BF2S Forums Pandemic thread

I'm sure a lot of them are users.

uziq wrote:

the real creator of divides and inequality is the expensive fee-paying school system before. that's how bloviating mediocrities like johnson and co rise to the top: connections and polish. they attend $50k/year schools that train them to be exam-eating machines and smooth talkers. the network of power and patronage extends all the way from rugger matches and schoolfields to gentlemen's clubs and retirement.

There is/was a pathway like a paved road - Eton - Balliol - Government, Oxford has been part of the problem for centuries.

Those were dots to link the arrows to, I'll fix it.

data is still coming from the lancet this weekend, we're talking pre-press at this point and still much bigger datasets to be gained from much bigger trials.

partly the media's fault for talking up a side-story, really, that people given 1.5x jabs in a small and unrepresentative group (age, ethnicity, etc) had 90% success.

the overall success rate is still much better than the other 2 vaccines available, even still, especially considering it doesn't use fussy mRNA technology.

the US CDC is prepared to approve a vaccine with a 50%+ hit-rate so, as long as they satisfy the sample size requirements of the US authorities, it'll be fine.

total non story really, again we're talking pre-press research at this point. but tell me more how scientific results are published

Dilbert_X wrote:

Those were dots to link the arrows to, I'll fix it.

Fixed for you:

What are you talking about, I just removed the dots.

Dilbert_X wrote:

So how did they make an error giving the doses?

Seems like a schoolboy error, and seems you didn't even read the article.

i’m sure you’ve read lots of papers about large trials and sample sizes.

uziq wrote:

Dilbert_X wrote:

So how did they make an error giving the doses?

Seems like a schoolboy error, and seems you didn't even read the article.

i’m sure you’ve read lots of papers about large trials and sample sizes.

Still not about the sample size, the wrong dose was given by accident, try reading the article.

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2020-11-26 22:39:22)

Well it seems they can't.

As I am under 55 I still consider it 90% effective for me

as i said above, even its general effectiveness puts it in a better performing category than the existing much-applauded vaccines. that and it can effectively be distributed along the same networks as ordinary food-supply logistics, because it's fine at fridge temperatures. good luck getting an incredibly expensive mRNA vaccine up to a mountain village in italy or, heaven forbid, the pampas of brazil. they have to be kept at something like -70 degrees.

in general there has been way too much overhyping and attention given to every positive story about covid, as would be expected. it has distorted the science and probably stoked a fair amount of suspicion and doubt on all sides. the whole world is pausing its breath waiting for deliverance from this literally global catastrophe. no surprises the signal is easily and quickly distorted.

science publishing doesn't do press-releases for arXiv or pre-press stuff normally for a reason. peer review and proper editorial work gives research findings their proper going-over and revision. if there's methodological flaws or inconsistencies in a small portion of the data (ca. 3,000 people for the 90% rate, afaik), this can easily be explained and taken into account in the significance findings of the full paper. i'm not going to belabour all the totally routine statistical methods available to scientists to derive significance/p-values from their work (frankly i hardly understand them). but the experiment isn't 'broken' because a few people received an inconsistent dose. it's just a practicality of large, multi-agent clinical trials.

it's been described as a potentially 'serendipitous' complication, i.e. an accident that might unlock a better outcome. you know, many things in science - and good science - start out that way. like, er, penicillin. what would make it highly questionable, and indeed bad science, is if they tried to fudge the method/results in their paper and to construe that the 90% rate is applicable to a much wider sample. which, obviously, they haven't. all of the vaccine testing protocols in their large trial were approved by the relevant bodies. so we should give the paper and its authors the benefit of the doubt.

at the end of the day, the real breakthrough here is an affordable, easy-to-manufacture, easy-to-deliver vaccine with a working mechanism. governments around the world are willing to throw their money at vaccines with even 50% efficacy. and that is entirely to the credit of oxford researchers and people who have been working around the clock for the better part of a year.

Last edited by uziq (2020-11-27 04:09:35)

Dilbert_X wrote:

I'm sure a lot of them are users.

by the way, a decent proportion of black voters are supposed to have swung to republicans, as per exit polls, due to perceptions that biden-harris are 'tough on crime', in particular on drug crime. kamala harris was attorney general of california before being elected to the senate, and both her and joe biden prosecuted 'the war on drugs' in an extremely tough-handed way. some black voters literally went republican due to this. you are living in an upside down reality over there in the antipodes.

so what the fuck are you talking about, BLM protestors are all also drug dealers or drug takers? it's just dumb calumny.