Pfizer vaccine doesn't need ultra-cold storage after all, company says:
In a bit of good news, Pfizer and BioNTech announced today that their highly effective COVID-19 vaccine does not require ultra-cold storage conditions after all and can be kept stable at standard freezer temperatures for two weeks.
The companies have submitted data to the US Food and Drug Administration demonstrating the warmer stability in a bid for regulatory approval to relax storage requirements and labeling for the vaccine.
If the FDA greenlights the change, the warmer storage conditions could dramatically ease vaccine distribution, allowing doses to be sent to non-specialized vaccine administration sites. The change would also make it much easier to distribute the vaccine to low-income countries.
"We have been continuously performing stability studies to support the production of the vaccine at commercial scale, with the goal of making the vaccine as accessible as possible for healthcare providers and people across the US and around the world," Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said in a statement. "If approved, this new storage option would offer pharmacies and vaccination centers greater flexibility in how they manage their vaccine supply."
Also at www.pfizer.com
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @11:39AM (1 child)
Fridge company shares going down.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @11:48AM
1) Freezer, not fridge
2) Short term storage, not long term
3) Going from -80 to -20 degrees C, still freezing
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @02:15PM (51 children)
In knowing they went through so much testing, they weren't even sure what temperature it was safe to store the product at. Now inject it peasant.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ewk on Monday February 22 2021, @02:25PM (49 children)
Thanks for playing, but... they tested much and knew it was/is safe at -80.
After additional testing we now we now even know a bit more: It is also safe at -20.
Yeah science!
I don't always react, but when I do, I do it on SoylentNews
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @02:32PM (38 children)
Yeah that 'additional testing'? That's what you do to things *before* you inject them into millions of people.
This isn't science beyond the fact that they're running a global level experiment on all of society gullible enough to inject this untested, rushed, crap. The immediate side effects are already substantial. It should be interesting to see the long term effects.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ewk on Monday February 22 2021, @03:09PM
They did the (initial, tested, not rushed) *before* thingy... hence the storage at -80.
Now they did the (additional test) *after* thingy... hence the storage at -20.
Works for me, whether you want to call it science or not.
I don't always react, but when I do, I do it on SoylentNews
(Score: 4, Informative) by choose another one on Monday February 22 2021, @03:49PM (19 children)
The long term effects are already becoming clear from Israeli and UK studies - around 85%-95% (depending on vaccine and no. of doses) reduction in risk of hospitalisation from covid.
https://www.itv.com/news/2021-02-22/vaccine-programme-linked-to-substantial-reduction-in-covid-19-hospitalisations-study-finds [itv.com]
We are still only beginning to sort out the long term effects of covid itself of course, looks like maybe 10% get "long covid" which is the umbrella term for being unable to walk up a flight of stairs without getting out of breath and/or too ill or confused to go back to work after almost a year. But yeah, it's still entirely possible the vaccines will all cripple 10% of those injected, even though they didn't do so when trialled on tens of thousands...
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @04:17PM (18 children)
These are short term effects. Long term effects do not manifest for some time. Though even the short term effects are now proving "surprising". I'm not sure if you're aware of your own wording, but it's subtle. The vaccines were claimed to be upwards of 90% effective at preventing measurable COVID infections. That turned out to simply be wrong, and a cynic would say a lie. In Israel, they are seeing real reduction numbers less than 50%. And so now they're shifting the goal posts to reducing hospitalization rates.
And the real game will begin when we start seeing longterm effects. For instance it paradoxically turns out that those that regularly get flu shots end up having substantially worse outcomes when infected than average. But there are also questions beyond just the virus itself. Long term effects of various medicines can manifest in a surprisingly diverse number of ways. And right now we simply have no idea what the longterm effects will be. And indeed they may be nothing, but they may also be critical. Right now we are carrying out a large scale experiment on society itself. And that is, in my opinion, very foolish - made vastly more foolish by the fact that this virus is relatively harmless to those under the age of 65.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @04:24PM
I got the gubmit vaccine and if I get sick from it I'll get the gubmint heathcare goodies. Either way, socialism wins! Let's bring this bitch back to the Stone Age.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @05:45PM (16 children)
Long term effects from the vaccines, if they occur, may take some time to manifest. On the other hand, there are some rather frightening long term effects already associated with the COVID-19 disease itself. I've found this video [youtube.com] to be rather enlightening concerning both short-term and long-term effects of mRNA vaccines. Well worth watching, IMHO.
