CharonY

It depends on at least two things. First, the endpoint measurement. I.e. how did you determine a positive event. If a trial consists of regular testing of even asymptomatic folks your final infected cohort will contain cryptic infections. If you only measure symptomatic cases, your study will ignore those. I do think that the trials are likely only focusing on symptomatic events and are therefore comparable (but I could be wrong). The second issue is that the number may be derived from a differently sized infection cohort. If you only have very few infected folks the numbers you get can be highly biased. Therefore any efficacy measurement with a small cohort is unreliable. There are therefore target numbers that the study has to hit, which given infection rates turn out not to be a problem. For rarer diseases this can lead to very long trials. Yes that is the basic idea. You create two cohorts that typically are similar in composition (to avoid bias) and then let them out in the wild and see what happens. The Null hypothesis is that after some time both groups should have similar infection rates if the vaccine does not do anything. What folks hope to see is that among the (much smaller) infected group, we see disparity between treatment and control. The big challenge is to get enough folks infected and there is a risk of confounding factors leading to who gets infected in the first place. The idea is then that both (control and vaccinated group) are similar enough to each other to cancel that out. That is potentially not always the case. Just as a random example, it is possible that the vaccine does not work for elderly female Asian folks (for some reasons). But since so few are in either group we have no information about that.

It would fall until the emergency approval pipeline. Herd immunity would take at least another year according to projections, assuming there are no further restrictions.

One would need to look at the full report to see what kind of measure was used. A typical design would involve self-monitoring for symptoms and participants will be regularly called to see how they are doing. So unless they specifically monitored for asymptomatic cases (which would increase complexity of the trial and I suspect is somewhat unlikely), it is more likely the reported cases are symptomatic ones. In other words, among the whole cohort we find 5% of folks having symptoms (and then tested) despite being vaccinated and the remaining infected folks only had the placebo. The overall cohort was only 30k people and while they try to be representative of the population, it also means that we will only have limited data regarding who has been infected and why. There are also other considerations, e.g. whether folks getting sick while vaccinated may have a much higher exposure than the rest. Also, one thing to consider is that, assuming the vaccine acts as promised, it basically means they do not get sick. However, it does not mean that they may not get infected and perhaps even spread the disease. I suspect that many folks will believe that once vaccinated they are immune and can get everywhere, but I hope it will be communicated that they still need to keep their distance from unvaccinated folks. Often, vaccinations will reduce the viral titer sufficiently to only pose a problem in rare cases. However, with this disease we simply do not know.

I think Pfizer submitted their report for approval, which is a good sign. I think Sputnik V is not a contender yet as they only reported 20 cases. And perhaps just as some additional info, the vaccine from Pfizer was developed by a small German company (BioNTech). Pfizer has taken over the costly bits (including manufacturing and distribution). Also perhaps as a sidenote, one of the reasons why they managed to hit their milestone is because so many people are getting infected...

Unfortunately I feel that even that limit may be too high, especially when folks travel from outside a given bubble. In Canada part of the current surge is likely due to thanksgiving gatherings. Considering that the US is already in worse shape, it could be rather catastrophic.

I suspect the authors may have assumed that because of their diet, but the acid is unlikely to accumulate in muscle. In ant eaters they remain in the stomach where they help digesting their prey, for example.

I mean that for a given column size you it works better to have sufficient resin to have an even packing, avoiding air gaps and so on. It depends a bit on whether you use syringes, spin- or gravity columns. Thinking back, I think too much resin could encourage unspecific capture, as there is less competition with your tagged protein, so I may have to walk back that statement a bit. Unless we run into trouble (e.g. after quantifying which proteins we isolated using mass spec) we tend to use a standard amount which corresponds to usually more than we need. But we do not try to optimize it before each isolation.

Indeed, but that is also why we do not just broadcasting it into the population without qualifying what the statistic mean.

Because numbers are generally not that high and folks misunderstand what it means. What are more common are low numbers, say 4% of the total are criminal and within a subgroup 8% are criminal. Many would then assume that folks falling into the subgroup are more criminal and hence should be avoided. Yet of course 92% are not criminal, meaning that that applying that particular logic would fail most of the time in predicting criminality. There will only be fairly few markers that would have any predictive value (say, a specific gang membership tattoo, though I am not really sure whether that is true, either). As most folks do not really go ahead and calculate positive predictive values for these kind of things and moreover, we have a psychological bias for positive correlations, folks are more likely to misinterpret things with at time rather ugly outcomes. In biomarker for disease research we face a similar challenge where many biological markers are more likely associated with a given condition, but if we really try to apply them indiscriminately, our ability to detect a given disease is often abysmal.

Our brain works hard to maintain color constancy. Some mechanisms are known, I believe, but as a whole is still subject to investigation. I assume that similar mechanisms are at play at reflective surfaces, colours are intepreted based on context. If we see a perfect reflection we interpret the reflected object, but seeing the object in isolation we interpret its surface instead. There may be other mechanisms at play as part of scene recognition, but this is way outside of any of my expertise.

