When will this shit end?

[xxialac]

2 minutes ago, fraybentos1 said:

We probs basically agree and it's just a matter of semantics 🙂

Sorry for the aggro, yep!

[steviewevie]

So...what do other EU countries do? And what are those over 65 who's had an AZ vaccine going to think? Bit messy really.

[Ozanne]

Superb. 

[Crazyfool01]

4 minutes ago, fraybentos1 said:

We probs basically agree and it's just a matter of semantics 🙂

 

1 minute ago, xxialac said:

Sorry for the aggro, yep!

yay 🙂 

[xxialac]

2 minutes ago, Ozanne said:

Superb. 

Whether you agree or not, that is amazingly well played.

[onthebeach]

13 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

They don't seem to be saying its unsafe. Just saying it's not demonstrated as effective. My feeling would be that given the situation, and the fact that it's safe, and that it's unlikely to be suddenly ineffective in older people, to start giving it out anyway. Although if their Pfizer supply is good enough they may not need to.

(Or it's a cheeky way to actually get the economy opened up by vaccinating younger people earlier)

I’m obviously not sure if this is correct but on this thread it looks like if the same criteria is used on the Pfizer vaccine for over 74 year olds it’s  -12% effective?

https://twitter.com/ProfTomEllis/status/1354784250248228866?s=20

Edited January 28, 2021 by onthebeach

[efcfanwirral]

10 minutes ago, fraybentos1 said:

London surely has the highest non-white population? Which is also the demographic least likely to take up the vaccine. Surely a factor.

That was my thought too - fits right in with those stats on the takeup demographics 

[DeanoL]

 

17 minutes ago, xxialac said:

This is tiring now.

I initially wrote it wasn't fake news...nothing more than that.

Then you were the one who jumped in to challenge me - it is fake news, you wrote.

All your other points may be valid but your challenge to me is not. It's not fake news because fake news is a term to denote malicious false reporting, not simply false reporting. 

I dunno man. It's obvious to anyone with half a brain cell that efficacy won't just go from 70% to 8% when you cross an arbitrary age, unless there's some actual biological change happening at that age (puberty, menopause). We all here instantly had that reaction of "that can't be right". And few of us are professional journalists. 

So if it wasn't malicious, I would say it was actively neglectful. Because either both the writer and the editor are really, really, really thick. Like more stupid than everyone on this forum, even me. The "everyone makes mistakes" excuse doesn't wash as people pointed out "that can't be right" and the writer doubled down, said he'd checked and it definitely was. So they're either proper thick, or they got the quote, got it confirmed, realised it made no sense, but published it anyway on the basis that they had the sources so could get away with it, knowing it would drive massive traffic and publicity to them.

It's extremely unlikely to be true, they knew that, but it's such a juicy story, so they checked and probably couldn't believe their luck when they got the couple of confirmations they needed to be able to publish it. They knew there was a misunderstanding, they knew if they asked to see the actual data it'd disprove it, but they didn't, they just reported it based on three sources all getting the same wrong end of the stick.

That's still fake news to me. And that's the only explanation. That or they're really, really stupid.

[zahidf]

3 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

 

I dunno man. It's obvious to anyone with half a brain cell that efficacy won't just go from 70% to 8% when you cross an arbitrary age, unless there's some actual biological change happening at that age (puberty, menopause). We all here instantly had that reaction of "that can't be right". And few of us are professional journalists. 

So if it wasn't malicious, I would say it was actively neglectful. Because either both the writer and the editor are really, really, really thick. Like more stupid than everyone on this forum, even me. The "everyone makes mistakes" excuse doesn't wash as people pointed out "that can't be right" and the writer doubled down, said he'd checked and it definitely was. So they're either proper thick, or they got the quote, got it confirmed, realised it made no sense, but published it anyway on the basis that they had the sources so could get away with it, knowing it would drive massive traffic and publicity to them.