Seriously? Do you have a citation for that? I would really like to know.
Frankly, this looks to me like a mishmash of FUD. I agree that right now there is a large scale experiment on society underway. We are rediscovering the devastating effects of letting a pandemic rage out of control. That is not FUD; that is reality. On the flip side, we have your concern about what might happen when we rush a vaccine out for use by the general public. So far, the side effects seem to be mostly minimal and temporary inconveniences. All of life is risk. Which side do you feel more comfortable being on right now?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @07:16PM (8 children)
This [macrotrends.net] is a graph of the overall US mortality rate. Can you spot the "devastating effects of a pandemic raging out of control"? No, nobody can because it doesn't even register as noise. If you're confused by the increasing mortality rate (expected to continue until ~2050) - it's caused by reductions in the fertility rate. Fewer kids being born, same number of older folks dying = gradually increased mortality rates until the people dying are those born during the start of the low fertility era (~1970).
The exact data by vary by state but the average age of those who have died of COVID is around 80 years old [cdc.gov]. The reason I mention this is that the average age of death by COVID is currently higher than the life expectancy at birth for Americans. This is one major reason there's been no significant impact on our mortality rates in spite of nearly half a million deaths. It's mostly just taking out people who were already on their way out.
And there is no "side" to this issue. The vaccines have not been proven unsafe. And they also have not been proven safe to a standard I find acceptable. We're in the data collection phase on an absurdly and unnecessarily large scale. And I will not be participating in this process. That doesn't mean I'm going out to maskless orgies -- masked orgies only. I'm simply playing the waiting game. In a couple of years will COVID still be around and raging? Will it become more or less dangerous? And what will be the consequences of the vaccinations? Depending on the answer to these questions I may be happy to jump in myself. I just think that getting injected right now is a very poor value proposition.
Citation [tandfonline.com] for comment regarding worse outcomes for those who received multiple vaccinations vs a single vaccination, in at least some cases. Plenty of other sources for the same topic. I recommend section 8 - expert commentary.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday February 22 2021, @07:43PM
Hmm... oddly enough I also don't see any evidence of the decrease in US mortality rates from 2018 (723.6 deaths per 100,000) to 2019 (715.2 per 100,000) https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db395.htm [cdc.gov]
Not to mention their numbers are off by over 100 deaths per hundred thousand. Some obvious possibilities are
A) They're looking at multi-year average trends, in which case one-year blips aren't going to show up regardless (supported by the fact that if you zoom in, the graph clearly show straight-line segments stretching about 2.5 years)
B) As an outfit dedicating to forecasting financial markets, they are unwilling or uninterested in detailed or accurate information (financial forecasting tends to be wildly inaccurate black-magic at the best of times - and anyone claiming to forecast such things across 100 years of unpredictable technological and social changes is obviously bloviating)
(Score: 5, Informative) by FatPhil on Monday February 22 2021, @07:51PM
It doesn't even register as noise, as it's not in that data - which bit of "NOTE: All 2020 and later data are UN projections and DO NOT include any impacts of the COVID-19 virus." did you fail to understand?
Don't you just love it when the FUDsters out themselves as idiots and frauds.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @07:52PM (3 children)
The poster was a bit inaccurate about flu vaccines - the more often you get a flu shot, the lower the overall effectiveness over your lifetime. But flu and cold are almost non-existent in countries with widespread mask and hand washing protocols.
We can keep it that way it assholes stop bringing their viruses to work because they don’t want to use up vacation or sick days.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @05:27AM (1 child)
Got a citation for that? Seriously, I want to see a citation!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @07:26AM
There are conflicting papers and analyses in both directions. The studies are messy because there are sample heterogeneity, study heterogeneity, seasonal differences, vaccine type/brand differences, population differences, age differences, time-series effects, outcome measures, influenza types, antigenic drift/shift, etc. that all add substantial noise. The best studies suggest that there may be an effect from repeated vaccinations for certain vaccines for certain influenza types in certain populations (not all vaccinations for every flu for everyone everywhere) but if such risk from a reduction in VE even exists (again, it is not clear that it does at all due to the noise) it is substantially less than the risk of skipping vaccination in those populations.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @07:34AM
Influenza does cause chronic infections and "long flu." For an example, there is this study [nature.com]
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @10:14PM
Better check your sources next time. Their source is the "2019 Revision of World Population Prospects" and the source they use is the official U.S. data from 2017. I can only imagine what conspiracy theories would arise if they had predicted the exact spike in death rates 3 years before it happened.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @05:12AM
You can see the historic progression of Spanish flu here. [theconversation.com] While the website cautions that "the past is not a prediction", I do think that it may give some clues on what to expect in the near future concerning COVID-19. The conclusion I draw: COVID-19 will still be around for at least the next year or two.
