Considering Denmark is also one of the richest countries on earth we can neither expect other countries to a) detect such a mutation early and b) handle the issue promptly.So I think it&#x27;s somewhat likely that we&#x27;ll see mutations emerge all over the world.Whether this vaccine works depends on how early we get most people vaccinated. It may only be a short term patch, which we will see once it&#x27;s rolled out, you can&#x27;t really predict the long term without any measurements.

&gt;I remember that in March somebody posted here an entry saying that mutation of the virus will make vaccinations only useful in the short term. Were these concerns already addressed at this stage?Regardless of whether the mutations are significant enough to affect vaccine efficacy, it won&#x27;t likely be a problem. These new mRNA vaccines have a development&#x2F;production time measured in weeks and months, not years. It changes vaccines from a hardware problem to a software problem. Once the underlying delivery technology is proven safe and effective, reacting to new strains will be as swift as patching a codebase. It&#x27;s hard to overstate what a massive advance in vaccine tech is happening here.

Coronaviruses like SARS-COV-2 mutate relatively slowly and minimally compared to others. So mutation isn&#x27;t expected to be a huge concern, unlike say influenza which mutates relatively rapidly and requires an annual tweak to the vaccines.What&#x27;s more, any new strains we do see spreading more widely will do so because their mutations confer a competitive advantage. In practice that usually means more drift towards higher infectiousness but less severe symptoms - the same mechanisms that have left us with 4 other endemic but mild common cold coroanviruses.The new SARS-COV-2 vaccines may be a useful tool to get us over this hump where the virus is still novel to a large proportion of the population, but are unlikely to be required indefinitely.

I remember that in March somebody posted here an entry saying that mutation of the virus will make vaccinations only useful in the short term. Were these concerns already addressed at this stage?We have seen mutations due to minks recently which could make the vaccinations ineffective. These mutations might have been controlled but similar situations may arise in the next years.For these reasons I am not entirely sure this is the beginning of the end.

I&#x27;ll take the other side of that bet.

It&#x27;s more than zoom, everything that&#x27;s gone up from the pandemic is dropping: amzn, meli, jmia, se, shop, sq. The markets had them valued at a premium due to their monopolies in the pandemic but retail stocks are now trending up premarket: bbby, etc.

I don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s worth looking at individual stocks in this instance, and I think you&#x27;re not understanding why Zoom would drop on good vaccine news.

The markets seem to wildly yo-yo with every piece of negative and positive news. Case in point: Zoom is currently down 10% but I’ll bet it will have rallied by the end of the day.

Investor speculation doesn’t put nails into anything :)

Did it? I’m looking at ZOOM and it’s on 500

I don&#x27;t understand, aren&#x27;t future events supposed to be already considered in the stock price? It&#x27;s not like a vaccine was unpredictable

Well, stocks go up and down, nothing new. There are also too many investors who panicky buying and selling without much knowledge of the industries they buy&#x2F;sell stocks.Zoom has been doing up ~500% this year. The large fluctuations are expected. Online learning&#x2F;work will continue to grow regardless of a vaccine. It&#x27;s not going to be in a crazy rate like it has been this year because of covid. I&#x27;m not even talking about companies, cause that&#x27;s a no brainer. I&#x27;m talking about education and hospitals. For example, the convenience of having a virtual appointment is great for both doctors and patients and it&#x27;s not going away no matter what.My opinion about Zoom. Selling because of a vaccine is pretty stupid. You should sell if you think they are over valued and not be able to compete with the big companies long term. One thing to pay attention to is their future plans. If they don&#x27;t have plans to expand their product line I would worry long term. There&#x27;s no problem for a company to pay for Zoom for video calls and for another company for things like slack&#x2F;docs etc. But when you have companies like Google&#x2F;Microsoft who package and integrate everything together, and can give you a good price for it too, then it&#x27;s a concern. Google&#x2F;Microsoft make many subpar products, and this year zoom showed it nicely. But they keep copying the important features and will eventually close the gap.

Except Zoom&#x27;s, which fell from 514 to 410 in less than an hour.Really puts the nails in coffin of the whole &quot;we&#x27;re gonna work more remotely after the pandemic&quot; narrative.

There is another quite negative reading of this comment and I&#x27;m not sure which one you meant :)

Although I want to agree, none of the companies started from zero.All these new technologies, the techniques, the principles were in development since years if not decades.Not trying to diminish the accomplishments achieved, great effort nontheless. Just saying nobody started from zero here, that would have been insane and frankly impossible.

I don&#x27;t really understand the underlying science but the nucleic acid based vaccine platforms seem really, really exciting. Getting an effective COVID vaccine is obviously huge, but the ability to rapidly develop vaccines in the future for emerging pandemics is amazing.

DNA&#x2F;RNA vaccinations have been around for 30 years or so.

What I find more impressive is Moderna was finalized in February, and most of the other candidates were finalized by March.If we could somehow develop rapid testing in some way, it&#x27;s shocking to me that the vaccine could have entered mass production by the Summer.There was a time where the only true way to test a new model Aircraft was to build one, but nowadays pretty much every characteristic is well understood by the time it enters service. To reach a similar point with vaccine testing will be important when the next pandemic hits.

