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Interesting new study on vaccine effects

The home for all non-political Coronavirus (Covid-19) discussions on The Lemon Fool
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This is the home for all non-political Coronavirus (Covid-19) discussions on The Lemon Fool
redsturgeon
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Interesting new study on vaccine effects

#498331

Postby redsturgeon » May 4th, 2022, 9:13 am

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_nKoybyMGg

Study shows significant differences between mRNA (eg. Pfizer) and adenovirus vector(eg. AZ) vaccines in terms of overall mortality outcomes.

With relative risk of death from all causes after mRNA vaccines 1.07 vs 0.37 with adenovirus vector vaccines.

(1.0 being no difference and lower number being less chance of death.)

Not peer reviewed yet but interesting early warning signals perhaps.

The professor interview says at the end that she would not recommend Pfizer type vaccines for over 50s but would recommend AZ type.

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Re: Interesting new study on vaccine effects

#498342

Postby XFool » May 4th, 2022, 9:56 am

redsturgeon wrote:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_nKoybyMGg

Study shows significant differences between mRNA (eg. Pfizer) and adenovirus vector(eg. AZ) vaccines in terms of overall mortality outcomes.

With relative risk of death from all causes after mRNA vaccines 1.07 vs 0.37 with adenovirus vector vaccines.

(1.0 being no difference and lower number being less chance of death.)

Not peer reviewed yet but interesting early warning signals perhaps.

The professor interview says at the end that she would not recommend Pfizer type vaccines for over 50s but would recommend AZ type.

So, an interesting reversal of previous 'recommendations'. :?

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Re: Interesting new study on vaccine effects

#498348

Postby redsturgeon » May 4th, 2022, 10:18 am

XFool wrote:
redsturgeon wrote:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_nKoybyMGg

Study shows significant differences between mRNA (eg. Pfizer) and adenovirus vector(eg. AZ) vaccines in terms of overall mortality outcomes.

With relative risk of death from all causes after mRNA vaccines 1.07 vs 0.37 with adenovirus vector vaccines.

(1.0 being no difference and lower number being less chance of death.)

Not peer reviewed yet but interesting early warning signals perhaps.

The professor interview says at the end that she would not recommend Pfizer type vaccines for over 50s but would recommend AZ type.

So, an interesting reversal of previous 'recommendations'. :?


Yes but actually thinking about the context in which she made that remark she may have mis-spoke and meant "under 50s"

Anyhow it is worth a look, there's a lot in there that I have summarised very briefly

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Re: Interesting new study on vaccine effects

#498351

Postby servodude » May 4th, 2022, 10:25 am

redsturgeon wrote:With relative risk of death from all causes after mRNA vaccines 1.07 vs 0.37 with adenovirus vector vaccines


So a vaccine like AZ more than halves your chance of dying from anything?

I'll have a watch when I get a chance but that seems like a strange proposition and sets my Simpson Paradox sense tingling

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Re: Interesting new study on vaccine effects

#498354

Postby redsturgeon » May 4th, 2022, 10:33 am

servodude wrote:
redsturgeon wrote:With relative risk of death from all causes after mRNA vaccines 1.07 vs 0.37 with adenovirus vector vaccines


So a vaccine like AZ more than halves your chance of dying from anything?

I'll have a watch when I get a chance but that seems like a strange proposition and sets my Simpson Paradox sense tingling


I know, I thought so too. I am neutral on this at the moment and wanted to hear some learned fool thoughts. The professor seems fairly kosher though and the whole thing has many caveats laced through. She is very low key in what she is claiming and her history in the area is valid.

Here is the abstract for a quicker read.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm ... id=4072489

John

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Re: Interesting new study on vaccine effects

#498356

Postby servodude » May 4th, 2022, 10:35 am

redsturgeon wrote:
servodude wrote:
redsturgeon wrote:With relative risk of death from all causes after mRNA vaccines 1.07 vs 0.37 with adenovirus vector vaccines


So a vaccine like AZ more than halves your chance of dying from anything?

I'll have a watch when I get a chance but that seems like a strange proposition and sets my Simpson Paradox sense tingling


I know, I thought so too. I am neutral on this at the moment and wanted to hear some learned fool thoughts. The professor seems fairly kosher though and the whole thing has many caveats laced through. She is very low key in what she is claiming and her history

Here is the abstract for a quicker read.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm ... id=4072489

John


Thanks. I'll have a read.

