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Comment by sillysaurusx | Hacker News Reader

I'm interested in evidence that the vaccine works. Where should I start?

(I know how this sounds, but it's not like that. It's more like, it's a modern miracle that we have any vaccine at all within a year of an outbreak, and I am extremely keen to understand how this is possible rather than just accepting it as a thing that exists now, like airplanes.)

EDIT: No complaints, but it's fascinating how polarizing this topic is. One wouldn't expect a straightforward request for information to generate such feelings. Thank you to everyone who provided resources!

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https://www.fda.gov/media/144245/download

They had a placebo arm and a vaccine arm. Look at figure 2 on page 30. You can see that new COVID cases in the vaccine group virtually stop on day 12 while the placebo arm continues to grow.

This is the right answer. This is the only reason that we know that it works. The other answers are more like the history of this vaccine (which are really interesting though)

And the reason we have that data in such a short period of time is horrifying for exactly the expected reason.

You are obliged to conduct a natural experiment. We do this thing (vaccination) we expect will work, on some fraction of a test population, and then we wait. Some other tricks could work, in theory but they're often unethical and unlike this experiment they aren't a direct model of the real world. "Does it actually work?" is an incontrovertible test.

But it should take years to do this, because obviously hardly anybody is going to get some horrible deadly infectious disease right?

Unless, as happened in most of the world, you have exponential pandemic case growth as measures to prevent spread are half-arsed or just not implemented at all.

Then it turns out - good news - that's a great environment for proving your vaccine works quickly. Shame about all the dead people though.

Yes, but - playing Devil's advocate here, I'm a solid believer that vaccination is our best chance out of this - the opposite is also true: because the disease is so virulent we are willing to play fast and loose with researching long-term side-effects. And unfortunately, the conspiracy theory circles are already full of bullshit about supposed side-effects of the vaccines (one I've seen a lot is that 'women may become temporarily infertile'), despite every trial not showing any such side-effects.

Do you have any source that on " (one I've seen a lot is that 'women may become temporarily infertile'), despite every trial not showing any such side-effects.". I want to forward it to the ppl I know who heard this. To show this, they need to monitor the conception rate after vaccination with the control group. Is this actually monitored? (what I sometimes found that 'no evidence' means 'we do not have data';like they claim in German trains no transmission has ever been found; spoiler, they didnt register and check names of passengers)

Instead of downvoting, please provide a peer reviewed reference (or preprint).

A few days ago I read the following blog post from Petra Falb(https://www.ema.europa.eu/sites/default/files/ContactsAndExp...) about long term side-effects and why this is generally not a problem with vaccines: https://verdareno.wordpress.com/2021/01/01/covid-impfstoffe-...

I recommend https://www.deepl.com/translator for english translation, as I don't have the time right now unfortunately.

I don't have any background in this, so if anybody can chime in with more knowledge than me it would be appreciated.

But to me the point she is making sounds reasonable.

Figure 6 on page 50 of this FDA document [1] provides similar data for the Moderna vaccine.

[1]: https://www.fda.gov/media/144452/download

Upvoted. I have same noob questions. Appreciate the many good replies. I'll get my shot(s) asap. Am also trying to persuade family members who are more reluctant.

There’s a great interview of Fauci explaining exactly how we got it done so fast. But basically - years of precursor work had been done on both other coronaviruses and mRNA vaccines. So they were in phase 1 trials in 6 weeks.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/in-the-bubble-with-and...

You can read up on the background here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_vaccine#Background but the tl;dr is that we were very lucky to be hit with the less serious SARS and MERS diseases years ago, as they got the world started on coronavirus vaccines that ultimately were turned into the covid vaccine.

Part of the backlash against your question might be that this information is very easy to find, like LMGTFY easy.

I’m not sure where you’re starting from, but this seems like a reasonable progression to start with:

(1) A video about how the immune system works: https://youtu.be/fSEFXl2XQpc

(2) An infographic from FDA explaining the EUA process: https://www.fda.gov/media/143890/download

(3) Reports from the Advisory Committee on Immunization describing evidence of effectiveness for the various vaccines. For example, Moderna’s: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm695152e1.htm

(Important caveats: I have family and friends who work in healthcare and drug discovery, so I’ve got a tiny bit of layperson background on this, but this is far from my field and I’m far from an expert)

If you dont want to go to the Pfizer/Moderna/etc papers, go to your local county health department website and they will probably have links.

I’m not an expert, so heaping tablespoon of salt and all that, but it seems like we were on the cusp of a revolution in vaccine development due to this mRNA method of making vaccines, and Covid came around at just the right time where a big infusion of cash into mRNA vaccine research could get the technology over the hump.

Again, totally not an expert at all, but from what I’ve gleaned this whole novel mRNA thing is key to understanding why this was so fast and why other vaccines in the future could come really fast as well.

This jibes with my understanding as well. I believe that research into mRNA vaccines began somewhere around the very early 1990's or very late 1980's, so the idea itself is not new. And vaccines (or candidate vaccines) were developed for earlier illnesses like MERS, but none ever made it as far as approval for widespread human use, for various reasons. Mostly, AIUI, because the outbreaks ended before they got that far and so it was no longer economically justifiable to continue the process.

So yeah, basically, COVID came along and suddenly there was money and impetus to push the thing over the finish line, and so here we are. That's my lay-person's understanding anyway.

This article goes into how and why the vaccine works by reverse engineering the vaccine RNA itself:

https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/reverse-engineering-source...

You are not that keen to figure it out, the information has been readily available for a couple of months, and it was headline news for a week when the info for each approved vaccine was released.

If there wasn’t evidence, they wouldn’t approve it. Just find the vaccines’ homepage and follow the footnotes.

You can see why some people might think the vaccine is somehow fake since people went (and are still going) ape shit over masks even though right on all of the boxes it clearly states that masks do not protect against Covid.

And before I get lynched: I am all for the vaccine since that has been tested to work and I still wear a silly mask even as it does nothing since I'm tired of people complaining.

I’ve never seen anything like that on a box of masks. And we are pretty sure they do provide partial protection from spreading the virus to others, and likely lowers the dose of virus you get from others.

No idea where you are buying your masks though.

Just read the box. They all say "this is not a respirator, does not protect against airborne bacteria" (this is paraphrased, since I have just seen my local products).

Even my local national health institute says that masks only protect against droplets from coughing, sneezing, or talking when in close proximity. Which I can grant you, but normal people shouldn't be coughing or sneezing into other peoples faces anyway. Which only leaves talking, but I don't see why grocery store is a place to socialize anyway.

IMO masks are only a thing because helpless people had the need to "do something" and masks are visible way of showing you are doing your part. Plus it didn't help that right wing nut jobs started a war against masks.

There is empirical evidence face coverings (of basically any fabric) reduce transmission rates. It's not like a respirator where there's a testing guarantee that if you're in an atmosphere full of infectious agents you'll be fine, but spreading or catching a virus is a game of probabilities and masks reduce those probabilities.

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