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[scriver]

When they've had questionnaires on tv regarding the vaccine here the advice of the doctor's regarding pregnant women was pretty much "we don't want to say anything for sure, it hasn't been properly evaluated" so yeah, there's some reason for caution there.

But iirc pregnant women are also at an heightened risk of getting the worse kind of corona symptoms, so one has to account for that too. I wouldn't be able to answer her convincingly either.

I'm planning on getting vaccinated eventually (I figure it will take a while before it will become available to me, I'm probably pretty far down the necessity list), but I have to admit I am more than a little worried about it.

[martinuzz]

Other vaccin developers might have a problem.  They will probably have to end their trials and set up new ones, because their current trials are based on double blind research with control groups that do not get a vaccin.

Now that there are working vaccines on the market, it is no longer considered ethical to use control groups that do not get a vaccin (because this leaves the testees at an unnescessary risk of dying from corona).
They will have to set up new trials using control groups that have been vaccinated with one of the existing vaccines instead.
This will likely mean the end for a lot of vaccin research, and at least a major slowdown for others.

Winner takes all, this time not thanks to capitalism but thanks to medical ethics.

There's already talks that pharma companies that are still in trial phase should be forced to end their trials and use their capacity to produce the competitor's vaccine instead, so we can have more vaccines, quicker.

[hector13]

I had a mild (as in I didn’t need to be hospitalized) case of covid, and it was a horrible experience.

I got a great deal of sleep (upwards of 11 hours) but still woke up exhausted, and also with very stiff and very sore muscles. Thankfully I was able to take regular over the counter pain medication -multiple times a day - to keep that at bay.

I didn’t really get a cough, but I had to take somewhat shallow breaths as I got a painful tightness in my chest and throat when taking a even a slightly deeper than normal breath.

The worst of the symptoms lasted about 10 days, but I still felt crappy for the better part of 3-4 weeks.

Basically, if you can get the vaccine, get it. It’s better than getting covid.

[Starver]

Boris Johnson: Covid rules are going to get tougher.

Also Boris Johnson: Fully open all schools tomorrow!

(Paraphrased, for effect.)

[MonkeyHead]

Boris Johnson: Covid rules are going to get tougher.

Also Boris Johnson: Fully open all schools tomorrow!

(Paraphrased, for effect.)

There is a shit storm brewing on this one. Education unions are instructing members not to work if they feel unsafe (which lots of us do, with 30 or more people in a poorly ventilated room, 6 times a day), and beginning legal action around the "advice" or "evidence" that government is following when it claims schools are "safe". Public opinion seems to generally favour switching to remote learning, but a very loud right wing voice (media amplified) is attacking teachers as "work shy scum".

Prediction: some time between 7 to 14 days schools will close, with government trying to either claim it was thier great idea, or that they had no choice.

[Zangi]

I gotta ask, what is the point of this double blind thing, where you already have data on people who do not receive vaccines?  (Though, I guess the companies that got the trials in first may not really care enough to share that data...)

[wierd]

Unconscious bias is a thing. It is real.

Double blind studies prevent the experimenters from knowing which set of operations are the actual variable being tested, and which are the control, which prevents the experimenters from contaminating the results.

[ChairmanPoo]

I gotta ask, what is the point of this double blind thing, where you already have data on people who do not receive vaccines?  (Though, I guess the companies that got the trials in first may not really care enough to share that data...)

You need to make sure the patient selection is equivalent and representative, and that you get the necessary data as needed (rather than rely on potentially inaccurate records). Also historical controls tend to overestimate the effects of singular interventions, as overall management tends to improve over time.

For instance, in the case of vaccines: What if you test the efficacy of your vaccine yet your vaccine intervention group is being more careful than the historical group simply due to behavior adaptation in the face of the pandemic? Eg: not wearing masks versus wearing masks

[LordBaal]

I would not get the vaccine because:

1- Rigth now I think the first line workers of the health system are the biggest priority.

2- Call me overcautious, but I will rather wait out a little bit to observe how likely are reactions to it and prepare for th worst.

3- Most likely it will be the Russian one the one that comes to this shores... which in Argentina has already caused bad reactions in a lot of people.