Yeah, setting aside all the politics and silliness, the science going on around this pandemic is remarkable. Going from nearly zero (yes, there was a bunch of research from SARS-Cov-1, MERS, and similar to build off of but nothing like this) to a functioning, tested, and mass manufactured vaccine in a year is absolutely jaw dropping. Even if it takes two years to distribute widely, three years to stomp out a pandemic is blindingly fast and a major credit to modern medical science, and the processes we have built up around it.

&gt; What are the markets, a handful of richI&#x27;m not yet but hoping to be...&gt; They are neither wise nor competentThat&#x27;s me again, but doesn&#x27;t preclude my success...However this 1995 paper (1) indicates that the S&amp;P 500 behavior does &quot;Granger Cause&quot; changes in USA GDP. i.e changes in S&amp;P 500 does predict changes in GDP from 1 to 3 quarters out. So that&#x27;s the one legitimate reason to be encouraged by rising markets. Perhaps the woman who cuts my hair will be able to get off food stamps by spring.1. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;digitalcommons.iwu.edu&#x2F;cgi&#x2F;viewcontent.cgi?redir=1&amp;article=1071&amp;context=econ_honproj" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;digitalcommons.iwu.edu&#x2F;cgi&#x2F;viewcontent.cgi?redir=1&amp;a...</a>

Since you asked, also the pension funds of almost everyone you know.

I&#x27;m not a vaccine expert, so when vaccine news comes out and the broader market reacts extremely positively to this news it just gives me confidence this is the real deal.There has been other vaccine news in the past which my friends&#x2F;family talk about excitedly but the broader market didn&#x27;t budge much.I don&#x27;t see any problem in using it a general barometer for this sort of news.

do you not have a 401k or ira or other similar fund?

Are you suggesting that the signal of the markets today has zero corellation with the promise of this vaccine? That seems like quite the position to take.Or are you lamenting that much attention is given to something that is primarily driven by wealthy organizations? I guess I might sympathize with you there.

&gt; What are the markets, a handful of rich in banks and large corporations?Glad you asked. No, &quot;the markets&quot; are not simply a handful of rich people, banks and large corporations. The markets are also more than just &quot;stocks.&quot;In fact, the majority of &quot;the markets&quot; is actually bonds, and most of those bonds are debt issued by nearly all the countries of the world (sovereign bonds). I think roughly 80 Trillion dollars, but don&#x27;t quote me.If you live in a country with roads, infrastructure, buildings, etc.--then the markets are responsible for everything around you.But you seem to be complaining about stocks since they get the most media attention, so let&#x27;s look at those.You may not realize it, but the future of every single country with a socialized pension system, sovereign wealth fund, etc. depends on the returns of global stocks. They make up only a portion of most pension portfolios, but deliver nearly all of the returns. Everybody has a stake in them even if they don&#x27;t realize it.Are the markets all-knowing or perfectly efficient? Of course not. But it&#x27;s literally the only place where you can measure how a global herd of humans are feeling about the state of the world at any given time with a single number. This makes it a default reference for journalists to cite, ie. &quot;thing happened, this is what the humans and their algorithms collectively think about it.&quot;The journalists are often wrong and don&#x27;t understand what&#x27;s happening, but this case seems to be pretty straightforward.

What did you mean by swt? Surely you are not making fun of Islam in a completely unrelated thread.

The markets? Spare me. What are the markets, a handful of rich in banks and large corporations? They are neither wise nor competent, why should every news story be suffixed by how &quot;the markets&quot; (swt) react?

That&#x27;s the popular view but I don&#x27;t think they&#x27;ve been as irrational as lots of people think.

the markets? that would be bad news because the markets have had no touch with reality for a long time

S&amp;P 500 is only up 90 points right now, and I don&#x27;t see any evidence it was up 400 at any point today.More generally, The DOW is way up, S&amp;P up moderately, and NASDAQ only up a little bit. That looks like it may well be a result of vaccine news to me, which is less good for the big tech companies that make up the NASDAQ than the broader set of companies tracked by the DOW and S&amp;P. I would expect an election related bump to have pretty equal effects on all three indices.

&gt;Great news and the markets are reacting very positively to the news as well which indicates to me this could be the beginning of the end!I&#x27;d argue that has a lot more to do with the election uncertainty being over with. This is incredibly promising news, but probably not enough to account for SP500 jumping 400 points this morning.

I think the data is what indicates this is the beginning of the end. All of the leading Western vaccine candidates showed very strong Phase 2 results. Now, we have the first vaccine showing very strong initial Phase 3 results. This is basically the best case scenario.

The markets have been reacting  positively for months, what’s new here ?

Great news and the markets are reacting very positively to the news as well which indicates to me this could be the beginning of the end!

