The key takeaway here is that this one, unlike Pfizer's, appears to be easier to store as it remains stable at minus 20C for up to six months and can be kept in a standard fridge for up to a month.
The above won't be hard to do for the first 3 months at least: just give the shot to health care workers as they come in for their scheduled shift. What gets hard is when you want to do a walk-in clinic: you need to figure out how much to order without knowing how many people will show up.
Note, don't take the above as a statement that Pfizer will (or should) ship at higher temperatures. While it works out on paper that they can, they have been putting effort into arranging really cold shipment for a reason: it is best to give the entire time stored at higher temperatures to the end clinic. Human logistics are the hardest part of this and this and really cold shipment gives more flexibility to the hardest part.
In any case: with both vaccines the hard part is ensuring people get their second dose on time after starting the shots! This is by far the most difficult logistical issue with either vaccine.
I hope everyplace offering vaccinations will have something in place to prevent anyone who comes in who is already infected but asymptomatic from infecting others there.
Given some states' track records on how they handled other things that attracted a lot of people, such as in-person voting, I'm not at all confident that we won't have some states that manage to turn vaccination clinics into super spreader events, which should be deeply embarrassing.
A good way to handle it is the way Kaiser handled flu vaccinations this year in western Washington. They had 10 minute windows available. You reserved online your spot in one of those windows. When you arrived a person at the door asked your name, checked you off the list, and gave you a pre-printed label with your information, and sent you in.
There were two or three people administering the vaccine, so two or three people for each 10 minute window. You went an stood in line with the others who shared your window, with the line very spread out.
When it was your turn you went in to get the vaccination, gave the person their your label, got vaccinated, and were sent out a side or back door so you would not cross paths with the people waiting or arriving.
I don't know how many hundred dollars it cost them to buy a couple dozen devices or how much it costs to wipe each one down and put it back under the infrared/anti-cootie lamp each use. But there are orders going out the window about every 2 minutes and no customers within 50 feet of each other.
Honestly, I'd prefer to be texted - no need to pass around a hot potato.
to this point you (everybody, really) should have a burner phone number
He points out that the standard being adopted by these studies for the point efficacy is 14 days after the second dose. That's honestly not too bad. It's no magic bullet, but it's survivable.
In the 2009 H1N1 flu outbreak
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/2009-h1n1-pandemi...
I remember getting the vaccine and it was offered outdoors, with a line in a parking lot and a nurse having a tent or a table or something. So that was good (although we weren't wearing masks -- the level of concern and associated precautions with H1N1 felt high at the time but now seems pretty trivial compared to COVID-19).
I recently went to my doctor's office for a seasonal flu shot and the office had separated spaces in the waiting room, lots of air filters going, and all patients and workers wearing face masks. And I think they wouldn't allow more than 4 or 5 patients in the office at a time. So those same precautions would feel pretty decent to me for COVID vaccination.
Edit: I guess I'm reflexively thinking of San Francisco in imagining this -- the outdoor line-up seems perfectly fine here, but it might be pretty unpleasant in January in New York or St. Petersburg or Edmonton...
We ended up just going to Target, which was much more risky, but actually something we could accomplish.
This was redundant. Anti-vaccination “belief“ is a serious, mental, issue.
Against HN rules, but it’s time to stop being so easy on people who try to distort science and reality and call them for what it is. You cannot have a eye to eye conversation with anti-vacciners, flat-earthers, climate-change deniers, election-fraud believers and Trump supporters.
The more leeway we give the more they try to win public opinion and damage our world.
Follow-up question: how can you be sure that you, personally, are on the side of the angels? Especially if you have never been allowed to hear the opposing point of view?
Seriously, the growing support for censorship in the previously libertarianish Tech community has been the worst development of the last decade.
In hindsight, I see how citing codes of conduct implies support for censorship, when my actual intent was simply to demonstrate another example of "intolerance" having noble goals.
Netiquette 101: Don't feed the trolls. (But here we are.)
Well, I agree with the scientific consensus on a general base. But since science was not always right, I don't see a valid argument from there to censorship.
You want to censor ideas not covered by scientific consensus?