That is quite a bit easier to answer. Vaccination campaigns have historically been very effective at containing and, in some cases, eradicating deadly disease outbreaks.
On that point, I have a bit more sympathy. Like you, I wasn't eager to be first in line for this vaccine. But, as has been pointed out by Beryllium Sphere, most adverse effects show up within the first six weeks. That's good enough for me. I am planning to get in line for the vaccine soon. YMMV.
(Score: 2) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Tuesday February 23 2021, @03:02AM (3 children)
The history of vaccines is that adverse effects tend to be concentrated in the first six weeks.
mRNA technology is new, but the key differences from past vaccines are that there's no virus material in them and the mRNA goes away quickly and completely at body temperature after its work is done.
If there's a negative delayed side effect, well, it would hardly be the first unpleasant surprise in the history of medicine but it would be a large surprise. Meantime we have lots of data about the lingering damage of a COVID case.
I've thought through the safety and am determined to get vaccinated as soon as I can.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @03:46AM
Thanks for being cool and collected. And also sensible.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @04:36AM
Thanks for that. I've seen it before but I can't remember where. Do you have a citation for it? I would much appreciate seeing one. Thanks!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @05:52AM
This is plainly false. Look at past history of severe adverse effects of vaccines, for instance with the Rotashield [cdc.gov] vaccine. That vaccine was found to cause intussusception, which leads to death if not treated at a capable hospital. And it was on the market for 9 months, with increasingly large numbers of adverse reports, before the CDC finally pulled it - in action they refer to as "quick." And that is for a *short term* effect.
(Score: 2) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Tuesday February 23 2021, @03:37AM (1 child)
It turns out that we do have long term safety data for mRNA vaccines. The COVID vaccines are brand new, but we have a decade of experience with human clinical trials of other mRNA vaccines. They've had clean records, and it would be outright bizarre if the COVID vaccines were different.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @06:44AM
And how many of these mRNA trials led to approval for usage when there was sufficient time available to properly evaluate the risk:reward profile?
(Score: 2) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Tuesday February 23 2021, @07:22PM
I have a citation for the effect of vaccination on severity of later flu infections.
It reduces severity according to published professional literature.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/spotlights/2017-2018/vaccine-reduces-risk-severe-illness.htm [cdc.gov]
The COVID vaccines are proven to be following the same pattern. Cases severe enough for hospitalization and death all but disappear among the vaccinated. I would not wish a "mild or moderate" case on anybody of course but we know the vaccines are dialing severity way back.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Monday February 22 2021, @03:58PM (6 children)
That is just for storage and distro. It's not like you are injecting people with a fluid (if you could even call it that or have it as such -- you can have sub-zero liquids if you just add additives (salt, alcohol ...) or change the pressure of the container) that is -80C. That would most definitely kill people much faster then any virus. I'm sure they can do even more test and conclude that it also works fine at -19C etc etc down to a limit.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @04:28PM (5 children)
The temperature is for the active vaccine. When you get an injection you get a tiny amount of the active vaccine (0.3mL for the Pfizer one) and the rest is diluent - a dillutant in a world where our language made more sense.
The reason I'm especially critical of this is because the -80C storage was not only completely unprecedented, relative to other vaccines, but also posed a major and extremely expensive hurdle for distribution, handling, and overall usage. They would have done everything possible to avoid requiring such cold storage. Something went very wrong in their testing process for them to go from requiring such absurd temperatures to perfectly normal temperature ranges for vaccines.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @04:40PM
And now it's gone right. Problem solved?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Immerman on Monday February 22 2021, @05:24PM (2 children)
For starters, the COVID vaccines are nothing like any previous vaccine - rather than injecting you with virus protein fragments, they're injecting you with blueprints (mRNA) to cause your body to produce the fragments itself. And mRNA is far less stable than protein fragments.
At a guess I would assume all the researchers were focused on creating a wholly new vaccine in record time, using the only promising technology that had potential to provide a vaccine quickly. Less than a year for a completely new vaccine is completely unheard of - usually new vaccines take several years to reach the point where they're ready for testing), and simply relied on standard-practice guidelines for handling synthetic DNA/RNA without corruption. First the focus was on development, then on rapidly scaling up laboratory technology to mass-production levels.