On the other hand:&quot;BioNTech CEO expects vaccine can be fridge-stored for two weeks&quot;&quot;Speaking at an online media briefing on the purchase of an additional German production site, Chief Executive Ugur Sahin said tests have recently confirmed the genetic compound remains stable at 2 to 8 degrees Celsius for five days but he expects storability at those conditions to be two weeks or longer.&quot;<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reuters.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;health-coronavirus-biontech-storage-int&#x2F;biontech-ceo-expects-vaccine-can-be-fridge-stored-for-two-weeks-idUSKBN2681BW" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reuters.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;health-coronavirus-biontech-...</a>

Shipping hundreds of thousands of doses of vaccine at -80C is more than a “minor logistical challenge”. First, you’d never ship in a liquid nitrogen dewar. It would be a massive logistics bottleneck considering the weight of dewars and the volume you&#x27;d be shipping (Pfizer already has deals secured for hundreds of millions of doses). And plus, these are packaged vaccines - a glass vial with a label, in a paper box, with a folded product info sheet inside. You can&#x27;t submerge the whole thing in liquid nitrogen.Shipping at -10C is a major logistical challenge. Mentally it doesn&#x27;t sound like like much, but that&#x27;s envisioning a single vial to a single patient. Multiply that by one million and deliveries to not only NYC but to Booneville, Louisiana. Temperature excursions mean spoiled product - product that gets thrown out. -80C is way harder than -20C (there are no vaccines today that require -80C).You can’t just throw it on dry ice and say “we’re good”. Even just packing it is complicated. You have a pallet sized box with 20,000 doses. You put it in a box and surround it with dry ice. Are all the vials the same temperature after 2 hours? Are you sure? You need temperature monitoring at multiple points in the package so you know when it’s been spoiled.Your delivery gets held up for 12 hours at customs, are all the vials still -80C? Are you sure? What do you do when you deliver to hospital and find out they don’t have -80C storage, even though they said they did? Do you have an intermediary storage facility you can bring it to until you figure out a solution?Do you have monitoring after it’s been delivered so it doesn’t spoil before administration? Correct thawing procedures? What happens if a dose is thawed and the patient doesn’t show up and it sits at room temp for an hour? Just throw it out? Or is it still good? Are you sure?And to add on top of all this - you (as the manufacturer) might have all this figured out, but you need to make sure everyone along the logistics chain does too. Guaranteed you&#x27;d send emails and letters in advance, and have massive yellow stickers all over the shipment that says &quot;Must be stored at -80C&quot; and you&#x27;ll have a customer call you a week later asking if the product that&#x27;s been sitting at -10C is still good.Here is a document from WHO that will tell you way more than you’d ever want to know about cold chain distribution. There is an entire section on how to appropriately stack the vaccine vials in the freezer so they stay the right temperature. Yeah, it&#x27;s that complicated.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.who.int&#x2F;immunization&#x2F;documents&#x2F;IIP2015_Module2.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.who.int&#x2F;immunization&#x2F;documents&#x2F;IIP2015_Module2.p...</a>Even cold chain for today’s products is really fucking hard.Derek Lowe had a good quote on this:&quot;Pfizer has provided these details to the CDC about shipping and storage of their candidate: the vaccine can be shipped in “dry ice pack” boxes, but that dry ice will need to be replenished within 24 hours of receipt. The shipping carton needs to be closed within one minute of opening, and not opened more than twice per day. Vaccine vials, once removed, can be kept at refrigerator temperatures for up to 24 hours or at room temperature for no more than 2 hours after thawing. So this is going to take a very organized approach to make sure that the vaccine is handled properly without wastage. We’re looking at a lot of dry ice and a lot of orders for ultra-cold freezers if this is the candidate that gets heavy nationwide distribution. And mind you, I’m talking about organized distribution in Little Rock and Long Beach. What about La Paz and Lahore? What about Lubumbashi? Even back inside the US, what’s the nearest source of dry ice in Shiprock, New Mexico or Oceana, West Virginia?&quot;<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blogs.sciencemag.org&#x2F;pipeline&#x2F;archives&#x2F;2020&#x2F;08&#x2F;31&#x2F;cold-chain-and-colder-chain-distribution" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blogs.sciencemag.org&#x2F;pipeline&#x2F;archives&#x2F;2020&#x2F;08&#x2F;31&#x2F;co...</a>

While it&#x27;s a minor logistical challenge, it&#x27;s simple enough to ship this in a liquid nitrogen dewar.Even very small cities will have liquid nitrogen facilities. Shipping from the nearest city to most of the population sounds very doable in 24 hours.Remember you only need to get most of the population to halt the spread. If there&#x27;s some tiny village 3 days hike away in the rainforest, you can skip them.

Many supermarkets carry dry ice. Any city of &gt;50,000 people will have a company supplying dry ice and liquid nitrogen. CO2 is a byproduct of several industrial process, so that market it glutted.  It is easy to turn CO2 into dry ice (if you don&#x27;t care about efficiency - with the supply being virtually unlimited there is no reason to care much)

Pretty much any biology lab in the world has -80 °C fridges. For shipping, a styrofoam container with some dry ice is probably good enough.

