Pfizer Stuns Experts With Early Data that Vaccine Is More Than 90% Effective (nytimes.com) 299
The drug maker Pfizer announced on Monday that an early analysis of its coronavirus vaccine trial suggested the vaccine was robustly effective in preventing Covid-19, a promising development as the world has waited anxiously for any positive news about a pandemic that has killed more than 1.2 million people. From a report: Pfizer, which developed the vaccine with the German drugmaker BioNTech, released only sparse details from its clinical trial, based on the first formal review of the data by an outside panel of experts. The company said that the analysis found that the vaccine was more than 90 percent effective in preventing the disease among trial volunteers who had no evidence of prior coronavirus infection. If the results hold up, that level of protection would put it on par with highly effective childhood vaccines for diseases such as measles. No serious safety concerns have been observed, the company said. Pfizer plans to ask the Food and Drug Administration for emergency authorization of the two-dose vaccine later this month, after it has collected the recommended two months of safety data. By the end of the year it will have manufactured enough doses to immunize 15 to 20 million people, company executives have said.
[...] Independent scientists have cautioned against hyping early results before long-term safety and efficacy data has been collected. And no one knows how long the vaccine's protection might last. Still, the development makes Pfizer the first company to announce positive results from a late-stage vaccine trial, vaulting it to the front of a frenzied global race that began in January and has unfolded at record-breaking speed. Eleven vaccines are in late-stage trials, including four in the United States. Pfizer's progress could bode well for Moderna's vaccine, which uses similar technology. Moderna has said it could have early results later this month. The news comes just days after Joseph R. Biden Jr. clinched a victory over President Trump in the presidential election. Mr. Trump had repeatedly hinted a vaccine would be ready before Election Day, Nov. 3. This fall, Pfizer's chief executive, Dr. Albert Bourla, frequently claimed that the company could have a "readout" by October, something that did not come to pass.
[...] Independent scientists have cautioned against hyping early results before long-term safety and efficacy data has been collected. And no one knows how long the vaccine's protection might last. Still, the development makes Pfizer the first company to announce positive results from a late-stage vaccine trial, vaulting it to the front of a frenzied global race that began in January and has unfolded at record-breaking speed. Eleven vaccines are in late-stage trials, including four in the United States. Pfizer's progress could bode well for Moderna's vaccine, which uses similar technology. Moderna has said it could have early results later this month. The news comes just days after Joseph R. Biden Jr. clinched a victory over President Trump in the presidential election. Mr. Trump had repeatedly hinted a vaccine would be ready before Election Day, Nov. 3. This fall, Pfizer's chief executive, Dr. Albert Bourla, frequently claimed that the company could have a "readout" by October, something that did not come to pass.
Significance of Science Reversal (Score:4, Funny)
Independent scientists have cautioned against hyping early results before long-term safety and efficacy data has been collected.
That "science" doesn't support the media's agenda anymore. We'll not be listening to the science in this case.
Hype that shit!
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Every government will be scrambling to get this vaccine.
...
Ideally distribution would be based on need
Washington governor (Inslee) has entered into an agreement with three other states to 'review' the FDAs approval and come up with their own distribution plan. I wouldn't be surprised if we were left sitting patiently for the results of their 'joint study' while our allocation gets shipped to California.
60 minutes did a nice piece [cbsnews.com] on the federal distribution system. Run by active duty military. Our four state agreement doesn't even fit the Pentagon's plan (map visible in the 60 minutes piece). I hope the ar
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Dumb ass, California is one the other states in the same plan, when the vaccine is distributed on the West Coast it will be by need first.
WA, OR, CA, NV will be using a regional plan.
The article you linked explained the military has big plans and strong words, but they don't have a stockpile yet. They won't tell us how many doses they have, because the number would "cause anxiety" but they promise it will be there later.
The article also explains that "boots on the ground" will not be transporting the virus,
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Ideally distribution would be based on need but in practice it will be down to who ordered early and is offering large sums of money.
Bullshit, in practice it depends who is making it where.
Special deal time? (Score:2)
Well, it's not Merck (Score:3)
After the whistlebower reports on the mumps vaccine, I had to go and look up to make sure that this wasn't the same company involved. But that one was Merck, so maybe.
