-PJ- wrote: ↑February 24, 2021, 5:21 pm
How about the doc who gave 2 elderly patients in a Qld retirement home 4 times the recommended dosage of COVID- 19 vaccine...
Wow.
Turns out the doc didn’t get sufficient training..he’s been stood down.
And they're both fine, go figure.
It's almost like vaccines aren't harmful or something.
Both are resting in hospital and will be ok you are right.
In the meantime the doctor involved will return to his specialist roll..temperature taking !!
3rd Battalion Royal Australian Regiment..Old Faithful
#emptythetank
gergreg wrote: ↑March 5, 2021, 4:26 pm
I made the mistake of opening the Facebook comments of a dept of health vaccine post last night. I won't do that again.
Sent from my SM-G975F using Tapatalk
Don't open the Comments section of anything, it really is just filled with the worst people on the planet... and Lucy.
Hmmmm, didn't really need those last two words then.
gergreg wrote: ↑March 5, 2021, 4:26 pm
I made the mistake of opening the Facebook comments of a dept of health vaccine post last night. I won't do that again.
Sent from my SM-G975F using Tapatalk
Don't open the Comments section of anything, it really is just filled with the worst people on the planet... and Lucy.
Hmmmm, didn't really need those last two words then.
Correct. The two are not mutually exclusive.
* The author assumes no responsibility for the topicality, correctness, completeness or quality of information provided.
On January 11th 2020, the RNA sequence of the SARS-Cov-2 was published for the first time. 2 days later, Moderna had a vaccine ready for testing. Today, just under 14 months later, I received my first dose of a Covid-19 vaccine.
Vaccines are first tested on animal models susceptible to the virus before moving onto human trials. Human trials occur in 4 steps, designated Phase 1 to Phase 4.
Phase 1 is mostly to determine if the vaccine is safe for further testing in humans. It occurs in small numbers, generally 20 to 100 healthy adult volunteers. It evaluates the safety of different doses, and performs early analysis of immune responses.
Phase 2 is to work out the best dose, and determine the common side effects. This phase includes hundreds of adult volunteers of different demographics and health statuses. By measuring antibody levels, T cell numbers and types, it evaluates the immune response of differing doses, and determines the likely most effective dose and regimen. It looks for common side effects, such as headaches, muscle ache, swelling at the injection site and low grade fever. It also looks for serious adverse events.
Phase 1 and Phase 2 typically take months to years each to perform.
Phase 3 is to determine how effective the vaccine is, and what the rare side effects are. These are very large trials involving tens of thousands of adult volunteers of differing demographics and health statuses. Volunteers are randomised to receive either the vaccine or a placebo. They, and the person giving the dose do not know if the volunteer is receiving the vaccine or the placebo (double blinded). The trial looks to determine a specific end point. In this case, the vaccine trials have been designed to determine if the vaccine reduces the rate of symptomatic (and particularly severe) disease. The trials were not designed to determine if the vaccine reduces the rate of transmission. Volunteers in Phase 3 trials are followed for 2 years.
Phase 3 trials often take years to complete.
Phase 4 occurs once the vaccine is rolled out to the community. Phase 4 is ongoing surveillance of the immunisation program. It detects very rare adverse events, or adverse events not recognised in Phase 3 studies.
On average, it takes 10 years to develop a vaccine and have it successfully approved for general use. Given this, it is understandable that people are wary about having a vaccine that was developed so rapidly. There are numerous reasons why these vaccines were successfully developed in record time.
Traditionally, vaccines have required growing and then weakening, killing or isolated parts of the pathogen (bacteria or virus). This takes a long time, and vaccines using this technology (such as Novovax) are still undergoing trials. The vaccines that have been approved for use have used new, repurposed vaccine “platforms”. After recent serious epidemics such as SARS, MERS and Ebola, “plug and play” vaccine platforms were developed for pandemic preparedness. Examples of this are the mRNA platforms (Moderna, Pfizer/BioNtech) which have been in development for over a decade, and the adenovirus platforms (Oxford/Astra Zeneca, Johnson and Johnson). Much of the safety aspects of these platforms was already understood. The vaccine is essentially ready to go, the mRNA sequence (mRNA vaccines) or viral antigen (adenovirus vaccines) just needs to be slotted in. This is why the Moderna vaccine was ready to be tested with 2 days of the virus sequence being released.
Governments and Corporations were very motivated to find a vaccine. This meant that development was funded very, very well. Multiple companies and research institutes had scientists working very long hours. There was massive recruitment of volunteers in weeks to months, something that generally takes months to years. The high rate of infection in the countries that the vaccines were trialled meant that end points (a certain number of people infected) were reached quickly. Companies were mass producing the vaccine while the trials were underway - Astra Zeneca had 4 million doses of their vaccine ready to distribute at the end of their Phase 3 trial.
Trial phases were run in parallel or back to back. Many of the trials merged Phase 1 and Phase 2. Data was crunched as it came in, allowing trials to run straight from Phase 2 to Phase 3 within weeks, whereas they may usually wait years.
Red tape was cut and money wasn’t a problem. There was no need to write grant applications only to have them rejected, rewritten and resubmitted. Institutional approvals were prioritised.
The Pfizer vaccine has 43,000 volunteers in its Phase 3 trial. The Astra Zeneca trial had 35,000. The data was scrutinised by independent regulators as the data rolled in and the trials progressed. Safety hasn’t been sacrificed in these trials – bureaucracy has. We are witnessing what Science can achieve unencumbered.
Today I rolled up my sleeve to protect my families and friends, my patients and colleagues, and my community. It wasn’t a hard decision for me. I have faith in our regulators, and I have faith in Science.
But Doc, Karen on Facebook is demanding to see the actual data from these tests and nobody has been able to provide it. Karen has the expertise that these scientists, who have been in their respective fields for decades, clearly don't. I think we should side with Karen on this one.
gergreg wrote:But Doc, Karen on Facebook is demanding to see the actual data from these tests and nobody has been able to provide it. Karen has the expertise that these scientists, who have been in their respective fields for decades, clearly don't. I think we should side with Karen on this one.
Sent from my SM-G975F using Tapatalk
"i want to see the long term side effects before I decide whether I want to take it"
Well you can die from the virus, and probably won't die from the side effects..
gergreg wrote:But Doc, Karen on Facebook is demanding to see the actual data from these tests and nobody has been able to provide it. Karen has the expertise that these scientists, who have been in their respective fields for decades, clearly don't. I think we should side with Karen on this one.
Sent from my SM-G975F using Tapatalk
"i want to see the long term side effects before I decide whether I want to take it"
Well you can die from the virus, and probably won't die from the side effects..
Sent from my Pixel 5 using Tapatalk
Must take these same people forever to do anything else in their lives. For example eating out, you've got to interegate the waiter about every single ingredient in the menu, where it's come from - particularly with preservatives. Imagine grocery shopping and having to look through the list of ingredients?