Great. This is the one that has to be kept ultra cold. Hoping for good news about some of the other vaccines in Phase 3 trials soon.The vaccine reportedly needs to be held in storage at -94° Fahrenheit (-70°c), and will last for only 24 hours at refrigerated temps between 35.6° and 46.4°. (about 2° to 8° c)from <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fiercepharma.com&#x2F;manufacturing&#x2F;pfizer-moderna-s-covid-19-shot-rollouts-could-be-ice-as-analysts-question-cold" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fiercepharma.com&#x2F;manufacturing&#x2F;pfizer-moderna-s-...</a>

I&#x27;m not sure it&#x27;s fully possible to not compromise on safety one way or another when doing something like this quickly. Let&#x27;s say a side effect is that 1% of women become sterile half a year after getting the vaccine - how would we possibly know that after testing for 3 months? All we can do is say it&#x27;s very unlikely based on other vaccines with similar approaches, and monitor for effects on the reproductive system (or anything else unusual in the body) that is know to potentially lead to something like that down the line. In the end, we can (and probably must) decide that taking the time to disprove there being any long term negative effects, is more likely to cause more harm (because more covid-infections will happen in the meantime) than the good it is likely to do us. But it is still a higher risk than the usual approach where we test for longer.

They produced it within months; it&#x27;s the clinical trials to prove its efficiency and safety that took a while.I wonder if this experience has led to developments to speed up the development process (without compromising on safety); I hope so, because this is not the first and will not be the last time we see a worldwide pandemic like this.

I am blown away at how quickly the world&#x2F;science&#x2F;this company produced this. Clearly this is not the end of it but this is something positive.

Can&#x27;t that be interpreted as either of the options in the parent comment?

This CDC page defines it in terms of cases:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cdc.gov&#x2F;csels&#x2F;dsepd&#x2F;ss1978&#x2F;lesson3&#x2F;section6.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cdc.gov&#x2F;csels&#x2F;dsepd&#x2F;ss1978&#x2F;lesson3&#x2F;section6.html</a>So &quot;disease&quot; is probably an infection there, not relatively milder infection.90% still crushes the transmission rate.

So what does it mean? Less severe symptoms or sterilizing immunity?

There&#x27;s no such thing as &quot;Covid infection&quot;. There&#x27;s SARS-CoV-2 infection, which often causes CoVID-19 disease.Pfizer is saying that their vaccine is effective at protecting against CoVID-19 disease. They haven&#x27;t said anything about preventing SARS-CoV-2 infection yet, as far as I can see. The difference is important, because there are vaccines (such as the Salk polio vaccine) that only protect against disease, but not against infection. People get infected and pass on the virus without ever getting sick, so there&#x27;s no herd immunity.

From Pfizer&#x27;s press release, they use &quot;vaccine efficacy&quot; which has a very specific definition.&quot;Vaccine efficacy is the percentage reduction of disease in a vaccinated group of people compared to an unvaccinated group&quot;So basically a 90% reduction in Covid infection.

I would assume something like with the influenza vaccine, where you have immunity to i think around 70% of currently available virus mutations, if the vaccine works.

Perhaps its something like &quot;90% percent of the individuals&#x27; immune system are successful in quick eliminating covid without any symptoms or adverse reactions&quot;.I admit I know very little on how immunity to diseases work, but I imagine that with viruses there is a chance it&#x27;ll progress to a full blown infection even if you are vaccinated in some cases.

&gt; what would it even mean for somebody to be &quot;90% immune&quot; to a disease?Hasn&#x27;t this virus already mutated to a bunch of different strands? Could it mean you&#x27;re immune to 90% of the known variations of the virus?

In terms of D&amp;D you have +8 to constitution saving throw vs this infection (assuming DC is 10) :)

No, it&#x27;s probabilistic, about the &#x27;amount of protection&#x27; from or &#x27;decrease in likelihood&#x27; of contracting it, which is why generally people are happy &#x2F; would have been happy even for a much lower percentage - protecting ~everyone a bit is higher impact than protecting a few people a lot.It&#x27;s the same as &#x27;herd immunity&#x27;, where each member is &#x27;90% immune&#x27; and as a result the herd is &#x27;more immune&#x27; than if only 10% of its members were 100% immune.

It means reduced severity so that people still get ill but you get 90% less people than you would expect hospitalised.

First phrasing makes more sense than the second one to me -- what would it even mean for somebody to be &quot;90% immune&quot; to a disease?

It is great news.I didn&#x27;t see the case numbers but I&#x27;ve inferred to arrive at 90% that there were 9 cases in vaccinated group vs 85 in controls. (95% C.I. 80-99%)Very interested to see forthcoming results from competitors that don&#x27;t face the -80 degrees issue.

If new pfizer&#x27;s vaccine has similar numbers, e.g. 90% after two shots and 80% after one shot, can it be more efficient to just use one shot, considering current race with time since we need to deliver vaccine to billions of people? Are there numbers for protection level after one shot somewhere? I couldn&#x27;t find it at first glance.

Excellent news it&#x27;s so high. For comparison, MMR is 88% effective on Mumps&quot;One dose of MMR vaccine is 93% effective against measles, 78% effective against mumps, and 97% effective against rubella.Two doses of MMR vaccine are 97% effective against measles and 88% effective against mumps.&quot;<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cdc.gov&#x2F;vaccines&#x2F;vpd&#x2F;mmr&#x2F;public&#x2F;index.html#:~:text=One%20dose%20of%20MMR%20vaccine%20is%2093%25%20effective%20against%20measles,and%2088%25%20effective%20against%20mumps" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cdc.gov&#x2F;vaccines&#x2F;vpd&#x2F;mmr&#x2F;public&#x2F;index.html#:~:te...</a>.