It's extremely unlikely to be true, they knew that, but it's such a juicy story, so they checked and probably couldn't believe their luck when they got the couple of confirmations they needed to be able to publish it. They knew there was a misunderstanding, they knew if they asked to see the actual data it'd disprove it, but they didn't, they just reported it based on three sources all getting the same wrong end of the stick.

That's still fake news to me. And that's the only explanation. That or they're really, really stupid.

Yeah. If the story was 'Germany wont approve it for over 65s becasue of lack of data' then thats a proper scoop.

 

Adding the 'effacay of 8%' is ridiculous. There isnt enough information! thats enough of a story!

[xxialac]

Just now, DeanoL said:

 

I dunno man. It's obvious to anyone with half a brain cell that efficacy won't just go from 70% to 8% when you cross an arbitrary age, unless there's some actual biological change happening at that age (puberty, menopause). We all here instantly had that reaction of "that can't be right". And few of us are professional journalists. 

So if it wasn't malicious, I would say it was actively neglectful. Because either both the writer and the editor are really, really, really thick. Like more stupid than everyone on this forum, even me. The "everyone makes mistakes" excuse doesn't wash as people pointed out "that can't be right" and the writer doubled down, said he'd checked and it definitely was. So they're either proper thick, or they got the quote, got it confirmed, realised it made no sense, but published it anyway on the basis that they had the sources so could get away with it, knowing it would drive massive traffic and publicity to them.

It's extremely unlikely to be true, they knew that, but it's such a juicy story, so they checked and probably couldn't believe their luck when they got the couple of confirmations they needed to be able to publish it. They knew there was a misunderstanding, they knew if they asked to see the actual data it'd disprove it, but they didn't, they just reported it based on three sources all getting the same wrong end of the stick.

That's still fake news to me. And that's the only explanation. That or they're really, really stupid.

You could be right, in which case sorry. I guess I hoped too much of them. 

To undermine a vaccine effort in a global pandemic just for a few extra hits to your website...I couldn't imagine they could stoop so incredibly low. Those extra hits aren't going to make that much of a difference to their financial bottom line after all and might even hurt their reputation, which as the equivalent of the Financial Times, they trade on.

To make a horlicks of the numbers, given lack of scientific understanding, I thought far more plausible. 

 

[zahidf]

5 minutes ago, efcfanwirral said:

That was my thought too - fits right in with those stats on the takeup demographics 

I wish theyd offer them lower down the groups then so people who do want it can be protected

[fraybentos1]

8 minutes ago, efcfanwirral said:

That was my thought too - fits right in with those stats on the takeup demographics 

I expect that London will have the lowest vax take up but also have by far the most natural immunity in the population from past infection. 

[duke88]

29 minutes ago, JoeyT said:

 

The newspapers in Yorkshire were all moaning about their number of doses being fewer this week, saying that they were being given less at the expense of the south. Seems like everyone's supply has been cut.

[steviewevie]

Well, we'll find out the effectiveness of the AZ vaccine in over 65s soon enough as we are the lab rats. If effective we can say hah boo to the Germans which is always a positive.

[Ozanne]

2 minutes ago, duke88 said:

The newspapers in Yorkshire were all moaning about their number of doses being fewer this week, saying that they were being given less at the expense of the south. Seems like everyone's supply has been cut.

A Tory MP in PMQs yesterday was asking Boris as his constituency hasn’t had as much of the vaccine. If you didn’t know he was a Tory MP you’d have thought he was an opposition MP by the way he was talking. 

[steviewevie]

26 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

 

I dunno man. It's obvious to anyone with half a brain cell that efficacy won't just go from 70% to 8% when you cross an arbitrary age, unless there's some actual biological change happening at that age (puberty, menopause). We all here instantly had that reaction of "that can't be right". And few of us are professional journalists. 

So if it wasn't malicious, I would say it was actively neglectful. Because either both the writer and the editor are really, really, really thick. Like more stupid than everyone on this forum, even me. The "everyone makes mistakes" excuse doesn't wash as people pointed out "that can't be right" and the writer doubled down, said he'd checked and it definitely was. So they're either proper thick, or they got the quote, got it confirmed, realised it made no sense, but published it anyway on the basis that they had the sources so could get away with it, knowing it would drive massive traffic and publicity to them.