Now we just have to see how quickly they can mass produce it, if they have the necessary supplies to package it for shipping (there were reports of a possible glass shortage), what it's going to take to distribute it (how cold does it have to be?), and how many needles they'll go through in the process ... or if doctors have to get one of those needleless jet injector things.
And how the priority is for people to get vaccinated. I would assume EMTs, hospital & nursing home workers ... maybe not nursing home patients depending on the possible side effects ... grocery and drug store workers, teachers, other first responders ... maybe people in meat processing & other places that had bad outbreaks ... etc.
(I'm not anti-vaccine ... but I actually had mumps, even though I had been vaccinated against it ... and got it from my twin brother. Our doctor claimed there was a known bad batch the month we were born, but it looks like the problems were much bigger than that)
Founders are Gastarbeiterkinder (Score:2, Interesting)
One nice anecdote about BioNTech is, that the two founders are Gastarbeiterkinder.
That means that their turkish parents moved to Germany in the 60ies.
Özlem Türeci and Uur ahin which are married btw.
The companies adress is
An der Goldgrube 12, Mainz
This means literally: "At the goldmine" ;)
Is it first or second strain (Score:2)
Because you know the whole flu shot thing doesn't work if you don't receive the right vaccine.
The second strain (Identified in March 2020) was said to have a higher rate of infection.
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Superb comment quality (Score:2, Interesting)
These are, without a doubt, some of the lowest quality comments I have ever seen on slashdot, and I've seen stories where the comments are just "GNAA" copypasta and swastika ascii art.
The accusation that the timing of this announcement is political, the utterly confused, anti-scientific information about vaccine efficacy, the basic misunderstanding about disease epidemiology, misunderstanding of cause of death and hospital reporting. Most of it willful ignorance and politically driven. Not one single insigh
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I am not sure why slashdot comments are sub-facebook, sub-twitter, sub-4chan quality but here we are.
Because unfortunately nerds are even more susceptible to the flawed idea of a single person can know "everything" and many of them judge themselves exactly such people.
Re:Have they noticed that worldwide (Score:5, Informative)
How can it make things "significantly worse"?
No matter how you run the numbers, a vaccine actually improves the situation both from an economic standpoint and the number of deaths dropping by a magnitude..
Re: Have they noticed that worldwide (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't matter if it is the primary cause of death. If you otherwise would have lived longer, you were killed by covid.
Re: Have they noticed that worldwide (Score:3)
Logical fallacy ridiculous example
Besides they aren't just writing covid under cause of death with no explanations
Re: Have they noticed that worldwide (Score:5, Insightful)
A death is usually caused by a chain of conditions. The root condition is causing all other conditions leading to death. COVID-19 is never a cause of death. COVID-19 is the root which causes other conditions. Example: COVID-19 causes viral pneumonia, leading to an opportunistic bacterial pneumonia, leading to lungs filling up with fluids, leading to death. This will go into the statistics as a COVID-19 death.
A knee to the neck causes blood circulation to the brain to stop, leading to death.
A SARS-Cov-2 infection doesn't need to contribute to this death. That's up to the coroner to decide of course. But the knee to the neck is the root of all other conditions ultimately leading to death. Without that knee he wouldn't have died there and then. Maybe an hour later, but that doesn't matter in the slightest.
What, you say, you're telling me COVID-19 can't be a singular cause of death? Indeed. Pure COVID-19 deaths only exists due to the doctor filling out the death certificate in a rush. We all know what they mean (COVID-19 causes the regular symptoms ultimately causing death), but a death certificate shouldn't be filled in this way.
So, your 37 should probably be 0.
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A note on underlying conditions: COVID-19 may cause underlying conditions to ultimately cause death. Of course COVID-19 is still the root cause here.
Re: Have they noticed that worldwide (Score:4, Insightful)
You do realize (just to cherry pick one case from Oregon) that there is no proof that a 103 year old man would have lived longer without covid-19 right?
That's like saying there's no evidence that a 103 year old man wouldn't have lived longer if he hadn't had a fatal heart attack. I mean, it might not have been much longer.