Now the hard work is done, and they have time to look at the distribution challenges and see if the requirements can be relaxed. Something there was no possibility of doing until an effective vaccine had been developed and tested - you can't determine whether decomposition at non-cryogenic temperatures is going to reduce the vaccine's effectiveness until you have a vaccine with a known effectiveness to work with.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @03:48AM (1 child)
That is FUD.
From earlier in this thread.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday February 24 2021, @02:07AM
I suppose I might have worded things a bit more precisely. Yes, there has certainly been mRNA vaccine *experimentation* for years - that's why the technology was deemed ready to take on a completely new virus under intense time pressure.
But so far as I know these are the very first mRNA vaccines approved for widespread use, and if not for the pandemic the first ones approved for mass production would probably still be at least 5-10 years in the future.
The point I was trying to make is that these are the first mRNA vaccines where real-world large-scale storage and distribution challenges are remotely relevant. In a medical research lab cryogenic storage is just down the hall, and I'd bet that virtually everyone doing mRNA vaccine research was far more interested in mastering the technology than exploring cost-cutting options for the hypothetical eventual distribution.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday February 22 2021, @08:35PM
That which dilutes.
Do you object to "nutrient" (that which nourishes) too? Would you rather that was "nutritant", or "nourishant", or something in-between?
We got these words from latin (sometimes via old french) - there's nothing lacking in sense about it. It's beautifully clear and logical, assuming a smattering of the classics.
There's not just nutrient, there are also nouns like patient (that which puts up with something), minuend (that which is diminished), subtrahend (that which is subtracted), and that's not even counting the adjectival ones with the same root, such as ambient (that which goes all around), etc. It's a not insignificant set of words your feigning abhorrence of.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @04:06PM (6 children)
We couldn't wait because a bunch of assholes decided masks were stupid.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @04:25PM (4 children)
And now they think vaccines are stupid. What else ya got?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @05:10PM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @07:41PM
And that no nuclear plants shut down in Texas because the sensors for the cooling water supply froze. Or that those same plants don’t have to shut down when the cooling water supply gets too hot to quickly shut it down in an emergency,
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @05:49PM
Me? Nothing. I'm just trying to figure out where I should go to get signed up for a vaccine appointment.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @08:08PM
They always thought vaccines are stupid. The quicker the Darwin themselves out of existence the better. In the meantime, they don’t want the vaccine? Fine, more for those with brains composed of a single cell that died of loneliness some time before the 2016 election.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 24 2021, @07:16AM
Masks are stupid and they do fuck all. It is a convenient scapegoat for your cognitive dissonance, but the masks don't stop the spread. You can come up with ever more creative reason as to why the lockdowns are never going to end, but those who already saw through the bullshit won't take the same ride.
For the record, everyone I know thinks the masks are stupid, but they do wear them to be polite to the unhinged ones who have a nuclear meltdown if you don't wear one. I just look forward to ever more ludicrous "precautions" that these authoritarians conjure up to both humiliate the masses and show them who is in charge. What's next? Two masks? Oh we already here. 4 masks? Sure. Anal probing checkpoint? Why not.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 22 2021, @05:31PM
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @07:36PM
(Score: 4, Informative) by FatPhil on Monday February 22 2021, @07:45PM
You approve it for use against the disease when it passes the former, you approve it for transportation at regular temperatures when it passes the latter.
I'm guessing that difficult words like "former" and "latter" will now probably need explaining to you. And "when", and "it".
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @05:07PM (9 children)
Additional testing? They literally had to leave a sample out on the counter overnight and compare it with the effectiveness of a known good sample. It was practically an accident waiting to happen. It didn't even need to be people tested. A hall janitor could have been performing this testing from day one. But then it wouldn't be special would it.
I suppose if money was no object I'd take the same approach to pizza. But as it is, I just take a bite from the slice left in the box I found under the couch and make a judgement call. Because I'm not in a position to get rich scaring people into believing they need to eat all the pizza within 30 minutes or they might die.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Immerman on Monday February 22 2021, @05:30PM (7 children)
No, they have to store thousands, if not tens of thousands of doses at non-cryogenic temperatures for weeks (to simulate transportation times), and then probably just sit around and wait for enough of the questionably-vaccinated people to get exposed to COVID to compare the outcomes, since intentionally infecting people with a potentially deadly disease to see if your intentionally handicapped vaccine works is highly unethical and likely to get you disbarred from ever conducting medical research again.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @07:36PM (2 children)
Your logic on the lack of direct testing makes no sense. The mortality rates of COVID on healthy people below the age of 65 are just about 0. What is more unethical?
