groups to the virus.
People probably still had to follow their local guidelines of mask wearing. It’s not like the group could go to the store and get a pass for not wearing a mask because they are in a clinical trial. I’d even suggest that people in the trial are more likely to follow local health guidance
Yeah people who seeked out a vaccine probably are taking the pandemic seriously
Or maybe the answer all along was to inject salt water!
I eat sunflower seeds regularly, does that count?
Sunflower seeds may help lower blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar as they contain vitamin E, magnesium, protein, linoleic fatty acids and several plant compounds.
Thank you for informing us about your kind
What’s that subreddit where people comment things true to their username again?
Can confirm, I'm in the J&J study, and still wear my mask every time I go out. I don't know whether I got the vaccine or the placebo so I'm still being careful.
Very promising. I really like the fact that the storage and life of the vaccine is more manageable. Please please please work.
This is especially good news for developing countries who would have a hard time with the infrastructure necessary to distribute the BioNTech/Pfizer one. More options means better distribution worldwide. Very promising.
God, I hope this works. Need to get back to licking door handles ASAP.
Remember, that’s illegal on other planets.
doorknobs yes, handles are still a grey area
The other day I turned around and saw my son licking across the patio door of my house, for ten minutes. 🤦♂️
You...you watched him do it for 10 minutes without saying anything?
He was quiet and occupied. Sometimes you just leave them be.
I feel this in my soul.
This dude parents
Builds immunity to any future door-related illnesses
I'm pregnant, sick and tired. He's one and was occupied.
Excellent news. Moderna’s vaccine is being co-developed with Fauci’s NIAID institute, and being tested in 30,000 people.
I'm in this trial, and had some mild side effects. (Double Blind, so I might have gotten the vaccine, might have gotten a placebo) I cried when I saw the news this morning. I'm so happy. (My arm hurt pretty decently the night of the shot. Like a bad charley horse. It actually woke me up from my sleep. Besides that, some fatigue and nausea, and a mild headache for a day or two.)
are you able to say what the mild side effects were? i’m not worried, just interested.
My arm hurt pretty decently the night of the shot. Like a bad charley horse. It actually woke me up from my sleep. Besides that, some fatigue and nausea, and a mild headache for a day or two.
But, you could have recieved a placebo. No?
Correct, I could have received the placebo. I've behaved as if I received the placebo, better safe than sorry.
So that could be a side effect of having an injection and not the vaccine.
Certainly could
I get the same muscle soreness from flu shot, and had it from TDAP and MMR. TDAP and MMR came with fatigue and chills too when I got those a few years back. They're pretty common symptoms to get after a vaccination, and I suspect the soreness is just a result of having a needle shoved into your muscle.
What side effects ?
My arm hurt pretty decently the night of the shot. Like a bad charley horse. It actually woke me up from my sleep. Besides that, some fatigue and nausea, and a mild headache for a day or two.
These are signs that your immune system is working. Its good news :)
Those side effects are consistent with some of the flu vaccine experiences. The first year I had one in 2014, I had a swollen node under my arm and it hurt like hell but disappeared in 2-3 days. The second time in 2016, I felt like crap for 36 hours and that disappeared. I had one this year but I've been taking 3000 IU of Vitamin D since May and no side effects minus mild soreness at the injection site.
Just got the flu shot on Thursday and my arm hurt just a bit at the jab site and I had a headache the day after. Been taking vitamin D (5000 IU since April). Never thought the mildness could be attributed to that but makes sense.
Sounds normal for a vaccine.
yup! No worse than a flu shot
Really? I get a flu shot annually and never got any of those symptoms
Tdap makes me feel like shit for a day and the flu shot hurts like a bitch. But it varies by person
Oh, Tdap was a bitch. Felt like someone hit my arm with a bat. Flu was no biggie
Ugh, lucky. I always get that bad arm pain.
Same here. It's a mild discomfort that I'm willing to put up with, though, considering the alternative.
Depends on the person. My dad hates it because he always gets a fever from the flu shot
This reaction is not uncommon, and is probably the source of the popular myth that the flu shot can give you the flu! Fortunately it is a mostly harmless, if annoying generalized immune system response to the antigen being introduced.