It's extremely unlikely to be true, they knew that, but it's such a juicy story, so they checked and probably couldn't believe their luck when they got the couple of confirmations they needed to be able to publish it. They knew there was a misunderstanding, they knew if they asked to see the actual data it'd disprove it, but they didn't, they just reported it based on three sources all getting the same wrong end of the stick.

That's still fake news to me. And that's the only explanation. That or they're really, really stupid.

but, immunity in older people weaker anyway..? That's why more are dying?

[steviewevie]

What's the crack with who gets what vaccine here? Are they giving pfizer more to older people?

[zahidf]

 

 

[tigger123]

2 minutes ago, steviewevie said:

What's the crack with who gets what vaccine here? Are they giving pfizer more to older people?

From what I understand, it depends where you have your vaccine, ie whether in a GP surgery or mass vaccination centre.

FWIW my 89 year old grandpa got the Oxford jab, as he got it at his local GP

[Mellotr0n]

Interview with Pascal Soriot, AstraZeneca CEO, in Italian paper La Republicca
https://www.repubblica.it/cronaca/20...nes-284349628/


Mr Pascal Soriot, CEO of AstraZeneca, why hasn't AstraZeneca been more specific on detailing the supply problem detected on its European plants? What exactly is the problem?

“I think we have been relatively specific with the information. Of course, we are all very disappointed. We would like to produce more. I think we will deliver up to Europe in the month of February a reasonable quantity actually, very similar to what others have delivered on a monthly basis. But of course, it's less than expected and also because our vaccine is easy to use people expected more so we could scale up. Our team is working 24/7 to fix the very much issues of production of the vaccine itself. You have two steps in the production of a vaccine: one is you produce the vaccine itself. We call it a drug substance, the vaccine. Then, when we are finished with it, we move this into different plants where we put the vaccine into vials and we call that the drug product, the final product. For Europe the drugs substance is essentially produced in two plants, one in the Netherlands, one in Belgium. The drug product is actually produced in Italy and Germany. So from a drug product viewpoint, we have full capacity. We have zero problem. The current problems have to do with manufacturing the drugs substance”.

“So maybe I need to give you a little bit of explanation as to how we manufacture those vaccines. Essentially, we have cell cultures, big batches, 1000-litre or 2000-litre batches. We have cell cultures inside those batches and we inject them with the virus, the vaccine, if you will. Then those cells produce the vaccine, it’s a biotechnology protection. Now, some of those batches have very high yield and others have low yield. Particularly in Europe, we had one site with large capacity that experienced yield issues. So it's essentially a question of when you scale up to the level we are scaling up to - something like this that's never been done. We are scaling up to hundreds of millions, billions of doses of vaccines at a very high speed".

“A year ago, we didn't have a vaccine. When you do that, you have glitches, you have scale-up problems. Therefore, the yield varies from one to three, by the factor of three. The best site we have produces three times more vaccine out of a batch than the lowest producing site. We do this with a series of partners: in the US, those partners are actually approved by BARDA, the US administration, the group that manages those things and manages the capacity”.


"In the US, we also have issues of yield and essentially our engineers have worked with our partners to identify what the issues are. We believe we have sorted out the issues now. The issues are different, for instance, in Belgium: we believe it was more a question of downstream filtering because when you finish making the vaccine, you have to filter it. When you filter it, you put it into vials. Our partner in Australia for instance also had yield issues. And they have been in the vaccine business for 20 years. But it's complicated, especially in the early phase where you have to really kind of sort out all sorts of issues. We believe we've sorted out those issues, but we are basically two months behind where we wanted to be. We've had also teething issues like this in the UK supply chain. But the UK contract was signed three months before the European vaccine deal. So with the UK we have had an extra three months to fix all the glitches we experienced. As for Europe, we are three months behind in fixing those glitches. Would I like to do better? Of course. But, you know, if we deliver in February what we are planning to deliver, it's not a small volume. We are planning to deliver millions of doses to Europe, it is not small”.