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Re: Interesting new study on vaccine effects

#498358

Postby AsleepInYorkshire » May 4th, 2022, 10:36 am

Can I have both?

Belt and braces :)

AiY(D)

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Re: Interesting new study on vaccine effects

#498367

Postby CliffEdge » May 4th, 2022, 10:55 am

Maybe the az vaccine was designed by aliens?

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Re: Interesting new study on vaccine effects

#498371

Postby servodude » May 4th, 2022, 11:00 am

CliffEdge wrote:Maybe the az vaccine was designed by aliens?


If there was an award for best cross/off-topic post I think you might have just won it

;)

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Re: Interesting new study on vaccine effects

#498373

Postby pje16 » May 4th, 2022, 11:04 am

AsleepInYorkshire wrote:Can I have both?

Belt and braces :)

AiY(D)

Go for a hatrick - Moderna :lol:

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Re: Interesting new study on vaccine effects

#498385

Postby Julian » May 4th, 2022, 11:41 am

servodude wrote:
redsturgeon wrote:With relative risk of death from all causes after mRNA vaccines 1.07 vs 0.37 with adenovirus vector vaccines


So a vaccine like AZ more than halves your chance of dying from anything?

I'll have a watch when I get a chance but that seems like a strange proposition and sets my Simpson Paradox sense tingling

Do watch. I'm about 60% of the way through but right up front she explains that the surprising AZ effect isn't actually anything new and has been seen already even more dramatically with measles vaccines where a campaign in Africa in the late 70s & early 80s was expected, if it only prevented Measles deaths, to reduce all-causes mortality levels in the population by about 10%. What was actually seen over the following year was all-causes mortality reductions of 70%! The thinking is that live virus vaccines somehow can not only stimulate the specific adaptive immune responses to the presented virus but also somehow give the immune system some more general "life lessons" that allows it to fight off other infectious diseases more effectively. (In the area of Africa involved other infectious diseases were the main causes of death especially in the young which is maybe why the effect was seen so dramatically there. The AZ Covid-19 vaccine seems to be behaving more like a live virus vaccine here. (Or maybe it is considered live virus, just not the virus being vaccinated against. The adenovirus used is I believe replication deficient so I'm not sure what category that would put it in.)

If these figures hold up (as in are not undermined by confounding factors or gross errors in methodology or even the data itself) then it seems to me to be a case of good news bad news. The good news is that if we could only understand more fully the mechanisms underlying that broader effect of the AZ (and some other) vaccines on all-causes mortality that could be a huge leap forward in public health. The bad news of course would be mRNA safety issues which would be such a shame given the flexibility and manufacturing benefits of that technology plus its applications in other non-vaccine areas.

At least as an initial reaction to the data it does look as if cardiovascular issues might be the area of concern for the mRNA vaccines. At about time index 16:00 they show a table that includes data specific to CV deaths and it shows the relative risk of a CV death after the vaccine (1 = no change in risk for vaccinated vs unvaccinated) as 0.065 for AZ and 1.45 for Pfizer. And on top of that, and I've said this a few times, I have seen at least 2 extremely detailed theories proposed for the mechanism of action leading to the rare AZ clots, with both papers suggesting that tweaks could be made in future to reduce those small risks even further, whereas I have seen nothing similar proposing any detailed mechanism of action for the mRNA peri/myocarditis adverse events. I assume the mechanism of action needs to be understood before vaccine developers can realistically work out how to address such issues.

If this does pan out then the Hollywood script for the Sarah Gilbert biopic seems to be writing itself. Scientist shoots to fame for developing a vaccine, standing ovations at Wimbledon etc. Then the world turns against the vaccine, countries sell off stocks, some people are nervous to take it, restrictions on who gets it are imposed, and some politicians even put the boot in. Our heroine is banished to the wilderness until it is discovered that far from being inferior it actually has health benefits far beyond those that anyone ever imagined, the world rejoices and once again Sarah Gilbert is showered with accolades and praise. Now if only the script writers could work in CliffEdge's aliens somehow it could be marketed as a sci-fi movie and those tend to be quite big earners at the box office.

- Julian

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Re: Interesting new study on vaccine effects

#498395

Postby XFool » May 4th, 2022, 12:03 pm

servodude wrote:
CliffEdge wrote:Maybe the az vaccine was designed by aliens?