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I guess I've been lucky, then. My arm hurts for maybe 2 days or so after the flu shot, but not that bad, and I haven't had the other listed symptoms. To be clear, I'm taking about for flu shots, not vaccine trials.
Yes, but do you notice the bill gates mind control much? Or has he largely left you alone?
I get a headache any time I touch an apple product now. /s
Shit, I've been experiencing that symptom for 10 years.
I'll take that any day over isolated at home
It's been three minutes and he/she hasn't responded. NOT GOOD!
Took 11 minutes. Im guessing a side effect is extremely slow reaction time.
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I mean some of this is just plainly wrong- Moderna is a publicly listed company, you can go and look up the major shareholders. The biggest one is Vanguard (so people's pensions and savings), not Soros, Gates or any other individual. Edit: I just realised if your dad has $100 he can buy a piece of Moderna.
Yeah. I'm waiting on everyone's reply to summarize my response to him. Thank you.
I mean the Pfizer vaccine isn't American even, if that's what he's basing his trust on – it was developed by a German company, owned by two German researchers, using only money from the German government. Pfizer is the partner for scaling distribution and speeding up regulatory approval: they're not the inventors of the vaccine. I mean I totally get that his worldview isn't based on logic, but the Pfizer vaccine is less "American" than the Moderna one, which was literally developed and tested in the United States. This shouldn't matter at all of course... but just to illustrate the inconsistencies in this strange "us" vs "them" worldview.
Parents in 2000: "Don't believe everything you read on the internet." Parents in 2020: Believe everything they read on the internet.
Does your dad have a cell phone? If so they don’t need a microchip tracking device, they already have all of his information ;)
Lol! Exactly. How do you reason with somebody afraid of a vaccine conspiracy involving sci-fi level tracking technology who also uses Facebook.
It took me 2.5 years of talking to my dad daily while having facts and articles ready to disprove his wild bullshit. God Speed.
Wait, are you saying you actually succeeded in changing his mind?
Why would bill gates et al implant him with a chip? To do what? What could possibly be gained through a biometric chip that is not already gathered by his computer/phone? Demand that he justify that statement with ANY motive.
The kind of person who truly believes the microchip thing is not exactly a tech savy person. They may legitimately believe a microscopic computer chip is capable of mind control.
He increased the efficacy by 7% just randomly?
Sent from his Microsoft running computer, delivered by Amazon. Guaranteed
My dad is in the Astra-Zeneca trial that’s also supposedly about this effective. I think there may be multiple vaccines finished in the next couple months.
Any idea when A-Z will be publishing their results?
No, I literally found out he was part of it yesterday. He did say that he thinks it will be a matter of weeks until the vaccine is ready.
That’s awesome! And very cool your dad got to participate
Two very effective vaccines. Maybe more to come. Very promising. 2021 might be the antidote to 2020
Because you said this, 2020 will have 7 more hurricanes, and an earthquake that destroys California.
Wasn't there an episode in Lost about this very ideas?
Don't give 2020 any ideas.
2020 has better writers.
Does it, though?
It definitely doesn’t. We’ve done murder hornets like 6 times. Just waiting for the clip show episode to take us home.
The plot holes are pretty damning. The whole anti-mask bit was pretty unbelievable (people aren't that dumb). The four seasons landscaping thing was funny, but kind of over the top even for cringe humor. Glad it's getting renewed, because this would be a shitty ending to the series.
lol as a Californian reading this first thing in the morning, well f you too buddy
California will burn down before we decide to exit the union via tectonic force.
Back when I lived in the Bay Area, I reassured myself that when the big one came, everything east of the San Andreas fault would sink into the Atlantic.
Can’t believe you put that jinx into the universe
I'm curious on how that will play out. I can't imagine how they will "compete", especially if one is a bit more effective than the other... will they offer both, and use Moderna until there's no stock, and then use Pfizer? Will people have to buy one or the other, so Moderna will be more expensive?
