Author Topic: The Pfizer Vaccine and do people who had COVID already need the vaccine?  (Read 25466 times)

Offline iluv2travel

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Re: The Pfizer Vaccine and do people who had COVID already need the vaccine?
« Reply #60 on: December 09, 2020, 10:29:19 PM »
https://www.fda.gov/media/144245/download

While not a significant number, 4 cases of Bell's palsy were reported. Neurological symptoms coupled with the allergy warning is making it seems less and less exciting by the day. And we're only D+1 from mass distribution in the West.

Bell's palsy is considered something that is rare but if it G-d forbid becomes more commonplace due to this vaccine that would be quite terrible. And even though Bell's palsy supposedly resolves by itself within a few weeks I personally know someone that remained with lingering facial paralysis for life because of it.

Again, I am not saying it will happen,  I definitely hope not but this something we have no way of knowing the ramifications until enough time has passed. I wouldn't exactly compare taking a vaccine containing a cocktail of who knows what, to stepping on your toe.

Offline iluv2travel

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Re: The Pfizer Vaccine and do people who had COVID already need the vaccine?
« Reply #61 on: December 09, 2020, 10:32:26 PM »
4/5 Bell’s palsy episodes are resolved without damage.

Its great that those 4 cases resolved without damage but for the time someone has it, its extremely uncomfortable to put it mildly.

And then there's the issue of the 1 unresolved...

Offline PlatinumGuy

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Re: The Pfizer Vaccine and do people who had COVID already need the vaccine?
« Reply #62 on: December 09, 2020, 10:36:26 PM »
Its great that those 4 cases resolved without damage but for the time someone has it, its extremely uncomfortable to put it mildly.

And then there's the issue of the 1 unresolved...
I meant; 80% of global incidents.
So yes, it’s a problem. No, it’s not a big problem.
Most importantly, it demonstrates trials are pretty effective
״וזה כלל גדול: שישנא אדם כל דבר שקר. וכל מה שיוסיף שנאה לדרכי השקר – יוסיף אהבה לתורה.״ - אורחות צדיקים

Offline biobook

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Re: The Pfizer Vaccine and do people who had COVID already need the vaccine?
« Reply #63 on: December 10, 2020, 09:39:40 AM »
I'm obviously missing something here. How can it be 82% effective after the first dose, but then only 52% effective between the first and second doses? And if it really is 82% after the first, why wouldn't Pfizer be playing that up instead of telling the NYT that the first dose is only 52% effective?
I puzzled over that all yesterday, then finally broke down and read the paper (actually, just this part of it)  Here's my understanding of the numbers:

From Day 0 (First dose given) to Day 105
Vaccine had 82% efficacy in decreasing infections: 50 cases in vaccinated group, 275 in placebo

But that calculation includes all the time after the first dose was injected.  In the first week after injection, it looks like efficacy is close to 0 - there are about 20 cases in each group, making it look like the vaccine has no effect.  But we know that this is because it takes a few days to synthesize enough antibodies to prevent infection, and it's only around day 12 that we start to see a change.  In the third week (days 14-21), 18 new cases occurred in placebo group, but only 2 in vaccinated group.  So they did another calculation to summarize this early 3-week period:

From Day 0 (first dose given) to Day 21 (before second dose)
Vaccine had 52% efficacy: 39 cases in vaccinated group, 82 in placebo

Good to show that %, because it emphasizes that the vaccine starts to have an effect quickly, but it looks misleadingly low because it includes that first week when the immune response was developing. 

After the second injection, they did two calculations:

From Day 21 (second dose given) to Day 28 (to allow one week for immune response to develop)
Vaccine had 90% efficacy: 2 cases in vaccinated group, 21 in placebo

From Day 28 (one week after second dose) to Day 105
Vaccine had 95% efficacy: 9 cases in vaccinated group, 172 in placebo

They can't really say what the efficacy would be after just one dose, because they only looked for three weeks, and after that everyone got a second dose.  It's possible that immunity would wear off more quickly after a single dose.  So why didn't they have a third group, that had just one dose, and they could follow that group for longer?  It's been shown for some other vaccines that two doses are needed for maximal effectiveness, and it would have taken that much more time to recruit an additional 22,000 people for that third group.  Perhaps this was one of the corners they cut to work at warp speed?

