Covid-19 Vaccine Pfizer/BioNTech 90% Effective - Update 11/9/20

[Smiley27]

It is ALWAYS Good news When a useful vaccine is found.
So let us hope for succes, for the companies that have worked hard.

Having said that, I am not going to run for a shot, but that is good news for all of those who do want it. Because it is going to Take years before there will be enough material to vaccinate most of the world’s population.

Regarding mandatory shot before cruising, I doubt that cruiselines would Take that step.

Like the flu....If you yourself has taken the shot, why worry If your next door neighbor has not...because you wont get it ( If it works ) right?

if they do ask you to have this shot, I would reconcider my cruising future....as of now have 3 cruises booked in the coming two years.

Living in Denmark, I think we will all ( in due time ) be offered the vaccine, but no one Can tell you that you have to. It might be recommended, like flu, for people over 65 , but never pulled Down on you ( If that is an American expression )

Crossing fingers for the Pandemic to be over with within 2021.

[farmersfight]

3 hours ago, Smiley27 said:

Crossing fingers for the Pandemic to be over with within 2021.

 

That's what this forthcoming >90% vaccine will result in (God willing...)

[Formula280SS]

Not sure if this information has been mentioned in the thread, but reading that the Pfizer vaccine 2-shot regimen (which we have noted) requires a 3-Week time period between the 1st and 2nd vaccination.  Here is one reference.

 

https://www.businessinsider.com/pfizer-coronavirus-vaccine-2-shots-2020-11

 

Moderna's vaccine, it appears, will require a 4-Week time period between the 1st and 2nd vaccination.  Here is one reference.

 

https://www.wcvb.com/article/moderna-says-it-has-reached-major-milestone-in-phase-3-trial-for-covid-19-coronavirus-vaccine/34648998#

 

[ziggyuk]

5 hours ago, Smiley27 said:

Regarding mandatory shot before cruising, I doubt that cruiselines would Take that step.

Like the flu....If you yourself has taken the shot, why worry If your next door neighbor has not...because you wont get it ( If it works ) right?

if they do ask you to have this shot, I would reconcider my cruising future....as of now have 3 cruises booked in the coming two years.

Living in Denmark, I think we will all ( in due time ) be offered the vaccine, but no one Can tell you that you have to. It might be recommended, like flu, for people over 65 , but never pulled Down on you ( If that is an American expression )

Crossing fingers for the Pandemic to be over with within 2021.

 

I have to disagree here, I really hope the cruise lines do make it mandatory to board the ship, your assumption that taking it makes you safe if not correct, with a 90% effectiveness you still have a 1 in 10 chance to catch it. If I take the vaccine, the last thing I want is a whole bunch of anti-vax spreaders onboard.
The flu vaccine is not the same at all as there are many major strains of flu, there was, before your countries strain emerged, only one major strain of Covid-19, all treatable with the vaccine, I believe the Denmark strain of Covid may not be treatable by the vaccine.
Additionally I can't believe this is still being compared with flu, without going into longCovid and mortality rates it's just not comparable.

While I would not wish anyone to be forced to have a shot, the cruise lines are perfectly entitled to bar those who do not and so are the airlines.

 

Personally I hope a form of vaccine passport happens which will allow, airiness, cruise lines, concerts, nightclubs, sporting events and even whole countries to bar those who choose not to have one. It is of course everyone's right to reject the vaccine but it's also my right not to be put at risk (be it 1:10) by those people in crowded spaces.

 

Edited November 12, 2020 by ziggyuk

[All-ready2cruise]

6 hours ago, Smiley27 said:

Regarding mandatory shot before cruising, I doubt that cruiselines would Take that step.

Like the flu....If you yourself has taken the shot, why worry If your next door neighbor has not...because you wont get it ( If it works ) right?

I disagree with you on this thought. The cruise lines, IMO, have every right to demand that pax are vaccinated prior to boarding their ships (once vaccines are available). After all, it's not just the pax they're trying to protect, it's their staff & crew, it's their livelihood too.

  

Considering how easily this Covid-19 spreads, they have to very careful.  The fact that C-19 is nothing like the flu, other than it's a virus, it will be imperative that they take every possible precaution to ensure the safety of everyone on their ships.  

 

Fingers crossed that they'll have enough vaccines manufactured for distribution before fall of 2021. 

