This blog, plus the comments, might give some clues up this alley. Or at least outline the difference between what we know, what we don’t know, and what we can’t know.
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/11/16/modernas-vaccine-efficacy-readout
Do you have a link to these studies? I realize a lot can change in a month, but as of a month ago there were only a handful of confirmed reinfections in the entire world.
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/10/14/immunity-and-re-infection
Whether it “feels right” or not, I’m wondering what the epidemiologists would recommend once a vaccine is available to the general public (after higher priority folks have received it). Suppose it is 95% effective. Once I’m vaccinated, is it safe for me (and everyone who has been vaccinated) to go out and do everything we used to do? 5% of those people would still be a lot of active cases. Will there need to be a period of vaccinations combined with quarantining and distancing to drive the number of cases down, and only then can we start returning to normal?
If so, I can see that being a hard sell. “I got the shots, what do you mean I have to stay inside for another month? Fuck that, I’m going to spring break.”
I suppose I’ll find out when the time comes.
You can’t say that.
I mean, if it were so, then “for all intents and purposes” COVID-19 doesn’t kill.
~Max
I can say that, it was my hypothetical.
If you want to be nitpicky about it, pretend like I said vaccinated or protected. The reason I phrased it that way is because you’re not considered protected until some time after your second shot, two weeks maybe? So it’s not that you get a shot and you’re good to go. It’s closer to 6 weeks after the initial shot.
I was looking at the 95% efficacy rate reported for the vaccine and comparing it to the 95%+ survival rate from the disease itself. You asked when it would be safe, and I don’t think you should write off either possibility.
(Putting these together would mean the chance of you dying after being exposed to the virus, after the vaccine has taken effect, drops from <5% to <0.25%, which is significant, but I’m not sure it’s sound to make that calculation.)
~Max
Good thinking. Nothing is ever “safe” or “unsafe”. Things are only “more safe” or “less safe”. The black and white categorical thinking is almost always wrong.
But a 5% risk is one thing and a 5% of 5% risk is something else again.
That’s the death statistic. I imagine the other symptoms are more prevalent. Presumably by immune or protected Joey_P meant safe from getting sick at all.
~Max
True. Though we can apply the same logic to getting sick at all by using a different percentage. The risk wasn’t 100% before and whatever it was, adding the vaccine to the mix drops the risk equation to ~5% of whatever it was.
The only way anyone will ever have a truly zero risk of COVID = “totally safe from COVID” is to get a time machine and go back to 2018 or earlier. Maybe they could be on the first voyage to Mars and get away from it that that way.
Other than that, the risk will always be non-zero. Now it’s just a matter of deciding how close to zero any one person insists on their personal risk being reduced to.
I expect some countries to require vaccination certificates for international travel just like some countries do know with yellow fever.
One thing I should have added to the previous discussion is that none of the cases among the vaccinated group were described as “serious”, while 11 of the roughly 90 cases among the controls were. That’s rough on the controls, but they were no worse off than if they hadn’t participated.
That’s one point. The other is that if, say, 80% of the people got vaccinated, then the R factor would be well below 1 and your chances of getting it would gradually fade away to negligible.
And how exactly is that enforced? I have a ‘yellow card’, which is basically, well, a yellow card with stamp on it for each of my vaccines, as well as a scrawled date and signature. While no one has ever asked to see it, even upon entry to countries that claim to require yellow fever vaccination, it doesn’t exactly seem foolproof if someone did want to take a look.
more good news on the Pfizer vaccine.
With more data now in they are able to give more specific figures on efficacy and, as I suspected, their first estimate was at the lower end of the range.
It also seems to give that level of protection across age ranges, sexes and ethnicities so that sounds really promising. They are filing with the regulators and hopefully that’ll be quick as there has been an incremental process ongoing already.
There’s another important study out today. It’s preprint, intermediate sample size (185), but from a reputable institution (La Jolla). It looks at cases beyond 6 months post-infection, and shows a strong SUSTAINED immune response, suggesting that immunity may typically last for years. This is obviously looking at people who were naturally infected rather than vaccinated, but it includes anti-Spike IgG and T-cells, i.e. the same antigen targeted by the two mRNA vaccines.
Paper:
NY Times:
The same way everything else is enforced: imperfectly. There is a rule that you must meet some requirement to do a thing. Have this vaccination to travel to that place, be 21 to drink alcohol, or whatever. For many people, the existence of the rule is enough to get them to comply. As the requirement becomes more onerous, and the thing more desirable, then more work will have to be done to stop cheaters—asking for ID to buy alcohol.
It would be easy enough to have a law that puts an exception in HIPAA so that people who’ve completed their COVID-19 vaccination get their name in a database that can be queried. Is this perfect? No, obviously not, but it’s a place to start talking.
I have read some more. First, the cost seems moderate, under $50, although given what big pharma likes to mark things up, that could be much costlier. We’ll see. As noted above there is evidence of long-term immunity.
Rather than continue the hijack above of this thread, I am going to start a new thread about enforcement of a vaccination requirement. Please don’t continue that here.
In Lecture 10: Kizzmekia Corbett, “Vaccines”, Corbett, who works in the NIH and was involved with the Moderna vaccine, showed a lot of data about it’s apparent efficacy in early tests. It produced immune response comparable to the average of the top quartile of natural immunity from a group of people who had gotten covid. So I think there’s an excellent chance that it does, indeed, do a better job of training your immune system than the wild virus does.
It, the Pfizer vaccine, and most of the others I’ve seen all aim to train your immune system to recognize the spike protein. So they may all have comparable results.
Also, if you haven’t noticed, yet, I think this course has been terrific, and recommend it to anyone with time to audit it. The lectures vary a lot, and a few of them were really over my head, and just felt like listening to a recitation of alphabet soup. But a lot of them have been very accessible, and quite interesting.
BTW, apparently we have Dolly Parton to thank, in part, for the development of the Moderna vaccine. As told in this Washington Post story she sought treatment at Vanderbilt in 2013 after a car accident. There she had conversations with Naji Abumrad, a surgeon there. And then in April 2020, she donated a million dollars for COVID research, in honor of Dr Abumrad. (BTW, the surgeon’s son is Jad Abumrad, who hosts Radiolab on public radio.)
So yet another reason why Dolly Parton is a very cool person.
Dolly donates a ton of time and money, especially in and around Tennessee. I saw a meme just this morning saying that Dolly could be a billionaire. She’s a millionaire because she donates so much money.