Offline avromie7

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Re: The Pfizer Vaccine and do people who had COVID already need the vaccine?
« Reply #64 on: December 10, 2020, 10:08:38 AM »
I puzzled over that all yesterday, then finally broke down and read the paper (actually, just this part of it)  Here's my understanding of the numbers:

From Day 0 (First dose given) to Day 105
Vaccine had 82% efficacy in decreasing infections: 50 cases in vaccinated group, 275 in placebo

But that calculation includes all the time after the first dose was injected.  In the first week after injection, it looks like efficacy is close to 0 - there are about 20 cases in each group, making it look like the vaccine has no effect.  But we know that this is because it takes a few days to synthesize enough antibodies to prevent infection, and it's only around day 12 that we start to see a change.  In the third week (days 14-21), 18 new cases occurred in placebo group, but only 2 in vaccinated group.  So they did another calculation to summarize this early 3-week period:

From Day 0 (first dose given) to Day 21 (before second dose)
Vaccine had 52% efficacy: 39 cases in vaccinated group, 82 in placebo

Good to show that %, because it emphasizes that the vaccine starts to have an effect quickly, but it looks misleadingly low because it includes that first week when the immune response was developing. 

After the second injection, they did two calculations:

From Day 21 (second dose given) to Day 28 (to allow one week for immune response to develop)
Vaccine had 90% efficacy: 2 cases in vaccinated group, 21 in placebo

From Day 28 (one week after second dose) to Day 105
Vaccine had 95% efficacy: 9 cases in vaccinated group, 172 in placebo

They can't really say what the efficacy would be after just one dose, because they only looked for three weeks, and after that everyone got a second dose.  It's possible that immunity would wear off more quickly after a single dose.  So why didn't they have a third group, that had just one dose, and they could follow that group for longer?  It's been shown for some other vaccines that two doses are needed for maximal effectiveness, and it would have taken that much more time to recruit an additional 22,000 people for that third group.  Perhaps this was one of the corners they cut to work at warp speed?
I would like to see what the results look like when calculating from when the number of cases in the vaccinated group slowed down until that many days after the second dose or maybe only until the second dose. If I understand correctly, both the 52% and the 82% are undercounting the effectiveness because they include the first few days before the vaccine actually works.
I wonder what people who type "u" instead of "you" do with all their free time.

Offline biobook

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Re: The Pfizer Vaccine and do people who had COVID already need the vaccine?
« Reply #65 on: December 10, 2020, 10:30:39 AM »
I would like to see what the results look like when calculating from when the number of cases in the vaccinated group slowed down until that many days after the second dose or maybe only until the second dose.
You can kinda see that in the numbers under the graph, which gives cumulative weekly cases.  It seems to be slowing down around d12 (in week 2), so what happens after that is the numbers I gave for days 14-21, just before second dose: 2 in vaccinated group, 18 in placebo.

Quote
If I understand correctly, both the 52% and the 82% are undercounting the effectiveness because they include the first few days before the vaccine actually works.
I don't think they're undercounting effectiveness, just that they're providing different ways of viewing effectiveness.  This document isn't really for us, it's for the FDA committee that reviews vaccines, and they may require these different calculations to get a fuller view of what's going on, and they would understand their value.
I expect that for us regular folks, they'll just say effectiveness kicks in only around day 10, so be especially careful for the next two weeks...

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Re: The Pfizer Vaccine and do people who had COVID already need the vaccine?
« Reply #66 on: December 10, 2020, 10:36:37 AM »
I puzzled over that all yesterday, then finally broke down and read the paper (actually, just this part of it)  Here's my understanding of the numbers:

From Day 0 (First dose given) to Day 105
Vaccine had 82% efficacy in decreasing infections: 50 cases in vaccinated group, 275 in placebo

But that calculation includes all the time after the first dose was injected.  In the first week after injection, it looks like efficacy is close to 0 - there are about 20 cases in each group, making it look like the vaccine has no effect.  But we know that this is because it takes a few days to synthesize enough antibodies to prevent infection, and it's only around day 12 that we start to see a change.  In the third week (days 14-21), 18 new cases occurred in placebo group, but only 2 in vaccinated group.  So they did another calculation to summarize this early 3-week period:

From Day 0 (first dose given) to Day 21 (before second dose)
Vaccine had 52% efficacy: 39 cases in vaccinated group, 82 in placebo

Good to show that %, because it emphasizes that the vaccine starts to have an effect quickly, but it looks misleadingly low because it includes that first week when the immune response was developing. 