 

[GA Dave]

More good news:

Vaccine good for "at least one year"

Vaccine volunteer: "Get it as soon as you can"

[njhorseman]

1 hour ago, GA Dave said:

Vaccine good for "at least one year"

Your headline is misleading and it is not what the BioNTech CEO said. Here's what he actually said:

 

"The Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine could protect patients from the virus for a year, BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin told "Mornings with Maria" on Thursday."

 

And:  "I personally expect that a vaccine could protect us ... for at least one year. "

 

Those words do not have the level of certainty that the headline suggests. Omitting the word "could" distorts the CEO's statement.

Edited November 12, 2020 by njhorseman

[njhorseman]

1 hour ago, GA Dave said:

 

Vaccine volunteer: "Get it as soon as you can"

The vaccine volunteer doesn't know whether he received the placebo or the vaccine so his statement is unscientific nonsense.

A saline injection can cause a site reaction and the other reported side effects can be from what is called the "placebo effect". 

https://www.webmd.com/pain-management/what-is-the-placebo-effect#1

"What Is the Placebo Effect?

Sometimes a person can have a response to a placebo. The response can be positive or negative. For instance, the person's symptoms may improve. Or the person may have what appears to be side effects from the treatment. These responses are known as the "placebo effect.""

 

Let's leave the pronouncements and recommendations for getting the vaccine to the scientists, please.

Edited November 12, 2020 by njhorseman

[chipmaster]

1 hour ago, GA Dave said:

More good news:

Vaccine good for "at least one year"

Vaccine volunteer: "Get it as soon as you can"

 

The news is encouraging and as a larger for the best interested of community or humanity if and when we get some agency's certifying them as safe then I'd think many should get it if available

 

But how anyone knows something last a year when it isn't even been out a year is laughable. 

[njhorseman]

12 minutes ago, chipmaster said:

 

But how anyone knows something last a year when it isn't even been out a year is laughable. 

 The "headline" is not what the BioNTech CEO said. He used the word "could".

[Formula280SS]

1 hour ago, njhorseman said:

The vaccine volunteer doesn't know whether he received the placebo or the vaccine so his statement is unscientific nonsense.

A saline injection can cause a site reaction and the other reported side effects can be from what is called the "placebo effect". 

https://www.webmd.com/pain-management/what-is-the-placebo-effect#1

"What Is the Placebo Effect?

Sometimes a person can have a response to a placebo. The response can be positive or negative. For instance, the person's symptoms may improve. Or the person may have what appears to be side effects from the treatment. These responses are known as the "placebo effect.""

 

Let's leave the pronouncements and recommendations for getting the vaccine to the scientists, please.

 

"Let's leave the pronouncements and recommendations for getting the vaccine to the scientists, please."  Good advice (for all). 🙄

 

"He told co-host Ainsley Earhardt Thursday he is fairly certain he got the vaccination and not the placebo because he showed antibodies after getting the second injection."

 

"Sometimes a person can have a response to a placebo. The response can be positive or negative. For instance, the person's symptoms may improve. Or the person may have what appears to be side effects from the treatment. These responses are known as the "placebo effect."

 

Do the side effects of a placebo generally include developing the virus antibodies?  😏

[njhorseman]

35 minutes ago, Formula280SS said:

 

"Let's leave the pronouncements and recommendations for getting the vaccine to the scientists, please."  Good advice (for all). 🙄

 

"He told co-host Ainsley Earhardt Thursday he is fairly certain he got the vaccination and not the placebo because he showed antibodies after getting the second injection."

 

"Sometimes a person can have a response to a placebo. The response can be positive or negative. For instance, the person's symptoms may improve. Or the person may have what appears to be side effects from the treatment. These responses are known as the "placebo effect."

 

Do the side effects of a placebo generally include developing the virus antibodies?  😏

The presence of antibodies could be due to exposure to the virus rather than administration of the vaccine . 

[Formula280SS]

1 hour ago, njhorseman said:

The presence of antibodies could be due to exposure to the virus rather than administration of the vaccine . 

 

Well it was first stated, in reaction to the notion that the vaccine volunteer's front-line perspective was "utter nonsense," that his reaction can come from side-effects of the placebo (you know, the "placebo effect"). 

 

Throwing that insight out, now it is from post vaccination exposure to the virus and not the vaccine's 1st or 2nd injection?

 

Yikes.

 

[njhorseman]

8 minutes ago, Formula280SS said:

 

Well it was first stated, in reaction to the notion that the vaccine volunteer's front-line perspective was "utter nonsense," that his reaction can come from side-effects of the placebo (you know, the "placebo effect"). 

