Absolutely no time at all for anyone sneering that the 70% efficacy reported for the Oxford vaccine is somehow bad news. It’s not. It’s fantastic. The more options for ways out of the pandemic there are, the better.
In fact, given the transport and storage issues the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines pose, the Oxford vaccine may prove to be a great improvement.
The key point from here is that the trials continue. We are in the early stages of data collection and we need a lot more.
But the news we are getting currently is fantastic. Science and cross-border cooperation and coordination are delivering. It gives us hope that other huge challenges can be solved. It may even be time for optimism about climate change mitigation - if the politicians can deliver the incentives.
On 26th August it was reported by the US mainstream media that Hillary Clinton had said that Joe Biden shouldn't concede the election "under any circumstances". Interesting how this has been forgotten now by the same media outlets.
I can understand why they haven't settled the Next President market, just. What beggars belief is that they haven't settled the Popular Vote market.
I think the reason is Betfair blundered into this mess. However, the excuse will be that the Trump campaign's lawsuits asked the courts to disqualify *millions* of votes.
The rules say "This market will be settled upon popular vote percentage figures as published by CNN". Even supposing the sake of argument Giuliani persuaded the Supreme Court to invalidate all the votes in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and have their respective legislatures decide who got the delegates, surely CNN still wouldn't be reporting that nobody there voted???
As I said, I think Betfair blundered into this. Now that they have, the lawsuits provide (or provided) some cover.
The mistake they’ve made was settling some markets early, while holding some back awaiting final confirmed results.
To be fair to the suppliers, they were wonderful in pushing back to May when we postoned in March. We are starting to liaise with them about May, but we have pretty much decided that unless getting married is illegal in May then we aren't going to postpone again, we would just scale down the service/reception. Admittedly this complicates things for us because suppliers are more likely to allow a straight postponement but scaling back may be less clearcut. Moreover, when we first postponed there were somethings we hadn't ordered/booked and we are wary of getting stuck in contracts now which weigh up losses.
Ultimately, we will need to make a decision at an arbitrary time and balance risk, but this isn't helped with government giving mixed signals about what 'back to normal' may look like and its timing; although I should stress I don't blame them for that given the uncertainty.
@James_M - go for something different. Postpone the reception but do the wedding and then, when things look more normal do "James & [insert partner's name] Big Wedding and Covid Bash" and celebrate both in one go.
It's also been pointed out that the different trial protocols could distort comparisons. Unlike Pfizer and Moderna, Oxford made sure to pick up asymptomatic cases as well.
While the US ones merely recorded symptomatic cases, the Oxford trial carried out weekly swabs on people to pick up any hint of infection. It could point towards the Oxford vaccine being able to prevent transmission and infection as well as illness (and is possibly what they were referring to with the "intriguing hint" stuff)
Yes, that's a big difference in methodology wrt picking up asymptomatic cases. The full trial data could show 95%+ efficacy for preventing symptomatic COVID like the other two. AZ's PR department has a lot to learn from the Americans. With vaccines I think winning the PR war is just as important as the science right now given all of the fake news we have everywhere, even on here.
Agreed.
Interesting post too by @Andy_Cooke - I wasn’t aware that P/Mod hadn’t tested for asymptomatic cases. Very important point!!
Great politics (not)...take all the negative hits for saving your minister, then reshuffle them away...
Boris Johnson 'will DEMOTE Priti Patel over asylum crisis': Under-fire Home Secretary is predicted to be made Tory chairman in reshuffle following bullying row
The reason for stuffing the Cabinet with Leavers was to give Boris political cover for whatever Brexit deal is cooked up, or indeed cocked up. He still needs Priti inside the tent pissing out.
Spot on, but that might only continue to apply for the next few weeks.
I am most excited about what the next few years will now bring in vaccine advancements. There’s some nasty tropical infectious diseases out there still to be conquered, cancer causing viruses, sti’s etc...
Will be interested to see whether any of these vaccines knock out common cold corona viruses too. If I was in charge I’d be chucking public money at coming up with a suite of rhinovirus vaccines too. Such a drag on productivity and quality of life. And who’s to say the next big pandemic might not be a mutated rhinovirus?
Don't understand why AZ even reported the 70% figure. It's unnecessarily confusing.
Because it's the was they decided at the start that they'd assess efficacy - doing something different when you've seen the results is a fundamental mistake in clinical trials, like saying you don't like a poll result but the Scottish subsample suggests a much better outcome. Further examination of the data gives a "hint" that doing it differently might give a 90% result, but that needs a separate trial IMO.
It's not a question of blame - we invested in a very serious effort and normally 70% would be a great result. Ity turns out that something else would be even better, but that's nobody's fault. What would be totally unacceptable would be to push out the Oxford vaccine now without further testing of the new hypothesis. Let's use the Pfizer/Modema vaccine for now.
TBF, it's a bit more than a hint. They have a decent number of cases to go on.
Sorry, yes, I was quoting the Oxford director, but he's talking about something slightly different: "There is just a hint in the data at the moment that those who got that regime with higher protection, there is a suggestion that it was also able to reduce asymptomatic infection." This is a claim that's also been made for the Pfizer vaccine, though I've not seen hard evidence.
