AstraZeneca Resumes Coronavirus Vaccine Study (usnews.com) 85
"Oxford University announced Saturday it was resuming a trial for a coronavirus vaccine it is developing with pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, a move that comes days after the study was suspended following a reported side-effect in a U.K. patient," reports the Associated Press:
In a statement, the university confirmed the restart across all of its U.K. clinical trial sites after regulators gave the go-ahead following the pause on Sunday. "The independent review process has concluded and following the recommendations of both the independent safety review committee and the U.K. regulator, the MHRA, the trials will recommence in the U.K.," it said.
The vaccine being developed by Oxford and AstraZeneca is widely perceived to be one of the strongest contenders among the dozens of coronavirus vaccines in various stages of testing around the world...
The university said in large trials such as this "it is expected that some participants will become unwell and every case must be carefully evaluated to ensure careful assessment of safety." It said globally some 18,000 people have received its vaccine so far. Volunteers from some of the worst affected countries — Britain, Brazil, South Africa and the U.S. — are taking part in the trial... Brazil's health regulator Anvisa on Saturday said it had approved the resumption of tests of the "Oxford vaccine" in the South American country after receiving official information from AstraZeneca... The university insisted that it is "committed to the safety of our participants and the highest standards of conduct in our studies and will continue to monitor safety closely."
Pauses in drug trials are commonplace... The Oxford-AstraZeneca study had been previously stopped in July for several days after a participant developed neurological symptoms that turned out to be an undiagnosed case of multiple sclerosis that researchers said was unrelated to the vaccine.
The vaccine being developed by Oxford and AstraZeneca is widely perceived to be one of the strongest contenders among the dozens of coronavirus vaccines in various stages of testing around the world...
The university said in large trials such as this "it is expected that some participants will become unwell and every case must be carefully evaluated to ensure careful assessment of safety." It said globally some 18,000 people have received its vaccine so far. Volunteers from some of the worst affected countries — Britain, Brazil, South Africa and the U.S. — are taking part in the trial... Brazil's health regulator Anvisa on Saturday said it had approved the resumption of tests of the "Oxford vaccine" in the South American country after receiving official information from AstraZeneca... The university insisted that it is "committed to the safety of our participants and the highest standards of conduct in our studies and will continue to monitor safety closely."
Pauses in drug trials are commonplace... The Oxford-AstraZeneca study had been previously stopped in July for several days after a participant developed neurological symptoms that turned out to be an undiagnosed case of multiple sclerosis that researchers said was unrelated to the vaccine.
Astra-Zeneca may be able to help. (Score:5, Interesting)
The media takes the best possible course of action - reports on a new development, quotes Oxford calling it "expected", and provides relevant background information noting that it's "commonplace".
Alternative facts junkie still finds reason to bitch. You forgot to complain about the regulators pausing the study for like 3 days, though. You're letting people do their jobs properly - worse yet, these jobs are important. Time to analyze what you're doing wrong.
Feeling anxious? Astra-Zeneca may be able to help.(tm)
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It's sensationalism that is no different to what you find daily on FOX News or CNN. At least it's factual.
You mean like CNN reporting the fact the trial is resuming [cnn.com], using the exact same words as this article? You mean reporting the facts?
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That's probably because the actual article is from Associated Press, and they're all just republishing it.
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Actually, yes. The sensationalism, though, was in deciding to report that the trial was halted. That was important information for some medical professionals, who had the background to evaluate it. For everyone else it was just sensationalism.
Most news practices sensationalism. There are both good and bad reasons for this. The good reason is that the news is important to some people, and their audience is diverse. The bad reason is that getting people worked up makes the news service more successful.
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So now we finally know, Slashdot is a "real news organization", even though it has always claimed not to be. It mostly reprints stories from other sources, but has occasionally carried original "journalism".
Re: Pauses in drug trials are commonplace... (Score:1)
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Cannot really stop a medical trial (Score:2)
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I've been on a medical trial during college (because free money!) that was stopped due to side effects about two weeks in, which presumably ruined the trial, because they restarted the trial at day zero again.
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Why are you a fucking idiot?
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Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Normal Flu mortality rates are around 0.2%. COVID-19 is 1-3%. So not really in the same ballpark. Also flu doesn't cause brain damage in a high proportion of the survivors, and permanent breathing problems are also rare and usually only the result of flu weakening the victim's immune system allowing in pneumonia.