I do not think that this can be easily generalized, especially as there are different systems. I found that having a good packing (based on the geometry of the column) is more important than the resin to substrate ratio. However that is not really based on stringent testing. The bigger issue I see with a low abundance of the protein is that the column captures more unspecific metal-binding proteins.

That could work, if you use the right primers, of course. There are multiple ways to approach this issue all with different advantages and disadvantages. It also depends a bit on the subject. But given the details you have provided I would not see why a PCR would not work. Edit: It would not work if you for some reasons a mixed sample, for instance.

I do not recall that the press release covered that. Most likely one would need for the full report to see more. At max of course the time frame covered is from the start of phase 3 (I think end of July for the Moderna vaccine) until now. So we only have at most dat for 4 months (but not everyone in the trial was vaccinated at the same time, of course).

Exactly. Also while the folks tried to have a somewhat diverse patient pool, the small numbers make it a bit difficult to assess overall efficacy in, say, elderly. There are also other challenges- mRNA are quite fragile so the logistics of storing and distributing them is going to be more finicky than most traditional vaccines. It also increases the risk of mishandling and resulting lack of protection.

Of course, it is clearly a PR/financial decision. However, we are also in a public health crisis so that mix is a bit hard to digest, so to speak.

I wished the companies would release reports rather than providing press releases (I know, it is all for their shareholders, but still). As a whole the the reports are very encouraging. The major issues are basically the relatively low infections. In both reported about 95 folks were infected with around 5-10 people in the treatment group. While the data looks great, one should be careful not to take the numbers at face value, the numbers are likely to shift once more people are inoculated and exposed to the virus. Considering the surges we have, it may not take long. Another thing to note is that mRNA vaccines have not been as rigorously tested as the other forms. While all existing data indicate that it is likely to be safe, there is simply not as much history behind them as for other forms.

On a different note, Sweden was doing a soft lockdown, but without the additional measures as found in a number of Asian countries. There was a bit of a controversy whether they actually tried to go for herd immunity (it was officially denied, though internal memos hinted at that). There were semi-official estimates that a good proportion of Stockholm might already have been infected a while back, though a subsequent antibody study indicated that it is not the case. Overall Sweden had a much higher number of deaths than their neighbours (600 deaths per mio vs 140 in Denmark). And now the numbers are climbing as in other European countries, indicating that clearly there is no sign of herd immunity to be found. Using current data, on a global scale the Americas are leading in deaths. Africa as a whole is doing much better, with the exception of North and South Africa. Australia and most of East Asia is also way better off. As a whole the overall trends have not shifted that much from the start.

No scientist (or any reasonable person) would claim to now everything. They would be out of a job at that point.

! Moderator Note The thread has veered away from politics toward mysticism (including satellites..?). We are still a science forum and do not talk about the great masters beyond the veil.

Water is absorbed passively throughout the intestine. The small intestine absorbs the bulk and then gets further removed as it moves through the large intestine.

Not to mention that the 2016 electorate has been dissected to death. More likely folks disliking Clinton were simply not turning up. There is a reason why folks voted for Trump in 2016 and that reason is not pretty. I doubt it has changed much this time around, but studies will tell. What is worrying is the strong support even after demonstrating that level of overall stupidity and incompetence. Just imagine what would have happened if Trump was a more capable autocrat and undermined democracy more effectively. Rather obviously a large swathe of the population as well as the political establishment is rather fine with subverting democratic procedures. So if an actual capable autocrat came along, things might look rather dire. After all, it does not seem that the mechanisms are that resilient in the US, as one might have hoped.

It shows that he takes the pandemic seriously (as he should). Unfortunately I a significant proportion of the US population (and unfortunately also elsewhere) do not. And since the measures in place in most of the countries rely on community-level behaviour, things are likely to be rather dire for a while longer. Just look at Canada, they had the right central messaging, but even ignoring policy failures there are too many people not taking the risks seriously. Especially among young folks there is the assumption that they are not going to be impacted, but apparently the spread is also not well contained in age groups above 40. Folks are tired of isolation and cases are rising everywhere. I also worry that the successes of potential vaccines may lead to more irresponsible behaviour fueling more deaths and long-term harm than necessary.

It is a great book though. However, the takeway should be that modelling the process of evolution requires multiple mathematical models for various aspects of it. There is no one elegant unified model (which is probably true for any somewhat complex system).

The only think I am wondering about is how many infections they managed to observe. I mean, given the surges now it should not be that hard to hit the numbers, but still... Edit: have not found a full report, but some articles reference 94 infections in total.

I think it depends a lot on framing as well as whether folks think that they (or someone like them) could eventually benefit from it. For example in a study there was significant support for housing supplements when a white family was on a brochure, but that support dropped when a black family was depicted. Similarly, (white) parents support ethnicity as part of admissions if they are shown images of Asian students, but are for race-free admission process if Asians are not mentioned. I.e. folks are not fundamentally against policies that are generally considered progressive, but they need it to be couched differently, especially if folks do not see a benefit for themselves.