1) Refining a vaccine through repeated precisely targeted tests including exposure, ensuring optimal efficiency and safety relying on nothing but a small number of people who are both compensated fairly for the risk they take on and who offer their completely informed consent.
2) Developing a vaccine you think will work but with relatively little and potentially flawed (and easier to fabricate) data based entirely on indirect evidence, and then injecting tens of millions of people with it.
And on the testing issue - no. You are seemingly assuming that the physical integrity of the vaccine cannot be physically measured. This seems beyond improbable.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Monday February 22 2021, @08:18PM (1 child)
We're not talking about developing an effective vaccine - that part is done (hopefully)
We're talking about reducing the transportation and storage requirements on an approved vaccine.
While you're making sure the vaccine works, you're going to do everything not directly related to the vaccine itself by the books - which means store the you mRNA at cryogenic temperatures known to preserve RNA with minimal damage. DNA/RNA synthesis is old hat at this point, but it's typically for laboratories that want to receive the exact sequences they ordered, not something a bit degraded in shipping - any degradation will introduce undocumented confounding variables into their own experiments.
The question is not whether warmer temperatures cause damage to the vaccine mRNA - we know they do, that's why we've been storing them so cold. What we haven't known is if the increased degradation has a serious impact on the efficacy.
Vaccines maybe don't care about a little degradation - some of the damaged RNA will probably now code for slight variations on the original protein spikes. Some may be so badly degraded they won't work at all anymore. Or even do something wildly different. But you're injecting millions (billions? trillions? I don't know) of mRNA copies with every vaccine dose. Hopefully there's enough undamaged and "close enough" copies to still get the job done, but you have to test that independently from testing the pristine vaccine. And since testing requires resources that are already stretched thin by trying to rush a highly experimental new kind of vaccine into production, you're not going to do those tests until you no longer have need for those resources for testing the pristine vaccine.
As for intentionally infecting people who have received an known-degraded vaccine... it doesn't matter so much what makes sense - there's a library of laws regulating ethical human medical experimentation, and violating them can have serious legal and professional consequences. Human experimentation is heavily regulated, both legally and culturally, precisely because it's led to some very dark outcomes in the past.
And it's not like we can use small groups of low-risk populations for testing either. If all the test subjects were unlikely to get sick regardless, how could you possibly tell if your vaccine is doing anything? Vaccines aren't magic armor that stops you from getting infected, they just train your body to fight off the infection faster. Hopefully before you even know you were infected. And hopefully without you becoming contagious (though that can be a completely separate thing) But that means the only way to test them is to vaccinate enough people who *would* get severely ill without it, that the difference shows up clearly in statistical analysis.
Also - just because a vaccine works and is safe for 20-somethings, doesn't mean it will do the same for children and elderly - our bodies change over time, the only way to know for sure how safe and effective a vaccine will be within a demographic, is to test it within that demographic.
But
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @10:59PM
Oh man, that's a lot of words...
There's this thing, it's called an antibody test. The antibody test tells you if you've been exposed to the virus and your body is primed to fight it with antibodies. It's EXACTLY the kind of testing they do during the development of a vaccine to prove that the vaccine has triggered an immune response. You should learn how vaccines and testing work.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/testing/serology-overview.html [cdc.gov]
The safe way to test a vaccine, on real live people, is to start by testing people for antibodies to begin with. A vaccine given to people who already have antibodies is a wasted vaccine. It can't be counted as 'effective' and it steals a dose away from someone who might actually need it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @08:32PM (3 children)
The UK just approved a study that will intentionally infect healthy people with covid
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/17/world/europe/britain-covid-study.html [nytimes.com]
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday February 22 2021, @09:10PM (2 children)
Cool. Risky human experimentation can be done. In some narrow cases it can even make sense. However there's a huge bunch of regulations against it pretty much everywhere, because there's a similarly huge history of reckless disregard for human life, and the body-count to prove it.