But sure, apart from the 10x mortality rate, and terrible long term consequences for many survivors, they're just the same!
Oh yes, the other thing is that we can vaccinate against flu. As you can see from this story, they're still working on that for COVID-19.
First 60 seconds as an example (Score:3, Insightful)
Just an example, let's do the first 60 seconds. Listen, then pause and think.
He claims that because 20% of the people have caught it so far, that means 80% are immune.
By his logic, anyone who hasn't been hit by a car yet is immune to getting hit by card, so they should go stand in the middle of the freeway.
The video is 37 minutes long. Think about each of those minutes and you'll find the 37 totally idiotic statements in them.
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Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
According the CDC the US flu mortality rates varies between 12,000 and 61,000 per year. Let's take 36,000 as a typical number for flu deaths in a normal year. The US is already at 200,000 COVID deaths. The first known death in the US was at the very end of Feb. So in just over 1/2 year 200,000 deaths. By the end of Feb 2021 360000 is very likely. That is 10x as claimed by others. If all deaths stopped today the US is already at 5.5x the normal flu death rate.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
Outside of ignoring the significant undercounting of COVID deaths during the period when tests were/are hard to come by...
the difference between dying from COVID and dying with COVID is less clear. Sometimes, admittedly, the virus has a minor impact on health, and it is almost never the proximal cause. This doesn't mean it's not the actual cause. When COVID causes blood clots to circulate that result in strokes, heart attacks, etc. you can honestly say both that they died of, say, a stroke AND that they died of COVID. You cannot honestly deny that they died of COVID.
Now an accurate determination in any particular case would require a very thorough analysis of exactly how they came to die to determine to what extent the death was caused by COVID. And even when someone has their throat cut, one could claim that they died of low blood pressure and still be accurate. But this doesn't mean that they didn't also die of having their throat cut.
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"You cannot honestly deny that they died of COVID."
Idiots can and will do anything. And there is an epidemic of stupidity around the world. Facebook creates a bubble around their information intake and they feel superior to the rest.
Anyway, it is becoming more apparent that COVID19 is a blood vessel disease. Once it enters your bloodstream, it makes your arteries leaky, and this creates all sorts of problems all around, including your heart, brain, toes, and lungs.
You know, just like a regular flu.
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That young boy of 19 didn't die because of the car crash. He died "with" the car crash. The instant stop from 120 to zero was just a final push.
That's how you sound.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Informative)
You may want to confirm the definition of 'Covid deaths' in the USA. It includes all people who die *with* covid, rather than *from* covid.
Nope. That's not the way it works. The numbers include all people who died of conditions that are believed to be caused by COVID-19 who were sick with COVID-19. It does not, for example, include people who died of gunshot wounds who happened to swab positive for the virus.
Either way, the excess deaths, at least in the United States, significantly exceed the coronavirus death counts, which strongly suggests that we are actually under-counting coronavirus deaths, not over-counting.
There's a large number of victims who died of coronary diseases, heart failure, cancer etc, which were noted as covid victim because there were traces of the virus in their body.
People who die of blood clots because they were confined to a hospital bed by COVID-19 were killed by COVID-19. They would not have died otherwise. Most of those people would otherwise have lived for many, many more years before their coronary artery disease got bad enough to cause a heart attack, and a good percentage would have gotten a heart cath or whatever to fix the blockage, giving them at least another decade or two after that.
Besides, that's the same way that the deaths from every other illness have been counted for at least the past several decades. If you try to count this one disease differently, you're creating numbers that can't be compared with other illnesses, which would make the new numbers mostly useless.
Re: Why? (Score:1)
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"Mortality rates are only marginally higher than a (really bad) flu season. Definitely not 10x as you claim. In my country it's 0.8%, similar to the flu season of 2017-2018. Total death toll in 2018 was 9450, now for Covid it's 6250."
And I'm sure your country behaved exactly the same in 2020, as it did in 2018.
In other words, your comparison is meaningless.
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I'm not saying this virus is benign. I'm saying it behaves like every other virus in terms of infection and recovery pattern.
Only in the most general sense of the words.
Flu can cause persistent damage to lungs as well as deaths. https://edition.cnn.com/2018/1... [cnn.com]
But those complications are at least an order of magnitude less common with influenza, if not two.