If there was an award for best cross/off-topic post I think you might have just won it

Um... I wonder if there might indeed be some genuine crossover here with that aliens thread?

I'd be very sceptical here, admittedly I have only read the abstract.

For overall mortality, with 74,193 participants and 61 deaths (mRNA:31; placebo:30), the relative risk (RR) for the two mRNA vaccines compared with placebo was 1.03 (95% CI=0.63-1.71). In the adenovirus-vector vaccines there were 122,164 participants and 46 deaths (vaccine:16; controls:30).

Were the two populations the same? Recruited in a similar manner? Same age distribution? Same social distribution? From the same countries even?
The overall statistics might imply the Adenovirus trial population were healthier, or less at risk, or just more risk averse to start with!

Number of deaths (vaccinated/unvaccinated) small in number in both cases.

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Re: Interesting new study on vaccine effects

#498400

Postby Dod101 » May 4th, 2022, 12:11 pm

From a totally unacademic simple soul. Let them argue it out and when they have a real conclusion I will listen. Meanwhile both seem to be doing the job.

Dod

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Re: Interesting new study on vaccine effects

#498414

Postby Julian » May 4th, 2022, 12:44 pm

Dod101 wrote:From a totally unacademic simple soul. Let them argue it out and when they have a real conclusion I will listen. Meanwhile both seem to be doing the job.

Dod

I think that's a sensible attitude. I've tried to read up on this stuff in a bit more depth over the last year or so so that I can at least eavesdrop on some of the arguments but unless one has dedicated decades of one's life to a relevant discipline such as immunology it is not sensible for a lay person to try to draw any conclusions at this stage, or at any stage come to that. In my view one does indeed need to wait until some level of scientific concensus emerges on a particular topic and if that doesn't happen then one can only go with gut instinct.

This professor herself cautions multiple times in this video that she is not happy with the sample sizes and levels of specific detail that she was able to get for this particular paper. It will be very interesting to see if it gets through peer review.

The basic message I take from this is that looking at non-specific vaccine effects with a view to quantifying (or even establishing) such effects, and then hopefully understanding what is actually going on if such effects are confirmed, seems to be a fascinating and promising area of research especially if overall positive non-specific effects can be understood and then deliberately engineered into future vaccines. I suspect that we're just at the foot of the knowledge mountain on this one though.

- Julian

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Re: Interesting new study on vaccine effects

#498422

Postby servodude » May 4th, 2022, 1:01 pm

Julian wrote:
Dod101 wrote:From a totally unacademic simple soul. Let them argue it out and when they have a real conclusion I will listen. Meanwhile both seem to be doing the job.

Dod

I think that's a sensible attitude. I've tried to read up on this stuff in a bit more depth over the last year or so so that I can at least eavesdrop on some of the arguments but unless one has dedicated decades of one's life to a relevant discipline such as immunology it is not sensible for a lay person to try to draw any conclusions at this stage, or at any stage come to that. In my view one does indeed need to wait until some level of scientific concensus emerges on a particular topic and if that doesn't happen then one can only go with gut instinct.

This professor herself cautions multiple times in this video that she is not happy with the sample sizes and levels of specific detail that she was able to get for this particular paper. It will be very interesting to see if it gets through peer review.

The basic message I take from this is that looking at non-specific vaccine effects with a view to quantifying (or even establishing) such effects, and then hopefully understanding what is actually going on if such effects are confirmed, seems to be a fascinating and promising area of research especially if overall positive non-specific effects can be understood and then deliberately engineered into future vaccines. I suspect that we're just at the foot of the knowledge mountain on this one though.

- Julian


I think we're in "dangerous language" territory more than much else.

The risk of a "correlation vs cause" mis-attributation is high in this kind of stuff at the best of times; and that's often down simply to a turn of phrase; not even un-intentionally equating sample sets.

As stated... It sounds as though the choice of vaccine I received could have more than halved my chances of dying (over the other one - which would have made nary a bawhair's difference)
- that's a very long bow to draw
- given my age, general behaviour and where I live I can't think of much I could do to get that improvement in odds other than staying away from the kitchen!

I do not doubt that the comparisons are true and valid for the data that have been observed - but it might have be spun a bit
-sd

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Re: Interesting new study on vaccine effects

#498783

Postby scotia » May 6th, 2022, 1:20 am

XFool wrote:I'd be very sceptical here, admittedly I have only read the abstract.
For overall mortality, with 74,193 participants and 61 deaths (mRNA:31; placebo:30), the relative risk (RR) for the two mRNA vaccines compared with placebo was 1.03 (95% CI=0.63-1.71). In the adenovirus-vector vaccines there were 122,164 participants and 46 deaths (vaccine:16; controls:30).