After the second injection, they did two calculations:

From Day 21 (second dose given) to Day 28 (to allow one week for immune response to develop)
Vaccine had 90% efficacy: 2 cases in vaccinated group, 21 in placebo

From Day 28 (one week after second dose) to Day 105
Vaccine had 95% efficacy: 9 cases in vaccinated group, 172 in placebo

They can't really say what the efficacy would be after just one dose, because they only looked for three weeks, and after that everyone got a second dose.  It's possible that immunity would wear off more quickly after a single dose.  So why didn't they have a third group, that had just one dose, and they could follow that group for longer?  It's been shown for some other vaccines that two doses are needed for maximal effectiveness, and it would have taken that much more time to recruit an additional 22,000 people for that third group.  Perhaps this was one of the corners they cut to work at warp speed?
I would like to see what the results look like when calculating from when the number of cases in the vaccinated group slowed down until that many days after the second dose or maybe only until the second dose. If I understand correctly, both the 52% and the 82% are undercounting the effectiveness because they include the first few days before the vaccine actually works.

From the numbers presented, this should be able to be calculated from how it dropped to 2 vs. 18 during the 3rd week.
Feelings don't care about your facts

Offline avromie7

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Re: The Pfizer Vaccine and do people who had COVID already need the vaccine?
« Reply #67 on: December 10, 2020, 10:46:24 AM »
You can kinda see that in the numbers under the graph, which gives cumulative weekly cases.  It seems to be slowing down around d12 (in week 2), so what happens after that is the numbers I gave for days 14-21, just before second dose: 2 in vaccinated group, 18 in placebo.
I don't think they're undercounting effectiveness, just that they're providing different ways of viewing effectiveness.  This document isn't really for us, it's for the FDA committee that reviews vaccines, and they may require these different calculations to get a fuller view of what's going on, and they would understand their value.
I expect that for us regular folks, they'll just say effectiveness kicks in only around day 10, so be especially careful for the next two weeks...
Because the time from day 14-21 is so short, we don't know what the efficacy really is in that time period based on only 40k participants. If we gave a margin of error of 1 case in each group the efficacy in that week would be nearly identical to the efficacy from day 28 to 105. If we assign only 1 case to the vaccinated group instead of 2 and 19 to the placebo group instead of 18, and multiply by 9 we get 9 in the vaccinated group and 171 in the placebo group. Compared to 9 and 172 from day 28-105. Obviously the MOE can go the other way too, but it seems reasonable to think 1 dose may be just as effective at least in the beginning.
I wonder what people who type "u" instead of "you" do with all their free time.

Offline avromie7

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Re: The Pfizer Vaccine and do people who had COVID already need the vaccine?
« Reply #68 on: December 10, 2020, 10:48:00 AM »
I don't think they're undercounting effectiveness, just that they're providing different ways of viewing effectiveness.  This document isn't really for us, it's for the FDA committee that reviews vaccines, and they may require these different calculations to get a fuller view of what's going on, and they would understand their value.
I expect that for us regular folks, they'll just say effectiveness kicks in only around day 10, so be especially careful for the next two weeks...
Maybe it would be better to say that using these numbers to gauge effectiveness would be very inaccurate.
I wonder what people who type "u" instead of "you" do with all their free time.

Offline biobook

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Re: The Pfizer Vaccine and do people who had COVID already need the vaccine?
« Reply #69 on: December 10, 2020, 10:52:17 AM »
The FDA committee that's reviewing the Pfizer vaccine is meeting now, live.  Started a couple hours ago, I think:
https://www.cnn.com/specials/live-video-1

Offline PlatinumGuy

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Re: The Pfizer Vaccine and do people who had COVID already need the vaccine?
« Reply #70 on: December 10, 2020, 12:23:45 PM »
Pfizer would make billions of dollars more if one dose was sufficient and they can get their vaccines out faster with less encumbrance of patients. Maybe this trial wasn't definitive about 1 dose vs 2 doses, but I'd assume they're fairly confident 2 doses are really necessary from the other trials and knowledge of other mRNA vaccines.
״וזה כלל גדול: שישנא אדם כל דבר שקר. וכל מה שיוסיף שנאה לדרכי השקר – יוסיף אהבה לתורה.״ - אורחות צדיקים

Offline avromie7

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Re: The Pfizer Vaccine and do people who had COVID already need the vaccine?
« Reply #71 on: December 10, 2020, 12:25:07 PM »
Pfizer would make billions of dollars more if one dose was sufficient and they can get their vaccines out faster with less encumbrance of patients. Maybe this trial wasn't definitive about 1 dose vs 2 doses, but I'd assume they're fairly confident 2 doses are really necessary from the other trials and knowledge of other mRNA vaccines.
How would they make more? They would max out at half the number of doses.
I wonder what people who type "u" instead of "you" do with all their free time.

