Ha, apparently. We can just use our non-microchipped phones that absolutely don’t spy on us to have the government tell us what to do and when, so we make sure everyone does it all at the same time.
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So the thing I’m trying to figure out currently is if the carrier oil is similar enough to miglyol to cause anaphylaxis in me. Because yeah. I don’t need that again
ETA: both vaccines contain PEG 2000, which is what I’m looking at
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This article is making the rounds in some of my science communities…it makes sense but isn’t great news for the vaccines.
TL/DR: the astra zeneca vaccine helps protect against severe disease but doesn’t stop assymptomatic infection or spread. It’s possible/likely that the two approved vaccines will have the same issue although they haven’t been studied in the same way yet.
I’d love for anyone in the medical community here to weigh in since I’m approaching this from a more research science perspective and maybe there’s something I’m missing.
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Jesus I hope that’s wrong. The second part, about reinfection rates, strikes me as the weakest conclusion because of small size and short duration of the study. I hope it was a data anomaly and not in fact representative.
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I don’t have any science background but the doctor podcaster on Sawbones thought it had more hope than that. 
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I am coming from a chemistry research background, so a lot of these clinical/biological studies are beyond my grasp. But to the medical community here, is there a way to know that the asymptomatic vaccinated people who tested positive are actually contagious? My understanding is that people who are infected the normal way can still test positive after they are no longer contagious. I wonder if there’s a chance that something similar can be happing here. Testing positive after an exposure, but not actually being able to transmit it due to the immune response. Or maybe that’s wishful thinking.
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Completely agree.
I was wondering the same thing. (I’m also a chemist by training but am married to a biochemist who’s currently working on COVID antibody research so I have the benefit of his knowledge/perspective as well.)
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I don’t understand how the author of that article comes to the conclusion that the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine provides no protection against asymptomatic infection, when table 2 pulled from the Lancet study shows that in the LD/SD (low-dose, then standard-dose) vaccine group, the vaccine showed 58.9% efficacy in preventing asymptomatic infection. That the 95% CI is huge, from 1.0-82.9%, just means the data is preliminary, and the study is ongoing. But looking at the raw numbers so far, seems the vaccine probably IS effective in preventing asymptomatic spread.
AstraZeneca discovered by accident that an initial low-dose of the vaccine is more effective at protecting against both symptomatic and asymptomatic infection. We need the data from ongoing trials with LD/SD recipients to make firm conclusions.
And agree with both Bracken_Joy and zygote above about reinfection. The standard for diagnosing reinfection is 1) PCR and genetic sequencing of initial infection, 2) negative PCR, 3) PCR and genetic sequencing showing a different strain of covid. Several proven cases so far, but not huge numbers out of the 70M+ documented cases in the world.
Here’s a link to the original Lancet article:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)32661-1/fulltext
Gotta read the papers for the Pfizer & Moderna papers first.
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I wrote to one of my friends (phd candidate, I think chemistry?) who works in a lab that works in some capacity with the Pfeizer research, waiting to hear her thoughts. I’ll let you know if I hear. I’ve always found her input really well thought out.
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Thanks for being such a great community with such well thought-out replies already!
@Mariposa, that makes sense. I haven’t had time to read any of the actual study results or publications. And I’m not totally up to date on my clinical trial statistics 
@Bracken_Joy it will be interesting to hear what she says.
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A few things stuck out on my reading so far, I’m updating as I read further:
Evidence suggests that both the AstraZeneca and Moderna vaccines provide only limited sterilizing immunity with a post-vaccination asymptomatic infection rate at roughly half the level of the non-vaccinated population.
This suggests to me that the vaccine cuts the asymptomatic infection rate in half, which could make a big difference in stopping the pandemic. It directly contradicts his statment in the Tl;dr section. Like @Mariposa I think the rest of the article supports some reduction (about 50% - 60%) in asymptomatic infections.
ETA: I just noticed these two statements:
- SD/SD dosage, equal asymptomatic infection rates between vaccine and placebo groups
- LD/SD dosage, vaccine group had asymptomatic infection at 40% of the rate of the placebo group"
This is the study where partway through they noticed that some people got a half a dose for the first dose (LD = low dose) and everybody else got the standard dose (SD). It was the group that was mistakenly given the Low Dose / Standard Dose protocol which demonstrated lower asymptomatic infection rates. I’m not sure, but I think when they roll out the vaccines, they will be giving everyone the standard dose for both doses (SD/SD protocol) which did not decrease the rate of asymptomatic infection.
I’d want to have a good understanding of how large the group was that was given only half a dose initially, and if they have anything else in common that could explain the better immunity. For example, if they are all in one location, or one age range or ethnic group versus a more randomized population.
These two statements together were more concerning to me. As far as I can understand, these concerns only apply to the Astra-Zeneca vaccine:
“There is no information on duration beyond the 2-months of protection also seen in the other vaccine trials. These vaccines almost surely have a longer duration, likely 6-12 months, but due to the brief length of the trial, this is all the data available.”