I think we should give the scientists a little time to come up with some detailed analysis - they've been under huge pressure to report. FWIW my impression is that they didn't set out to do a trial on the lower dose, but they quite properly included various dose patterns to generate further hypotheses. The numbers in the subsample don't look sufficient to justify rushing out on that basis, but this is a former statistician going by a newspaper report of an interim result, so don't take my word for it.
Whatever works best! What we don't need is people embracing the Oxford approach because it's British, or rejecting it because they don't like the Goverrnment that bought a big stock. But it's undoubtedly true that people at high risk will want the best approach for them. rather than the fastest/cheapest.
Absolutely.
I note that little was said about safety results, though I expect there's still rather a lot of data compilation being done.
Note the data being shared today appears to date back a couple of weeks. https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2020-11-23-oxford-university-breakthrough-global-covid-19-vaccine# ...Following the trial reaching the target for interim analysis, the independent Data and Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB) recommended that the team at Oxford conduct its first analysis on all the cases with data locked on 4 November 2020.
These preliminary data indicate that the vaccine is 70.4% effective, with tests on two different dose regimens showing that the vaccine was 90% effective if administered at a half dose and then at a full dose, or 62% effective if administered in two full doses.
Additional cases are expected to accrue by the time of the final analysis and future analyses will determine the duration of protection. No serious safety events related to the vaccine have been identified...
Absolutely no time at all for anyone sneering that the 70% efficacy reported for the Oxford vaccine is somehow bad news. It’s not. It’s fantastic. The more options for ways out of the pandemic there are, the better.
In fact, given the transport and storage issues the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines pose, the Oxford vaccine may prove to be a great improvement.
The key point from here is that the trials continue. We are in the early stages of data collection and we need a lot more.
But the news we are getting currently is fantastic. Science and cross-border cooperation and coordination are delivering. It gives us hope that other huge challenges can be solved. It may even be time for optimism about climate change mitigation - if the politicians can deliver the incentives.
Indeed. And we may finish with one that is excellent but we don't actually have, one that is excellent but a real faff to transport and dispense and where we're in a queue, and one that is good at first dose and excellent after a second, that is cheap and easy to make. In which case it should be a no brainer; timeliness will save as many lives as effectiveness.
AZ shares dont seem very excited by the news, however. Are they going to sell at cost price?
On 26th August it was reported by the US mainstream media that Hillary Clinton had said that Joe Biden shouldn't concede the election "under any circumstances". Interesting how this has been forgotten now by the same media outlets.
And Biden hasn't conceded. What's your point? In the current context, Hillary is saying Democrats should fight Trump's attempts to get votes disqualified in court rather than rolling over and conceding.
Woo, great vaccine news! That’s three of them almost ready to go.
Hopefully this damn menace will soon be over.
Should load a three-pronged needle with all three, so no one knows what they are going to get. Bit like a tame version of Russian roulette. Sort of.
That'll be fun. I used to have a monthly blood test and just before the needle went in the nurse would say 'Ok. Little prick'. Then after several months she said 'Ok. Small scratch'. So I asked her what had happened to 'little prick' and she said they'd had a directive to say 'small scratch' from now on......
Sometimes the truth hurts too much Roger.
I was going to point out that 'little prick' describes it much better!
Though might be interpreted as a rather derogatory comment on the patient!
It isn't terribly obvious to me why a half dose should be more effective at priming the immune system than a full one, but immunology is a fairly dark art.
From The Atlantic:
"An immunologist and a cardiologist are kidnapped. The kidnappers threaten to shoot one of them, but promise to spare whoever has made the greater contribution to humanity. The cardiologist says, “Well, I’ve identified drugs that have saved the lives of millions of people.” Impressed, the kidnappers turn to the immunologist. “What have you done?” they ask. The immunologist says, “The thing is, the immune system is very complicated …” And the cardiologist says, “Just shoot me now.”
Don't understand why AZ even reported the 70% figure. It's unnecessarily confusing.
Because it's the was they decided at the start that they'd assess efficacy - doing something different when you've seen the results is a fundamental mistake in clinical trials, like saying you don't like a poll result but the Scottish subsample suggests a much better outcome. Further examination of the data gives a "hint" that doing it differently might give a 90% result, but that needs a separate trial IMO.
It's not a question of blame - we invested in a very serious effort and normally 70% would be a great result. Ity turns out that something else would be even better, but that's nobody's fault. What would be totally unacceptable would be to push out the Oxford vaccine now without further testing of the new hypothesis. Let's use the Pfizer/Modema vaccine for now.
TBF, it's a bit more than a hint. They have a decent number of cases to go on.
Sorry, yes, I was quoting the Oxford director, but he's talking about something slightly different: "There is just a hint in the data at the moment that those who got that regime with higher protection, there is a suggestion that it was also able to reduce asymptomatic infection." This is a claim that's also been made for the Pfizer vaccine, though I've not seen hard evidence.
I think we should give the scientists a little time to come up with some detailed analysis - they've been under huge pressure to report. FWIW my impression is that they didn't set out to do a trial on the lower dose, but they quite properly included various dose patterns to generate further hypotheses. The numbers in the subsample don't look sufficient to justify rushing out on that basis, but this is a former statistician going by a newspaper report of an interim result, so don't take my word for it.