"and their answers should sit uncomfortably in all humans"
Because, also no. I do not feel uncomfortable. I am strongly against censorship. Open, unrestricted exchange of ideas. If the scientific way is the best (which I believe), then the crackpot approaches will fail naturally. But if you censor those other approaches, you might actually strenghten them.
From where I'm sitting, perceived authoritarian tendencies on the democratic side is a large part of what really motivates Trump voters. That's certainly a lot of the narrative, if you ever visit that side of the media landscape.
1. Don’t even entertain their distorted reality
2. Put a stop on the spread of misinformation
Stopping your anti-vaccine post from going viral on social media is in no way any different than a scientific magazine refusing to publish the same.
> put a stop on spread of misinformation
That’s what censorship is. A small group of people will decide what is considered misinformation and will censor everything that goes against that
I believe the government should not have a say in whether or not all information circulates, but ordinary people who build information sharing systems (and I don't just mean electronic ones) have an opportunity to figure this out. Should they not?
This is not censorship. Censorship is stopping you from expressing your thoughts. Not publishing your thoughts is not. You can say whatever you want but no newspaper is in any obligation to publish it.
Similar with social media, you can write whatever you want on your personal "page", but they are under no obligation to make sure it reaches other people's feed.
Nice euphemism for censorship.
Social media is common people writing and reading. And they choose which people to follow etc.
"stopping a post to go viral" means in this context activily manipulating and interfering what information does and does not reach other people.
That is something very different than a newspaper refusing to publish a certain article.
If you’ll permit a scientifically inaccurate analogy here: sunlight is the best disinfectant.
It all comes down to whether or not the community in question is one in which members can readily leave without cost. I don't agree with making anti-vaxxers change their ways by government force, but I'm into being intolerant of them in other ways to the point that they'll come around and obviate any need for governmental force in the first place.
Beliefs? Science, and scientific evidence became “beliefs”
That’s the problem right here.
But we DO have to convince people, we have to convince people by showing them how it works, and letting them decide that that makes sense, you can't just mandate belief as a science authoritarian.
And science is still performed by humans, and we're fallible, and our incentives aren't always good, and every time there's a public failure of the process, and every time a scientist goes on record to shill for a company's chosen viewpoint, it dings the general public's faith in science and scientific experts in general.
My fear that is that not enough folks will take the vaccine. I've been hearing a lot about anti-vaxxers lately. interesting bunch.
Reason is not a universal attribute of human beings. Some of us have it. Some don't (they just simulate it more or less successfully).
Most pro-vaxxers have simply picked up the dominant opinion from the surrounding society -- not a bad heuristic in practice. Most anti-vaxxers have picked up an opinion from a persuasive single source and then read some other sources that back it up.
I admit I'm in the first category, I certainly vaccinate my own children, but I can't really claim that I've come to this decision after a thorough understanding of immunology, I have simply followed the path of least resistance.
That particular version of antivaxxism is the one I would have the most trouble refuting. It's especially troubling since if it were true then the powers that be would have every incentive to try to keep it quiet and attack anyone who suggests it.
I mean, I make the same judgement call every year for flu shots. Is it at least plausible that I would be better off overall making the same call for some other disease?
> That particular version of antivaxxism is the one I would have the most trouble refuting.
What's hard to refute? I mean, the exceptionalism argument only sticks with sociopaths who believe society exists only to serve their personal interests without having to contribute anything in return.
That's not really true though. The risks involved in getting a vaccine are much, much smaller than the risks involved in not getting the vaccine, especially with diseases like Covid.
COLD is the stock symbol and company that own temperature control storage facilities. They're international too and a REIT.
Do note I own this stock.
It’s not like aircraft are busy at the moment.
The 2nd key takeaway here is that while 5 patients in the vaccination group tested positive for coronavirus, none of them had severe disease. Which means to me that while this vaccine isn't a magic shield, if you do get it, it will keep you out of the hospital and probably make it a very mild experience.
People seem content with vaccines, meanwhile I want to understand WHY some people fair better than others. There's a far better solution than vaccines to be found, if people are willing to ask the question, and look for it.
(source: mostly stuff I read linked from the hn page, hopefully without excessive misreading)
With an n of 5, isn't this a premature conclusion?