Re: Have they noticed that worldwide (Score:5, Insightful)
It's like a guy in the hospital who's being treated for several gunshot wounds. Then I walk up, put a pillow over his face and shoot him in the forehead, killing him. Did the other gunshot wounds kill him, or did my gunshot wound kill him? I posit the last gunshot wound was the fatal one.
And that's how covid works. You can have multiple other ailments, but covid comes up and administers the coup de grace.
"But your honor, I'm innocent! He was already sick! My gunshot didn't actually kill him! He was going to die anyway!"
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guy in the hospital who's being treated for several gunshot wounds. Then I walk up, put a pillow over his face and shoot him in the forehead, killing him.
Damn. That guy needs a better HMO.
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There are a significant number more of extra deaths compared to previous years
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You do realize (just to cherry pick one case from Oregon) that there is no proof that a 103 year old man would have lived longer without covid-19 right?
Life and death in health is not about proof, it's about statistics and probabilities, and it is overwhelmingly likely that not having contracted COVID-19 would have let the 103 year old man live longer. We know he didn't live less. We can't rule out him getting shot in the face the exact same moment had he not been in hospital with COVID-19, but it's overwhelmingly likely that that he would have lived longer.
Anecdote battle (Score:5, Interesting)
Everyone - young and old - that I have personally known who caught the virus recovered quickly.
And of the people I have known personally who tested positive, the fatality rate is 50%.
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Re:Anecdote battle (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably more of a sampling bias. You're more likely to know that someone had it if they got seriously sick. Otherwise, most people aren't going to tell you. First-person to get it here didn't want her name put out because she didn't want to be treated like a Typhoid Marry.
My point is that anecdotes are horrible and, as you say, are prone to bias. Meanwhile, the fact that since February we have seen twice as many deaths in the US as we did during US involvement in WWI argues that it is still a very serious problem. Hell, in WWII the US average monthly death toll was 6,600; average monthly death toll in the US for covid is almost 24,000-the equivalent of an Iwo Jima, Okinawa, D-Day, and Pearl Harbor combined every month.
Re:Anecdote battle (Score:5, Interesting)
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Interestingly, the first wave of the Spanish Flu mostly killed old people. The second wave was the one that killed lots of young people. The fact that a major war was happening/just finished may have also made people more susceptible due to stress, poorer diet and such.
Another consideration is that we're better at treating diseases now, if the Spanish Flu happened now, I'd guess it would kill fewer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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I was going to reply, but I'm in that other half. Today, I'm going to vote instead.
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That's why I use large numbers not personal anecdotal evidence. Overall, 6% of deaths have no other underlying cause.
Pretending to be stupid is a bad look (Score:5, Informative)
I'm pretty sure you know better than that. I'm pretty sure you're just pretending to be stupid because you think that someone reading your post is stupid enough to fall for it. We're not. Pretty much nobody on Slashdot is that stupid. Maybe try Facebook; there are some truly stupid people there.
The vaccine reduces the risk of infection in a two-month period by 90%. Specifically, 94 study participates got covid. Of those, 95 got the placebo, only 9 got the vaccine. You are ten times more likely to get covid if you don't get the vaccine.
It's actually even more effective at scale and over time because you can't catch covid from your wife if she doesn't catch covid. She can't catch covid from her co-worker if her co-worker doesn't have it. For each transmission pathway of three people:
The vaccine reduces by 90% the chance that the first person gets it.
Even if the first person gets it, the vaccine reduces by 90% the chance that the second person catches it from the second (total 99% reduction that second person gets it).
Even if the second person gets it, reduces by 90% chance that the third person catches it from the second (total 99.9% reduction in the probability the the third person gets it from this pathway).
Because you catch covid from someone who doesn't have it, and they catch it from someone who doesn't have it, every time anyone in your city gets vaccinated it makes your family safer.
Re: Pretending to be stupid is a bad look (Score:2)
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> If you only have a few percent of the population active at any one time how can you measure effectiveness?
You get a bunch of volunteers and have them randomly divided into group A and group B. You give group A the vaccine. You give an equal number of people the placebo. After 100-200 people get infected, you find:
100 placebo people got infected
10 people with the vaccine got infected
Now you know the vaccine reduces the risk of infection by about 90%.
