One-jab efficacy questions

[Chris152]

Good news that there's strong evidence one jab prevents transmission between about 40 - 50%.

Interesting news that the UK has ordered 60m Pfizers for our boosters in autumn. Does that reflect a reduction of faith in the traditionally formulated vaccines (AZ) in favour of mrna? I see Europe's focussing its future efforts in the latter direction.

 

[Rorschach]

Do we have the numbers? 40-50% sounds great but it would good know the numbers, if it was only a 2% chance of catching it and is now a 1% that is not really a big difference is it?

 

[Jonm]

Do we have the numbers? 40-50% sounds great but it would good know the numbers, if it was only a 2% chance of catching it and is now a 1% that is not really a big difference is it?

Well we know that in the second half of last year, without vaccine, with the uk variant and with the restrictions then in place that infections, illness and deaths rose dramatically. Halving transmission means that what would have been an R number of 2 now becomes 1 for people who have been vaccinated. That seems a big difference to me.

 

[Jonm]

Good news that there's strong evidence one jab prevents transmission between about 40 - 50%.

Interesting news that the UK has ordered 60m Pfizers for our boosters in autumn. Does that reflect a reduction of faith in the traditionally formulated vaccines (AZ) in favour of mrna? I see Europe's focussing its future efforts in the latter direction.

I think that German and French politicians have either deliberately or by accident undermined the AZ vaccine. Pfizer is five times the price of AZ, is transported in batches of 1000 doses and has to be stored at -70 deg C. A hospital local to me lost 1000 Pfizer doses due to a storage problem. It is not suitable for distribution to the third world, slums and refugee camps, they do not have the infrastructure or organisation to do it. AZ can get to those places. So it is correct that Europe should go for Phizer, they can afford it, have the infrastructure to distribute it, good for German industry and leaves more doses of AZ for the third world. AZ have not been good at honouring their contracts with eu and that has not helped.

As for UK, I would expect boosters to be the same manufacturer as original doses. I cannot see us going away from AZ but cannot find evidence of us ordering boosters.

 

[selectortone]

I think that German and French politicians have either deliberately or by accident undermined the AZ vaccine.

You've got to love the French - first they say the AZ vaccine is unsafe, then they say they won't give it to over 65s, then they say they won't give it to under 35s, then they say they don't want it at all. All the while saying they will sue us for not letting them have it.

 

[francovendee]

I don't think one leader has got dealing with covid spot on.
Macron seems to have lost the plot, case numbers still very high and hospitals nearly full, yet he's easing restrictions and the schools are working again.
Just like Johnson the leaders seem unwilling or unable to learn from other countries.
Boris was slow to lock down and France underestimated the effect of the UK strain. This is now the predominant type although numbers of SA and Brazilian variants are in some numbers, 10% in the department where I live.
Macron has not made enforced hotel quarantine mandatory for people returning from these countries.
At least the UK has done this for people arriving from India where another strain has been reported

 

[francovendee]

You've got to love the French - first they say the AZ vaccine is unsafe, then they say they won't give it to over 65s, then they say they won't give it to under 35s, then they say they don't want it at all. All the while saying they will sue us for not letting them have it.

Not quite the facts. Macron at first questioned the effectiveness in older people and he was proved to be wrong.
The restriction to only over 55's having it was as a result of abnormal clotting after have the AZ vaccine. This has been the same in other countries. This information was at first poo pooed in the UK but eventually figures were released and at the time (some weeks ago) they reported 79 cases with 19 deaths from clots.
Sometimes it seems like a vaccine propaganda is in progress.
Here in France we are very short of any type of vaccine and whilst there is a preference to have Pfizer the majority of people will have either.
I had my second jab in early March but my wife is still waiting for hers and hopefully she'll be having one (either type) in the next two weeks.
I think the EU is royally p*****d off with under delivery from AZ. This is the vaccine that will be most beneficial to poorer parts of the world so sincerely hope it's never regarded as second best.

 

[Terry - Somerset]

Many/most EU leaders are in defensive political mode. They want to shift the blame for their inadequacy over vaccines supply:

• it has serious side effects - although the vaccine is far less a risk than catching covid.
• the UK are to blame for buying up all the vaccines - ignoring the possibility that the EU were dilatory in contracting similarly
• they are aided by other pharmaceutical companies unhappy that AZ are undermining their profitability by providing vaccines and manufacturing licences at cost.