It&#x27;s a 2-dose regimen, needs to be stored at -70C, and Pfizer already said they&#x27;ll only have 1.5B doses over the course of the next year.It&#x27;s going to be a very slow roll out.

We should be clear about the goalposts. Reducing the transmission rate to a manageable level will be very easy with even just some fraction of the population being vaccinated. What exact percentage is unclear, but it&#x27;s a lot less than 100%. No realistic number of anti-vaxxers can change that.Eradicating the virus is a whole different goal, and there could be lots of different impediments to that. After all, we still get vaccinated for a large numbers of illnesses that we haven&#x27;t eradicated but are just very rare. That&#x27;s not a terrible endgame for COVID.

R only drops if this vaccine provides sterilizing immunity. The press release only discusses protection from disease.A vaccine that only prevents disease, but which does not prevent infection, does not necessarily create herd immunity.

Pretty confident it&#x27;s the former, which if the case, essentially ends the pandemic in a month after it&#x27;s distributed, given that the R0 would drop precipitously.The challenge will be reconciling this with the antivax crowd given that as the vaccine rolls out the rate of infection will come down correspondingly among the whole population (including the unvaccinated). They&#x27;ll immediately claim that the virus is &quot;going away on it&#x27;s own&quot; as opposed to the truth, which is that potential spreaders are being steadily removed from the susceptible population due to the vaccine.

It&#x27;s the BBC, I wouldn&#x27;t expect any scientific rigour from them.

The way these studies (most of the big trials finishing up soon, and this one too) are set up is that they measure the percentage of people that will not get symptomatic covid-19, so the only thing that is measured is whether they get symptoms or not. So the result is that 90% (within a confidence interval) of people who are given this vaccine will not develop any covid symptoms. Transmission may be impacted, and the data will reveal hints about this, but it&#x27;s impossible to draw hard statistical conclusions about that, and in general a different type of vaccine technology will be needed to end transmission and thus the pandemic. This will save countless lives though, and may end lockdowns, so a great day nonetheless.

Note that they provided &#x27;Confirmed COVID-19 in Phase 2&#x2F;3 participants without evidence of infection before vaccination [ Time Frame: From 7 days after the second dose of study intervention to the end of the study, up to 2 years ]&#x27;as their primary outcome in their study registration<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;clinicaltrials.gov&#x2F;ct2&#x2F;show&#x2F;NCT04368728" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;clinicaltrials.gov&#x2F;ct2&#x2F;show&#x2F;NCT04368728</a>

At the time of writing (2020-11-09 12:04 UTC) the article uses &quot;90% of people&quot; and &quot;90% protection&quot; interchangeably. I assume it means &quot;90% of individuals achieve immunity&quot;, rather than &quot;individuals achieve 90% immunity&quot;.EDIT: See child comment re: Pfizer press release.EDIT 2: See [1] for said press release, which has more detailed information than the BBC article.[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;investors.pfizer.com&#x2F;investor-news&#x2F;press-release-details&#x2F;2020&#x2F;Pfizer-and-BioNTech-Announce-Vaccine-Candidate-Against-COVID-19-Achieved-Success-in-First-Interim-Analysis-from-Phase-3-Study&#x2F;default.aspx" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;investors.pfizer.com&#x2F;investor-news&#x2F;press-release-det...</a>

=&gt; projected cost to the customer seem to be ~ 80&#x2F;100 per shot with 2 shots needed (if we go with a $20 base + $80 premium)

That’s surprisingly cheap. Are they breaking even at that price?

At least in the US &quot;Pfizer and BioNTech will sell their mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine to the U.S. government at an estimated cost of $19.50 per shot...&quot;<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fiercepharma.com&#x2F;pharma&#x2F;pfizer-biontech-s-u-s-supply-deal-price-tag-leaves-room-for-decent-profit-covid-19-shot" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fiercepharma.com&#x2F;pharma&#x2F;pfizer-biontech-s-u-s-su...</a>

Small but important nitpick: since at least 2005 there is no &quot;on the NYSE&quot;, the price you&#x27;re likely seeing is the best price consolidated across all national market system venues, the primary listing exchange is mostly only an administrative entity in recent times.  Actually some of the largest premarket trading is occurring on NASDAQ and a CBOE-owned exchange called BATS

Edit:
The article states
“ Pfizer believes it will be able to supply 50 million doses by the end of this year, and around 1.3 billion by the end of 2021.
The UK should get 10 million doses by the end of the year, with a further 30 million doses already ordered.”So the UK will only get 10&#x2F;50 Millionen doses produced this year.

UK already ordered 30M out of the 50M avail for this year. So no going on winter break to Thailand just yet!
Wondering who will grab the next 20M, and how much this vaccine is being sold per dose.(edit: PFE is currently trading +13% pre-market on the NYSE)

It might be more helpful to link to Pfizer&#x27;s press release versus a media summary of it.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;investors.pfizer.com&#x2F;investor-news&#x2F;press-release-details&#x2F;2020&#x2F;Pfizer-and-BioNTech-Announce-Vaccine-Candidate-Against-COVID-19-Achieved-Success-in-First-Interim-Analysis-from-Phase-3-Study&#x2F;default.aspx" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;investors.pfizer.com&#x2F;investor-news&#x2F;press-release-det...</a>

I suspected quite similar to how people are vaccinated against the flu every year.