Because only 110 people got infected, the effectiven
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"Underlying cause" which implies it was a cause of death? Or simple accompanying ailment, like allergies?
"He had allergies, then he got the rona. But it was the allergies that killed him."
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And I congratulate you on finding the real issue.
Re:Have they noticed that worldwide (Score:4, Informative)
We're glad you found one another. Now go found a room at the Troll Hotel, please.
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If you presume the vaccine has zero effect other than reducing your chance of getting COVID-19, then maybe that's a supportable point of view. Fact is, we have no idea what this vaccine does over the long term. The window is about six months here.
The presumption is ALWAYS that a vaccine is better than the disease, otherwise why bother?
Could this be a PR stunt from Pfizer, certainly - but if their figures hold true and nothing else crops up during the Phase-3 study that indicates that a large portion of vaccinated people dies or develop debilitating symptoms it will be better than not being vaccinated. And by a large portion we are talking about 2-3%, but vaccines generally have the possibility of serious side-effects for just 1-2 per million vaccina
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Mortality, not infection rate.
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50 million people worldwide have gotten this virus, out of 7.8 billion, round numbers.
Do the math yourself.
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Re:Have they noticed that worldwide (Score:5, Insightful)
* In 8 months, 238K people have died from covid-19 [jhu.edu]. That's an annual pace of 357K dead a year.
* In WWII, the US suffered 405K deaths in 3.75 years (Pearl Harbor to VJ day). [va.gov] That's a 108K annual pace.
We can declare there's a war going on when people are dying at a 108K annual pace, but we can't declare a health emergency when people are dying at over 3 times that annual rate? Curious criteria.
A vaccine lowers R(t) below 1 (Score:3)
A vaccine doesn't increase the infection rate. It decreases the pool of susceptible individuals from (initially) 100% to 10%.
A contagious disease can spread only to susceptible hosts. Once there are few enough of those, the disease dies down. For example, say a disease normally spreads such that the average host infects three others.* Thus the base infection rate R0 = 3. An effective vaccine removes potential hosts from the susceptible pool. If more than two-thirds of the population are not susceptible, the
Re:A vaccine lowers R(t) below 1 (Score:5, Funny)
The point is that it currently appears the pool of susceptible individuals is 0.6% To begin with.
Well, that number must be glad to be out of your arse and into the fresh air.
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An ass that size is going to hold a lot of numbers, this is slashdot.
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I think you seriously misunderstood the story. It's not saying that at all.
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That's great news, though I'm skeptical it would have spread at all if that were true.
That would mean that there are 5 million false positives globally, no undetected cases, and somehow through some miracle the virus managed to find each and every one of them. On the plus side, if you're correct there will be zero new infections and in a few weeks no cases at all.
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Except you don't understand the concept, or math, or both.
If your rate of transmission of 0.6% is right (it isn't) in an un-vaccinated population, then the rate of transmission in the same population that has been vaccinated with this (should the protection rate remain at 90%) would be 0.06%.
That's the difference between a pandemic and a controlled outbreak. Seems pretty awesome to me.
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I'm guessing the doctor had to use the tongs to pull his head out faster so he could make it to the golf course on time.
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Is there an actual example of this? Quoted in a generally respected source, not some YouTuber relating some personal speculation?
Re:Have they noticed that worldwide (Score:5, Insightful)
> Non-vaccine measures apparently have a 99.994% effective rate at preventing the virus?
You have data that only 0.006% of the world population will catch the virus without a vaccine? That's funny because more than 420,000 people have already caught it. So, no.
> And that even without a vaccine, this disease has a 97% survival rate (based on 35,000,000 people recovering vs 1,300,000 dying)?
Do you actually not care about long-term morbidity effects and economic fallout or are you just unaware of the character of the disease progression?
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It will if we pay them to do it (to return, for a second, to my earlier Marxist politics)
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There are over 3.5 million active cases right now. Almost 6.5 million recovered. So, 10 million people are not or have not been working or being productive.
