The coronavirus

Spiritual_Chaos

The World Health Organisation said that evening that adapting strategy to reflect changes in the development of the virus was important.

They also said "masks work" and urged countries in the situation Sweden is currently in to consider recommending them alongside social distancing measures.

The comments were made in reponse to a question from a Svenska Dagbladet reporter, who asked if the significant changes were "a sign of misjudgment" and whether masks would be useful.

Michael Ryan, executive director of the WHO Health Emergencies Programme, said his understanding was that there had been "very high compliance" with Sweden's mostly voluntary measures in spring, and cited other advantages such as a high proportion of single-person households, but noted the country had "not been without its difficulties".

He said the organisation's advice around mask-wearing was clear: "Masks work. Masks work in particular environments where you can't maintain physical distance, where you're in a crowded setting. We would like people to look at all aspects of how you protect yourself, to look at your risk-score in a sense on a weekly basis."

Spiritual_Chaos

BREAKING: Pfizer and partner BioNTech announced their coronavirus vaccine is more than 95% effective in the final analysis of its massive Phase 3 trial

mace1229

lastexitlondon said:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/coronavirus-hull-schools-collapse-covid-b1724287.html
This is our schools struggling.  So as numbers  go up in an area school is untenable .
Parts of this country  have 200 per 100.000.
Hull has 770 per 100,000
Madness and thats under a lockdown

Last I checked, about 4 or 5 days ago, we were over 800 per 100,000 and 12% positivity. It was going up every day and out school finally went remote. Just 2 weeks ago it was about 200 and 6%.

rgambs

Our school district is going remote starting next week.  Hillbilly heads must be exploding.

JeBurkhardt

rgambs said:

Our school district is going remote starting next week.  Hillbilly heads must be exploding.

Our school district in rural Southern Illinois went fully distance this week, for 2 weeks. They plan on coming back Monday 11/30, 4 days after Thanksgiving. It is the dumbest thing I have seen in a very long time. Everyone will be getting together for Thanksgiving and those who are exposed will most likely be both contagious and asymptomatic the following week. The week following Thanksgiving is the absolute worst week to be coming back. They did say they would reevaluate it, based on how the numbers were looking. Since positive tests in our county are sky rocketing, my hope is that they grab a clue and cancel until after Christmas. A couple of weeks ago the school administration suggested going fully distance from 11/23 to after MLK day in January to keep the expected surge from Thanksgiving and Christmas from totally overwhelming the school district. The school board shot the plan down.  My wife is a teacher and she and her coworkers are pissed off.   

HughFreakingDillon

sounds like we're going to have an extended christmas holiday for the schools on the back end, knowing full well people will gather and they'll want to wait for the full incubation period to be over prior to kids returning to school. 

Meltdown99

Spiritual_Chaos said:

BREAKING: Pfizer and partner BioNTech announced their coronavirus vaccine is more than 95% effective in the final analysis of its massive Phase 3 trial

That settles it.  Lol.  Let’s just say I’m skeptical...you know big Pharma and all.

have they add their findings peer reviewed?  If not, then I trust this company about as much as I trusted the Russian vaccine. 

HughFreakingDillon

it does seem odd to me that pfizer first said, what, up to 90% effective, moderna says 94.5%, now all of a sudden pfizer is 95%? what is this, a pissing match for king of the pandemic?

Spiritual_Chaos

A new Danish study shows that mouth protection cannot be proven to protect against covid-19.

Rigshospitalet writes in a press release.

PJNB

HughFreakingDillon said:

it does seem odd to me that pfizer first said, what, up to 90% effective, moderna says 94.5%, now all of a sudden pfizer is 95%? what is this, a pissing match for king of the pandemic?

It was not up to 90%. It was more than 90%. They rolled the number out before knowing exactly what it was. 


The studies are always done with these type of trials from a 3rd party company. The drug company finds out the number almost the same time the public does. 

mace1229

HughFreakingDillon said:

it does seem odd to me that pfizer first said, what, up to 90% effective, moderna says 94.5%, now all of a sudden pfizer is 95%? what is this, a pissing match for king of the pandemic?

I haven’t looked deeply into it other than just evening news. But the 95% the other company (names slips my mind right now) advertised seemed odd to me too. They put up numbers that said it was tested on several thousand, out of those 95 got covid and of those 95 only 5 had the vaccine. 5 out of 95 seems like too small of a sample to say 95% effective. 

mickeyrat

rgambs said:

Our school district is going remote starting next week.  Hillbilly heads must be exploding.

has the connectivity issue been addressed in rural ohio? tablets or computers being loaned or issued to students?

have seen several parents in cumbus taking their kids in to panera and places like that that offer free wifi....

oftenreading

Further info from Pfizer and BioNTech's press release:

NEW YORK & MAINZ, Germany--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE) and BioNTech SE (Nasdaq: BNTX) today announced that, after conducting the final efficacy analysis in their ongoing Phase 3 study, their mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine candidate, BNT162b2, met all of the study’s primary efficacy endpoints. Analysis of the data indicates a vaccine efficacy rate of 95% (p<0.0001) in participants without prior SARS-CoV-2 infection (first primary objective) and also in participants with and without prior SARS-CoV-2 infection (second primary objective), in each case measured from 7 days after the second dose. The first primary objective analysis is based on 170 cases of COVID-19, as specified in the study protocol, of which 162 cases of COVID-19 were observed in the placebo group versus 8 cases in the BNT162b2 group. Efficacy was consistent across age, gender, race and ethnicity demographics. The observed efficacy in adults over 65 years of age was over 94%.