We&#x27;ll have to find out. If the virus is suppressed for 6-12 months, it&#x27;s basically eradicated, and vaccination would only have to start once it starts spreading again.The rate of spreading will depend on factors such as international travel and how much people will have learned from this period. I expect&#x2F;fear that everyone will try to get life as before as soon as possible, so the extra delay after the vaccine wears off might be negligible.

There literally aren’t going to be able to make that many doses, so no.

&gt;In reality, a vaccine is probably going to offer a lower (but if this study is true, acceptable) level of protection. I wouldn’t be surprised if the protection drops exponentially after 2 months. Similar to the live virusSerology reports for the Moderna vaccine (very similar technology) are showing 4-5 times higher levels of antibodies than those who actually contracted the virus.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nejm.org&#x2F;doi&#x2F;full&#x2F;10.1056&#x2F;NEJMoa2028436" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nejm.org&#x2F;doi&#x2F;full&#x2F;10.1056&#x2F;NEJMoa2028436</a>

If you get the virus, you only appear to be immune for a short time (6months, would have to look it up). This matches other coronavirus and how you can get colds multiple times a year.In reality, a vaccine is probably going to offer a lower (but if this study is true, acceptable) level of protection. I wouldn’t be surprised if the protection drops exponentially after 2 months. Similar to the live virus

By not knowing how long the immunity&#x2F;protection lasts, it could mean people would have take the vaccine every 6months?12months?

I found that strange too. Diverse is a relative term, not an absolute one.

Random sample of women aged 19-30 would be less diverse than random sample from anybody.

It means that it includes people from different ethnicity, ages (also younger and older people) and some immunocompromised people.

You want to have at least a nontrivial group of every race and ethnicity to ensure that you collect enough data to make sure it&#x27;s also effective on everyone.Additional challenges in the US are that many minority communities are distrustful of the pharmaceutical industry due to historical reasons and you typically need a concentrated effort to do outreach there to actually collect enough volunteers to meet your sampling concerns.

&quot;diverse backgrounds&quot;What does that mean exactly? Surely a random sample of people will have diverse backgrounds.

Pfizer&#x27;s press release with more information: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.businesswire.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;home&#x2F;20201109005539&#x2F;en&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.businesswire.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;home&#x2F;20201109005539&#x2F;en&#x2F;</a>- Vaccine candidate was found to be more than 90% effective in preventing COVID-19 in participants without evidence of prior SARS-CoV-2 infection in the first interim efficacy analysis- Analysis evaluated 94 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in trial participants- Study enrolled 43,538 participants, with 42% having diverse backgrounds, and no serious safety concerns have been observed; Safety and additional efficacy data continue to be collected- Submission for Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) planned for soon after the required safety milestone is achieved, which is currently expected to occur in the third week of November- Clinical trial to continue through to final analysis at 164 confirmed cases in order to collect further data and characterize the vaccine candidate’s performance against other study endpoints

Thermo Fisher Scientific has freezers that hit these temps. About $10-20k per unit it appears.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fishersci.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;en&#x2F;browse&#x2F;90106033&#x2F;ultra-low-temperature-freezers" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fishersci.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;en&#x2F;browse&#x2F;90106033&#x2F;ultra-low-te...</a>

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.skycell.ch&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.skycell.ch&#x2F;</a>

Probably the airlines who will both be dealing with the logistics and be able to return to BAU quicker because of the vaccine. For example, American Airlines is up 25% premarket today and IAG (owner of British Airways) is up nearly 30%.

Based on this NYT article [1], some logistics companies planning to store and transport the vaccine are using freezers from Stirling Ultracold. It may just be a curiosity, but their freezers (as the name would suggest) use bona fide Stirling engines rather than the typical two-stage compressors used in most ULT freezers.As someone in life science research who uses plenty of -80 freezers, I&#x27;ve always been curious about Stirling Ultracold. Maybe they&#x27;re on to something after all.[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;09&#x2F;18&#x2F;business&#x2F;coronavirus-covid-vaccine-cold-frozen-logistics.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;09&#x2F;18&#x2F;business&#x2F;coronavirus-covi...</a>

So which company benefits the most here? From a cursory googling the following seem decent:- The Whirlpool Corporation
- Electrolux AB
- LG Electronics Inc.problem is these companies have a lot of exposure to other sectors as well of course.

You’re way too late to the party. Peloton became a $30 billion company during covid. Down over 10% in premarket trading

Yep, time to invest in zoom too. I assume at some stage people will need to make more video calls.

I think Nintendo will do pretty good as well, Animal Crossing looks like an ideal game for a lockdown.

Get some Peloton too. People will probably want to start exercising in their homes.

The places that would need to worry about building cold chain infrastructure capacity probably won&#x27;t have the cash for permanent installations on top of the money they&#x27;ll need to buy the vaccine.Better to invest in companies that make and lease refrigerated semi-trailers, I&#x27;d think.

