Flu jab

[lurker]

The vaccine can’t damage you.

to everyone else, I am truly sorry for asking him “the question “.
the opening post was , I think received by everyone, bar one, in the way I intended.

 

[AJB Temple]

I know very little about vaccines. However, my then employer, some years ago, sponsored me to do a second degree, being a masters in mathematics, a sizeable chunk of which was statistics. As I was intended to do a PhD one of my study tasks was to write a paper about effective sample sizes for testing vaccines.

It is not really as simple as presented above. Things have probably moved on (this was the late 1980s) but there can be a lot of variables to deal with. In order to avoid bias in the population (which is hard to spot) generally large sample populations are chosen for both the control and those exposed to the vaccine. If you don’t do this, your confidence in the outcome is greatly reduced.

We need to establish what confidence rate we are seeking to reach. 95% is often cited. The guesstimate of vaccine efficacy varies markedly in its usefulness depending on the scale of the confidence interval.

Some studies (back then at least) also attempted to introduce separate control groups for vaccines with negative efficacy. It’s a long time ago but I recall some US and Finnish studies of vaccines on some large samples. The samples chosen were from select groups (so excluded groups which the vaccine was not targeted at or was likely to be unnecessary).

You also need to be able to evaluate the disease attack rate on both the test group and the controls. Often (at least then) control groups will be doubled to include a placebo set and a no action set.

Further, you also need to be very clear what it is that you are trying to measure: for example the disease attack rate in the vaccinated sample, versus that in the control. This may be layered, as diseases can have variable impact from severe (death) to nil or unknown harm. Vaccine producers need to know whether vaccines change the level of damage - ie is there a degree of efficacy as opposed to complete or no efficacy.

The statistics involved and the measures needed to ensure valid outcomes are in practice fairly complex. For a mass vaccine study sample sizes of 1,000 would not be used and no one would draw a confident result from them.

 

[artie]

The vaccine can’t damage you.

to everyone else, I am truly sorry for asking him “the question “.
the opening post was , I think received by everyone, bar one, in the way I intended.

How can you be sure that the vaccine can't damage you.
And how is anyone supposed to know your intention when you start a thread?
Did you only want supportive answers not genuine opinion?

 

[sploo]

I am going to comment again on this thread now that maybe the dust has settled, but I won't be surprised if the usual bullies jump all over it again.
To make a very valid point and use words, like likelihood and entirely probable.

But on the other hand, if you take 1000 people and vaccinate them, take another 1000 and don't vaccinate them.
What is the probability that the unvaccinated 1000 will be damaged by a vaccine?

That's a fair question; and is covered as part of a well conducted drug trial.

Usually, you'll have three groups; one gets nothing, one gets the actual drug, one gets a fake drug that has no effect (a placebo). It's quite normal for people to report improvement in symptoms when they believe they have been given treatment, so it's likely your placebo group will give slightly better reports than the untreated group. The key is the need to show that your new drug performs better than the placebo, not just better than the untreated group.

"Better" is obviously in the context of symptoms the drug is designed to treat, but also that it doesn't do harm.

This does not mean there will never be terrible errors (Thalidomide scandal - Wikipedia) and it does not mean the pharmaceutical industry is whiter than white; but, the consequences (both legal and reputational) for releasing a drug that causes more damage than it fixes would be severe.

Based on the number of people that receive a yearly flu jab (I think it's >70% of the over 65s in England) there will be a huge amount of data available for medical review; and so it would be clear fairly quickly if people were being damaged by the flu jab.

So - in short, I suspect the answer to your question is that in both groups (vaccinated and unvaccinated) the number of people being damaged by the vaccine will be effectively zero.

 

[lurker]

How can you be sure that the vaccine can't damage you.
And how is anyone supposed to know your intention when you start a thread?
Did you only want supportive answers not genuine opinion?

everyone else responded as I had intended.

my regret is that there was no mumps vaccine available when I was a child. I might just have a avoided a lifetime of deafness.

 

[SammyQ]

I do object to the fear selling that is going on. Because face it or not there are vast sums of money being made.

Ah! Got you now. The answer to that is complicated. Polio was around in the early 60's when I was in primary school
So were measles, I got them. They are still rampant in 'The Third World', I have brutal experience of them in India during extended charity trips. Both are preventable by vaccine. So, do we need vaccines to prevent "unnecessary suffering", then we need pharmas to develop them. That costs, someone has to pay.
I do not agree with your phrase "fear-mongering", if I could take you back with me to the slums of Dehra Dunn and show you why, I would. None of the charity workers conducted into that scene woukd call it "fear-mongering", the reality is all too graphic and plainly disturbing. The idea that we could shun an available preventative measure here in UK is a non-starter.
That argument applies to 'flu and Covid too. I've had 'flu as a twenty-something, I certainly would not want it now in my mid-sixties.
So, who pays? We do. We also pay for research into possible drugs or vaccones on a vast scale. My elder son works in pharma as a develoment chemist. The 000's of man-hours put into even one drug's exploration is phenomenal, and that is just one, among thousands. Only a few make it past testing. So, the pharmas pass on their costs to us, as an attempt to recoup outlay. Yes,unscrupulous ones fudge figures to make a bean, but hey, we have all those drugs to help us along. Would you go so far as to deny yourself Paracetemol? Asprin?

Penecillen? Novocaine at the dentists? Chemotherapy drugs? Anesthetics for internal operations?
Sam

 

[artie]

everyone else responded as I had intended.

my regret is that there was no mumps vaccine available when I was a child. I might just have a avoided a lifetime of deafness.

I had mumps in my 30's. Not a pleasant experience.

You didn't answer my question, did you not want an honest opinion?