Add in the medical bills they have ran up. And depending on their insurance, that will be huge bills for them. And all those old people on Medicare, it will put a huge burden on that program.
Now let us add in the economic impact of people not spending money. Sure Amazon has a boost, but the rest of the econ
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It's far worse than that, for people not being productive- in the first world fully 10% of the workforce has been thrown out of work from the lockdowns ALONE.
People unemployed are already running an average of 673 for every person who has died.
Actual cases of COVID-19 are only 35:2 for cases to deaths.
How do abortion limits produce educated adults? (Score:3)
Just a few restrictions on abortion would easily replace everybody who had died of COVID-19.
An adult dying of influenza, AIDS, or COVID-19 typically removes an educated, trained adult from the taxable labor pool. Births alone do not replenish this. In addition, a mother dying of childbirth complications also removes an educated, trained adult from the taxable labor pool.
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But if you allow that child to be born, and educate them, you end up with an educated adult.
May I present exhibit A: Marxist Hacker 42
No matter how much we try. You don't always end up with an educated adult.
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Non-vaccine measures like 'staying home' and 'quarantining infected people' and 'shutting down businesses'. Yes, those work, but they're not really very normal, and as we've seen, they're incredibly hard to get right without a significant, concentrated effort.
This is among the most asinine comments I've ever seen on slashdot, and I've been here an awfully long time.
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Non-vaccine measures like 'staying home' and 'quarantining infected people' and 'shutting down businesses'. Yes, those work, but they're not really very normal, and as we've seen, they're incredibly hard to get right without a significant, concentrated effort.
This is among the most asinine comments I've ever seen on slashdot, and I've been here an awfully long time.
Like any real defense, the defense against covid should be in depth. That means getting a vaccine once they are available. That also means continuing to wear a mask. Continuing to social distance. Continuing to reduce occupancy at buildings/events. This isn't a "choose the best answer" question, it's a "choose all that apply".
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Certainly, but the claim that the vaccine would make things worse because it's 'only' 90% effective is absurd on its face. The measles vaccine is about 90% effective, and until people STOPPED VACCINATING THEIR KIDS, measles was all but wiped out. 90% effectiveness and broad application CAN lead to herd immunity effects. You still have to keep on top of vaccinating, but you can really change the whole direction of this pandemic.
Re:Have they noticed that worldwide (Score:5, Informative)
A 90% effective vaccine does not mean that the infection rate is 10%. The smallpox vaccine was about 95% effective - do you think the infection rate from smallpox is 5%? That 95% effective vaccine wiped smallpox off the face of the earth.
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I can haz numbrz? I can haz cheeseburder? With COVFEFE-19 sauce?
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And what about posting the same wildly incorrect stupid ass thing over and over?
Re:Have they noticed that worldwide (Score:5, Informative)
SARS has a case fatality rate of about 15%, much, much worse than COVID-19's case fatality rate. But the dynamics of a SARS epidemic means that even in a bad outbreak only a tiny number of people are infected.
What make COVID-19 more dangerous than SARS isn't its case fatality rate, it's the capacity to infect huge numbers of people. Smaller fatality rates times a sufficiently large number of cases equals more deaths.
Without a vaccine, COVID-19 will eventually infect the majority of people on Earth. And while they will overwhelmingly survive, that small fatality rate multiplied by billions people would make it the most effective killer of humans in history. On top of that a small fraction of people who survive suffer debilitating long term neurological or cardiopulmonary injury, which by the same math becomes a huge problem when huge numbers of people are infected.
So yes, an effective vaccine is a big deal. Non-vaccine measures *can* control the spread of COVID-19, but people can't keep them up indefinitely, and over time the effectiveness of things like social distancing wanes.
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50 million sounds like a lot, until you compare it to 7.8 billion.
That's exactly should make you wary. It's like saying a fire has only burned less than 1% of your house *so far*. If there were no more flammable materials left, that would be very good news. If there's plenty of stuff left to burn then you'd better be looking for ways to put the fire out.
There is nothing to suggest fifty million is anywhere near the ceiling, in fact globally rates of new cases are rising exponentially. Unless we do hit some kind of ceiling, that suggests the global scale of the probl
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Mostly because you have no idea how any of this works, and should probably stop commenting on things you don't have any knowledge of.