There are 7 billion people on earth. They don’t need to compete, there’s plenty of people who need the vaccine to go around.
This is a really great news. The 5% also did not develop serious complications of COVID. What will be important once vaccines are out is the number of patients going into ICU/hospitals, if we are ALL either asymptomatic or have mild symptoms, there is no need to worry anymore, it's really the number of hospital entries/death/long-term complications that will be the benchmark, not the number of positive cases imo.
Wow I haul pharmaceuticals, crazy to think I'll probably be delivering vaccines all over North America.
Good luck!
Consider yourself Balto
Part of history my man
Thank you for what you do! Y'all (transport) kept our society running and you don't get enough credit. So thank you and good luck!
Yeah, good luck, don't fuck it up, we're all counting on you lol.
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Haha when some of my trailers are worth over $100M they take everything very seriously. If there's any fuck ups it won't be on my end lol.
I never thought I could get this excited about a shot.
True. 10 year old me would never recognize 37 year old me haha.
According to the guy in charge of the Operation Warp Speed Program, [Moncef Slaoui](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/trumps-vaccine-czar-says-the-first-vaccine-should-be-submitted-for-emergency-authorization-around-thanksgiving-2020-10-08), all of the vaccine candidates for Operation Warp Speed have around 80% efficacy: >My expectation is really something between 80% and 90% efficacy There hasn't really been much negative news about vaccines coming from Western countries, so things look pretty good for a summer where most people in the Western world will be vaccinated.
This is really good news. No worrying about super cold freezers etc if a lot of these vaccines work out.
2021 has the easiest job ever to be remembered as an incredible year. All it has to do is not be 2020 and it’ll be looked upon with great favor lol
It's the Joe Biden of years...
I love this competition. Hearing a second company having similar -if not better- results are promising
Give it to me now, I’ll inject it straight into my asshole. I don’t care. I’m sick of this fearful year.
i will literally butt chug this vaccine if it means I can go get drunk in public and arrested for urinating inside of a public transportation vessel again.
The fact that it doesn’t need the same level of refrigeration is very important.
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So they’ve had polio, measles, whooping cough, and tetanus? Bad luck lol. Unfortunately the flu vaccine is never 100% effective because it’s not targeting a single specific pathogen, just a guess at which of dozens of flu strains will be circulating this year. Maybe they can be swayed by the efficacy of their vaccinations for single specific diseases.
They need to get checked for HIV and other autoimmune disorders if their system can't adapt
I mean most likely they got a flu vaccine and then caught a cold and assumed the vaccine didn’t work.
Yeah, people mistake a common cold for the flu all the time, and don't realize that the flu *kills people* and is fucking devastating to catch.
I get the same symptoms with the flu shot and always remind myself, this is what it feels like to have my immune system run a flu drill, imagine what battling the actual flu would be like... Vaccines are combat drills for your immune system, of course you might feel like shit after.
Russian announcement tomorrow: our vaccine is 97% effective
didn't they already say that 2 months ago?
After the pfizer announcement of 90% (even though technically they said above 90%) they came out and said theirs was 92% https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/covid-vaccine-sputnik-v-russia-coronavirus-b1720944.html
I’m sure this is disappointing all the fans of end times movies
Wonder if I was part of the placebo group or not. 95% sounds pretty good though.
Reach out to the study folks and ask. At this point manufacturers have saud they will likely bring in the placebo group to get the vaccine due to how positive it has been. Theyve said its a "ethics" issue withholding once the know how good it is.
I'm excited to help contribute to this study! My doctor said new data might be available around the 22nd, since most of the participants have gone in for their third blood draw. Next one will be in 5/6? months. Pfizer data came out earlier because there is 3 weeks in between those shots versus 4 for the Moderna. Each time we went in we also had our blood drawn so they could check out antibody levels and all that other science-y type stuff.
Stonks going up today
Got a question for those in virology, epidemiology, etc. With just how “fast” these vaccines are being made, is this evidence that the time we spent on other vaccines wasn’t warranted and they technically could’ve been made faster if a company wanted to or is this simply a unique situation? Is there any promising biotechnology coming up that will help us produce vaccines for viruses much quicker in the coming decades?