 

[artie]

Ah! Got you now. The answer to that is complicated. Polio was around in the early 60's when I was in primary school
So were measles, I got them. They are still rampant in 'The Third World', I have brutal experience of them in India during extended charity trips. Both are preventable by vaccine. So, do we need vaccines to prevent "unnecessary suffering", then we need pharmas to develop them. That costs, someone has to pay.
I do not agree with your phrase "fear-mongering", if I could take you back with me to the slums of Dehra Dunn and show you why, I would. None of the charity workers conducted into that scene woukd call it "fear-mongering", the reality is all too graphic and plainly disturbing. The idea that we could shun an available preventative measure here in UK is a non-starter.
That argument applies to 'flu and Covid too. I've had 'flu as a twenty-something, I certainly would not want it now in my mid-sixties.
So, who pays? We do. We also pay for research into possible drugs or vaccones on a vast scale. My elder son works in pharma as a develoment chemist. The 000's of man-hours put into even one drug's exploration is phenomenal, and that is just one, among thousands. Only a few make it past testing. So, the pharmas pass on their costs to us, as an attempt to recoup outlay. Yes,unscrupulous ones fudge figures to make a bean, but hey, we have all those drugs to help us along. Would you go so far as to deny yourself Paracetemol? Asprin?

Penecillen? Novocaine at the dentists? Chemotherapy drugs? Anesthetics for internal operations?
Sam

I never said vaccines have no place. I get your point about India and the slums, but you can't really compare that to present day UK.
A vaccine for flu, covid, shingles, pneumonia, where does it end?

 

[lurker]

I had mumps in my 30's. Not a pleasant experience.

You didn't answer my question, did you not want an honest opinion?

The answer you gave at #11 was perfectly sufficient.

 

[SammyQ]

⁹

my regret is that there was no mumps vaccine available when I was a child. I might just have a avoided a lifetime of deafness.

Magnificent answer, at a level of dignity stratospherically above the general tone preceding it. Respect.
Sam

 

[sploo]

I never said vaccines have no place. I get your point about India and the slums, but you can't really compare that to present day UK.
A vaccine for flu, covid, shingles, pneumonia, where does it end?

True; but we're somewhat sheltered from seeing the worst here in the UK (in that, as general members of the UK public we don't have to face the consequences of many terrible diseases on a daily basis - so it's easy to underestimate the seriousness). If people frequently walked past you coughing up blood from TB I suspect few would oppose a TB vaccine.

In terms of where does it end; where should it end? I mean, if there were no negative consequences, surely a vaccine for every dangerous/unpleasant ailment would be a positive thing? Humans will always find something else to die from, but there's no point in dying from things we can prevent.

 

[SammyQ]

but you can't really compare that to present day UK.

Artie, without (reasonably) easy access to vaccines, here in UK, there would be no difference between Dehra Dunn and Belfast.
The human misery, indignity, lack of a sustainable economy would be catastrophic.
Sam

 

[artie]

In terms of where does it end; where should it end? I mean, if there were no negative consequences,

There it is right there.

 

[artie]

The answer you gave at #11 was perfectly sufficient.

If I recall correctly that was all I said to you?

 

[artie]

Artie, without (reasonably) easy access to vaccines, here in UK, there would be no difference between Dehra Dunn and Belfast.
The human misery, indignity, lack of a sustainable economy would be catastrophic.
Sam

Maybe

 

[artie]

If people frequently walked past you coughing up blood from TB I suspect few would oppose a TB vaccine.

Did that ever happen?

 

[SammyQ]

Did that ever happen?

Frequently. One of the reasons isolation hospitals (sanitoriums) came into being.

Sam

 

[AJB Temple]

A very good friend of mine is a maths professor in the US. He is presently dealing with an interesting dilemma related to vaccines (he is working with a Pharma group). The problem is that we will probably not know for sure, for a long time, whether vaccines for C19 work on the elderly (this in fact means over 65 in the study). This is because vaccines are typically tested on a younger age group, with similarly aged "controls". Testing on the elderly is riskier and it is harder to establish control groups.

So, let us suppose a vaccine is found that works on younger people. It will immediately be deployed to elderly people as it would be morally wrong not to. It would also be morally wrong to deploy a placebo without their knowledge (I imagine few would give informed consent) as the litigious risk from preventable deaths would be too high.

Hence a form of Catch 22 arises: a vaccine gets deployed but until we have enough years of it to see a death rate trend change (if any) then we will not know if it works.

Vaccines are inevitably a bit of a leap of faith: as individuals we never know what fate had in store for us if we had not had that injection.

 

[artie]

A very good friend of mine is a maths professor in the US. He is presently dealing with an interesting dilemma related to vaccines (he is working with a Pharma group). The problem is that we will probably not know for sure, for a long time, whether vaccines for C19 work on the elderly (this in fact means over 65 in the study). This is because vaccines are typically tested on a younger age group, with similarly aged "controls". Testing on the elderly is riskier and it is harder to establish control groups.

So, let us suppose a vaccine is found that works on younger people. It will immediately be deployed to elderly people as it would be morally wrong not to. It would also be morally wrong to deploy a placebo without their knowledge (I imagine few would give informed consent) as the litigious risk from preventable deaths would be too high.

Hence a form of Catch 22 arises: a vaccine gets deployed but until we have enough years of it to see a death rate trend change (if any) then we will not know if it works.

Vaccines are inevitably a bit of a leap of faith: as individuals we never know what fate had in store for us if we had not had that injection.

I wonder what the supposed difference is between young and old as far as a virus is concerned.

afaik testing without a control group isn't proper testing, what alternative is there?

 

[RogerS]

And we're off.

How long before this thread also gets locked. ?