Whatever works best! What we don't need is people embracing the Oxford approach because it's British, or rejecting it because they don't like the Goverrnment that bought a big stock. But it's undoubtedly true that people at high risk will want the best approach for them. rather than the fastest/cheapest.
Absolutely.
I note that little was said about safety results, though I expect there's still rather a lot of data compilation being done.
Note the data being shared today appears to date back a couple of weeks. https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2020-11-23-oxford-university-breakthrough-global-covid-19-vaccine# ...Following the trial reaching the target for interim analysis, the independent Data and Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB) recommended that the team at Oxford conduct its first analysis on all the cases with data locked on 4 November 2020.
These preliminary data indicate that the vaccine is 70.4% effective, with tests on two different dose regimens showing that the vaccine was 90% effective if administered at a half dose and then at a full dose, or 62% effective if administered in two full doses.
Additional cases are expected to accrue by the time of the final analysis and future analyses will determine the duration of protection. No serious safety events related to the vaccine have been identified...
Not often people admit to "buy less of our product for an enhanced outcome"!
Listening to the report on the Oxford vaccine it is really great news and yet it seems siren voices are trying to criticise it's efficacy and you do wonder why when we get good news many seem to want it to fail
It is very disappointing that we cannot all rejoice at good news
I’m slightly concerned by the smallish sample size in the dose that has 90% efficacy. They clearly weren’t expecting that dose to be as effective so only gave it to 3000 people compared to >17k who got the full dose. That should slightly dampen our expectations. Anything between 70% and 90% is still worthwhile and good (especially as an inexpensive mass jab you can produce billions of doses of) but it’s not going to go down well when the government bangs on about being world beating and delivers the population a “second class” innoculation.
The trouble is that 70% is an average between the two groups. The measured efficacy in the larger group was only 62%, and because the efficacy is lower there's a lot of statistical uncertainty about the true figure. It might even be below 50%. I don't think you can justify choosing the less efficacious regimen just because the numbers are larger. Particularly if it means fewer people can be vaccinated.
I put that in greater detail in my later post. Of course you don’t approve the 2x full dose over the other one if it works less well. But... you also don’t want to yell “Oxford is 90% effective” from the roof tops if it turns out that was a statistical burp from a small sample size. Again, this is partly an issue with how hard it is to report on complex, multi arm trials with multiple outcomes. Pfizer and Moderna were simpler.
But the sample size for the half/full dose was pretty big, 62% vs 90% looks statistically significant.
However, I agree on the general point that doing a multi variable trial should maybe have been bigger. I guess the halting of it in the US is the main issue here, that had 20k participants.
You’d need to compare it to the other half of the UK trial arm to be completely sure. I would have preferred the BRA trial they combined it with to be identical (rather than the whole trial arm being 2x full dose). If their statisticians and the MHRA’s statisticians eventually concur once the trial finishes then It’ll be good news indeed.
To be fair to the suppliers, they were wonderful in pushing back to May when we postoned in March. We are starting to liaise with them about May, but we have pretty much decided that unless getting married is illegal in May then we aren't going to postpone again, we would just scale down the service/reception. Admittedly this complicates things for us because suppliers are more likely to allow a straight postponement but scaling back may be less clearcut. Moreover, when we first postponed there were somethings we hadn't ordered/booked and we are wary of getting stuck in contracts now which weigh up losses.
Ultimately, we will need to make a decision at an arbitrary time and balance risk, but this isn't helped with government giving mixed signals about what 'back to normal' may look like and its timing; although I should stress I don't blame them for that given the uncertainty.
Absolutely no time at all for anyone sneering that the 70% efficacy reported for the Oxford vaccine is somehow bad news. It’s not. It’s fantastic. The more options for ways out of the pandemic there are, the better.
In fact, given the transport and storage issues the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines pose, the Oxford vaccine may prove to be a great improvement.
The key point from here is that the trials continue. We are in the early stages of data collection and we need a lot more.
But the news we are getting currently is fantastic. Science and cross-border cooperation and coordination are delivering. It gives us hope that other huge challenges can be solved. It may even be time for optimism about climate change mitigation - if the politicians can deliver the incentives.
Indeed. And we may finish with one that is excellent but we don't actually have, one that is excellent but a real faff to transport and dispense and where we're in a queue, and one that is good at first dose and excellent after a second, that is cheap and easy to make. In which case it should be a no brainer; timeliness will save at as many lives as effectiveness.
AZ shares dont seem very excited by the news, however. Are they going to sell at cost price?
They're signed up to cost price for the first year or something like that.
I actually think the efficacy differences may end up being differences in methodology with AZ doing weekly tests and picking up asymptomatic cases while Pfizer and Moderna only tested trial participants reporting symptoms. We'll need to wait for the full data readout to get a sense of how many symptomatic COVID cases there were in each of the active vaccine arms. It could turn out that we have a vaccine that's cheap to manufacture, easy to transport, where we have 50m doses worth of domestic manufacturing lined up for early next year, and where we have 95%+ efficacy in preventing symptomatic COVID just like the other two.