You say that EU is going to receive a reasonable quantity of doses by February. Could you please quantify this?

"First of all, as soon as we get an approval by EMA, in the next few days, we will be shipping at least three million doses immediately to Europe, then we'll have another shipment about a week later and then the third or fourth week of February. And the target is to deliver 17 million doses by February. So, I am just estimating roughly, that would mean like about 3 million doses for Germany, probably 2,5 million for Italy and something like 2 million for Spain. I don't know exactly what the precise allocation is, but it's based on the population of each country. If you're in Germany, you can vaccinate three million people in one month. It's actually not so bad especially for the people who are the most exposed and most at risk. That's not a small proportion. And if you apply the three month regimen, then in March, you can do the same again or more potentially because we are working hard to increase our goals. It's not as good as we would like to, but it's really it's not so bad”.


So Europe signed the contract too late, instead of the UK?

“I will not pass judgment on this. But I can only tell you the facts and the facts are that we basically signed an agreement with the UK three months before we did have it with Europe. Now, part of this can be easily explained. When we entered the agreement with Oxford, they had already been working with the UK government on this. So they had a head start. We were able to quite quickly take the UK supply chain and improve it. We had to modify the formula in the process, because Oxford gave us a process that needed to be modified to enable manufacturing at scale. Just think about, we've done all of this in months. Usually, it takes years. We got a manufacturing process that Oxford gave us, which was producing a good vaccine, but not at an industrial scale. It was just able to produce quantities for clinical trials. So then we had to modify the process to turn it into a process that could manufacture billions of doses. At a cost that is reasonable and at a speed that is reasonable".

"We had to change all of these. Then we had to do what we call technology transfer. So we go to each partner and we train them on the process. We train them on how to manufacture. And then, you know, some people are new to this process. It's like they learn the process. They don't know how to make the vaccine and they're not as efficient as others".

"So you may have lower productivity. That's why we have a productivity going from one to three. And so, unfortunately, it's really bad luck. Actually, there's nothing mysterious about it. But look, the sites that have the lowest productivity in the network are the sites that are supplying Europe. And quite honestly, I mean, we're not doing it on purpose. I'm European, I have Europe at heart. Our chairman is Swedish, is European. Our CFO is European. Many people in the management are European. So we want to treat Europe as best we can. You know, we do this at no profit, remember? We didn't go into this to try and make money or whatever. We would like to treat Europe as good as possible. I actually do believe we treated Europe fairly".

"Now, let me give you another number. Our total capacity globally now is about 100 million doses a month. From February onwards we are able to make 100 million doses a month, that's not small. Most vaccines have 100 million doses a year, that already takes us on a 1,2 billion pace per year. We are going to keep growing. Of course, we are ramping up production and Europe is getting 17 percent of this global production in February for a population that is 5 percent of the world population. Now, from the beginning we took very seriously the approach that Europe took, which we thought was fair and we all took. In fact, the US didn't say that Europe said that. Europe said the vaccine is common good and everybody needs to get access at the same time globally. That's what we are doing. Europe is getting 17 percent of our global supply for a month for 5 percent of the world population. The problem is: 100 million doses is a lot, but we have 7,5 billion people in the world".

"We are in the ramp-up phase and basically it will improve, but it takes time. Having said all of this, I'm not looking for excuses, honestly. We take accountability. We want to do better and we're working day and night. Our people in manufacturing, we have hundreds of people, thousands of people now. Many of them didn't take any Christmas vacation. I'm not asking you feel sorry for us but you know, we're doing our very best. But it's a very complicated process and a big scale”.


After the explanation you just gave at the same time it is striking the aggressive way which the EU has responded, even threatening to impose a new control on exports of activity out of Europe. Some are suggesting that you're selling your product to some other countries.

