[mchusma]

If they stopped banning Astrazeneca too, and stopped vaccinating people who already had COVID, we could be done within 60 days. Astrazeneca is well above the FDAs original safety and efficacy guidance and something I'd be glad to take and give my family.

[ganeshkrishnan]

I don't think Astrazeneca is banned. maybe they dont have FBA approval.

Also they illegally marketed their psychotic drugs to children under kickbacks from doctors https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Health/astrazeneca-pay-520-m...

[IfOnlyYouKnew]

Nothing is "banned".

AZ accidentally ran their first trial with only half the intended dose. For some reason, this turned out to work better than the intended regimen (90 % vs 60 % in the other trial).

When they noticed the mistake, they pretended it had been their intention all along.

That's one troubling error, one surprising result that doesn't fit expectations and could, therefore, indicate other, potentially dangerous, problems in thinking or execution, and one deliberate lie.

Personally, I'd tend to agree with you and would probably take their vaccine if offered.

But that's something entirely different than allowing it to be given to millions of people. Getting this wrong would lead to a total breakdown of trust in institutions, and, in due course, a few democracies as well.

To insinuate some conspiracy given these circumstances is evidence for the mechanism of that breakdown, as well as irresponsible and, frankly, amateur populism.

[chromatin]

And it turns out the cohort who received the half dose was on average younger than the total study population, this explaining the apparent improvement in efficacy

[IfOnlyYouKnew]

As far as I can tell, the virus is more prevalent among younger people. Since infection, not death, was the primary endpoint, and also because medicine hasn't used that sort of wishful reasoning for about a hundred years, the age difference doesn't explain anything.

[BillyTheKing]

it certainly does, younger people have stronger immune systems, and therefore generally react better to vaccines than older people. The stronger the immune system reacts to a vaccine the better, since that usually ensures that there will be an immune-response to the actual virus as well.

[SAI_Peregrinus]

> For some reason, this turned out to work better than the intended regimen (90 % vs 60 % in the other trial).

The difference isn't actually statistically significant. It's probably 60-70% effective overall.

[IfOnlyYouKnew]

It is utterly impossible for two trials of that size (thousands) to result in 60% and 90% effectiveness, respectively, by chance. I can't quite do a t-test in my head any more, but I'd guess that difference passes the 5% significance threshold somewhere around n=30.

[eganist]

> and stopped vaccinating people who already had COVID

How would you propose doing this without drawing blood from every single person getting a vaccine?

[enchiridion]

Seem like a good option. I'd imagine it's a parallel supply chain, so it would speed things up.

[eganist]

it's most definitely not. The application and collection points aren't even the same because there's a time delay in antibody testing.

[blhack]

There are people I am personally acquainted with who have been PCR positive for COVID, who are now also receiving the vaccine.

[tertius]

If they haven't been proven to be infected why should it matter?

[blhack]

What? They have been proven to be infected (PCR positive) and they are now receiving the vaccine.

[tertius]

PCR positive doesn't mean infected.

You'll need an high amount in PCR, i.e. low cycle threshold for the probability to be high.

Antigen tests will show if there was/is an infection.

PCR does not show infection only presence. (WHO has now put out guidance about this. They don't have to it's well known.)

If you're European this may be strange to you but I'm the U.S. we don't receive the cycle count when the RNA for the virus is detected.

Here's Fauci talking about it a little: https://youtu.be/a_Vy6fgaBPE&t=4m30s

[throwaway201103]

Simply tell people, "if you've had COVID, don't get the vaccine" or maybe "go to the end of the line"

[m-ee]

That’s terrible messaging given that reinfection is rare but possible and occasionally deadly. We want everyone to take it.

[throwaway201103]

Hard to imagine that infection and recovery from the actual virus confers less immunity than the vaccine, but even without knowing that, it seems reasonable that people who have already recovered should be a lower priority for vaccination than more at-risk groups.

[m-ee]

It’s not hard to imagine, it’s a well observed phenomenon in other diseases like HPV. Antibody titers were higher for the mRNA covid vaccines than convalescent plasma if I remember right.

Most people probably are at lower risk, but some people are dying from reinfection. They certainly weren’t.

[stjohnswarts]

None of what you said is true...

[apsec112]

The AstraZeneca vaccine doesn't have enough supplies for that when you count all the countries that have ordered it, and isn't effective enough to create herd immunity by itself (most likely 60-70%).