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I got my Flu Vaccine for this year. Not because I am afraid that I would die from the Flu, but having had the flu before, I realized it really isn't something I want to have.
When you have large populations small percentages do mean a lot. A percentage is 1 out a 100 when you have Millions or Billions in your number. 1 out of a hundred is a really big deal.
Lets just say you have 99.994% chance of getting shot when you leave your house, every day. So say you leave your house every day, chances are you w
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Stop spreading misinformation then, asshole, facebook has a low fucking bar. Wow you suck.
Re:Thank you Kamala! (Score:5, Funny)
It just took one election to cure Covid. Thank you for Believing In Science and curing Covid in 1 week President Harris.
Oh, and if anyone anywhere dies from Covid in 2021, Trump is still personally responsible for murdering them too.
You forgot about how Dr Fauci and O'Blama and HIllary put the 'rona in jet chemtrail juice to kill all those likely Trump voters. It all ties together now, obvious if you think about it.
Re: Thank you Kamala! (Score:2, Offtopic)
Not to mention that it ain't cured until the vaccine is actually produced and distributed... This is a promise of a potential cure, not "the end of coronavirus". We will still be hearing about corona for a long time, well after the fourth despite what his orangeness said
Re: Thank you Kamala! (Score:4, Insightful)
Bed rest and soup won't help with the long term health complications experienced even by some with no obvious covid symptoms, about which we are still learning. Wishing them away won't help, either. What doesn't kill you can still make you weaker.
Re:Thank you Kamala! (Score:4, Insightful)
"And I thought the whole corona virus thing as supposed to go away as soon as Biden was elected." If that was the case then you are just really stupid.
I know it is the typical GOP argument of pretending what your opponent is going to say and think, than state an exagurated form of it, to show how stupid their logic is. While it is really the one who is saying it is looking kinda dumb.
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I was thinking the same thing. It sure was odd for Pfizer to wait until Biden's win was assured before announcing this.
Then again, it could be pure coincidence and we're reading too much into it. Regardless, the markets are doing well under Biden so there's that.
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Your salty tears are delicious.
Re:Thank you Kamala! (Score:5, Informative)
This is still early data. So it isn't like you are going be be able to get your shot next week, or in time for thanks giving. Even after a Vaccine is problem to be effective and safe. We will need a coordinated effort to get the enough quantity made, have it distributed and priced so it can be distributed to a large part of the population. All this will require leadership and hard work.
Being that Covid is at a record high currently. No one with a half a brain expected a full cure to be done after the election.
A week later we find good results, but we had reports of good results in the past that were bunked. So let the Scientist do their job, and be sure they can work quickly but responsibility to make sure we do get something safe and effective.
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It just took one election to cure Covid. Thank you for Believing In Science and curing Covid in 1 week President Harris.
I'm not sure why you're thanking Kamala. It was Trump who promised that COVID would disappear this week. https://twitter.com/realDonald... [twitter.com]
Oh, and if anyone anywhere dies from Covid in 2021, Trump is still personally responsible for murdering them too.
Well yes that's how pandemics work. We weren't disagreeing with Trump that the pandemic will magically disappear after the election because we hate Trump, we did so because pandemics don't work like that. They don't care whose president. But a particular president seems to have been an active instigator in helping spread it, especially at his super-spreader events.
Trump
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It was Trump who promised that COVID would disappear this week.
Of course he did; he lies all the time.
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The election starts the minute the last one ends. Media and politicans are in campaign mode a full 100% of the time. Have you not noticed this?
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"So the naysayers still want to push doom and gloom. Trump has not gotten a fair shake and recognition of the good he did during the whoie 4 years"
He can do good during 8 years in Rikers.
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"So the naysayers still want to push doom and gloom. Trump has not gotten a fair shake and recognition of the good he did during the whoie 4 years"
He can do good during 8 years in Rikers.
He's going to serve as much time as Hillary did... Remember "Lock her up!" being chanted? Your little mantra will have the same net effect, the only folks affected by it will be the disappointed folks who actually thought it might happen. Hillary walked and was never even charged with so much as J-Walking.