On 26th August it was reported by the US mainstream media that Hillary Clinton had said that Joe Biden shouldn't concede the election "under any circumstances". Interesting how this has been forgotten now by the same media outlets.
I’m slightly concerned by the smallish sample size in the dose that has 90% efficacy. They clearly weren’t expecting that dose to be as effective so only gave it to 3000 people compared to >17k who got the full dose. That should slightly dampen our expectations. Anything between 70% and 90% is still worthwhile and good (especially as an inexpensive mass jab you can produce billions of doses of) but it’s not going to go down well when the government bangs on about being world beating and delivers the population a “second class” innoculation.
The trouble is that 70% is an average between the two groups. The measured efficacy in the larger group was only 62%, and because the efficacy is lower there's a lot of statistical uncertainty about the true figure. It might even be below 50%. I don't think you can justify choosing the less efficacious regimen just because the numbers are larger. Particularly if it means fewer people can be vaccinated.
I put that in greater detail in my later post. Of course you don’t approve the 2x full dose over the other one if it works less well. But... you also don’t want to yell “Oxford is 90% effective” from the roof tops if it turns out that was a statistical burp from a small sample size. Again, this is partly an issue with how hard it is to report on complex, multi arm trials with multiple outcomes. Pfizer and Moderna were simpler.
But the sample size for the half/full dose was pretty big, 62% vs 90% looks statistically significant.
However, I agree on the general point that doing a multi variable trial should maybe have been bigger. I guess the halting of it in the US is the main issue here, that had 20k participants.
A sample size of 3,000 for the measure that showed 90% effectiveness is quite enough. What we know is that 3,000 people were exposed to the virus after being given the half-dosage vaccine, that the proportion who then caught it was only 10% of the proportion in the control group, and the virulence in the rest was far less such that no-one needed hospitalisation. Maybe that's not quite large enough a sample to tell us whether it's actually 92% or 88% effective, but it's certainly enough to act on the results with confidence. Zero hospitalisations out of 3,000 exposures is enough for me at least.
The initial half dosage method is also very clearly the more effective means of administering the vaccine, compared to the standard method that delivered only a 62% rate of effectiveness, so that result is irrelevent.
I feel for you @JamesM - it may be pretty much over by May. Or we find the vaccines are a bit of a false dawn - limited supplies, botched injection plan etc etc.
I know that weddings take a lot of planning and that the industry is happy to make things as complex (and thus expensive) as possible. Are we going to see a firesale when restrictions eventually get lifted and venues / events suddenly needs short notice bookings?
Absolutely no time at all for anyone sneering that the 70% efficacy reported for the Oxford vaccine is somehow bad news. It’s not. It’s fantastic. The more options for ways out of the pandemic there are, the better.
In fact, given the transport and storage issues the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines pose, the Oxford vaccine may prove to be a great improvement.
The key point from here is that the trials continue. We are in the early stages of data collection and we need a lot more.
But the news we are getting currently is fantastic. Science and cross-border cooperation and coordination are delivering. It gives us hope that other huge challenges can be solved. It may even be time for optimism about climate change mitigation - if the politicians can deliver the incentives.
There are far more than three under development just in the west. Interview of a US vaccine expert ... by a doctor
I’m slightly concerned by the smallish sample size in the dose that has 90% efficacy. They clearly weren’t expecting that dose to be as effective so only gave it to 3000 people compared to >17k who got the full dose. That should slightly dampen our expectations. Anything between 70% and 90% is still worthwhile and good (especially as an inexpensive mass jab you can produce billions of doses of) but it’s not going to go down well when the government bangs on about being world beating and delivers the population a “second class” innoculation.
The trouble is that 70% is an average between the two groups. The measured efficacy in the larger group was only 62%, and because the efficacy is lower there's a lot of statistical uncertainty about the true figure. It might even be below 50%. I don't think you can justify choosing the less efficacious regimen just because the numbers are larger. Particularly if it means fewer people can be vaccinated.
I put that in greater detail in my later post. Of course you don’t approve the 2x full dose over the other one if it works less well. But... you also don’t want to yell “Oxford is 90% effective” from the roof tops if it turns out that was a statistical burp from a small sample size. Again, this is partly an issue with how hard it is to report on complex, multi arm trials with multiple outcomes. Pfizer and Moderna were simpler.
But the sample size for the half/full dose was pretty big, 62% vs 90% looks statistically significant.
However, I agree on the general point that doing a multi variable trial should maybe have been bigger. I guess the halting of it in the US is the main issue here, that had 20k participants.
A sample size of 3,000 for the measure that showed 90% effectiveness is quite enough. What we know is that 3,000 people were exposed to the virus, that the proportion who then caught it was only 10% of the proportion in the control group, and the virulence in the rest was far less such that no-one needed hospitalisation. Maybe that's not quite large enough a sample to tell us whether it's actually 92% or 88% effective, but it's certainly enough to act on the results with confidence. Zero hospitalisations out of 3,000 exposures is enough for me at least.
The initial half dosage method is also very clearly the more effective means of administering the vaccine, compared to the standard method that delivered only a 62% rate of effectiveness, so that result is irrelevent.
