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Comment by inglor | Hacker News Reader

91.6% seems like a very good result for this vaccine and a big confidence boost to the companies that bought it.

I'm waiting for the J&J results after two-dose immunisation given this vaccine takes a similar (non mRNA) approach and appears to be very effective.

(Not ignoring that 66% efficiency is still significant but much less so than 91.6%)

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> I'm waiting for the J&J results after two-dose immunisation given this vaccine takes a similar (non mRNA) approach and appears to be very effective.

Given the J&J two dose trial (ENSEMBLE 2) only started just recently, and takes 60 days between two doses, this is going to take a while though. (I'm a volunteer. My second those is scheduled for mid-march.)

Thanks! 60 days would still be very interesting to get results for if-only to understand the technology (mRNA vaccines) better for future viruses.

A lot of claims were made about how mRNA vaccination was revolutionizing how we approach these problems - but the Sputnik V results show similar gains with the traditional method.

Sputnik V is not a traditional method either. It is different form mRNA, but both are relatively new on the vaccine scene.

No traditional vaccine has finished phase-3 trials anywhere. Everything is something fairly new.

> No traditional vaccine has finished phase-3 trials anywhere. Everything is something fairly new.

According to the table at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_vaccine both CoronaVac and Covaxin are traditional "inactivated virus" vaccines, and both have finished Phase 3 trials; CoronaVac is already being applied by the government here (started last month, so far only health workers and elderly above 90 years old), and IIRC there have been talks of bringing Covaxin to be applied by private clinics.

I stand corrected.

According to an article I read recently, the difference between 66% and 90% isn't actually very important when it comes to ending the pandemic.

The 66% vaccines and the 90+% vaccines were about equally as effective at preventing severe COVID cases. More people get it on the 66% vaccine, but their cases were like a mild to medium flu.

Most experts seem to believe that COVID is not going to be one of those viruses like smallpox or polio that we can for all practical purposes eliminate. They believe COVID is going to like cold and flu viruses.

The long term goal then is to get it so that when we do get it, which most of us inevitably will at some point, it is no worse than a mild flu. The 66% vaccines are as good as the 90+% vaccines for that.

We could probably eradicate a single cold virus if we wanted. The reason why we didn't is that there are a great many.

SARS-CoV-2 is nothing like influenza.

Technically, we could certainly eradicate this virus. It would take years, but it would be possible. It's just that it seems many countries just don't want to.

What's important is hospitalization and death. Ideally you want the vaccine to protect you against infection, but where we are today, having a vaccine with "only" 66% efficiency against infection but that protects you with > 85% from severe reaction is very promising. I'd take the J&J one shot vaccine in a heartbeat.

Short term yes, but long term I want to get rid of this virus and ensure my children don't get it. Since kids cannot get a vaccine that means elimination, and 95% gets us there a lot faster. I'm not even sure if we can eliminate with a 66% vaccine without covering kids - even 95% is questionable but we can get a lot closer.

As far as I know it's impossible to eliminate this virus.

The science we have so far says the virus is safer for children than the vaccine.

> As far as I know it's impossible to eliminate this virus

Almost no virus is impossible to eliminate or eradicate. It’s a question of cost (and reservoirs).

> The science we have so far says the virus is safer for children than the vaccine

Source? We haven’t tested the vaccine on children. We have had children die from Covid. This sounds like bunk.

My only source is the logically conclusion when we don't have the data how the vaccine will affect children yet we do have data on how many children are suffering serious side effects from the virus.

> only source is the logically conclusion

I don't think this is unreasonable. (I lack the domain knowledge to call it reasonable or not. Though there are few vaccines that are safe for adults and unsafe for children.)

But it's a stretch to brand that as "the science we have so far."

That sounds preposterous. Citation? Or is this some anti-vaxxer propaganda? Of course the virus can be eliminated. Like every cold that goes around, once R0 drops below 1 it dies out and we never see it again. Completely gone. There is no long-lasting latent virus outside of a living organism, not like bacteria.

If the theory that it made the jump from another animal turns out to be true it means there’s a reservoir of virus in nature and short of developing some vaccine and distribution plan for that species it will be there. Or I guess eradicating the species. But that seems harmful.

Lets not make this sound like some surprising new thing. COVID from animals jump every year and its called 'a cold'. Always a different one. Always quite different ones. This one will never recur.

This is an unknown. We know covid has spread to minks. There have been reports that it can spread to other animals. If covid spreads to something wild we may always have COVID coming back to humans from the wild animals around.

We have 'COVID' spreading every year. Its called 'a cold'. The entire issue is, will this particularly pernicious one return. That is very unlikely (by many decimal places).

I wouldn't say it's impossible, but we need to weigh the costs of trying to eliminate it, versus the very real likelihood that it is already endemic.

We _could_ eliminate the common cold virus, but the measures taken would be so destructive to society, it's not worth it.

The cost/benefit analysis here seems to be the crux of the conflict around COVID mitigation efforts.

> The science we have so far says the virus is safer for children than the vaccine.

We have no such data.

Which is why we aren't giving children the vaccine. The virus is considered safer at this point.

Only because we haven't done all the studies to prove the vaccines work.

Vaccines safe for adults are pretty much all safe for children. However the children generally need different doses from adults so work is needed to figure out the correct dose. A some point a child's (baby) immune system isn't mature enough to react to the vaccine, this doesn't mean the vaccine is dangerous, it just means it does nothing but hurt.

We also do not give children the virus.

Currently we do not give children the vaccine because the relative value of giving it to the elderly vs. children is considerably tilted towards the elderly and it is a limited resource.

It does not imply anything about the safety of the vaccine vs. virus itself in that age group.

Kids are not in risk group for this virus though. Check out graphs at https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps - with all the lockdowns etc going on this year, mortality for 0-14 age group even decreased a bit.

But kids can/do pass it on. That's a big issue.

Yes, but if the rest are vaccinated than it's not a big issue.

Kids are too big a fraction to dismiss. And they are massive infection vectors. A kid gets sick, everybody else in the family will get sick. People with kids know that. Teachers know that. Doctors know that.

As of right now, children do not appear to transmit it as readily, at least in school settings.

Is this because in school they are better at social distancing protocols? Maybe. Is it because they are less infectious on average? Maybe.

There are also reports that the new SA/British variants may change this situation.

That is inaccurate.

But kids with underlying medical conditions are at risk.

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