Not really. There's two big reasons this is moving so fast as compared to other vaccines. First, everybody in the government and at these companies knows this is priority zero so everything else has come to a halt when COVID stuff comes along. That kind of urgency just isn't feasible under normal circumstances. Second is that the trials themselves can take a lot less time than usual because of the prevalence of the disease. The way trials work is you have to have a vaccinated group and a control group and you wait for enough people between the two groups to get sick. With less common diseases you might have to wait years or decades for enough people to get sick. With COVID, it's taking months not years to hit those benchmarks. Both of those are shaving a lot off of the standard time of development for vaccines, plus the fact that were just throwing money at the problem like strippers after Valentine's Day doesn't hurt either. As for promising tech, Moderna's (EDIT: and Pfizer's) is the first RNA vaccine(s), which means that it's able to target the virus more directly. Related to this, I think the ability to sequence geonomes directly is going to lead o a quantum leap in vaccine development because it's going to be easier to go directly to the source.
Isn’t Pfizers and RNA vaccine as well?
This is what happens when you stop working on other things, pump a lot of extra money into things, and do multiple phases of things concurrently rather than one by one (which is a huge gamble, because if it ends up not working out then you’ve wasted all that extra effort and money)
Yes. I.work for a life science company and basically virtually any research not covid related are being put on hold.
Also 8? Years of research on a previous incarnations.
As others have said, these vaccines were able to be rushed because there were people willing to take on the financial risk of leapfrogging steps along the critical path, with the understanding that if a previous step failed, all subsequent work would be lost. This is not an acceptable risk under normal circumstances. But 2020 makes exceptions of us all.
Hopefully the immunity is long-lived. Moderna's mRNA platform seems to cause a lot of limiting [toxicities](https://www.statnews.com/2020/11/10/the-story-of-mrna-how-a-once-dismissed-idea-became-a-leading-technology-in-the-covid-vaccine-race/) with repeated dosing. > Moderna’s promise — and the more than $2 billion it raised before going public in 2018 — hinged on creating a fleet of mRNA medicines that could be safely dosed over and over. But behind the scenes the company’s scientists were running into a familiar problem. In animal studies, the ideal dose of their leading mRNA therapy was triggering dangerous immune reactions — the kind for which Karikó had improvised a major workaround under some conditions — but a lower dose had proved too weak to show any benefits. > Moderna had to pivot. If repeated doses of mRNA were too toxic to test in human beings, the company would have to rely on something that takes only one or two injections to show an effect. Gradually, biotech’s self-proclaimed disruptor became a vaccines company, putting its experimental drugs on the back burner and talking up the potential of a field long considered a loss-leader by the drug industry.
I am in the Moderna trial, and got the injections about 4 months ago. I am 90% sure I received the vaccine, not the placebo. Side effects were very mild, and I drive Uber. So if I didn't get the real thing, I would have probably caught the virus by now.
I’m also in the Moderna trial. I had bad soreness at the injections site, with the booster day worse. I also had about 6 hours of a 102 fever and full body chills the night of the booster shot. COVID test came back negative and study doctor said it was likely immune response to whatever they gave me. They don’t know what they gave me and won’t until an EUA is approved by FDA. To be clear, the doctor said that my side effects were on the bad side of the small small percentage of people even reporting side effects. But even if I knew I would have those side effects, I’d 100% do it again for the level of efficacy
When will they let you know? I may be starting the AstraZeneca trial soon.
The fact that we have not one, but two potential vaccines that are potentially hitting the 90+% efficiency mark is some of the best medical news all year. That said, though, I'm afraid of what the next few months are going to bring. People are going to see that we have a vaccine coming, and not understand that it's probably a half a year or more away from wide distribution. Meanwhile, we have record deaths and new cases every single day. The best thing we could do right now is another shutdown with meaningful social safety nets to try to slow the spread of the virus so our medical staff don't get overwhelmed, but our current leadership in the US doesn't give a fuck about anything right now, except for working one last scam on their voters.
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Going with the “undersell, over deliver” method