Mortality rates are only marginally higher than a (really bad) flu season. Definitely not 10x as you claim. In my country it's 0.8%, similar to the flu season of 2017-2018.
This is a perfect example of lying with statistics. Mortality rate over the population is not usefully comparable between COVID-19 and influenza, because the response to COVID-19 has been much, much more extreme than the response to influenza in any year in my memory.
The only meaningful number is the mortality rate relative to the case count and the contagiousness, b
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That high percentage is a lie and was entirely based upon only testing people with severe symptoms at the start and done on purpose to make it look far worse than in reality it was, LIAR.
How about countries with widespread TB inoculations who performed TEN TIMES better than countries without, they picked up on it, talked about testing it and then buried it, NO FUCKING PROFIT.
Yeah, you can shove that crap vaccine where the sun don't shine, I ain't touching it, why the fuck should I, I already had it, milde
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"watch a video" (Score:4, Informative)
I don't.
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Yeah, this should be like Godwin-ing the thread.
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It's not related to infuenza in any way, other than it's a virus that stops some people from breathing.
You could similarly call a Dodge Ram a "Fiat 500-like vehicle". They both run on gas!
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Fiat bought the Chrysler Corporation (manufacturer of Dodge Rams) during the Obama Regime's destruction of the USA automobile industry.
Fiat even rebadges their cars under the Jeep brand. (One that I am aware of; I would expect more Chrysler cars are just rebadged Fiats.)
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Remind me when a flu virus last killed 195,000 Americans.
And that's in spite of lockdowns, masks etc.
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Which right wing loon is behind that youtube link?
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Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
"The reproductive number – the number of secondary infections generated from one infected individual – is understood to be between 2 and 2.5 for COVID-19 virus, higher than for influenza."
"While the range of symptoms for the two viruses is similar, the fraction with severe disease appears to be different. For COVID-19, data to date suggest that 80% of infections are mild or asymptomatic, 15% are severe infection, requiring oxygen and 5% are critical infections, requiring ventilation. These fractions of severe and critical infection would be higher than what is observed for influenza infection."
And importantly, and in direct contradiction to your point regarding mortality rates:
"Mortality for COVID-19 appears higher than for influenza, especially seasonal influenza. While the true mortality of COVID-19 will take some time to fully understand, the data we have so far indicate that the crude mortality ratio (the number of reported deaths divided by the reported cases) is between 3-4%, the infection mortality rate (the number of reported deaths divided by the number of infections) will be lower. For seasonal influenza, mortality is usually well below 0.1%. However, mortality is to a large extent determined by access to and quality of health care. "
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I made a claim about the infection and recovery pattern of this virus (explained in the video), which is just like any other new virus. Results for this one are a bit more severy with marginally higher mortality rate, and persistent damage to some,
So this one is more severe, with higher mortality rate and higher risk of persistent damage, but other than those two things, it's just like any other new virus? WHICH IS IT? Make up your fucking mind already. By persisting in this "it's just the same, except where it's different" bullshit you're only harming your own credibility on all subjects as you prove that you will engage in any kind of mental gymnastics available in order to "support" your "point". All we're hearing is the inherent contradiction in
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As do most other virii.
The plural is viruses
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Your reference is from March 17, 2020, which means that it is grossly outdated.
It doesn't make sense to compare the "crude mortality ratio" (usually called the case fatality rate) for two diseases, because the case fatality rate depends heavily on the proportion of asymptomatic infections and how much testing is taking place. To accurately compare fatality, you need to consider the infection fatality rate, not the case fatality rate. For COVID-19, there are an extremely high number of asymptomatic infecti
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When they count mortality for the seasonal flu do they also record people who were diagnosed with it and then hit by a car 30 days later? Or is that just for covid 19? Sorry I mean coronavirus. We don't talk about covid 19 any more.
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Why should I trust the video enough to give it even a single glance? I can find information claiming all sorts of things if I want to. I could probably find proof that Godzilla actually did destroy Tokyo. But why should I trust it?
As for "political bias", the right wing for some reason seems more actively lying about COVID than the left wing. Other topics they lie less about. But the GPs guess that it was a right wing video is plausible BECAUSE it's about COVID. (If you want, I could dig up some left
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"What information in the video is incorrect please?"
This is factually wrong in the video:
Lock-downs do nothing.