Not really. Pfizer has bet big on this by preemptively manufacturing the vaccine. They&#x27;re already filling freezers. Unless you&#x27;re referring to the freezers some less equipped distribution centers&#x2F;agencies will need you acquire?

A bit late; these companies already have vast stocks of the vaccine ready to be deployed once they get greenlit. They will be getting - and have already received - orders and reservations for tens, hundreds of millions of units of a potential vaccine, awaiting testing and approval; see <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dailymail.co.uk&#x2F;news&#x2F;article-8852159&#x2F;The-video-world-longed-Covid-vaccines-rolling-production-line.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dailymail.co.uk&#x2F;news&#x2F;article-8852159&#x2F;The-video-w...</a>, citing they&#x27;re aiming to produce 1.3 billion doses next year.

this is the only investment I find possibly useful.  Liquid nitrogen is so common in industry that I don&#x27;t think there will be a problem sourcing enough just from spare capacity.

Maybe also manufacturers of liquid nitrogen dewars.

I saw some claims on Twitter that zoom took a hit, though there’s enough random noise in the market that I never know what to believe

Good time to buy shares in almost anything that&#x27;s not related to online meetings or home deliveries, to be honest. Stock markets are skyrocketing.

Time to invest my life&#x27;s savings in bandaids

Seems like yesterday was a good time to buy shares. Now it&#x27;s not so clear!

I initially thought so too, but  there are some big losers in the market today - think home  delivery (Ocado) , entertainment (Netflix), and more interestingly specialist Covid test suppliers.

Seems like a good time to own shares in literally anything. The DJI is going to open up 1,500 points at least.

Since you mention it ... it&#x27;s kind of hard to buy anything. I couldn&#x27;t log in to my Schwab account this morning [1], and others are reporting problems with TD Ameritrade&#x2F;Scottrade as well, and it seems to be affecting other brokerages, due to this high trading volume&#x2F;volatility.[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;downdetector.com&#x2F;status&#x2F;charles-schwab&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;downdetector.com&#x2F;status&#x2F;charles-schwab&#x2F;</a>

Dry ice manufacturers may be a better bet. Hard to change -70C&#x2F;-80C freezer manufacturing capacity, but pretty easy to pump out more dry ice or LN2 for storage.

Seems like a good time to buy shares in whoever manufactures industrial sized extra cold freezers.

The RNA is read by human cells and the spike protein antigen is created by human cells; it’s not particularly viral RNA.

What extra does a virus have over and above some RNA? Is it just a spike protein for injection into a cell or does it depend?

Also interesting to note that this is a mRNA vaccine, where the production of antigen within the cell is induced by injecting a RNA sequence instead of a disabled virus.

In Uk I have recently recieved a vaccine, and it was in a commercial refrigirator. I don&#x27;t know if they have a UPS, but it appears like a normal thing to do.

They could do that, but it&#x27;s far more likely to be just dry ice. -80 being a class of freezers is a thing because that&#x27;s what dry ice can provide.-80 transport often consists of good insulation and a good chunk of dry ice instead of active measures.

I&#x27;m not sure it can be used, since it is much colder than -80. I actually hope it can be, because there is quite a few liquid nitrogen facilities, usually near big medical facilities. Dry ice, quite rare. I&#x27;ve seen some for special effects, but declared at a higher temperature than -80.

&gt; Vehicles equipped for transport are an issue by itself.What about putting it into liquid nitrogen?

Haha, I find it easier to traverse Germany side-to-side than Serbia.

Germany is planning to establish centers for vaccination exactly to avoid problems with the continous cold chain. (People travel without issue at ambient temperature. They even prefer that to other temperatures;)I would assume that other nations will adopt similiar solutions for vaccines that have ultra-cold storage requirements.

Great news, but I think the importance of the -80 degrees centigrade storage requirement is underestimated.Serbia, where I live, has ordered this vaccine. And our medical system is far from world-class, but leaps and bounds from less developed countries, and I honestly think logistics here will not be able to match those requirements. I&#x27;ve seen tetanus vaccines just being kept in regular, commercial, refrigerators. There have been cases where they have been switched off because they were not on UPSs or not up to standards. Vehicles equipped for transport are an issue by itself.

Convenient how it all just happens to be at once.

November is the month that doesn&#x27;t stop giving.Bitcoin over 15k, the old Yello on its way out and now Covid vaccine.Quite the November surprise.

It&#x27;s made in Germany IRRC, could be why

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blogs.sciencemag.org&#x2F;pipeline&#x2F;archives&#x2F;2020&#x2F;08&#x2F;11&#x2F;the-russian-vaccine" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blogs.sciencemag.org&#x2F;pipeline&#x2F;archives&#x2F;2020&#x2F;08&#x2F;11&#x2F;th...</a>

Because this is a phase 3 trial, which has not been completed by any other vaccine.

&quot;Also, this is a German result, and people trust Germany more.&quot;Like with the diesel emissions?

&gt; people trust Germany moreWhat people are you talking about here? Western societies or entire world?

