Good News Thread - part 2

[KitKatastrophe]

Thank you to those who have contributed to the good news thread over the past few weeks. We are at 40 pages so here is a new one to continue sharing good news stories :)

Does this vaccine cause some kind of growing immunity then? That would be interesting...

The sky link and the telegraph says up to 90% if they give half a dose then a full dose a month later. Plus the telegraph goes on to say that there were no severe cases at all...... which in fairness they've always said that the Oxford vaccine would be more likely to prevent serious illness than all illnesses.

I'd assume the Oxford vaccine will form the body of vaccines for non vulnerable people
With the others being given to older/vulnerable people.

This is bloody brilliant news!!

Think of how the world will look by Easter. Yippee!
I want clap for scientists now. 👏👏👏👏

Good news I’ll take that. Easier to distribute. Starting in December (hopefully). This 90% is bizarre but R4 AZ guy seems gung ho.

Although didn’t say how much we’d manufactured already

It seems to prevent severe disease too...no hospitalisations on the vaccine group, so that's a great result.

I've said this before and I'll say it again, I bet they've (scientists etc) have learnt huge amounts more about viruses in general in the last months which should stand us in good stead for the future too!

I'm so pleased. And a little annoyed that many will take the 70% as bad news without really understanding the dosing peculiarity that could get us to 90%. There's lots about this vaccine that is incredibly good news. No hospitalisations, known technology so less unknown long term impact, and of course much much cheaper to buy, store and distribute. It's really really amazing. So I'm going to take this as a good news day not a mixed news day, because it is. I wonder if long term, this one will be preferred over mRNA, for all those reasons. I guess we still have to see length of immunity.

I want to say a heartfelt cheers and thanks to the good news crew on this thread. It's not about being proved right, it's about having been allowed to hope. It's meant a lot.

Is no hospitalisation in the vaccinated group statistically significant? How many hospitalisation in the other group ?

As another positive , it is probably better this way round, the expensive logistically difficult vaccine has higher efficacy and so can be given to higher risk groups and then the Oxford vaccine can be the mass roll out vaccine to everyone else as much easier to do in high numbers and quickly.
And yes no hospitalisation in the 30% of those vaccinated that got Covid so that is amazing

It is strange that the BBC seems to be the only news outlet to lead on 70% rather than 90%. I have never thought there was anything in the Daily Mailish view that the BBC has an anti nationalist agenda but it does seem odd that they have decided to downplay it like this. I thought maybe the 90% was in a tiny group of people but the sums make more sense if it’s about a third, which is enough to be unlikely to be chance. So why would you not do it the more effective way?!

Bloody brilliant news! I'm bewildered by the BBC headline. Why not lead with 'up to 90% effective'?

@TheCountessofFitzdotterel

It is strange that the BBC seems to be the only news outlet to lead on 70% rather than 90%. I have never thought there was anything in the Daily Mailish view that the BBC has an anti nationalist agenda but it does seem odd that they have decided to downplay it like this. I thought maybe the 90% was in a tiny group of people but the sums make more sense if it’s about a third, which is enough to be unlikely to be chance. So why would you not do it the more effective way?!

From reading the report I thought the 90% was in a tiny sub group, but it's 2741 with statistically significant results. Great news.

Well I'm really happy too. I need every bit of good news I can get.

The author of the BBC report, James Gallagher, generally tends towards the pessimistic I find. (Nick Triggle is usually optimistic and Fergus Walsh is pretty balanced imo. You know your life has gone weird when you know who the different BBC Health reporters are and what their reporting style is like!)

I’m interested in what next based in that. Half dose? Or is it not high enough numbers as a group.

I think it’s possible to say due to these results we’ll be back to normal more quickly? Mass vaccination with easier to use and cheaper and lower hospitalisations.

Brilliant news, isn’t science just wonderful?!

Does anyone here know if there are plans to test any of the vaccines on children? Or is the plan to try and reach herd immunity by enough adults taking the vaccine and driving R right down...?

Since children don’t get it badly but might spread it they probably can’t make a decision on that till they know 1. More precisely about the role of children in spreading it 2. What the impact of the vaccines is on spread. At the moment they know that the vaccines are excellent at stopping people getting ill but they can’t get a full picture of how well they stop people passing it on from these trials, though I believe there are some positive indications.

My suspicion (and it's only that) will be that they vaccinate all adults first which will reduce pressure on the NHS, drive numbers right down and remove the need for social distancing.

They'll then need to carry out specific paediatric trials to get the vaccine licensed in under 18s as I understand it. Once approved it can then go onto the general schedule of childhood vaccinations (with a catch up to get all children covered).

Whether adults and children will need regular boosters generally or not will depend on how long immunity lasts (I'm optimistic it will be long lasting but obviously we don't know yet).

It wouldn't surprise me if it ends up being given to everyone once or twice before falling into a regime similar to flu where only those most at risk are vaccinated.

Is it just my imagination or has the BBC changed their headline this morning to a more positive title? Now the are talking about the Oxford Vaccine being "highly effective"!
I'm sure the first report from them
this morning stated "mixed results"

Yes! Not your imagination.

Even the Guardian led on 90%, I noticed! They seem to have been relatively doomy overall so I was quite surprised.

You've already seen it! I'm really pleased with the Oxford results, sure on the face of it, results aren't as good but if most of the world can get this one due to logistics surely its amazing!

Plus there are rumours on twitter that Oxford were more vigorous in testing participants I.e they had regular covid tests where as they Pfeizer and Moderna waited for people to self refer if they got symptoms which if true means those vaccines may not be quiet as effective and could have missed 1 or 2 asymptomatic cases. Does anyone know if its true?

I can definitely confirm we had weekly Covid tests, weekly questionnaire on symptoms and what we had done that weekly, weekly emails to remind us to call them even with a slight cough so they could test us and 6 weekly blood tests so pretty thorough in fact it is still ongoing until next year sometime. It is not over yet!
No idea if the other vaccine developers did the same

So asymptomatic cases would have been picked up

From that report:

"These data also suggest that this half dose and full dose regime could help to prevent transmission of the virus, evidenced by lower rates of asymptomatic infection in the vaccinees, with further information to become available when trial data are next evaluated."