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Re: The Pfizer Vaccine and do people who had COVID already need the vaccine?
« Reply #72 on: December 10, 2020, 12:36:54 PM »
How would they make more? They would max out at half the number of doses.
They don't charge per ML, they charge per vaccination. They'd have capacity to make twice as many, and their vaccine would be more desirable than competition that require 2 doses.
״וזה כלל גדול: שישנא אדם כל דבר שקר. וכל מה שיוסיף שנאה לדרכי השקר – יוסיף אהבה לתורה.״ - אורחות צדיקים

Offline AsherO

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Re: The Pfizer Vaccine and do people who had COVID already need the vaccine?
« Reply #73 on: December 10, 2020, 09:33:16 PM »
They don't charge per ML, they charge per vaccination. They'd have capacity to make twice as many, and their vaccine would be more desirable than competition that require 2 doses.

That’s true for the dose itself, but if they’re making money on the distribution due to the special cold-storage needs of the vaccine (that they have the expertise in) and they’re going to get paid per dose in that regard, that could be a factor as well.
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Re: The Pfizer Vaccine and do people who had COVID already need the vaccine?
« Reply #74 on: December 10, 2020, 09:49:36 PM »
That’s true for the dose itself, but if they’re making money on the distribution due to the special cold-storage needs of the vaccine (that they have the expertise in) and they’re going to get paid per dose in that regard, that could be a factor as well.
The distribution capacity will be maxed out regardless for the better part of the year (at the very least), and by then competition will drive the distribution pricing down.
״וזה כלל גדול: שישנא אדם כל דבר שקר. וכל מה שיוסיף שנאה לדרכי השקר – יוסיף אהבה לתורה.״ - אורחות צדיקים

Offline AsherO

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Re: The Pfizer Vaccine and do people who had COVID already need the vaccine?
« Reply #75 on: December 10, 2020, 10:02:10 PM »
The distribution capacity will be maxed out regardless for the better part of the year (at the very least), and by then competition will drive the distribution pricing down.

Is production (supply), distribution, or demand the bottleneck here?

Sounds like all three, and aligning them all sounds like a nightmare especially when people have to show up three weeks later for a second dose (which has to be available to them).
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Re: The Pfizer Vaccine and do people who had COVID already need the vaccine?
« Reply #76 on: December 10, 2020, 10:06:40 PM »
Is production (supply), distribution, or demand the bottleneck here?

Sounds like all three, and aligning them all sounds like a nightmare especially when people have to show up three weeks later for a second dose (which has to be available to them).
I understand, which is why Pfizer is strictly regulating that governments must keep the second dose allocated from the time of the first shot, and can't rely on future supplies.

However to your poin, if you're going to distribute every vaccine you produce, and you are producing as many as you can, you'll do a similar amount of distribution regardless of 1 or 2 doses (more locations/deliveries if 1 dose)
״וזה כלל גדול: שישנא אדם כל דבר שקר. וכל מה שיוסיף שנאה לדרכי השקר – יוסיף אהבה לתורה.״ - אורחות צדיקים

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Re: The Pfizer Vaccine and do people who had COVID already need the vaccine?
« Reply #77 on: December 10, 2020, 11:06:44 PM »
I understand, which is why Pfizer is strictly regulating that governments must keep the second dose allocated from the time of the first shot, and can't rely on future supplies.

However to your poin, if you're going to distribute every vaccine you produce, and you are producing as many as you can, you'll do a similar amount of distribution regardless of 1 or 2 doses (more locations/deliveries if 1 dose)
Until a certain point.
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Re: The Pfizer Vaccine and do people who had COVID already need the vaccine?
« Reply #78 on: December 12, 2020, 06:57:18 PM »
The FDA committee that's reviewing the Pfizer vaccine is meeting now, live.  Started a couple hours ago, I think:
https://www.cnn.com/specials/live-video-1
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