There were 10 severe cases of COVID-19 observed in the trial, with nine of the cases occurring in the placebo group and one in the BNT162b2 vaccinated group.

To date, the Data Monitoring Committee for the study has not reported any serious safety concerns related to the vaccine. A review of unblinded reactogenicity data from the final analysis which consisted of a randomized subset of at least 8,000 participants 18 years and older in the phase 2/3 study demonstrates that the vaccine was well tolerated, with most solicited adverse events resolving shortly after vaccination. The only Grade 3 (severe) solicited adverse events greater than or equal to 2% in frequency after the first or second dose was fatigue at 3.8% and headache at 2.0% following dose 2. Consistent with earlier shared results, older adults tended to report fewer and milder solicited adverse events following vaccination.

article continues in link https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-detail/pfizer-and-biontech-conclude-phase-3-study-covid-19-vaccine

HughFreakingDillon

mace1229 said:

HughFreakingDillon said:

it does seem odd to me that pfizer first said, what, up to 90% effective, moderna says 94.5%, now all of a sudden pfizer is 95%? what is this, a pissing match for king of the pandemic?

I haven’t looked deeply into it other than just evening news. But the 95% the other company (names slips my mind right now) advertised seemed odd to me too. They put up numbers that said it was tested on several thousand, out of those 95 got covid and of those 95 only 5 had the vaccine. 5 out of 95 seems like too small of a sample to say 95% effective. 

yeah, when I read that, I thought "either that's too small a sample or I don't understand this". I'm guessing it's the latter. lol

mace1229

HughFreakingDillon said:

mace1229 said:

HughFreakingDillon said:

it does seem odd to me that pfizer first said, what, up to 90% effective, moderna says 94.5%, now all of a sudden pfizer is 95%? what is this, a pissing match for king of the pandemic?

I haven’t looked deeply into it other than just evening news. But the 95% the other company (names slips my mind right now) advertised seemed odd to me too. They put up numbers that said it was tested on several thousand, out of those 95 got covid and of those 95 only 5 had the vaccine. 5 out of 95 seems like too small of a sample to say 95% effective. 

yeah, when I read that, I thought "either that's too small a sample or I don't understand this". I'm guessing it's the latter. lol

Wish it was the latter, but 5/95 is 95%. If that math didn’t add up I’d assume you’re right. But it’s exactly what they advertise so that’s a huge coincidence if that isn’t how they determined it. Which is an extremely small sample. More like 95% +/- 50% due to small sample size.

oftenreading

mace1229 said:

HughFreakingDillon said:

mace1229 said:

HughFreakingDillon said:

it does seem odd to me that pfizer first said, what, up to 90% effective, moderna says 94.5%, now all of a sudden pfizer is 95%? what is this, a pissing match for king of the pandemic?

I haven’t looked deeply into it other than just evening news. But the 95% the other company (names slips my mind right now) advertised seemed odd to me too. They put up numbers that said it was tested on several thousand, out of those 95 got covid and of those 95 only 5 had the vaccine. 5 out of 95 seems like too small of a sample to say 95% effective. 

yeah, when I read that, I thought "either that's too small a sample or I don't understand this". I'm guessing it's the latter. lol

Wish it was the latter, but 5/95 is 95%. If that math didn’t add up I’d assume you’re right. But it’s exactly what they advertise so that’s a huge coincidence if that isn’t how they determined it. Which is an extremely small sample. More like 95% +/- 50% due to small sample size.

It’s not a “small sample size”. The sample size is 43,000 people. The sample is the population studied, not the number that had infections. 

oftenreading

mace1229 said:

HughFreakingDillon said:

mace1229 said:

HughFreakingDillon said:

it does seem odd to me that pfizer first said, what, up to 90% effective, moderna says 94.5%, now all of a sudden pfizer is 95%? what is this, a pissing match for king of the pandemic?

I haven’t looked deeply into it other than just evening news. But the 95% the other company (names slips my mind right now) advertised seemed odd to me too. They put up numbers that said it was tested on several thousand, out of those 95 got covid and of those 95 only 5 had the vaccine. 5 out of 95 seems like too small of a sample to say 95% effective. 

yeah, when I read that, I thought "either that's too small a sample or I don't understand this". I'm guessing it's the latter. lol

Wish it was the latter, but 5/95 is 95%. If that math didn’t add up I’d assume you’re right. But it’s exactly what they advertise so that’s a huge coincidence if that isn’t how they determined it. Which is an extremely small sample. More like 95% +/- 50% due to small sample size.

See also the newer data I posted above. The 95% rate does not come from the data you are talking about. 

HughFreakingDillon

I guess what I'd like to know is, do these in the study just go about their daily lives, or are they exposed to the virus in some way in a controlled setting?

PJNB

HughFreakingDillon said:

I guess what I'd like to know is, do these in the study just go about their daily lives, or are they exposed to the virus in some way in a controlled setting?

These were all conventional trials as far as I can tell meaning they went about their normal lives. They are in talks of doing a challenge trial which purposefully tries to infect the volunteer with the virus. Here is a good write up on it. 

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/11/17/21540773/covid-19-vaccine-human-challenge-trial-ethics

oftenreading

PJNB said:

HughFreakingDillon said:

I guess what I'd like to know is, do these in the study just go about their daily lives, or are they exposed to the virus in some way in a controlled setting?

These were all conventional trials as far as I can tell meaning they went about their normal lives. They are in talks of doing a challenge trial which purposefully tries to infect the volunteer with the virus. Here is a good write up on it. 

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/11/17/21540773/covid-19-vaccine-human-challenge-trial-ethics

You’re correct, these were population based trials and not challenge trials.