“The suggestion we sell to other countries to make more money is not right because we make no profit everywhere. That's the approach we took and we agreed on that. That’s the agreement we have with Oxford University. It's actually even written in a contract we have with Oxford University: that we will be at no profit. We have slightly different prices from one geographic to the other because the cost of goods may be different. We have a supply chain in Brazil, we have another one in Latin America, another one in South Asia. We have one in Japan. Of course, you know, local costs are different. So you've got slight variations, but more or less, it's about three to four dollars, more or less everywhere. It makes no difference. Zero difference. I understand we all want to be vaccinated. I think the populations of Europe, like everywhere else in the world, have been under so much stress with this pandemic for so long now, for a year or so, that people are tired. And I think the people who didn't want to be vaccinated maybe six months ago are now saying: "I want to be vaccinated". You have a lot of people who want to be vaccinated".

"So, governments are under pressure. Everybody is getting kind of a bit, you know, aggravated or emotional about those things. But I understand because the Commission is managing the process for the whole of Europe. We're certainly not taking vaccines away from the Europeans to sell it somewhere else at the profit. It would not make sense, honestly, if you think about it: we engaged in this process a year ago and we're going to make zero profit. It would not make sense for us to then say "we're going to make a profit somewhere else and destroy the whole spirit of the agreement". First of all, we would be in breach of the agreement we have with Oxford. Secondly, we've done it because we want to do it for the good of humankind".


You said that the UK signed the AZ vaccine contract three months before EU, so you had more time to tweak and fix the potential disruptions of the supply. Why then did you commit to similar contracts with the EU, if you knew that in a very short time there could be problems like the one the EU supply chain is experiencing right now?

"First of all, we have different plants and they have different yields and different productivity. One of the plans with the highest yield is in the UK because it started earlier. It also had its own issues, but we solved all, it has a good productivity, but it's the UK plant because it started earlier. Anyway, we didn't commit with the EU, by the way. It's not a commitment we have to Europe: it’s a best effort, we said we are going to make our best effort. The reason why we said that is because Europe at the time wanted to be supplied more or less at the same time as the UK, even though the contract was signed three months later. So we said, “ok, we're going to do our best, we’re going to try, but we cannot commit contractually because we are three months behind UK”. We knew it was a super stretch goal and we know it's a big issue, this pandemic. But our contract is not a contractual commitment. It's a best effort. Basically we said we're going to try our best, but we can't guarantee we're going to succeed. In fact, getting there, we are a little bit delayed”.


So is this the contract that the EU signed?

“Yes, certainly. Now we have a vaccine and everybody thinks it's easy. But in April last year, everybody was saying “it's impossible to do a vaccine by the end of the 2020”, or “you're going too fast” or “you're cutting corners”, “you can't do it”, et cetera. Now everybody is saying “you’re too slow”, while before we were “too fast”. At that time, when we talked about those things, first of all we didn't know whether we would have a vaccine or not. We didn't know what the yield would be. When you develop a vaccine, usually you do that over five, six years. We did this in a few months, so we thought, you know, if we are successful, we can get through this yield. Unfortunately, some manufacturing sites got to the yield and others didn’t. We knew that it was going to be very challenging. But if we had not stretched the process like this, maybe we would not even be able to produce vaccines now”.


Italy is one of the countries that have explicitly threatened legal action against AstraZeneca. However, from what you have been saying, there is no feasible basis for a potential legal action against AstraZeneca.

“I don't want to give judgment on anything that has been said. I can only tell you what's in their contract. And the contract is very clear. Our commitment is, I am quoting, “our best effort”. There are a lot of emotions running in this process right now, and I can understand it: people want vaccine. I want the vaccine too, I want it today. But, at the end of the day, it's a complicated process. We are getting there, in two or three months we will be at scale. We have a 17-million-dose production per month right now, it is actually not small at all. But of course, it’s less than people want and understandably so”.


Is there any chance that the contracts could be reconsidered in the sense that you may distribute the vaccines in some other way? For instance, would it be possible to take some of the vaccines destined for UK and move them to the EU or some other countries? Or is this such a fixed contract that you cannot change it?