It wasn't a challenge trial so we don't know how many of the 3000 people were exposed to the virus, but zero hospitalisations is a very good number, even in the full two dose arm there were no serious cases while Moderna had one serious case in their vaccine arm.
I can understand why they haven't settled the Next President market, just. What beggars belief is that they haven't settled the Popular Vote market.
I think the reason is Betfair blundered into this mess. However, the excuse will be that the Trump campaign's lawsuits asked the courts to disqualify *millions* of votes.
The rules say "This market will be settled upon popular vote percentage figures as published by CNN". Even supposing the sake of argument Giuliani persuaded the Supreme Court to invalidate all the votes in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and have their respective legislatures decide who got the delegates, surely CNN still wouldn't be reporting that nobody there voted???
As I said, I think Betfair blundered into this. Now that they have, the lawsuits provide (or provided) some cover.
The mistake they’ve made was settling some markets early, while holding some back awaiting final confirmed results.
To be fair, in normal circumstances Trump would have conceded but Gore/Bush 2000 should have reminded Betfair that circumstances can be abnormal.
A lot of Betfair's problem is that it just set up too many potentially interlinked markets. Settling them piecemeal might embarrass big layers, and layers are harder to find than backers.
The popular vote markets were always likely to be subject to some states' slow counting, to take the most obvious example. Why have separate ECV band markets for each candidate, as if they were independent of each other? And too often, Betfair's settlement terms were vague -- projected by who, is one obvious question -- and were amended after the markets were in play. No doubt any lessons will be forgotten by next time. Some 2024 markets are already open.
Absolutely no time at all for anyone sneering that the 70% efficacy reported for the Oxford vaccine is somehow bad news. It’s not. It’s fantastic. The more options for ways out of the pandemic there are, the better.
In fact, given the transport and storage issues the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines pose, the Oxford vaccine may prove to be a great improvement.
The key point from here is that the trials continue. We are in the early stages of data collection and we need a lot more.
But the news we are getting currently is fantastic. Science and cross-border cooperation and coordination are delivering. It gives us hope that other huge challenges can be solved. It may even be time for optimism about climate change mitigation - if the politicians can deliver the incentives.
There are far more than three under development just in the west. Interview of a US vaccine expert ... by a doctor
Don't understand why AZ even reported the 70% figure. It's unnecessarily confusing.
Because it's the was they decided at the start that they'd assess efficacy - doing something different when you've seen the results is a fundamental mistake in clinical trials, like saying you don't like a poll result but the Scottish subsample suggests a much better outcome. Further examination of the data gives a "hint" that doing it differently might give a 90% result, but that needs a separate trial IMO.
It's not a question of blame - we invested in a very serious effort and normally 70% would be a great result. Ity turns out that something else would be even better, but that's nobody's fault. What would be totally unacceptable would be to push out the Oxford vaccine now without further testing of the new hypothesis. Let's use the Pfizer/Modema vaccine for now.
If the Oxford one is cheaper, easier to produce, and doesn't need all the dry ice to store and move it about, then surely the best strategy is to get everyone vaccinated with a first dose of the Oxford, which gets us to herd immunity (when you add in the people already immune) as quickly as possible, and then come round with a second dose to get to over 90%? Indeed if the first dose is a half dose, logically we will be producing doses for the first phase twice as quickly.
No the herd immunity part is incorrect and is a misreading of the release. The doses were either 2 full doses several weeks apart or one half dose and then a full dose the same several weeks later. You are only protected two weeks after the second dose. The second dose does not confer 90% immunity on its own. It is unknown what the single dose efficacy is.
Great politics (not)...take all the negative hits for saving your minister, then reshuffle them away...
Boris Johnson 'will DEMOTE Priti Patel over asylum crisis': Under-fire Home Secretary is predicted to be made Tory chairman in reshuffle following bullying row
The reason for stuffing the Cabinet with Leavers was to give Boris political cover for whatever Brexit deal is cooked up, or indeed cocked up. He still needs Priti inside the tent pissing out.
Wildly O/T: a resident says he's a trail biker, and has been digging a small trail on common land. He says it's nowhere near wherever anyone walks, and doesn't damage the environment since it's just earth and nature will fill it up again in due course. He says he's a teenager getting a lot of hassle for sitting around at home, and now he's getting a lot of hassle for doing something useful outdoors.
I'm a bit dubious about someone with the best of intentions digging up common land, but what is the legal position on this?
People who used to dig trails in their local woods turned the idea into a multi-million pound industry. We now have trail centres all over the UK.
I very much doubt it is legal to do it without permission but unless there is something particularly rare growing there does it really do any harm?
We have a few trails locally in old sand and limestone quarries where the disturbance actually helps several rare species that like bare ground.
I do know there have been problems - for example at Wharncliffe near Sheffield - where there have been conflicts between the downhill mountain bikers and the Forestry Commission. It seems odd because the Forestry Commission are one of the organisations that run official trail centres. It is officially private land though, albeit with a right of access, so a different legally from common land.
If you remember, there was some talk about the human adenovirus vector vaccines being less effective than the chimpanzee one owing to and existing immune response against the vector itself, rather than the antigen payload.
Perhaps the lower initial dose means such an unuseful immune response is less likely against the booster shot.
