mattb65

Not sure if you've been following but Covid-19 appears to hit pregnant women hard and has caused some tragic deaths and has been linked to an increased risk of preterm labor and miscarriage. The vaccine so far has proven safe and extremely effective. The rate ofserious but treatable allergic reactions whose rate is TBD but unlikely to be higher than 1 in 30,000 is almost certainly less than the risk of much less treatable serious illness, death or miscarriage for pregnant women who contact severe covid. So I can easily see how pregnant women would rationally choose to enter a clinical trial. They may also be doing it to help others though... There's also a lot of people out there who care about other people and participating in a clinical trial means those people are willing to make a sacrifice to help others. I'm not surprised that you consider selfless actions irrational. It confirms a lot about how you've carried yourself in this thread.

I imagine the FDA here and the equivalent agency in the UK will be doing allergen skin testing in all of these individuals to identify which component of the vaccine is causing the reaction. The rate of anaphylaxis to other vaccines historically has been one per million and though it's early, based on how many doses of Pfizer's vaccine that have been distributed, it looks like the rate for this vaccine will probably be significantly higher. So long as these vaccines are given where treatments for anaphylaxis is readily available, the risk is manageable. With time hopefully they can identify the offending component of the vaccine and use an alternative.

This is not a good take, so far the rate of allergic reaction doesn't appear to far outside what is common. Need to apply Bayes theory here to determine the significance. They cut out red tape in the review process for the clinical trials but didn't compromise the quality of the clinical trial. A 40,000 participant double blind RCT is about as good of quality data as one can get. The only big shortcut in my mind is to approve them EUA with only 2 months of safety data rather than a longer follow up period. Under the circumstances, I believe this is a reasonable shortcut to take.

Great storm for the Boston metro! I was surprised how cold it was even on the warm side of the coastal front. Was worried it would be in the 32-33 range rather than 29-30. Deerfield helped to avoid power problems. I was checking on that beast WCB band before I went to bed wishing on some level I could be there... Maybe some day.

Agree! It also snows sometimes on Haleakala on Maui. In fact the record for snowfall was 6 inches on Haleakala from 1938 up until recently. In Dec 2016 Mauna Kea got approximately 2 feet of snow. Unfortunately no official measurement because roads were impassible getting to the summit.

Now about 24 hours after getting the vaccine, here's what I experienced. The injection was nearly painless, no burning or anything. The first 12 hours I had no symptoms at all, starting at about 12 hours I started to have some slight tenderness where they did the injection, tender to palpation and mild pain when I used the muscle. It wasn't nearly bad enough that I would have taken a Tylenol or Motrin. It was slightly uncomfortable to sleep on that side. The soreness is already starting to improve. Regarding the allergic reactions being seen, I think it's important to administer the dose in a seeing where there is epinephrine, Benadryl and nursing care at a minimum all available. Anaphylactic type allergic reactions are very serious but also very treatable. I'm guessing it's more likely caused by some preservative or other component of the vaccine not the mRNA. So I'm not sure if you can definitely expect the same rates of allergic reactions between this vaccine and the Moderna one.

Just got dose #1, barely felt the shot at all but when they had to bring it the drill to insert the microchip well, don't want to discourage anytime. Thankfully they reassured me that Fauci, Hugo Chavez, Q, and the "deep state" all worked together programming the microchip to make sure it would only affect people who voted for Trump. All kidding aside, the shot itself was less painful than the flu vaccine, if I get any symptoms from this dose I'll be sure to mention it.

I guess this will depend on the track and other factors as well. On the most recent 3k NAM, here's a depiction of the coastal front at its most inland advance before it starts to crash back south and east. Pretty decent amount of areas puking snow at 33 degrees for at least a few hours. Here's the sounding for Boston at the same time.

Been tracking this storm from afar and wishing I would be in my old stomping grounds in JP or Somerville. Both look like they are in for big totals. One thing that I've seen looking at some of the mesoscale guidance is the push of the coastal front which looks to me to advance as far out as Newton/128 and extend NW/SE. On the cold side of the CF it's really cold, low to mid 20s and on the "warm" side it's 32-34 degrees until you get down to the Cape. The profile above the surface is plenty cold for the ptype to remain snow for most in MA until you get to the cape and there may be a push of sleet into some areas of CT/RI. This seems like a narrow area of 32-33 degree heavy mashed potatoes with potential for power outages/ tree damage possibly into the Boston metro and extending to parts of the south shore and north shore, thoughts? (I've got no horse in the race, it rarely gets below 60 degrees where I live, but I love tracking a good winter storm)

Some more vaccine news released from the FDA review of the Moderna data. In the Moderna study, they apparently swabbed all trial participants prior to their second dose and found that there was also a reduction in asymptomatic transmission by 64%. This is a follow up on a couple posts I had with OSU and Hoosier last week regarding the Pfizer/Biontech study. That study looked at only symptomatic patients so it is possible the vaccines are only effective at preventing symptoms/reducing disease severity and not necessarily preventing infection. This new data from Moderna provides more evidence that the Moderna vaccine probably does both. Since the vaccines are both using the same technology, I think it's a safe assumption that both mRNA vaccines will provide similar benefits to the recipient. And hopefully they are even more potent at preventing transmission after both doses because the finding was only after the first dose. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1251237?__twitter_impression=true

I'm scheduled to get dose 1 of the vaccine tomorrow morning, from what I've read, dose 1 generally has very mild side effects and dose 2 tends to have the flu-like reactions. This makes sense because dose 1 primes the immune system so when you get dose 2 the immune system ramps up the attack which is what causes the fever and body aches.