“The UK agreement was reached in June, three months before the European one. As you could imagine, the UK government said the supply coming out of the UK supply chain would go to the UK first. Basically, that's how it is. In the EU agreement it is mentioned that the manufacturing sites in the UK were an option for Europe, but only later. But we're moving very quickly, the supply in the UK is very rapid. The government is vaccinating 2.5 million people a week, about 500,000 a day, our vaccine supply is growing quickly. As soon as we have reached a sufficient number of vaccinations in the UK, we will be able to use that site to help Europe as well. But the contract with the UK was signed first and the UK, of course, said “you supply us first”, and this is fair enough. This vaccine was developed with the UK government, Oxford and with us as well. As soon as we can, we'll help the EU. I mean, as a company we are half Swedish and half British. In fact, we're global, of course, but we are European as much as we are British".

[DeanoL]

15 minutes ago, steviewevie said:

but, immunity in older people weaker anyway..? That's why more are dying?

Sure, but it's gradual isn't it? At least across the population. It's not like something happens to you in your mid-60s that knocks your immunity down to 10% of what it was.

[Toilet Duck]

30 minutes ago, onthebeach said:

I’m obviously not sure if this is correct but on this thread it looks like if the same criteria is used on the Pfizer vaccine for over 74 year olds it’s  -12% effective?

https://twitter.com/ProfTomEllis/status/1354784250248228866?s=20

What it really highlights is the difficulty in drawing significant conclusions from very few events. In the Pfizer Phase 3 data, there were 19 cases in >65s on the placebo arm, Vs 1 case in the vaccinated arm (nearly 4000 participants in each arm). In the >74s, there were 5 cases in the placebo arm, 0 cases in the vaccinated arm (just under 800 participants in each group). Confidence intervals tend to be huge where there are no events on one side of the equation, but the same pattern of protection is seen in all subgroups irrespective of age for the Pfizer shot (48 Vs 3 for >55s, 114 Vs 5 for the 18-55, 162 Vs 8 overall). For the AZ shot, in the data shown on that thread, there was 1 case in >65s that got the shot and 1 case in the placebo arm, so it wasn't following a consistent pattern seen in every other group, but again, it's the lack of events that is making the confidence interval huge (which is a statistical quirk...it explains why people are suggesting <10% efficacy, but it's really a misunderstanding of statistics). The real reason the Germans are holding off on >65s is that confidence intervals aside, there isn't enough data there to draw a firm conclusion, here just wasn't enough people included in that age group to say with confidence that the patterns observed in other age groups persist (and remember, the AZ data is messy full stop, as they had a mix of gaps between shots and a mix of doses, so all of a sudden, when you are looking at subgroups, there a dwindling number of participants in each of them and that cuts your statistical power). I would say from the data that there is far more security in what Pfizer showed since it's clear, clean, and consistent across age groups, but not adequately powered to say anything other than, our vaccine is 95% efficacious and we don't see much difference no matter what age group we look at (and that's in a single study of over 36,000 people)...AZ have a good signal for what works, they have 62% efficacy in one group, 90% efficacy in another (they reported this as overall as 70%), but have since said they have figured out how to make it over 80% irrespective of dose....but they don't have that data from almost 40,000 individuals, they have it from a couple of hundred within their various trials (it's probably fine, but it's a mess). In cold hard scientific terms, there's no comparison between the outcome of the two trials, but it's obviously being suggested that it's political. Really, it's a company that already makes vaccines vs a company that has less experience in this regard (while still being one of the biggest Pharma companies in the world). 

[Ozanne]

 

[onthebeach]

6 minutes ago, Toilet Duck said:

What it really highlights is the difficulty in drawing significant conclusions from very few events. In the Pfizer Phase 3 data, there were 19 cases in >65s on the placebo arm, Vs 1 case in the vaccinated arm (nearly 4000 participants in each arm). In the >74s, there were 5 cases in the placebo arm, 0 cases in the vaccinated arm (just under 800 participants in each group). Confidence intervals tend to be huge where there are no events on one side of the equation, but the same pattern of protection is seen in all subgroups irrespective of age for the Pfizer shot (48 Vs 3 for >55s, 114 Vs 5 for the 18-55, 162 Vs 8 overall). For the AZ shot, in the data shown on that thread, there was 1 case in >65s that got the shot and 1 case in the placebo arm, so it wasn't following a consistent pattern seen in every other group, but again, it's the lack of events that is making the confidence interval huge (which is a statistical quirk...it explains why people are suggesting <10% efficacy, but it's really a misunderstanding of statistics). The real reason the Germans are holding off on >65s is that confidence intervals aside, there isn't enough data there to draw a firm conclusion, here just wasn't enough people included in that age group to say with confidence that the patterns observed in other age groups persist (and remember, the AZ data is messy full stop, as they had a mix of gaps between shots and a mix of doses, so all of a sudden, when you are looking at subgroups, there a dwindling number of participants in each of them and that cuts your statistical power). I would say from the data that there is far more security in what Pfizer showed since it's clear, clean, and consistent across age groups, but not adequately powered to say anything other than, our vaccine is 95% efficacious and we don't see much difference no matter what age group we look at (and that's in a single study of over 36,000 people)...AZ have a good signal for what works, they have 62% efficacy in one group, 90% efficacy in another (they reported this as overall as 70%), but have since said they have figured out how to make it over 80% irrespective of dose....but they don't have that data from almost 40,000 individuals, they have it from a couple of hundred within their various trials (it's probably fine, but it's a mess). In cold hard scientific terms, there's no comparison between the outcome of the two trials, but it's obviously being suggested that it's political. Really, it's a company that already makes vaccines vs a company that has less experience in this regard (while still being one of the biggest Pharma companies in the world). 

Thank you, as ever, for taking the time for such a detailed explanation!

[Chef]

7 minutes ago, Toilet Duck said:

What it really highlights is the difficulty in drawing significant conclusions from very few events. In the Pfizer Phase 3 data, there were 19 cases in >65s on the placebo arm, Vs 1 case in the vaccinated arm (nearly 4000 participants in each arm). In the >74s, there were 5 cases in the placebo arm, 0 cases in the vaccinated arm (just under 800 participants in each group). Confidence intervals tend to be huge where there are no events on one side of the equation, but the same pattern of protection is seen in all subgroups irrespective of age for the Pfizer shot (48 Vs 3 for >55s, 114 Vs 5 for the 18-55, 162 Vs 8 overall). For the AZ shot, in the data shown on that thread, there was 1 case in >65s that got the shot and 1 case in the placebo arm, so it wasn't following a consistent pattern seen in every other group, but again, it's the lack of events that is making the confidence interval huge (which is a statistical quirk...it explains why people are suggesting <10% efficacy, but it's really a misunderstanding of statistics). The real reason the Germans are holding off on >65s is that confidence intervals aside, there isn't enough data there to draw a firm conclusion, here just wasn't enough people included in that age group to say with confidence that the patterns observed in other age groups persist (and remember, the AZ data is messy full stop, as they had a mix of gaps between shots and a mix of doses, so all of a sudden, when you are looking at subgroups, there a dwindling number of participants in each of them and that cuts your statistical power). I would say from the data that there is far more security in what Pfizer showed since it's clear, clean, and consistent across age groups, but not adequately powered to say anything other than, our vaccine is 95% efficacious and we don't see much difference no matter what age group we look at (and that's in a single study of over 36,000 people)...AZ have a good signal for what works, they have 62% efficacy in one group, 90% efficacy in another (they reported this as overall as 70%), but have since said they have figured out how to make it over 80% irrespective of dose....but they don't have that data from almost 40,000 individuals, they have it from a couple of hundred within their various trials (it's probably fine, but it's a mess). In cold hard scientific terms, there's no comparison between the outcome of the two trials, but it's obviously being suggested that it's political. Really, it's a company that already makes vaccines vs a company that has less experience in this regard (while still being one of the biggest Pharma companies in the world). 

Do you know if there are more participants in the >65's in the US trial to hopefully make things clearer or are we effectively in a live mass trial with it currently being rolled out in the UK?