“One issue with this technology is those receiving this vaccine will develop an immune response to the chimpanzee adenovirus, rendering the virus unusable for future re-vaccinations. You literally develop an immune response against the vaccine itself in addition to SarsCov2. These chimpanzee adenovirus vaccines will also not be effective in sub-Saharan Africa due to the high prevalence of exposure to chimp adenovirus strains.”
Me again. So the Astra-Zeneca vaccine is estimated to be effective for up to a year and can’t be repeated. It’s going to be obsolete quickly. This is the one that doesn’t have such demanding refrigeration requirements so it seemed like the natural choice to ship to Africa, but this type of vaccine won’t be effective in sub-Saharan Africa. Given these caveats I’m king of surprised the business people pursued it, unless this company had no better options.
I’ll keep reading.
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I am a layman. A friend of mine is in biochem and told me that Pfizer and Moderna were superior to the Oxford vaccine but not why!
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I wonder how much of it was that they wanted to be able to say they were first?
Thank you to all of you who are able to wade through the medial stuff better than I can, I appreciate your thoughts and detailed reviews.
I’m just hearing today about a different strain that’s in England, how different is different? Would the vaccine work on the new strain also? Is it like Flu A and Flu B in a given year where the flu vaccine still works on the other strain but not as well?
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Even if it is, that’s the beautiful thing about the mRNA vaccines- it’ll be so quickly to swap what spike protein is being used. Not sure if it’ll require redoing clinical trials though? We don’t have a precedence yet for that as far as I know, since it’s a new vaccine technology.
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I suspect it was more the high stakes and urgency of the situation, and perhaps feeling that doing something was better than nothing, a humanitarian perspective. From an ROI (return on investment) perspective, being first helps you to build market share but they ultimately won’t be able to keep that market share at least for this type of vaccine. Maybe there are more things in the pipeline that can build on this work. Maybe what they will be paid will cover their development costs enough to provide an acceptable ROI.
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My husband’s grandmother has covid. my mother in law, and my brother in law may have covid.
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My biggest takeaways from the article:
If you are prone to anxiety maybe skip this post
- Vaccines are not going to be the silver bullet we’d hoped.
- We have no data yet on how vaccination impacts long-term Covid effects. I’m concerned we’ve just seen the tip of the iceberg here.
- Life is not going back to what we consider normal in 2021. Or in the next few years. We’ve built an entire culture around being able to be in close quarters with stragers and large groups of them at that. It’s going to be a long time before we can safely do that again.
I see at least four possible outcomes:
- Additional technological and medical advances that ultimately defeat the virus.
- The virus ultimately mutates itself out of existence, or to a less dangerous form. I’m not an epidimologist but my intuition is that is more likely when the virus is not so widespread. There’s too many copies of the lethal variation running around.
- We get our act together for a strict, severe, semi-long-term lockdown. That makes what we did this spring look like child’s play. Like everyone has enough food and other supplies stockpiled for I’d estimate two months, and teams providing critical services are small and in physical contact only with their teams for that time. It’s got to be large scale, or if done piecemeal, with very strict border closings. I’m not sure this is even feasible given our food systems, etc. And our nature as humans.
Worst case
- A lot of people die. Maybe not right away, maybe from long term effects. Similar to what happened when European settlers brought disease to the American Indians and 90% died. The 10% who survived had immunity. There will likely be some part of the population that is not killed by the virus, or the long term effects and will keep the human race going. The more contagious, more deadly strain supposedly circulating in the UK has me concerned.
Those with more understanding, please tell me why these scenarios are wrong. Can also delete if too upsetting.
This is why I don’t watch horror movies. I don’t need to with my imagination.
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NO.
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Don’t read if you have anxiety
Summary
Well, if 90% of us die, it seems like that isn’t too hard to accept. It’s 25%-50% that seems horrific, to me. Because how do you go on? If only 10% of humans are left, it’s so phenomenally different of a world that however you go on will never even need to look like it did before.
I really don’t think mass extinction is likely though. Maybe in the US, but other countries seem to be getting this together. And I’m still wondering how most of Africa seems to be weathering this without much issue.
The idea that 2021 is magically better has been a fairy tale along with Trump’s miracle where it just went away. Even getting everyone vaccinated will take years, and people will need more vaccination by the time we get the first round done. Anti maskers WILL HAVE to start wearing freaking masks.
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Yet more cause for anxiety
It would actually be maladaptive of the virus to evolve into a form that has the potential to kill 90% of us. The more likely terrible downside is high infection rates and then high rates of long-term effects, but a mortality rate of maybe 10 or 20%. Then we get a whole bunch of people with lifelong aftereffects, and a whole system where everyone’s afraid of catching it again. But even in the US, 90% mortality is vanishingly unlikely with this virus.
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