 

Throwing that insight out, now it is from post vaccination exposure to the virus and not the vaccine's 1st or 2nd injection?

 

Yikes.

 

Neither you nor I know what was caused by the vaccine, exposure to the virus, the placebo effect or some combination of factors with different observations caused by different factors. That's why the scientists are conducting double blind trials with tens of thousands of participants that will be the subject of sophisticated statistical analysis which will determine the mathematical confidence in the vaccine's efficacy and safety. 

From a scientific perspective the anecdotal observations and test results from a single study participant are meaningless, even if they are interesting and encouraging.  

 

The sole exception to not drawing conclusions from a single study participant would be if someone develops a serious unexplained illness, which will result in the study being put on hold to allow investigation of the illness's possible association with the vaccine.  That's already happened in a couple of the trials. 

[HowardK]

The 90% is from 8 or 9 people so far from the vaccine group getting the virus, and 84-85 of the people from the placebo group getting the virus. They are doing another 70 readings to reach 163 so the % could change. Also, they won't have any long term measures of course of the vaccine so I could understand why people would be apprehensive.

 

Ticketmaster said they will require testing or proof of vaccination before entering concerts. I am wondering how they are going to work checking 18,000 people at Madison Square Garden .

THey also want to do timed entries.

So for cruise lines, would they want tests 1-3 days before or that day? So now people who take time off might need additional time off to get a test and work that in to the schedule.

[chipmaster]

The efficacy is calculated by looking at the number of positive COVID for those that got the vaccines versus those that got the Placebo.  It isn't a statement that 90% of the ones are fully protected, that will take larger statistics and long time study.    

 

The ethics prevent a simple test.

 

They gave the blind vaccine or placebo to what 44,000 people, then out of that there were 94 people that got COVID, I can assume they came from mostly those that got placebo and a few from those with vaccine and with those very low numbers decided viola 90%.

 

Far easier if they just gave the vaccine to "X" number of people and then subjected them to various levels of live virus to see how well it work, opps that isn't very ethical.

 

While encouraging this is just the first step, call it 3 inning of the 1st game of a possible 7 game world series, LOL

[Formula280SS]

5 hours ago, njhorseman said:

Neither you nor I know what was caused by the vaccine, exposure to the virus, the placebo effect or some combination of factors with different observations caused by different factors. That's why the scientists are conducting double blind trials with tens of thousands of participants that will be the subject of sophisticated statistical analysis which will determine the mathematical confidence in the vaccine's efficacy and safety. 

From a scientific perspective the anecdotal observations and test results from a single study participant are meaningless, even if they are interesting and encouraging.  

 

The sole exception to not drawing conclusions from a single study participant would be if someone develops a serious unexplained illness, which will result in the study being put on hold to allow investigation of the illness's possible association with the vaccine.  That's already happened in a couple of the trials. 

 

Yikes, the volunteer wasn't presenting a proffer on trials, mathematics, etc.  The volunteer shared the actual, real life, personal experience.  Appreciate.  Please no narcissistic POV about a front of the line volunteer for the Covid vaccine testing as being "meaningless."  What is?  That NPOV.

[njhorseman]

1 hour ago, Formula280SS said:

 

Yikes, the volunteer wasn't presenting a proffer on trials, mathematics, etc.  The volunteer shared the actual, real life, personal experience.  Appreciate.  Please no narcissistic POV about a front of the line volunteer for the Covid vaccine testing as being "meaningless."  What is?  That NPOV.

I didn't say the volunteer was meaningless, I said " his statement is unscientific nonsense." I don't expect the average person to understand the science and mathematics. My beef is not with the volunteer, it's with the media making what he said into a sensationalistic headline.

 

By the way...I was one of the 1.3 million "Polio Pioneers"...schoolchildren who participated in the 1954 trials that led to the approval of the Salk polio vaccine. While obviously we didn't make the choice to participate on our own...our parents volunteered us...more than 65 years later I still have an appreciation for those who are willing to take the risk of participating in this important vaccine trial. So, you just might want to thank me, and my fellow Polio Pioneers, for helping to virtually eradicate a horrific disease..so that you (and your children and grandchildren if you have any) don't have to worry about it.

Edited November 13, 2020 by njhorseman

[plainsstormchaser]

On 11/11/2020 at 9:14 AM, ziggyuk said:

 

I'm on the Oxford Trial and I asked them what would happen if I was offered a competitors vaccine before the trial ended as I was not willing to endanger my life if I had the option of a vaccine.
I was told, if the situation arose, I would be told if I had received the vaccine or placebo as it would be unethical not to do so.