If 4m doses of Az already exist in the UK and the first dose only needs to be half a dose, can we not get on and vaccinate 8m people immediately ???
Yes. Let’s go.
70% is fine by the way.
70% is an average figure across two trial doses. Two full doses had 62% efficacy and a half then full dose had 90%. There's not actually any combination that does 70% so it's a very odd figure for AZ to release. The MHRA is almost certainly going to approve the half/full dose.
Probably trying to correct for what the press will do with numbers. iF they had included -
- 62% at one dosage - 90% at another
There would have been headlines - "VACCINE! ONLY! 62%! EFFECTIVE! DISASTER! EVERYONE! RUN! ROUND! SCREAMING! ON! FIRE!"
Quite. I saw the 70% headline but realised as soon as I looked at the official press release that it was totally misleading.
The most important figure to me was that nobody who had the vaccine got seriously ill. I'll take that...
Wildly O/T: a resident says he's a trail biker, and has been digging a small trail on common land. He says it's nowhere near wherever anyone walks, and doesn't damage the environment since it's just earth and nature will fill it up again in due course. He says he's a teenager getting a lot of hassle for sitting around at home, and now he's getting a lot of hassle for doing something useful outdoors.
I'm a bit dubious about someone with the best of intentions digging up common land, but what is the legal position on this?
That's exactly what I did as a teenager 25 years ago. Some people just like to give teenagers - any teenager - a hard time.
Absolutely no time at all for anyone sneering that the 70% efficacy reported for the Oxford vaccine is somehow bad news. It’s not. It’s fantastic. The more options for ways out of the pandemic there are, the better.
In fact, given the transport and storage issues the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines pose, the Oxford vaccine may prove to be a great improvement.
The key point from here is that the trials continue. We are in the early stages of data collection and we need a lot more.
But the news we are getting currently is fantastic. Science and cross-border cooperation and coordination are delivering. It gives us hope that other huge challenges can be solved. It may even be time for optimism about climate change mitigation - if the politicians can deliver the incentives.
Indeed. And we may finish with one that is excellent but we don't actually have, one that is excellent but a real faff to transport and dispense and where we're in a queue, and one that is good at first dose and excellent after a second, that is cheap and easy to make. In which case it should be a no brainer; timeliness will save at as many lives as effectiveness.
AZ shares dont seem very excited by the news, however. Are they going to sell at cost price?
They're signed up to cost price for the first year or something like that.
I actually think the efficacy differences may end up being differences in methodology with AZ doing weekly tests and picking up asymptomatic cases while Pfizer and Moderna only tested trial participants reporting symptoms. We'll need to wait for the full data readout to get a sense of how many symptomatic COVID cases there were in each of the active vaccine arms. It could turn out that we have a vaccine that's cheap to manufacture, easy to transport, where we have 50m doses worth of domestic manufacturing lined up for early next year, and where we have 95%+ efficacy in preventing symptomatic COVID just like the other two.
Don’t rush to “methodology” quite so easily. That part is only mentioned in the UK trial spec on the AZ press release. I don’t know if that was done in the BRA trial. It’s annoying because we can’t parse things out easily due to that difference aside from the overall efficacy numbers since the two trials were subtly different. What might well be important is that the swabbing was done on the part of the trial which has shown greater effectiveness. That makes me a little more confident.
I’m slightly concerned by the smallish sample size in the dose that has 90% efficacy. They clearly weren’t expecting that dose to be as effective so only gave it to 3000 people compared to >17k who got the full dose. That should slightly dampen our expectations. Anything between 70% and 90% is still worthwhile and good (especially as an inexpensive mass jab you can produce billions of doses of) but it’s not going to go down well when the government bangs on about being world beating and delivers the population a “second class” innoculation.
The trouble is that 70% is an average between the two groups. The measured efficacy in the larger group was only 62%, and because the efficacy is lower there's a lot of statistical uncertainty about the true figure. It might even be below 50%. I don't think you can justify choosing the less efficacious regimen just because the numbers are larger. Particularly if it means fewer people can be vaccinated.
I put that in greater detail in my later post. Of course you don’t approve the 2x full dose over the other one if it works less well. But... you also don’t want to yell “Oxford is 90% effective” from the roof tops if it turns out that was a statistical burp from a small sample size. Again, this is partly an issue with how hard it is to report on complex, multi arm trials with multiple outcomes. Pfizer and Moderna were simpler.
But the sample size for the half/full dose was pretty big, 62% vs 90% looks statistically significant.
However, I agree on the general point that doing a multi variable trial should maybe have been bigger. I guess the halting of it in the US is the main issue here, that had 20k participants.
A sample size of 3,000 for the measure that showed 90% effectiveness is quite enough. What we know is that 3,000 people were exposed to the virus, that the proportion who then caught it was only 10% of the proportion in the control group, and the virulence in the rest was far less such that no-one needed hospitalisation. Maybe that's not quite large enough a sample to tell us whether it's actually 92% or 88% effective, but it's certainly enough to act on the results with confidence. Zero hospitalisations out of 3,000 exposures is enough for me at least.