Like I said at the time Trump was running on the "Hillary is a crook" platform, nobody is going to get charged much less go to jail.
Re:Thank you Kamala! (Score:4, Interesting)
The difference this time, is that actual working prosecutors agree on the "lock him up" thing, which didn't happen last time. The allegations include specific infractions of criminal code, something Clinton never had to worry about.
And this isn't just from forward-looking prosecutors, but judges in the past. Remember that one of the co-conspirators in some of Trump's crimes (Michael Cohen) has already been convicted of working with Trump. The guilt has already been proven in court, so Trump's only shot is to show that we can't be sure he is really "individual one," the mysterious unidentified figure who ran a successful presidential campaign in 2016 and had employed the naughty lawyer.
Then there's the jurisdictional diversification. When you get down to it, there might be up to 51 different governments who have criminal complaints against Trump. Obviously it won't go to court like that, but it's clear that at least the state of New York isn't going to let it go. And if they can do it, maybe your state can do it too. Why not try to get back some of that stolen money?
And then there's the fascinating speculation about that 51st (or 1st, however you measure it) government: the United States itself. Earlier, Biden said he wouldn't interfere with federal law enforcement going after Trump, but lately he's backpedalled a bit, saying it would be "bad" if the law were enforced against a former president. We'll see if he prevents his new AG from acting or not. But if that AG acts, then the next thing is how to adjudicate Trump's upcoming self-pardon. That's going to be a lot of fun, with common sense defying 1860s SCOTUS precedent, tons of emotion on each side of the public, etc. Nice flamewars coming if things go like that, so I hope things go like that.
I can see that last one being a Trump win but also resulting in a constitutional amendment which prevents future presidents from pardoning themselves or family. That's when we all need to remember to bring up Hillary Clinton again, to encourage red state voters to vote the right way on such an amendment.
Re: Thank you Kamala! (Score:2)
Obama reduced troop deployment far more than trump, you can look it up. He also was only able to do it because we wrapped up certain goals under Obama. Once again he took credit for things that had nothing to do with his presidency.
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You must be talking about 2016.
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Except it wasn't thoroughly debunked. In late August a Senate panel led by Republicans found that there was indeed clear collusion between Trump and the Russians.
https://www.bostonherald.com/2... [bostonherald.com]
Re:No review means (Score:5, Informative)
No, this is a company reporting the statistical outcomes of a controlled test overseen by the FDA. There was no opining about a product, and no call to buy it. At least click a link or two before you start bragging about how cynical and wise you are.
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No, this is a company reporting the statistical outcomes of a controlled test overseen by the FDA. There was no opining about a product, and no call to buy it. At least click a link or two before you start bragging about how cynical and wise you are.
From the article:
Dr. Jansen said that because the trial is continuing, an independent board reviewing the data has not told her or other company executives other details, such as how many of the people developed mild versus more severe forms of Covid-19 — crucial information that the F.D.A. has said it will need to evaluate any coronavirus vaccine. The agency has also asked for other detailed data that could take weeks to review, including about how the company plans to manufacture millions of doses and ensure that the product is consistent and safe.
Doesn't sound like the FDA has had much to do with this to me.
Re:No review means (Score:5, Informative)
In this case it looks likely that it will be approved quickly and distribution will begin this year. First it will go to medical staff and other people who are at high risk of exposure.
It's about balancing risk. Someone who works in a hospital or a care home is at great risk so the possible unknown problems with this vaccine are probably worth taking a chance on, given that complications are seemingly quite rare given that none of the 43,500 test subjects had any.
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In this case it looks likely that it will be approved quickly and distribution will begin this year. First it will go to medical staff and other people who are at high risk of exposure.
It's about balancing risk. Someone who works in a hospital or a care home is at great risk so the possible unknown problems with this vaccine are probably worth taking a chance on, given that complications are seemingly quite rare given that none of the 43,500 test subjects had any.
If there wasn't a record of hiding bad test results a mile long I'd agree, but I'm very wary of Big Pharma's claims to miracle breakthroughs when they stand to make billions before any unfortunate side-effects are discovered. Take the money and run.
