So, that vaccine
9 Nov 2020 17:00![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nwhikerLooks like Pfizer has a vaccine candidate that is performing extremely well in trials: Pfizer coronavirus vaccine could be cleared by mid-December following release of data showing it is more than 90 percent effective.
This is encouraging news.
HowEVER, it's preliminary results, it was a press release, not a peer-reviewed anything, and major big caveat: people who got the vaccine had 90% fewer cases of symptomatic Covid than those who got a placebo. Sounds great, but it doesn't at this point give any data on asymptomatic people who might or might not be shedding virus.
And boy is this one going to be a peachy bit of fun to distribute: it needs to be stored at -70C. That's, um, cold. Not surprising since it's an mRNA vaccine, and RNA is a finicky chemical.
And about that mRNA technology: it's completely new. Yay, let's inject the whole world the a vaccine made with new tech. It should be safe. But it still sounds like the start of a bad science fiction dystopian society post civilization collapse from the unintended consequences of a vaccine story.
Still, I was excited to read this, and I'm looking forward to more data being released. Because the important piece of information appears to be this one: up to now, we knew they could trigger the immune system to make antibodies against Sars-CoV-2. We did not know if those antibodies could prevent people from catching Covid-19. This appears to say we can. And that's critical.
This is encouraging news.
HowEVER, it's preliminary results, it was a press release, not a peer-reviewed anything, and major big caveat: people who got the vaccine had 90% fewer cases of symptomatic Covid than those who got a placebo. Sounds great, but it doesn't at this point give any data on asymptomatic people who might or might not be shedding virus.
And boy is this one going to be a peachy bit of fun to distribute: it needs to be stored at -70C. That's, um, cold. Not surprising since it's an mRNA vaccine, and RNA is a finicky chemical.
And about that mRNA technology: it's completely new. Yay, let's inject the whole world the a vaccine made with new tech. It should be safe. But it still sounds like the start of a bad science fiction dystopian society post civilization collapse from the unintended consequences of a vaccine story.
Still, I was excited to read this, and I'm looking forward to more data being released. Because the important piece of information appears to be this one: up to now, we knew they could trigger the immune system to make antibodies against Sars-CoV-2. We did not know if those antibodies could prevent people from catching Covid-19. This appears to say we can. And that's critical.
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