The initial half dosage method is also very clearly the more effective means of administering the vaccine, compared to the standard method that delivered only a 62% rate of effectiveness, so that result is irrelevent.
It wasn't a challenge trial so we don't know how many of the 3000 people were exposed to the virus, but zero hospitalisations is a very good number, even in the full two dose arm there were no serious cases while Moderna had one serious case in their vaccine arm.
OK thanks for that clarification, I take your point about the absence of a challenge trial. Nonetheless, the difference with both the control group and the results from the standard method is still very obvious and it's still clear that it's a markedly better method, such that we shouldn't hide between statistical nicities of the difference between a 99% and a 99.9% confidence interval.
Wildly O/T: a resident says he's a trail biker, and has been digging a small trail on common land. He says it's nowhere near wherever anyone walks, and doesn't damage the environment since it's just earth and nature will fill it up again in due course. He says he's a teenager getting a lot of hassle for sitting around at home, and now he's getting a lot of hassle for doing something useful outdoors.
I'm a bit dubious about someone with the best of intentions digging up common land, but what is the legal position on this?
People who used to dig trails in their local woods turned the idea into a multi-million pound industry. We now have trail centres all over the UK.
I very much doubt it is legal to do it without permission but unless there is something particularly rare growing there does it really do any harm?
We have a few trails locally in old sand and limestone quarries where the disturbance actually helps several rare species that like bare ground.
I do know there have been problems - for example at Wharncliffe near Sheffield - where there have been conflicts between the downhill mountain bikers and the Forestry Commission. It seems odd because the Forestry Commission are one of the organisations that run official trail centres. It is officially private land though, albeit with a right of access, so a different legally from common land.
Maybe they are worried about liability?
If I were the site manager I’d be getting cold sweats at the idea of a 14 year old mountain biker ending up head first in some forestry equipment. With the FC licensed places they block off the trails and tracks where forestry management or clearing is taking places
Wildly O/T: a resident says he's a trail biker, and has been digging a small trail on common land. He says it's nowhere near wherever anyone walks, and doesn't damage the environment since it's just earth and nature will fill it up again in due course. He says he's a teenager getting a lot of hassle for sitting around at home, and now he's getting a lot of hassle for doing something useful outdoors.
I'm a bit dubious about someone with the best of intentions digging up common land, but what is the legal position on this?
He needs extra clicks of high speed damping on his forks if he's gapping big doubles.
Wildly O/T: a resident says he's a trail biker, and has been digging a small trail on common land. He says it's nowhere near wherever anyone walks, and doesn't damage the environment since it's just earth and nature will fill it up again in due course. He says he's a teenager getting a lot of hassle for sitting around at home, and now he's getting a lot of hassle for doing something useful outdoors.
I'm a bit dubious about someone with the best of intentions digging up common land, but what is the legal position on this?
People who used to dig trails in their local woods turned the idea into a multi-million pound industry. We now have trail centres all over the UK.
I very much doubt it is legal to do it without permission but unless there is something particularly rare growing there does it really do any harm?
We have a few trails locally in old sand and limestone quarries where the disturbance actually helps several rare species that like bare ground.
I do know there have been problems - for example at Wharncliffe near Sheffield - where there have been conflicts between the downhill mountain bikers and the Forestry Commission. It seems odd because the Forestry Commission are one of the organisations that run official trail centres. It is officially private land though, albeit with a right of access, so a different legally from common land.
Maybe they are worried about liability?
If I were the site manager I’d be getting cold sweats at the idea of a 14 year old mountain biker ending up head first in some forestry equipment. With the FC licensed places they block off the trails and tracks where forestry management or clearing is taking places
True, I suppose. It makes it harder to block off access if you don't know where all the access points are. Even official trail centres have 'special' routes known only to the locals, mind.
I'd be interested to know how many incidents there have been involving forestry management.
Even 50 year old mountain bikers have been known to ignore closed signs on occasion (ahem).
I know grade inflation is a persistent problem but these charts, specifically the one about positive tests by Health Board, are worth a look. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-53511877
On their own measures:
NONE of Scotland should be in tier 4 (currently over 2m people) Only Lanarkshire and Greater Glasgow should be in tier 3 (instead of almost all the central belt and Aberdeen) Ayrshire, Lothian, Fife and Forth Valley should be tier 2 Borders, Grampian and Tayside should be tier 1 (we are currently tier 3). Highland, Shetland, Western Isles and Orkney should all be at tier 0.
Really surprised that more is not being made of this. The economic consequences of this are severe and, apparently, unnecessary.
Because absolute case numbers isn't the only indicator.
The new pub rules sound like Tier 2 is what Tier 3 was (substantial meals only) and Tier 3 is what lockdown was (takeaway only) or have I misunderstood that?
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In fact, given the transport and storage issues the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines pose, the Oxford vaccine may prove to be a great improvement.
The key point from here is that the trials continue. We are in the early stages of data collection and we need a lot more.
But the news we are getting currently is fantastic. Science and cross-border cooperation and coordination are delivering. It gives us hope that other huge challenges can be solved. It may even be time for optimism about climate change mitigation - if the politicians can deliver the incentives.
And she isn’t fighting this election.
Stop pushing this boring meme.