This corresponds to binomial 95% confidence intervals of (0.0004, 0.0013) and (0.0000, 0.0002). So it seems to prevent severe illness.
Whether it reduces the odds of severe illness IF YOU ARE INFECTED or purely reduces the odds of severe illness by preventing infection--- you're right, there's not nearly enough n to know.
Is that conclusion warranted given the small number of people who got it? Perhaps in another population one of those 5 will indeed have severe, hospital-needed symptoms?
The pressing follow-up question is this: how many of the control group were discovered with (and despite of) equally weak symptoms? The answer could be anything between many more and many less. If it's more (more discovered very mild cases amongst the placebo group) then the vaccine apparently prevents most infections from happening at all, but if it's less then the vaccine doesn't really reduce the number of infected (and infective), it only prevents bad outcomes (which usually remain undiscovered, even in a phase III trial group).
A vaccine that only prevents bad outcomes would still be very valuable, but only to the vaccinated themselves because it would not create a herd immunity effect. This virus is very good at spreading from a mild case, so if the vaccinated still get unnoticeable mild cases they would still serve the virus as stopovers.
http://www.emro.who.int/health-topics/corona-virus/transmiss....
From what I've heard, virus concentration in the upper respiratory tract (i.e. where the aerosols come from) peaks two or three days before symptoms start.
Right now, ease of rolling out a vaccine is more important than its effectiveness, within reason. As long as the vaccine is effective enough to slow the spread of the virus it will save lives -- the more people we vaccinate, the fewer potential spreaders there will be, and that should help us protect people who have not been vaccinated yet.
Today, we would probably be better off with an A grade vaccine that is easier to store and ship across the country than we would be with an A+ vaccine that is more picky about storage temperature.
Of course, we can probably have both vaccines at the same time once the manufacturing capacity spins up.
Bottom line is they want the company to be successful, so their long-term plan is to profit from making drugs. If they lived in a socialist economy where no such profit was possible, they would not have bothered, and then there would be no cure. If that is the world you prefer to live in, you have options (North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela currently, the rest having collapsed or transitioned to free market some time ago).
Given the timelines and uncertainty, I don't think 1B and 1.3B are materially different. Both require 2 doses per vaccination.
I'm not sure there's a real difference here.
They're extremely similar. Both are mRNA delivered via lipid nanoparticle vector.
And no, stability testing happens pretty early on. Pfizer would have definitely collected enough data at this point to say whether or not their vaccine is stable at higher temperatures.
Pfizer is big enough to have/let a PR department do a press release during business hours. Of course given that Pfizer did a press release first Moderna for PR reasons needed to release more data to make a bigger splash.
No matter how you look at it, there is important data that will be in the FDA (and equivalent in other countries) submission that we don't have. There could be a "thats funny" thing burred, though odds are against it.
Pfizer hit their interim analysis point before Moderna did, but only by a few days.
The difference is not very big, but to those who like numbers it is big enough.
Most vaccines are a protein (originally a fragment from the (inactivated) virus, now more often a synthetically manufactured fragment of the virus).
These vaccines (Moderna & Pfizer) are delivered as the RNA that encodes a fragment of the virus (that your own body then uses to produce a fragment of the virus). The delivery mechanism is very different, but the viral fragment that your body sees is the same as it would if the protein was delivered directly, as is traditional.
RNA can't reliably survive on a surface for more than a few minutes (which is somewhat good news since coronovirus itself is an RNA virus), or more than a few days unrefrigerated, and is very sensitive to any contamination by bacteria or other organisms.
Traditional proteins are generally much less fragile both chemically and as food for other organisms. And sometimes a protein (vaccine) can be specifically engineered to be even more stable in room-temperature, dry, or other unforgiving conditions.
And none of this takes into account specific formulations, or other chemicals that are used to aide the delivery process. Much of this has to be measured empirically. It's not clear to me if there is some chemical difference between the Pfizer & Moderna vaccines, or if the different temps are just what they use as their protocol filed with the FDA.
Further, see /u/dnautics below, often RNA therapeutics aren't completely true RNA (they can have chemical features to enhance stability).