Re:No review means (Score:4, Informative)
In this case it looks likely that it will be approved quickly and distribution will begin this year. First it will go to medical staff and other people who are at high risk of exposure.
It's about balancing risk. Someone who works in a hospital or a care home is at great risk so the possible unknown problems with this vaccine are probably worth taking a chance on, given that complications are seemingly quite rare given that none of the 43,500 test subjects had any.
If there wasn't a record of hiding bad test results a mile long I'd agree, but I'm very wary of Big Pharma's claims to miracle breakthroughs when they stand to make billions before any unfortunate side-effects are discovered. Take the money and run.
OMG - The conspiracy theories are going to run fast and deep on this one eh?
You've got to understand that if the CDC allows this vaccine to be used, they have reasonable evidence to show the vaccine is safe and effective at least in the short term. Big Pharma isn't going to be able to just start selling the vaccine on the street corners with out some kind of approval and concurrence of the CDC (At least not here in the USA). Yes, the testing is of limited duration, but we also have people dying here (thousands a week right now) and one must judge the level of risk against the possible lives that could be saved by not waiting.
This whole COVID thing is only going to stop when we reach some kind of herd immunity. There is no practical way to keep it from spreading though the entire population (social distancing, mask wearing and hand washing only slow things down). That means there are two choices you can make to end this, let everybody just get sick and make sure we have the medical resources to treat them OR we get a vaccine into the population and generate immunity in the herd that way. Personally, if the CDC is willing to let this vaccine get used, then I'm all for getting it out sooner rather than waiting 10 years, by which time it won't likely matter all that much because COVID will either have burned though the population, mutated into a form that's not prevented by the vaccine or both.
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Herd immunity should protect them pretty well. As long as we keep taking some precautions to limit the spread the virus won't be able to survive very long with only 10% of people at risk from it.
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> It's about balancing risk. Someone who works in a hospital or a care home is at great risk so the possible unknown problems with this vaccine are probably worth taking a chance on, given that complications are seemingly quite rare given that none of the 43,500 test subjects had any.
I hear what you're saying, but I'd just like to remind everyone of Gulf War Syndrome to understand why this can still go horribly wrong.
Yes, but we are losing a thousand people a day to the virus right now. You've got to weigh the risks, including the risks of doing nothing and keep watching 1,000 people die per day.
Yes, there are risks here, nobody is claiming otherwise, but sometimes there are no perfect answers. Sometimes you have to pick the best solution you have right now and run with it, full knowing it may not not perfect. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
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As if that wouldn't have been done by any of the other 2016 primary candidates.
Re:Thank you Donald Trump... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Thank you Donald Trump... (Score:5, Insightful)
COVID cases and deaths are higher per capita in many European countries.
COVID deaths per capita are only worse than the USA in two European countries; Belgium, and Spain. Check the numbers yourself.
https://www.worldometers.info/... [worldometers.info]
I know US citizens believe they have the best healthcare in the world, but that's only true for a few percent of the wealthiest citizens. For the bottom 95% or so the health care in most European countries is far superior. Also Trump didn't even try to slow this down, preferring to lie about it instead.
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ISIS is a direct result of the power vacuum left when Saddam was removed from power. He was bad but kept the area stable.
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That AND because Obama left Iraq in a lurch before the Iraqi armed forces was ready and equipped to maintain control of their country. And don't give me the Iraqis asked us to leave due to their demands. Had Obama desired to stay in Iraq, he could have negotiated something with them. He pulled out, over his political opposition's objections, who foretold what was going to happen.
Can't tell if liar or idiot. Obama withdrew troops from Iraq according to the agreement [wikipedia.org] George W. Bush's administration negotiated and George W. Bush signed in 2008. Obama's political opponents passed the schedule into law before he had any say in the matter. Obama had no option to negotiate a change in that schedule because the law signed by Bush didn't have any such option. Obama took office after that agreement had been signed. It specified the withdrawal schedule. Obama honored that withdrawal sch
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They were largely defeated under Obama, almost finished off under Trump. But they or their successors are still there, plotting a rise back into power.
Obama/Biden reluctantly continued wars started by Republican Bush. So did Trump.