Whether their public and electorates are remotely convinced or completely underwhelmed by their protestations is unclear.

 

[Rorschach]

• it has serious side effects - although the vaccine is far less a risk than catching covid.

Well that depends on the person and it depends if our data on side effects is accurate. From what we know at the moment for someone under 40, healthy, they are possibly at greater chance of death or serious illness from a vaccine and that's just short term, we have zero knowledge of long term effects of the vaccine (same goes for covid too though).

 

[francovendee]

Whether their public and electorates are remotely convinced or completely underwhelmed by their protestations is unclear.

I think the outcome of the legal action by the EU against AZ will make up people's minds. It certainly will for me. I'm willing to believe, for now, the EU would be in a better position if the contract had been honoured.
If the court finds it has been then the EU will get the blame but much of it will rub of on the heads of the leaders of the member states.

 

[Spectric]

They all need to get their heads together, forget nationality and politics and get the vacines manufactured and delivered globaly to all because this pandemic can only be beaten when everyone has been jabed and with systems in place to deliver boosters on a regular basis, this way we might just reduce the potential for a mutant strain and return to some level of normal, it will be a long while before the old normal fully returns. Then all the specialist need to work as one to be ready for anything else that turns up so we don't have a repeat of this fiasco.

 

[D_W]

Well that depends on the person and it depends if our data on side effects is accurate. From what we know at the moment for someone under 40, healthy, they are possibly at greater chance of death or serious illness from a vaccine and that's just short term, we have zero knowledge of long term effects of the vaccine (same goes for covid too though).

Over the term that we've measured so far, the effects of moderate or severe covid are worse and despite the cry about the vaccine causing genetic changes (I don't believe it does, and academically, it makes no permanent changes other than your immune system reactions to the proteins), there is actual genetic change from severe covid.

I saw the news headline yesterday that britain ordered 60MM pfizer. Given the data on it vs. AZ, that would seem to be a smart idea.

 

[D_W]

I think that German and French politicians have either deliberately or by accident undermined the AZ vaccine. Pfizer is five times the price of AZ, is transported in batches of 1000 doses and has to be stored at -70 deg C. A hospital local to me lost 1000 Pfizer doses due to a storage problem. It is not suitable for distribution to the third world, slums and refugee camps, they do not have the infrastructure or organisation to do it. AZ can get to those places. So it is correct that Europe should go for Phizer, they can afford it, have the infrastructure to distribute it, good for German industry and leaves more doses of AZ for the third world. AZ have not been good at honouring their contracts with eu and that has not helped.

As for UK, I would expect boosters to be the same manufacturer as original doses. I cannot see us going away from AZ but cannot find evidence of us ordering boosters.

Pfizer current price is something like $20 per dose. Given its efficacy above and beyond the AZ and the fact that it's covid, it would seem to be money well spent. Let the second and third world use the vaccines that are cheaper, somewhat less effective and much harder to transport and store.

 

[Jonm]

Pfizer current price is something like $20 per dose. Given its efficacy above and beyond the AZ and the fact that it's covid, it would seem to be money well spent. Let the second and third world use the vaccines that are cheaper, somewhat less effective and much harder to transport and store.

I think you meant “ much easier to transport and store”

That is one way of looking at it. As for efficacy are you talking about preventing catching Covid, preventing hospitalisation, preventing long Covid or preventing death. Personally I am not bothered about feeling unwell for a few days but I am concerned about serious illness or death. Here is a british medical journal article on the results in Scotland showing AZ to be better than Pfizer at preventing hospitalisation.
https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n523
There is also the issue of supply. There was a very short interview with a French woman as she was wheeled in to hospital with Covid, she still considered she had made the correct decision to refuse AZ and wait for Pfizer. Here in uk the government line is that Pfizer and AZ are both excellent vaccines and the policy is that it will be the supply of vaccines that limits the rollout. All over 50’s have been offered a vaccine and in my general area the uptake is over 99%. I have received both doses and it was AstraZeneca. The under 45’s are now being offered the vaccine. Over 21 million people have received the astra Zeneca jab out of a total of over 34 million vaccinated so over 60% of people vaccinated have received AZ.

