Companies are already starting to ask for proof of covid vaccination. How would Taipei respond when someone received the Sinovac vaccine? Or the rest of the world if Taiwan releases a vaccine to the world?
How do you guys feel about Taiwan pushing a vaccine that has so little data? I personally feel phase 2 is not enough to determine the efficacy of the vaccine and I feel they are using Immunobridging to just shortcut the entire process to just get it out there asap.
They are also using Novavax as some example of why the taiwanese vaccine will work just fine. I get they both use a protein spike, but the majority of protein spike vaccines have been proven to like 50-70% effective.
In this approach, an immune response biomarker(s) elicited by the vaccine in a pediatric age group is compared to the same immune response biomarker(s) elicited by the same vaccine in a relevant adult age group, with formal statistical hypothesis testing to demonstrate that the measured immune response in the pediatric age group is non-inferior to that in adults.
In the US theyâre considering using immunobridging to evaluate if an already proven (Phase III completed and EUA approved) vaccine elicits the same level of immune response in a different age group.
This is very different than whatâs being discussed in TW because in TW, the vaccines wonât have gone through Phase III trials to prove real-world efficacy in any group of people in the first place.
Well Novavax is not yet approved for use in any country. And to say that a vaccine will work just because another vaccine that uses the same general technology works seems to be pushing the bounds of medical ethics.
A question about how vaccination influences oneâs capacity to serve as a host for the virus. From my, admittedly limited, understanding, the primary benefit of vaccination is reduced chance of âcatchingâ or suffering ill effects from the virus. However, itâs unclear (to me) whether or not a vaccinated individual could still transmit the virus and infect others, if proper precautions were not taken (e.g., wearing masks).
I ask this in response to @Iconâs attempts to caution the elderly to get vaccinated and @Shaun008âs mention of healthcare workers advising the elderly.
The context: my elderly landlord/landlady chatted with me recently and were sad their sons couldnât visit them (thankfully they work from home, but live in the north). However, I was shocked to hear that the daughterâs visit every week. Both daughters are nurses in hospital settings, but claimed that they could safely visit their parents because they received their first AZ shot.
Itâs not really my business, but I advised my landlady that it would be better to wait until she and her husband were vaccinated, since transmission may still be possible, particularly from people working in hospital settings. Of course, the assurances of their nurse daughters greatly outweighed my paranoid concerns.
tl;dr: Is it safe for hospital nurses, with only the first AZ shot to be interacting weekly with their 75+ year-old elderly parents (without masks, obviously).
Theyâre still investigating whether the vaccines provide any level of sterilizing immunity. From what Iâve read, it looks like the mRNA vaccines might be superior in this regard.
One study found that a single dose of AZ cuts transmission by two thirds, which is not bad. For the vaccinated individual, the first dose provides decent protection (after 10-14 days) for at least 90 days.
Notably, in exploratory analyses, vaccine efficacy after a single standard dose was 76¡0% (59¡3â85¡9) from day 22 to day 90, and antibody levels were maintained during this period with minimal waning.
Based on these numbers, I donât think it would be âsafeâ for a person with a single dose of AZ who works in a high-risk environment to visit unvaccinated vulnerable family members. Their protection as individuals is nowhere near 100%, and even if a single dose reduces transmission by two thirds, that still leaves a non-negligible risk of transmission.
Thank you! I believe this is a reasonable takeaway from the limited findings we have so far. Intuitively, at least, it makes sense to maintain social distancing at least until all parties are fully vaccinated. However, I tend to err on the side of caution.
Where my parents live, it seems, people prefer to emphasize their ârightsâ while avoiding basic social âresponsibilities.â This does seem, however, to be less of a cultural phenomenon and more of a natural outcome of âfatigueâ resulting from extended social restrictions or âcomplacencyâ stemming from a status quo of limited local transmissions. I fear Taiwan is beginning to show a bit of both in recent weeks.
I believe thatâs just scientists being careful in a way that, yes, can certainly increase anxiety in the reader. Probably the study stopped after 90 days, so they canât speak to what happens after that.
The efficacy starts to decline, which is why a second booster shot is needed. This is common. Seasonal flu shots are only peak effective for a few months as well.
We will probably be getting annual shots for COVID the rest of our lives.
I agree that boosters will almost certain be part of the pictureâat least until the various forms of COVID are eradicated.
Just to give some historical point of reference: with full international cooperation, it took 20 years to get small pox fully under control. Looking back to such historical precedents, this guy at Canadaâs Centre for International Governance Innovation gives a great explanation about how he thinks COVID will likely end:
Yeah, IIRC they havenât looked beyond this period because itâs beyond the interval for both doses. They assume everyone who gets the first shot will get the second, so limited use in testing the efficacy of a single dose over longer periods of time.
Thereâs a lot of reason to believe that without the second booster dose the protection from the first dose will decline. Also, theyâve found that the efficacy against some of the variants is pretty low after just one dose, so thatâs an issue too.
Yes, and these days we have much less international cooperation. Itâs never fully going away. But researchers are innovating⌠I heard theyâre already coming up with a vaccine patch (same delivery system as a nicotine patch) that you just slap on your skin. Itâll be available in a year and it might be a game changer for getting people protected on a massive scale.
But COVID is here to stay. Letâs hope it gets less lethal like Spanish Flu, and doesnât mutate into something even worse.