Chat about Novel Coronavirus - 2019-nCoV - COVID-19

A friend of mine has expressed concern about a Covid vaccine and unknown long term effects. He points to thalidomide as an example of a drug people were told would be great for reliving morning sickness and a few years later not so much.

Vaccines also go wrong from time to time like the Cutter Incident. Combine that with a view that they are unlikely to get whatever the disease is and there is a more reasonable worry.

Then there are vaccines which go against some other rule, for example the flu vaccine that is pork based so not halal (lots of religious leaders say you can ignore that rule but there is always a different religious opinion available).

And so the list goes on before you get to microchip implantation (why wouldn't you want that???)

So the Oxford vaccine has an efficacy of 62% when administered the way they planned it. It was only by mistakenly giving a group of participants a first half dose that efficacy rose to 90%. Doesn't sound great.

Can we choose which of the vaccines to get?

Doesn't sound great.

Serious question: why not? Lots of vaccines have a protocol that calls for multiple doses and/or booster shots.

(Edit: if we're talking about the one-shot efficacy not sounding great, then there's a logistics trade-off; the Oxford vaccine doesn't require extreme cold storage, so swings and roundabouts...)

I've seen a few what I would consider rational people on fb posting videos that on the face of it appear well reasoned & it starts a bit of debate, but ultimately it's gilded horse-shit - but with a decent enough production value that it takes people a while to start to question who these people are & where their agendas lie...

It's not always obvious to a lot of people that they're reposting tinfoil-hat batshit crazy stuff until you explain in great detail why, even at that I reckon some people genuinely want to believe that they've stumbled upon some insider knowledge & are embarrassed to admit they sat and watched a 20 minute video without suspecting the person leading the expose is a grade A lunatic & probably spends their evenings throwing rocks at the moon...

Headache or death?

Or, as Eddie Izzard put it, cake or death?

Which would you chose?

I've seen a few what I would consider rational people on fb posting videos

Well, there's your first mistake...

Doesn't sound great.

Sounds pretty fucking normal. Gore-Tex was invented due to a combination of frustration and serendipity. If it works, it works. How it's got there is a side issue.

Can we choose which of the vaccines to get?

No. But you can check your entitlement.

I've never understood where anti-vaxxers even come from

A potent blend of stupidity, ignorance and fear. And narcissistic exceptionalism. It's a heady mix.

Headache or death?

Quite - but you've met the British Public right?

Or, as Eddie Izzard put it, cake or death?

I'm not sure this quite fits?

Which would you chose?

Headache for vaccine, death over cake with the vicar.

Oh, do fuck off.

It was a serious statement and then a serious question. 62% doesn't sound like a great success rate for a vaccine. Better then no vaccine obviously, but it doesn't sound great.

If I could choose whether to have a 90% vaccine or a 62% vaccine I would like to choose the 90% vaccine. The government has all the different vaccines on order, so do we think we'll be able to choose which one we can take.

Yeah fair point - a mate of mine is a high level piss-taker & has recently taken to winding up Eric Clapton fans to my great amusement which is pretty much the only reason I go there...

genuinely surprised at some of the folk posting bullshit covid stuff though - not just the obvious ones anymore

Isn't the normal flu vaccine in the range of 40-60% effective?

If I could choose whether to have a 90% vaccine or a 62% vaccine I would like to choose the 90% vaccine. The government has all the different vaccines on order, so do we think we'll be able to choose which one we can take.

Noone is going to be getting a 62% vaccine. They'll give it in two doses for a 90% rate.

Seriously? So even if you get vaccinated, you only have roughly a 50% less chance of getting the flu?

It's unlikely you'll be able to choose which one you get; that will probably be determined by the logistics of where you get it. The overall efficiency for the Oxford vaccine is about the same as any of the other candidates, but requires two jabs for full effectiveness. The trade-off is that it doesn't need storing at -70°C.

Yes, but those are obviously not bonkers arguments. I was talking more about what dubtap mentions and what Brommers says.

I don't have any problems with it when people are afraid of vaccines--I think fear like that is quite natural. However, as with all kinds of fear, where people then completely refuse to have it addressed and instead dig their heels in, and become increasingly traumatised and irrational, that's where I don't understand how that comes to be tied to vaccines (of all things).

I completely understand worries about unknown long-term side effects happening, but again it depends on how you handle that. It seems pretty clear that most vaccines have worked well for some time now.

The worry about the animal origin of some vaccines I suppose is twofold--one that I share is that I don't want to use animal products for ethical reasons (although I've probably been vaccinated with one or several while not knowing their origins), and the other side, which I don't share because I don't understand it, is that people seem to worry about vaccinating against viruses that have jumped the species barrier by using vaccines derived from other species. I don't think the second worry is bonkers, either, and perhaps there's a perfectly easy explanation, but there again I'm sure there are people who forcibly resist explanation, etc.

As always, there are plenty of things to fear quite rationally, e.g. falling off a 200-foot cliff (meaning that the fear is aligned with reason, not that the emotion itself is rational), but for some reason some people have hit on this complex of bizarre beliefs that don't seem to be subject to rational penetration at all, and by that I mean the things one hears about on t'Internet, and especially, perhaps, the ways in which people attempt to 'connect' them.

Can we choose which of the vaccines to get?

I assume not. At first.

A year down the line they might be available privately like the flu vaccine is. At that point you could pay and have them all!

Anyway, I've started a thread about COVID-19 vaccines.

https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/356920/

Starting to look like lockdown is working as hoped. 11,299 cases today.

608 deaths...hopefully deaths will peak soon too.

London figures:

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/london-coronavirus-deaths-rise-second-wave-b77693.html

Seriously? So even if you get vaccinated, you only have roughly a 50% less chance of getting the flu?

But that becomes material if it means everyone infects half the number of people.

If R is 1.5 for example, and you start with 100 people with the virus, after 5 rounds you'd have 10*(1.5^5) = 75.9 infections.

With a 50% effective vaccine then that 1.5 I'd have thought becomes 0.75, so after 5 rounds the 10 people with the virus is 2

(I'm sure I've vastly simplified things, but a number that doesn't look too spectacular from the point of view of one person can actually be significant when applied to an exponential spread across a population)

Edit: the above assumes the entire population have received the vaccine, which is unrealistic. But principle is still there

Anti-vaxx "Don't want a vaccine, Bill Gates wants to put microchips in me"

Without wondering why Bill Gates didn't do more of that kind of thing when developing the operating system that about 80% of the computers in the world use.

Indeed. Even a partially effective vaccine has a massive effect on transmission rates. The maths is really quite simple. The smallpox vaccine wasn't 100% effective. Still didn't stop it being used to wholly eradicate smallpox.

I noticed with the anti vaxxers "but big pharma!" then you ask "would you take a government developed not for profit one?" and it's tumbleweeds time.

Given the wide variance in flu and the associated vaccines year on year, does that statistic make much sense?

Ah, yes. That makes a lot of sense now. Cheers