Brazil did nothing.
Sweden did nothing.
Masks do nothing.
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That's not true. Many youtube videos report facts. I could give you a link to programming in Go, for instance. It's just that lots of youtube videos are sheer garbage, so there needs to be some external reason to take any particular one of them seriously.
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Also, most ideas are better expressed via text. Very few ideas need to be expressed with videos. Any youtube video about virus stuff is probably not worth my time, because it's probably junk. I'll read a paper in a real journal about virus stuff, though.
Re: Why? (Score:1)
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Really?
YouTube has a ton of how-to, history, comedy, music videos, etc.
Are you saying the video that I used to fix my refrigerator door isn't "fact"?
Are you saying the video of the Beatles wasn't a "fact"?
Are you saying the actual videos of history (past and current) aren't "fact"?
If so, why should anyone believe anything you speak, write, post, or Think?
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I’m going to take a wild stab in the dark and guess that processing whatever is in the video would require me to click on a blind link shared by a covid19 denier.
Yeah, that ain’t gonna happen.
His name is right there (Score:3)
Click the link, there is the creator's name, right there.
Ivor Cummins is hardly right wing. He is, however, someone who likes get media attention by saying unusual things about medical topics.
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As an American myself, it's fucking embarrassing, that a country which mostly leads in tech and innovation can't get its shit together and uses politics
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why are we treating this virus, which behaves exactly like every other virus, like something special?
What you're saying is that all viruses are the same. That doesn't sound accurate.
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"Any other virus" isn't spreading like wildfire, causing permanent lung damage and death.
Tell you what, try watching that same video except every 60 seconds pause and think about what he said in the previous 60 seconds. Ask yourself "is what he just said obvious bullshit? Does it make any logical sense whatsoever? Does it directly contradict what he said three months ago?"
I suspect that if you actually pay attention, you'll notice the same things that the rest of us notice.
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Why are we treating this virus, which behaves exactly like every other virus,
Show us how every other virus gives people symptoms lasting months [cnn.com] after the infection?
Go on, we'll wait.
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In other words, covid-19 is not like every other virus. The flu conditions you mention worsen the effects of existing medical conditions. It does not create the emergence of medical conditions which didn't exist before the infection. Further, the conditions which covid exhibit persist for months in many people. Not so with every other virus.
Still further, you mentioned only one virus. Not all viruses.
Try again.
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To be pedantic, influenza actually can trigger long-lasting autoimmune issues, and can also cause blood clots, heart attacks, strokes, etc. just like COVID-19. The difference is that those side effects occur much, much more frequently with COVID-19.
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This guy cherry-picks his charts.
Also, in the same video he claims that masks do nothing, and then later that because of the masks, people did not get the corona immunity during the summer.
So, which is it, do masks work or don't?
(If anyone thinks that masks do nothing, I'm ready to spit in your face, and I'll wear a mask or won't, you choose.)
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It sure acted like a plague in NYC, and came close to overwhelming the hospitals. People were on ventilators by the 100's, with about 80% of those on ventilators not recovering. The virus can be horrific in its side-effects if you do recover, with the only real defense, because no cure exists (other than the politicized, legally out-of-reach hydroxychloroquine), the only effective strategy is to not contract it.
I'm expecting that unless people can prove that they have taken the vaccine, they're probably
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Excellent idea. But remember, if they're going to follow the instructions of their dear leader, they have to take it with a huge dose of HCQ and a clorox chaser.
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Any vaccine approved through the standard tests and approval bodies I will be 1st in line to take, no matter it arrives 1 January, 1 Nov, or tomorrow. Don't get in my way, you may be trampled.
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Have been relying on them all my life, and haven't gotten a bad vaccine yet.
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Re: I encourage Trumpers to take it right away (Score:1)
What was the adverse event? (Score:2)
I don't recall any news source mentioning in any blurbs exactly what the adverse event was. As long as they don't identify the patient surely it's not confidential...
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Transverse myelitis (paralysis and sensory loss caused by a virus screwing up a horizontal slice of your spinal cord).
Unfortunately, this seems like it is probably an entirely predictable side effect of using adenovirus as a vector.
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UK sources are not allowed to tell - patient confidentiality and data protection.
Somehow US sources leaked it.
One of the many reasons that EU/US data protection is a waste of time.