Current situation in UK
population - 66 million
daily Covid admissions to hospital - 144
Covid patients on ventilation - 208
total number Covid patients in hospital -1700
daily Covid deaths - 20

I think the above would look very different if we had refused the AZ vaccine and waited for Pfizer. And we are dealing with the uk variant.

The EU gave come in for a lot of criticism regarding their vaccine procurement hence Macron and his “quasi effective for over 65’s“ comment regarding AZ. Mud is slung at him so he slings some back, never mind the consequences of people then refusing an excellent vaccine. In fact we have tended to use it in the care homes because the residents are vaccinated “at home” and AZ is much easier for small numbers of vaccinations.

As Van Tam said, do not get hung up about small differences in efficacy, in the trials no one having AZ vaccine was hospitalised.

 

[D_W]

You're the same person who tried to hang me up in an earlier post about mutations. If you're obsessed with mutations, why would you think a higher case rate is OK?

J&J, moderna and pfizer all do about the same in preventing severe/hospitalizing covid here. I'd rather not get it at all, not even moderate.

you posted a false dilemma - pfizer wasn't available right away so you went with AZ. That's fine. I didn't state that to be the choice (none or pfizer), i said that if you have the choice between the two and you're trying to stop covid, then pfizer. There would be fewer cases around with it in a vaccinated population and the hospitalization rate would be lower in a society vaccinated by pfizer because there would be fewer symptomatic carriers passing covid.

I'd say exactly the same thing about J&J here. If nothing else is available, get it. If pfizer is available, get that over J&J. Hospitalization rates are similar, but you have less chance of getting sick at all with pfizer.

In the US here when they paused the J&J, and quickly reversed course, I thought it was stupid - let's at least compare the vaccine complications to a fraction of what you'd get with the resulting increase in covid from not vaccinating. It' wasn't a situation where everyone scheduled to get it would just get pfizer instead, and the same with europe pausing or halting AZ. If there isn't another more viable option, then that choice results in unnecessary deaths.

 

[Spectric]

You're the same person who tried to hang me up in an earlier post about mutations. If you're obsessed with mutations, why would you think a higher case rate is OK?

A higher case rate equates to a larger petri dish

 

[D_W]

I got that - it's the inconsistency that strikes me. First it matters that we have no covid cases, then when it's a sort of nationalist sentiment with a vaccine, it doesn't matter.

 

[Terry - Somerset]

Both the AZ and Pfizer vaccines apparently perform well above the level originally anticipated in reducing hosptalisations and deaths.

In the short term that manufacturing capacity cannot meet demand.

The need is to protect as many people as possible in the shortest possible time. It matters not that one may be 1-5% more effective than another.

Were time on the side of humanity it would be possible to conduct more thoughtful analysis of better quality data to understand differences in performance, side effects, different mutations etc etc.

Waiting for this is quite simply to "watch whilst Rome burns" (so to speak).

 

[Selwyn]

Over the term that we've measured so far, the effects of moderate or severe covid are worse and despite the cry about the vaccine causing genetic changes (I don't believe it does, and academically, it makes no permanent changes other than your immune system reactions to the proteins), there is actual genetic change from severe covid.

I saw the news headline yesterday that britain ordered 60MM pfizer. Given the data on it vs. AZ, that would seem to be a smart idea.

Whilst I would say this is true, the chances of moderate or severe covid for people under 40 appear to be very low.

 

[Chris152]

'Researchers in the UK and United States have demonstrated the efficacy of one dose of either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine against infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in a real-world community setting in the UK.
...
As reported in The Lancet: Infectious Diseases, documented infection rates following a single dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech (BNT162b2) vaccine were 58% lower after 12 to 20 days, 69% lower after 21 to 44 days, and 72% lower after 45 to 59 days, compared with unvaccinated controls.

Following one dose of the Oxford-AstraZeneca (ChAdOx1) vaccine, documented infection rates were 39% lower after 12 to 20 days and 60% lower after 21 to 44 days than among unvaccinated controls.'
https://www.news-medical.net/news/2...en-better-than-clinical-trials-predicted.aspx