Heck, even the first European vaccination involved a nobleman intentionally infecting a servant's child with smallpox to test the efficacy of cowpox as a vaccine. Perhaps the researcher was extremely confident the child wouldn't die, but it's hard to avoid noticing that he didn't test his potentially miraculous discovery on himself...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @06:05AM
Whatever you read about Eward Jenner [wikipedia.org] was playing a bit loose and fast with the facts. His father was a priest, he was not "nobility". And tests on himself would have been useless. He had been innoculated against smallpox as a child by variolation, with lifelong consequences. And contrary to our contemporary shifting of the goalposts, effective vaccination against a disease has historically yielded immunity. Consequently tt was impossible for him to get smallpox (again), and so testing on himself or anybody else who had been inoculated would have been impossible.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @06:13AM
Come to think of it. What is this huge history of loss of human life in vaccine experimentation?
In general, even when there were no regulations whatsoever, there was informed consent. It's in some ways paradoxical that the more heinous acts (e.g. Tuskegee) only happened well into the regulated era. The obvious Pink Elephant I'm sidestepping here are things like Unit 731 [wikipedia.org], but I think we'd both agree that has relatively little to do with what we're discussing.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ewk on Monday February 22 2021, @06:56PM
Well, since we're going for the short quotes anyway: "...out on the counter overnight..."
That's a pretty damn cold counter then at -20.
I pity the hall janitor for that test.
I don't always react, but when I do, I do it on SoylentNews
(Score: 4, Insightful) by istartedi on Monday February 22 2021, @07:51PM
There was so much concern for safety, they designed the bridge to withstand 3X the wind load they thought it might encounter. Now drive on it peasant.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @05:58PM (2 children)
Rhymes with 'gazebo'.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @06:34PM
I'm too lazy to rhyme si we'll go with the mashup: u iz covidiot
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Monday February 22 2021, @07:55PM
Gazebo, you say? I shoot it with my bow (roll to hit) [netfunny.com]
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 1) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday February 22 2021, @09:55PM (8 children)
And here all these years I thought vaccines by definition conferred immunity. Turns out that's no longer what "vaccine" means. Nowadays weakening or treating a disease without preventing catching it or spreading it can score you the label.
Anyone else miss when words had meanings that didn't shift according to convenience?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @12:28AM
Yes, those were truly gay days.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @03:50AM (6 children)
Vaccines are rarely 100% effective at providing absolute immunity, but I'm sure you know that. I suspect those "additional" effects you mention are being touted now because there is more transparency regarding these new technologies. They don't want to over sell the hype train and have everyone doing stupid shit after they get the vaccine.
You just know there are going to be people who still get sick and say "It doesn't work! It's worthless!" Then anti-vaxxers will point to the 5% of people that aren't fully protected and the cycle of disinformation and lies will continue.
If your complaint is solely about the language used: Gōde wyrde!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @06:24AM (3 children)
No, the newspeak is because the vaccines aren't working as marketed. In pretrial tests it was claimed that the vaccines prevented upwards of 90% of infections. In the wild, in Israel, the number is closer to 50% [timesofisrael.com]. I mention Israel because they're the world's first true testbed of outcomes 'in the wild' and they also have a media that's, somewhat ironically, more interested in accuracy than agenda. And that number will presumably continue to decrease as people face increased exposure over time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @02:39PM (1 child)
What newspeak? What is it about a vaccine that's 50% effective makes it not a vaccine?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @02:44PM
1. It probably would never have received emergency approval if they were honest about the numbers. 50% effectiveness + unproven tech = bad risk:reward ratio.
2. People continue to have relatively little interest in taking vaccines that most people think are still being marketed as 90%+ effective. 50% would have near 0 interest = no profit.
Of course this doesn't change the fact it's still a vaccine, just not one most people would voluntarily take.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 24 2021, @09:41AM
Wow. You must not have even finished reading the headline before leaping to the wrong conclusion.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday February 23 2021, @02:55PM (1 child)
These vaccines confer no immunity whatsoever. Zero. You will still catch and spread it exactly as easily as before, your body will simply do better at fighting it off once you have.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @10:09PM
Mmm the sweet sight of TMB bonking himself on the head. Wasn't there an old school Turbo Grafx game designed after you?
(Score: 2) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Wednesday February 24 2021, @08:39PM
If you search for "lyophilized" and "mRNA vaccine" you find literature that says other mRNA vaccines, when freeze-dried, can survive months or years in normal refrigerators and plenty long enough for distribution at room temperature.
Pfizer is working on a freeze-dried formulation but is talking 2022. The Artcurus vaccine is freeze-dried to begin with but has not had really encouraging trials.