Here's a good place to start

The market is also forward looking and sees the end of the pandemic in the not too distant future. There is less and less uncertainty as we move forward with vaccinations so though there may be a temporary worsening of the economy due to lack of stimulus, the long term is looking good. My opinion.

Here's an estimate on when the pandemic will be over based on the projected rate of vaccinations and infections. https://covid19-projections.com/path-to-herd-immunity/ tl;dr probably June/July 2021 we get back to normal and defeat the virus finally. 500k death toll +/- 100k projected . Many assumptions feed the model, the biggest ones imo are numbers willing to be vaccinated, no major adverse effects that reveal themself and cause vaccinations to halt and no major manufacturing logjams. Related twitter posts discussing the model. https://twitter.com/youyanggu/status/1337147909955964929?s=19

This is a good point, I wasn't sure and looked through the NEJM paper and some of the study protocol and it does appear that the study is designed to trigger tests only for symptomatic patients. It did not appear to have any random asymptomatic testing to detect whether or not it completely blocks asymptomatic infections. I am inferring that because it blocks symptomatic infections that it probably blocks infections and doesn't just prevent symptoms. That could be inaccurate, I still will be following all the appropriate masking and related public health interventions after getting the vaccine and until the rate of community spread is reduced to a degree that we can go back to normal. Hopefully by summer 2021 if everything goes well.

95% reduction in the risk of getting the virus effectively means that once I have the vaccine I will be a dead end for the virus. This chart from the phase 3 data published in the NEJM is very powerful. It takes roughly 10 days from exposure to a foreign substance for the body to develop antibodies. That is just about the exact time when infections in the vaccine group go to a negligible level. Figure 3 in the link below. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2034577#figures_media

Bell's palsy caused by the vaccine is certainly a possible adverse reaction but more data is needed to know if this signal in the phase III data continues as the vaccine is now being widely administered. Having only 4 people is too low to be a statistically significant difference.

Your link indicates that only 10-15% experience significantly noticeable side effects. What I've read is most are nothing that a dose of Tylenol or Motrin wouldn't cover. Getting the vaccine so that I'm a dead end in a transmission chain is easily worth it to me. I'll probably be getting the vaccine in the next couple weeks, I'm second in line in my hospital behind the ICU, ER and first responders (police, fire, ems). What do you mean about complications of getting pregnant? Generally speaking pregnant women are excluded from clinical trials and the recommendation will probably be to wait until after the pregnancy. Regarding the allergic reactions, those are a risk of any treatment whether it be a vaccine or pill or infusion and will need to be monitored to see how common it is. Allergic reactions are almost always treatable. The few cases of bells palsy are still being looked into ( I'm a neurologist so this is in my wheel house) but generally speaking it's an annoying problem that the vast majority fully recover from with time. What I read is that the early opinion is more likely that the cases of bells palsy were a coincidence.

Shoot us some links to share please.

I can't help but come back to this completely reality detached statement. You have no appreciation for the scale of what 2500+ deaths a day much less 3,000+ deaths per day means. The leading causes of death are heart disease and cancer in this country. If we average 3,000 deaths per day for a whole month, that's just about the same number of people dying from Covid as people that die from cancer and heart disease in a month combined! "Not that fatal"

Third highest cause of death for 2020, caused the life expectancy to drop for the first time in Sweden in a very long time. But NBD....

Got my first email today sent to staff in my department asking who would opt in on the first round of vaccinations. I find that alone to be somewhat interesting because with the flu vaccine there's no opt in or opt out. It's get the vaccine unless you have a contraindication. I suspect I'll be getting the first dose probably within the next couple weeks.

I'm in the only yellow state on the map!

Hawaii reports residents who are positive out of state to their total. Logistically, not sure the mechanisms towards how that gets communicated to the various state health departments and if there are consistent policies in different states.

This site which previously modeled out to the future has launched a new project trying to model backwards to answer the question you are looking into above. https://covid19-projections.com/ Their best estimate is 48M total infections but a range from 32M to 73M Some pretty impressive/sad maps showing how widespread it has become in many of the midwest states while other states that put in measures to contain the thing - Hawaii, NH, VT, ME, CA, WA, OR have fared much better.