A Real Vaccine Before the Election? It’d Take a Miracle. | Talking Points Memo

It’s interesting that an administration that has spent four years claiming that “experts” don’t know as much as people with “common sense” did not anticipate that common sense might convince people that a rushed vaccine might not be a good idea.

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Wasn’t a tissue culture experiment. It was a phase ll trial with 1,000 participants
They are starting a phase lll trial with 60,000 people now. The only drawback is that it MAY not be as effective in people over 65. They need more older people in the phase lll trial.

Nearly 1,000 healthy adults participated in the clinical trial, which began after Johnson & Johnson saw that the vaccine provided strong immune protection when tested on monkeys.

The company began the latest phase of the trials on Wednesday when it began a 60,000-person trial. If results are successful, the trial would be another step on the path to a viable coronavirus vaccine.

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His Rose Garden Covid testing plan was a bit of a laugher.

The White House has a Rose Garden event today celebrating a covid testing contract they already announced in August. pic.twitter.com/3Ztsj88Aqw

— Kelly O'Donnell (@KellyO) September 28, 2020
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I hope that works, because I have a couple of ounces of that.

Joe’s going to ask him about it tomorrow night. And then Joe’s going to confirm Trump, Ivanka, Melania, the two boys and Rudy will be taking the first injections, on television for all to see. Yeah.

Wear a mask, use leeches and read tea leaves…

My Son in Law will get the Moderna phase 3 vacine next week.

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Curses. Nature wins again!

1 shot too, I think.

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Like the FDA will even review it. There will be a rubber stamp to get it out on 11/1

One thing that bothers me (in addition to the incredibly low bar for efficacy) is that no one has discussed longevity of protection? In natural infections antibodies last just 3-4 months IF a person developed them, and IF antibodies are sufficient to protect a person from infection. I certainly hope that they are also tracking longevity of protection, because a vaccine that lasts a month or two before needing to be readministered will not provide much protection in communities where people can’t get another injection easily.

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And the thing the Trumpies don’t seem to understand … you rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles.

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Nope. Efficacy and “produces detectable antibodies” aren’t the same thing.

It’s like the difference between “actually puts the fire out” and “well, we see water coming out of the nozzle” when evaluating a (type A) fire extinguisher.

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So much is getting overlooked -
What if the virus comes in at 70%, but most people who do get sick are black? Or mostly women? Or over the age of 65? Or black women over 65?
How do you know what group can or can’t take it?

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Interesting. The faster they get results, the more likely the vaccine is ineffective. Doesn’t do much for Trump’s chances at winning re-election. A really good vaccine won’t be proven until New Year’s Day, but a really bad one can be shit-canned by Halloween.

It must really suck to be Trump right now. All that money from Fred, but no soul and no fucking brains to do anything constructive with it. I guess you can’t have everything.

I don’t think it works that way. You get “results” by having people show infection in the control group. If a smaller number (or none) of the vaccined group show infection in that time, then you likely have an effective vaccine. The “faster” they get “results” is a function of how much covid-19 is running around to infect people, not of the effectiveness of the vaccine.

She also expressed caution about basing a hugely consequential decision on such a small number of cases, like the 32 in Pfizer’s first look.

With numbers that small, you’re making an enormous bet that your samples are really random and representative, and that their behaviors are uniform enough to not complete screw you over. All you need is for something to cause differential risks for the members of the control and treatment groups you’re looking at. And with numbers that small even a half dozen people all from control or all from treatment going (separately one assumes, although at least some study participants will necessarily know one another by now) going ot a superspreader event and the results get hinky.

Some real statistician correct me, but even though you have these big test populations, by looking at the first small number to test postive aren’t you probably looking at behavioral/exposure outliers?

They looked at the sera from the participants in the phase 2 study to see if it would neutralize the virus in tissue culture - called a plaque reduction assay (PRN). My point was that production of neutralizing antibodies that work in a PRN assay MAY not mean protection of actual people. Only the phase 3 study will show that.

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