Not to say that health workers should be the lab rats but if I worked in the health sector, I would get it anyway, risks of reactions or not, better to feel bad a few days and stop being a vector for that piece of shit virus, specially if you are going to be dealing with the sick (of covid or otherwise).

[Starver]

For instance, in the case of vaccines: What if you test the efficacy of your vaccine yet your vaccine intervention group is being more careful than the historical group simply due to behavior adaptation in the face of the pandemic? Eg: not wearing masks versus wearing masks

Conversely (but not at all equalising the errors), a study group that assumes it is vaccinated is less careful because it 'feels the benefit'. Or even actively pursues dangers to personally 'test' their protection.

That's dealt with by the 'blind' tests (depending on what you can/must test) with cohorts for the dose(s) you're trialling vs other cohorts with a competitive treatment and/or placebo[1], such that other factors (gender, age, obesity, whatever you can measure) are spread around those cohorts.

But a doctor/nurse who can see past the patient-blindness is a problem. From actually telling the subject "be careful, this is/isn't the actual/pre-approved/full-strength dose!" to unwitting facial expressions or tone of voice[2]. So the gold standard is to keep them in the dark (about which they are administering[3]) by supplying (e.g.) lab-labelled vials of "dose for patient XYZ", "dose for patient QPR", etc.

Further behind the scenes, the layer of administration holds all the back-references. Usually there is a criteria (such as "more than 20% of participants get significantly more well/sick", or "in the event of a participant death", tuned to expectations) at which point an interim analysis is performed on the deblinded data to establish if there's an unusually good/bad outcome to one group or another - if it's indeed significant, the protocol allows for the trial to be stopped and those with the most troublesome/least beneficial treatment to be fast-tracked onto the better alternative.  That could be the hoped-for test item or not. Including back to the previous 'standard' treatment (not able to be used as the bl8nd-counter) when that's applicable.


It's interesting to consider the implications. But there are those who do that professionally, and with far more attention to the detail of the specific study (how participants can/must they recruit, how, what level of result is significant/beyond chance, what are the showstopper events (good and bad), what's the end-game, what after-care/post-trial follow-uping may be needed, etc, etc, etc...) that varies wildly according to whether it's a chemical treatment, a biological one, surgery, implantation, dressing, topical salve or any other form of therapy short of pure psychology (which may have its own system, but I've not heard details of that).


[1] The 'placebo' for acupuncture is interesting. But harder to double-blind.  OTOH, they've done some decent work towards double-blinding the power of prayer.

[2] That's also been tested, with both informed actors and unwitting personal 'administering' a global placebo (in a Phase I-ish situation) to see what placebo/nocebo effects can arise out totally independent of other causes.

[3] Not that they are in trial situation. Except where this is specifically a test as described just above, personnel and recipients must both know they might/might not be in the target cohort, etc, with what the possibile 'treatments' are, for ethics reasons.

[McTraveller]

I'm trying to wrap my head around the viewpoints of some of my friends.  They just traveled to another state and lauded it because the "people there are living more normally but are following the rules" but said "and they are doing that even though their case numbers are higher than here".

This is interesting on three fronts: the first is that yes, of course if you are in a state where there are fewer restrictions like restaurants are still open and such, then, all else equal, there are going to be more case counts.  The second is that the sentiment is one expressed by many people: there was an implicit assertion that it is preferable to have higher case counts in exchange for a less locked-down environment.

The third front, which is more interesting perhaps, is in that "preference". I ponder of late if it's even possible to rank those situations on a "better/worse" scale.  What I mean by that is that there are some systems that do not have the attribute of sort-ability. For example, the complex numbers cannot be sorted the way real numbers can: there is no "greater than" operator which produces a specific ordering of complex numbers.  The extension is that perhaps many situations in the real world are like complex numbers - it's just fundamentally not possible to order them as "better/worse" and humanity runs into all sorts of problems by trying to order them.

[misko27]

Boris Johnson has announced Britain will reenter lockdown, as cases of the new variant of the virus rise.

[Starver]

Shocked! I'm shocked I tell ye...

[LordBaal]

It was inevitable.

[nenjin]

It is terrifying.