refusing to elaborate your argument because of some vague "gentlemen's agreement" is a terrible idea. I dont suggest anyone listen to this guy's advice, trust me I would tell you why but I've made a promise and we pinky-sweared!
Not naming and shaming enables terrible people to do continue doing terrible things. I've never understood (unless there is an NDA, but sometimes even then..)
I also think I should've been paid for how brutal (and sudden) the effects of covid were on me - And that was something I didn't have any choice in the matter in...
It's also sad that humans act so immorally that laws forbidding rape and murder must exist. Or maybe it's good that we can come together as a society and agree that these things are bad? Who knows
Well the big difference is that even without laws against rape and murder it is generally still a big exception. On the other hand tracking, carelessness with personal data, privacy violations etc. have been very much the norm with all companies (and arguably still are) even before the GDPR.
Probably because Biden supporters are less 'online' and there aren't that many dedicated supporters of his (as in there are more people who simply think biden is better than the alternative than actually liking him). Contrasted to a personality like Trump who amassed an online dedicated cult following, in which they would literally try to decipher every word he said for hidden messages from the God emperor himself.
In the same way that Twitter seems to be full of anti-capitalist anarchist communists, demographics of the real world turn out to be a lot different than social media makes it seem.
Not just immunocompromised. Group 6 was anyone <65yo with a clinical condition which made them more vulnerable. Nearly 7 million people were eligable for that. I imagine they have nearly been done by now, and at least half would have had AZ, so that's 3.5m young(ish) people that have had AZ used.
do you really think the thousands of scientists working on this just forgot to take into account the harm caused by the vaccine in comparison to covid?
i know we all trust US and european science more than others, but we need to be careful with press releases until proper research is published. e.g. remdesivir is generally a fiasco yet widely publicized
Mind reading doesn't work. I was merely pointing out there doesn't seem to be safety data yet, and it will be required to deploy this widely. This is PR pure and simple. It doesn't mean that "we have a vaccine" quite yet, unless you want to recklessly endanger a lot of people. We won't have it for a while.
In your conspiracy theory, surely, they'd just have announced after polls closed? Why wait for it to be called? Also, this vaccine was actually developed by a German company, who would likely resent their partner playing this game.
This timing is consistent with when we've been told we might see early results all along, really; it shouldn't be that surprising. Expect announcements from other teams over the next couple of months.
First business day after the election was called, but not after the election itself (i.e. people couldn't vote after 11/02). Or are you saying that they were planning on not releasing this at all in case of a Trump win and not just trying to influence the election?
The thought didn't even cross my mind that they'd hold the vaccine for political reasons. Just the press release. Holding the vaccine itself for political reasons would be murder on a mass scale.
In a double-blind, phase 3 trial only one group has on-going data access: the independent group conducting the study. No one else, including patients, doctors, and the business, has any knowledge of the results until they are "unsealed". That continues to be true throughout the entire trial even if preliminary results are unsealed at different points.
Precisely. They have seen 94 infections total so far, based on the statistics that’s likely to be almost entirely in the control group. Those infections are reported as they come in, so for example, perhaps last week there were 87 infections. The study ends once they hit ~150 infections, based on their sample size that will give them the confidence intervals they need to finalize.
So the difference between announcing preliminary results last week versus this week was their own internal decision on timing.
They intentionally kept the samples frozen in their lab until the day after the election. The most important vaccine in the 21st century, and they kept the samples on ice? That's incredible.
Ok, I have to partially take that back. According the Pfizer they intentionally did not confirm the data until last Wednesday.
> The first analysis was to occur after 32 volunteers — both those who received the vaccine and those on placebo — had contracted Covid-19. If fewer than six volunteers in the group who received the vaccine had developed Covid-19, the companies would make an announcement that the vaccine appeared to be effective. The study would continue until at least 164 cases of Covid-19 — individuals with at least one symptom and a positive test result — had been reported.
> In their announcement of the results, Pfizer and BioNTech revealed a surprise. The companies said they had decided not to conduct the 32-case analysis “after a discussion with the FDA.” Instead, they planned to conduct the analysis after 62 cases. But by the time the plan had been formalized, there had been 94 cases of Covid-19 in the study. It’s not known how many were in the vaccine arm, but it would have to be nine or fewer.
> Gruber said that Pfizer and BioNTech had decided in late October that they wanted to drop the 32-case interim analysis. At that time, the companies decided to stop having their lab confirm cases of Covid-19 in the study, instead leaving samples in storage. The FDA was aware of this decision. Discussions between the agency and the companies concluded, and testing began this past Wednesday. When the samples were tested, there were 94 cases of Covid in the trial. The DSMB met on Sunday.
Discussions between the agency and the companies concluded, and testing began this past Wednesday.