Were the two populations the same? Recruited in a similar manner? Same age distribution? Same social distribution? From the same countries even?
The overall statistics might imply the Adenovirus trial population were healthier, or less at risk, or just more risk averse to start with!
Number of deaths (vaccinated/unvaccinated) small in number in both cases.


OK - I had a look at the full paper, and I focussed on the tables containing the data - and carried out some of my own calculations. You have highlighted the probable differences in the setups of the various trials, but even if you assume that these various trials were carried out in identical circumstances (unlikely), then the numbers are so small as to make meaningful numerical analysis problematic. So in comparing the relative merits of the two types of vaccine, I think this analysis is on shaky grounds on both the inconsistency of the trial setups and the very poor statistical accuracy . Perhaps the best that can be said is that there are possibly some advantages of the AZ type which have been previously unnoticed. Unfortunately there is unlikely to be any future very large scale side-by-side trials of the two vaccine types which would provide any clearer evidence.
I should possibly add that I am a happy recipient of the AZ, Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.

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Re: Interesting new study on vaccine effects

#498784

Postby servodude » May 6th, 2022, 1:52 am

scotia wrote:
XFool wrote:I'd be very sceptical here, admittedly I have only read the abstract.
For overall mortality, with 74,193 participants and 61 deaths (mRNA:31; placebo:30), the relative risk (RR) for the two mRNA vaccines compared with placebo was 1.03 (95% CI=0.63-1.71). In the adenovirus-vector vaccines there were 122,164 participants and 46 deaths (vaccine:16; controls:30).

Were the two populations the same? Recruited in a similar manner? Same age distribution? Same social distribution? From the same countries even?
The overall statistics might imply the Adenovirus trial population were healthier, or less at risk, or just more risk averse to start with!
Number of deaths (vaccinated/unvaccinated) small in number in both cases.


OK - I had a look at the full paper, and I focussed on the tables containing the data - and carried out some of my own calculations. You have highlighted the probable differences in the setups of the various trials, but even if you assume that these various trials were carried out in identical circumstances (unlikely), then the numbers are so small as to make meaningful numerical analysis problematic. So in comparing the relative merits of the two types of vaccine, I think this analysis is on shaky grounds on both the inconsistency of the trial setups and the very poor statistical accuracy . Perhaps the best that can be said is that there are possibly some advantages of the AZ type which have been previously unnoticed. Unfortunately there is unlikely to be any future very large scale side-by-side trials of the two vaccine types which would provide any clearer evidence.
I should possibly add that I am a happy recipient of the AZ, Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.


Same (or similar - I got side tracked by work when reading so didn't finish) here
- it feels very much like a resolution type thing (similar to where you suggest "have you widened out the timebase to have a look?" on a scope)

What really sets my detectors off is the wording
- consider a population with a high uptake of AZ in their older cohort (pick a card - any card)
- as worded, that population will now be dwindling at 37% of the expected rate (and they've given themselves a huge demographic issue)
- which ever card you picked I'm pretty sure that's not what's happening

In the interview she also seemed very quick to attribute the secondary effects of the measles vaccine exclusively to physiological/immune response
- whereas I'm pretty sure I've seen a decent analysis (possiby in Factfulness now I think of it?) which posited it was because it put people in front of medical staff who otherwise might never have seen one (in a part of the world where there is a good deal of unnecessary death because of lack of resources)

Interesting stuff though and I'll try and keep an eye on it

- sd

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Re: Interesting new study on vaccine effects

#499111

Postby Hallucigenia » May 7th, 2022, 4:46 pm

Having skimmed the paper, my immediate reaction is that it'll probably end up being something to do with different populations getting different vaccines, so all you're really seeing is that eg "more people had mRNA jabs and old people are more likely to die". My guess would be that it's a variation on Simpson's paradox but I'm happy to wait and see what happens with scrutiny from proper statistics bods.

But I'm not going to waste much time on it now given that extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence and I don't think they really have that yet and it's still a preprint so should be treated with a pinch of salt until it's been through peer review. There's been quite a lot of Covid papers that have made big claims but have failed to survive scrutiny, so we should be cautious at this stage.


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