Why have sceptics points failed to land has often been asked? Is it because the awkward squad are regarded as a nuisance? AstraZeneca have studiously avoided calling this compound a vaccine, perhaps to deflect the ire of the awkward squad.
In Pharmacology, only a tiny finite number of possible compounds/molecules are discovered and looked at. It is a search in an infinite landscape for rare gold nuggets. That is why we need Big Pharma, big searches need big firms with deep pockets. And that's how it is, scientists and shareholders have to eat.
So we hire doctors to help or treat the majority of people, i.e. those able to take and respond to medicine. Once a effective vaccines are discovered, people regard it as a job done for that segment of the population, who are expected to be willingly vaccinated. Most people willingly act in a benevolent manner.
People rarely seek to cater for the awkward squad, who are regarded as a nuisance.On the other hand doctors seek to help and treat those amongst us who are not able to take vaccine, such people include those who might be predisposed to anaphylactic shock, or elderly or immunocompromised cancer patients, where chemotherapy intentionally suppresses the immune system. The discovery of a vaccine is not regarded as job done for those people, so the search goes on, in a field known as monoclonal antibodies, which is not entirely unrelated to vaccines,.
While treatment is unavailable, for that small but vulnerable segment of the population to whom vaccines do not apply it is necessary for protection to look wider than the level of individual rights, esp. in the period before an emergent virus becomes Endemic in our midst. In that period, the fortunate many are asked to extend their benevolence to protect the vulnerable few . For some, this demand is too great, since it may involve curtailment of certain pleasurable, habitual and activities, a thing known today as lockdown or vaccine certification.
In recent weeks, a different type of preventative medicine, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/11/18/astrazenecas-new-covid-antibody-treatment-effective-vaccines/
has arisen that uses a different mechanism to vaccine. It will be interesting see too how long it is before sceptics spurn this method of counteracting Coronavirus, as they spurn all other means.
I don't spurn other means: I take IVM, Vit C and D, magnesium and zinc + Vit k and quercetin.
No, I don't rattle - I take them spread over the week, and I have reduced carb intake.
Seems to have worked so far.
My wife works for Astrazeneca, would you care to elaborate on your post?
I had to let her read it because I couldn't grasp what you were getting at, she laughed and called it bollocks, that's what I thought too.
@superunknown bollocks, that's what I thought
so you have already rejected AZD7442, that was predictable enough, but even sooner than I expected!
@ewloe What have I rejected exactly?
A new drug is being released by Astrazeneca, you could have left out ninety five percent of your opinion piece and just said so.
Meanwhile, they have ceased production of their other wonder drug in Australia, and appear to be scaling down production across Europe. I note these small facts were left out of the press release, I wonder why?
@ewloe you could have left out ninety five percent of your opinion piece and just said so.
the first character of my post was a link to the story.
@ewloe they have ceased production of their other wonder drug in Australia, and appear to be scaling down production across Europe. I note these small facts were left out of the press release, I wonder why?
Coud it be that the Press Release related to the newer monoclonal antibodies medicine AZD7442, and that the new drug appears to last longer and work better on the delta variant?Only cretins would not realise that.
Interesting, but not much to go on from a press release. I hope their trail data is better than what we've seen so far, if we get to see it. I wonder which abs they chose, and weather they measured T-cell response.
It's clear there are no correlates for immunity from SARs CoV2 tho, so without more info it's hard to conclude anything.
A separate trial shows the drug also reduces the risk of severe Covid and death by 88 per cent when given within three days of the onset of symptoms.
Absoloute risk, or relative risk? Past trial results reporting high effectiveness in the press relases used relative risk, which is very misleading.
relative risk, which is very misleading.
All expressions of risk reductions must relate to variations in treatment. Any risk reduction that does not relate to any difference in treatment is obvsly useless.Such a thing would not show if the compound made any difference related to something else!
Perhaps you are very confused or wish to add confusion to bolster a rumour?
perhaps I recognise relative risk is useless when they should be following the guidelines for trial pubication in absolute terms.
Perhaps you have no clue about relative Vs absolute risk reduction.
relative Vs absolute risk reduction.
You are a clot all vaccine risk reduction is relative to risk with no vaccine.
all vaccine risk reduction is relative to risk with no vaccine.
Exactly! Does that make us both "clots"? Why are you pretending to disagree?
Lets examine that so we know exactly what we're both agreeing here. People are being told the vaccines have “95%” or so efficacy, but they are not told how this is calculated, they are not the trials report relative risk.
Eg.Pfizer/BioNtech:
8 “cases” in vaccine group
162 “cases” in placebo group (that would be the "no vaccine" I quoted from you)
8/162 = 5%
100%-5%= 95% (so relative reduction, relative to 'cases' in the unvaxed placebo group.
This says nothing about absolute risk reduction in the wider population, to work out the absolute risk reduction, we need the total number of people in the trials, so it can be compared to a wider population.
What they are not factoring in is the size of the denominator. If it is large, then with 8 vs 162, the difference becomes less significant. It matters how many people were in each group, for example, whether this be 200, 2,000, or 20,000 would alter the absolute risk significantly, this is why the guidelines for medical trails state the results must be quantified in absolute terms.
So lets look at the number of participants in each arm of the Pfizer/BioNtech trial, each group had over 18,000 people!
Injection Group: 8/18,198 = 0.04%
Placebo Group: 162/18,325= 0.88%
Therefore, the absolute risk reduction for Primary Efficacy Endpoint is 0.84%. (ie. 0.88-0.04)
This means, that someone who takes the Pfizer/BioNtech injection, has less than 1% chance of reducing at least one symptom of non-severe “Covid” for a period of 2 months. This means that someone who takes this injection has over 99% chance that it won’t work, regarding the efficacy. Over 100 people have to be injected for it to “work” in one person.
You can read more about this here:
I can see I'll have to start spoon feeding you.The value you computed is useless for competitive purposes. The silly value you computed is entirely unhelpful for deciding.
The only choice we have is whether to take a vaccine or not. So we must compare those choices, either way, relative to each other. People want to know how much safer they will be with vaccines, than not. So I'll use the actual values and show that vaccines make you much, much safer relative to people without vaccines. During the trial period, for the 21830 participants in each leg:
162/21830=0.00742 was the risk of getting covid without vaccine.
8/21830=0.000366 was the (much smaller )risk of getting covid after vaccine
0.000366 goes into 0.00742 20 times. Hence the risk of getting covid19 after the vaccine is 20 times smaller than the risk of getting covid19 without the vaccine.
1/20 is equivalent to 5%. The vaccinated risk is only 1/20th (i.e. 5%) of the size of the unvaccinated risk. Equivalently, the risk of being unvaccinated is 95% larger than the risk of being vaccinated.