Move it to the end of summer or early autumn
Interesting post too by @Andy_Cooke - I wasn’t aware that P/Mod hadn’t tested for asymptomatic cases. Very important point!!
Will be interested to see whether any of these vaccines knock out common cold corona viruses too. If I was in charge I’d be chucking public money at coming up with a suite of rhinovirus vaccines too. Such a drag on productivity and quality of life. And who’s to say the next big pandemic might not be a mutated rhinovirus?
I note that little was said about safety results, though I expect there's still rather a lot of data compilation being done.
Note the data being shared today appears to date back a couple of weeks.
https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2020-11-23-oxford-university-breakthrough-global-covid-19-vaccine#
...Following the trial reaching the target for interim analysis, the independent Data and Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB) recommended that the team at Oxford conduct its first analysis on all the cases with data locked on 4 November 2020.
These preliminary data indicate that the vaccine is 70.4% effective, with tests on two different dose regimens showing that the vaccine was 90% effective if administered at a half dose and then at a full dose, or 62% effective if administered in two full doses.
Additional cases are expected to accrue by the time of the final analysis and future analyses will determine the duration of protection. No serious safety events related to the vaccine have been identified...
AZ shares dont seem very excited by the news, however. Are they going to sell at cost price?
It isn't terribly obvious to me why a half dose should be more effective at priming the immune system than a full one, but immunology is a fairly dark art.
From The Atlantic:
"An immunologist and a cardiologist are kidnapped. The kidnappers threaten to shoot one of them, but promise to spare whoever has made the greater contribution to humanity. The cardiologist says, “Well, I’ve identified drugs that have saved the lives of millions of people.” Impressed, the kidnappers turn to the immunologist. “What have you done?” they ask. The immunologist says, “The thing is, the immune system is very complicated …” And the cardiologist says, “Just shoot me now.”
Which looks like quite a significant change to me.
Whinging is what we do.
- The plan is apparently to vaccinate at 1 million per week.
- Accelerating to 4-5 million per week next year
- https://www.newscientist.com/article/2237475-covid-19-news-nhs-drafts-plan-to-vaccinate-adults-in-england-by-april/
"Adults under 50 could start getting vaccines late January, with the majority vaccinated in March."
From the following
that suggest that the plan is to have all the major risk groups done by the end of January.
The question in this is now
1) Supply of vaccine(s)
2) Getting people vaccinated.
I actually think the efficacy differences may end up being differences in methodology with AZ doing weekly tests and picking up asymptomatic cases while Pfizer and Moderna only tested trial participants reporting symptoms. We'll need to wait for the full data readout to get a sense of how many symptomatic COVID cases there were in each of the active vaccine arms. It could turn out that we have a vaccine that's cheap to manufacture, easy to transport, where we have 50m doses worth of domestic manufacturing lined up for early next year, and where we have 95%+ efficacy in preventing symptomatic COVID just like the other two.
I see fake news (or maybe just shit reporting) is on today's agenda.
It's 90% effective. Yes, that means a half-doze followed by a full one, but that's known.
Calling it 70% effective if you don't use the superior (and, as mentioned, known) method of vaccination is disingenuous at best.
The initial half dosage method is also very clearly the more effective means of administering the vaccine, compared to the standard method that delivered only a 62% rate of effectiveness, so that result is irrelevent.
I know that weddings take a lot of planning and that the industry is happy to make things as complex (and thus expensive) as possible. Are we going to see a firesale when restrictions eventually get lifted and venues / events suddenly needs short notice bookings?
https://peterattiamd.com/pauloffit/
The discussion of safety is informative. So is the degree to which governments have signed blank cheques to speed the process up.
A lot of Betfair's problem is that it just set up too many potentially interlinked markets. Settling them piecemeal might embarrass big layers, and layers are harder to find than backers.
The popular vote markets were always likely to be subject to some states' slow counting, to take the most obvious example. Why have separate ECV band markets for each candidate, as if they were independent of each other? And too often, Betfair's settlement terms were vague -- projected by who, is one obvious question -- and were amended after the markets were in play. No doubt any lessons will be forgotten by next time. Some 2024 markets are already open.
I very much doubt it is legal to do it without permission but unless there is something particularly rare growing there does it really do any harm?
We have a few trails locally in old sand and limestone quarries where the disturbance actually helps several rare species that like bare ground.
I do know there have been problems - for example at Wharncliffe near Sheffield - where there have been conflicts between the downhill mountain bikers and the Forestry Commission. It seems odd because the Forestry Commission are one of the organisations that run official trail centres. It is officially private land though, albeit with a right of access, so a different legally from common land.
Maybe they are worried about liability?
https://twitter.com/_b_meyer/status/1330782510763151360
If you remember, there was some talk about the human adenovirus vector vaccines being less effective than the chimpanzee one owing to and existing immune response against the vector itself, rather than the antigen payload.
Perhaps the lower initial dose means such an unuseful immune response is less likely against the booster shot.
The most important figure to me was that nobody who had the vaccine got seriously ill. I'll take that...
I'd just politely listen, and then ignore.
I'd be interested to know how many incidents there have been involving forestry management.
Even 50 year old mountain bikers have been known to ignore closed signs on occasion (ahem).