That makes sense. I'll ask my coordinator at my January visit.

[plainsstormchaser]

22 hours ago, Formula280SS said:

Not sure if this information has been mentioned in the thread, but reading that the Pfizer vaccine 2-shot regimen (which we have noted) requires a 3-Week time period between the 1st and 2nd vaccination.  Here is one reference.

 

https://www.businessinsider.com/pfizer-coronavirus-vaccine-2-shots-2020-11

 

Moderna's vaccine, it appears, will require a 4-Week time period between the 1st and 2nd vaccination.  Here is one reference.

 

https://www.wcvb.com/article/moderna-says-it-has-reached-major-milestone-in-phase-3-trial-for-covid-19-coronavirus-vaccine/34648998#

 

...and at least for me in the trial the Pfizer vaccine was given exactly the minimum number of days apart. I've not seen indication of how long after the minimum interval before the second shot has reduced effectiveness.

[plainsstormchaser]

19 hours ago, chipmaster said:

But how anyone knows something last a year when it isn't even been out a year is laughable. 

Math, physics. By measuring how the effectiveness declines over a short time it can be projected over a long time. Thus the disclaimer word "should." They don't know, but based on the 3-6 months they've had in testing, they are projecting it lasting a year or more.

[Formula280SS]

1 hour ago, plainsstormchaser said:

...and at least for me in the trial the Pfizer vaccine was given exactly the minimum number of days apart. I've not seen indication of how long after the minimum interval before the second shot has reduced effectiveness.

 

Thanks for the input.  There sure is a lot more to be disclosed about what they have learned. 

 

Another uptick in discussion is the monthly post vaccination 'at home test capabilities of various providers so that the duration of the effectiveness can be measured.

 

A question (if you want to answer) ~ do you continue to be tested on any periodic basis for the duration and effectiveness of the vaccine response you've experienced?

 

Again, thanks.

[ziggyuk]

1 hour ago, Formula280SS said:

 

Thanks for the input.  There sure is a lot more to be disclosed about what they have learned. 

 

Another uptick in discussion is the monthly post vaccination 'at home test capabilities of various providers so that the duration of the effectiveness can be measured.

 

A question (if you want to answer) ~ do you continue to be tested on any periodic basis for the duration and effectiveness of the vaccine response you've experienced?

 

Again, thanks.

 

Just a little more information.

On my Oxford vaccine, I was invited back for an optional second shot in early August, at the time the instruction said the booster should be administered 4-12 after the initial vaccination.

[nomad098]

Before people start stating only those vaccinated should be allowed to cruise or attend mass gatherings or get on with life they should learn a little more about what is actually going on with vaccines and what they are actually trying to do. 

 

If the the vaccine breaks transmission meaning a person can not carry or spread the disease then it makes sense to have a policy of only vaccinated people being allowed to cruise or enter other countries.

 

If the vaccine has a severe or a varying reduction in harm but still allows people to carry and spread the disease this then makes the call a lot more difficult. 

 

https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4037

https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4058

 

And I think people should understand the history and science behind mRNA vaccines before they declare that everyone who is not keen on this type of vaccine is an anti vaxxer.

 

In 2019 it was thought mRNA could not affect DNA this changed in 2020

 

https://phys.org/news/2020-01-rna-effect-dna.html.

 

I'm not saying mRNA vaccines are bad I'm pointing out that even though studies of mRNA have been going for 30 years no vaccines have ever come to market making these the first and the scientific community have no idea of long term outcomes in mass populations. 

 

Where a mRNA treatment outcome is preferable to the outcome of disease like rabies and cancer this does not automatically translate to covid-19 for the vast majority of people.

 

 

 

[PelicanBill]

One thing that we may be talking about soon is the logistics complexity.  Beside the hard job of parceling out limited supplies to health workers and elderly to start, the vaccine must be shipped and stored at -70c .  That's insane.  We heard Fedex and UPS are scurrying to equip some trucks with freezers.  But I have a feeling that all 500,000 people in my area will have to queue at the 4 hospitals in the area.  Doctor's offices won't have that capability.  An executive of Walgreens made a false claim that all their stores are equipped and ready for it - that has sparked outrage among Walgreens employees in fact (seen on Reddit.)  This suggests to me the process will take all next year to get even a majority of people vaccinated - and then we may have to do that each year?