They have only done phase 1&#x2F;2 trials and this one is phase 3.Also, people trust US&#x2F;EU research more. They have not been very forthcoming with data. The data that has been made available has been lacking in detail or has patterns that indicate either fabrication or sloppiness.Both countries appear to be moivated by domestic and geopolitical political purposes. The US has also being doing that, but the medical establishment and regulatory bodies in the US are seen to be more independent of government than in China or Russia. Also, this is a German result, and people trust Germany more.

I think the Russian ones were approved after &#x27;Phase 2&#x27; trials. Which are small scale trials. That&#x27;s their call if they want to start vaccinating with &#x27;half-tested&#x27; vaccines, but it doesn&#x27;t meet the typical international standards which is usually completing Phase 3 trials.Not sure about the Chinese ones.

The Russians and Chinese don&#x27;t have phase 3 trials with data available to review, they&#x27;re all phase 1&#x2F;2.

&gt; So those who claim that Russian vaccine is only on the 1&#x2F;2 phase spread an outright lie.Russian vaccine was announced back in August, when it was only on phase 1&#x2F;2. In contrast phase 3 Pfizer&#x2F;biontech had been well under way at that time.Russia announced a not fully tested vaccine, proudly called it &quot;Sputnik V&quot;. The exact words Putin used when announced it was: &quot;As far as I know, a vaccine against a new coronavirus infection has been registered this morning, for the first time in the world&quot;. So geopolitical concerns and pride are correct assessment. No wonder it drew skepticism.

Obviously because of the geopolitical concerns and pride. Truth is the first victim as usual. The Russian vaccine was indeed registered just after the 2nd phase trials, but according to its website the 3rd phase trial has started on August 25 (one month later than for BNT162b2) and involved more than 40k people (effectively the same number).So those who claim that Russian vaccine is only on the 1&#x2F;2 phase spread an outright lie. Both vaccine have approximately the same speed of development with minor differences between regulation and testing procedures.

As if &quot;the West&quot; and the US in particular don&#x27;t lie left and right if it helps to promote their agenda. It&#x27;s a simple matter of who aligns with whom.

America launched a fake vaccination campaign to catch osama-bin-laden; many villagers in surrounding areas are refusing to take vaccine because they have lost trust.Western governments are no doubt better for their own citizens than say Russia or China, but we outsiders have absolutely no reason to trust one government over the others. Russia&#x27;s vaccine has only passed phase 2- now that&#x27;s a good point, &quot;Trust&quot; absolutely isn&#x27;t.

Right... And iraq was invaded because of the truth?You think russia and china lie because of propaganda. Their citizens believe we lie because of propaganda.Whether one views another country favorably relies entirely on propaganda.

Trust. Russia and China lie through their teeth on everything and anything. It&#x27;s irrelevant whether or not they are lying in this particular instance: they cannot be trusted.

You have to stop reading propaganda. If we had a vote around the world, russia and china together would win over the &quot;west&quot; by a long shot. It wasn&#x27;t russia and china brutalizing the world for 500 years. It isn&#x27;t russia and china destabilizing much of the world today.We have to stop believing that the &quot;west&quot; is the world. It&#x27;s going to bite us in the end one day. The only thing people around the world like is wealth. As china and russia get wealthier, even that won&#x27;t matter as much.

Because Russia and China are most of the world&#x27;s political and economic enemies.

None of those have announced positive results on a phase 3, have they? In effect, the Russian one is also in phase 3; they kind of pretended it wasn&#x27;t, but are doing a very limited rollout that is for all practical purposes just a phase 3 trial.Also, this one was developed in Germany and the trial is being run in Germany and the US; people might be forgiven for trusting a combination of the EMA and FDA, who will need to approve this, somewhat more than Putin&#x27;s one.

This is much farther along than the Russia vaccine. They are also publishing their data publicly. I know they haven’t published this data yet, but they say they are going to, and they have a good track record of doing so.

Does anyone know if Russia&#x2F;China&#x27;s vaccine operate using the same mRNA mechanism?

geopolitical. if russia&#x2F;china has us military bases, you should have already received their vaccines.

Just curious, why the reaction towards this and the ones from Russia&#x2F;China are different ?

Real question I have is how well the study was conducted AND how long immunity lasts. Even if both were good here... we won’t have the vaccine widely available until mid to late next year.

It’s a 90% reduction in cases in a vaccinated population vs unvaccinated.  Basically how good is the vaccine at preventing symptomatic infection upon exposure

This was developed by a German company and will be widely distributed in the EU if approved, so will have to be approved by both the FDA and EMA. Now, if the FDA passes it and the EMA says &#x27;no&#x27;, that would be reason for concern, potentially, but assuming both bodies pass it that should be good enough for most people.

Hopefully there is more better scientific data on this vaccine before rushing it to top of HN and judgement. I am not sure how to explain 90% immunity from a disease in scientific language, because there are only two states a person get infected with COVID-19 or does not get infected with COVID-19. Not sure how this vaccine will make a person 10% infected and 90% not infected with COVID-19.This is one of the vaccine Trump referred to in his debate, not sure how much it’s really useful or its another one like Sputnik and Coronavac.I think the best details for Corona related vaccine efforts are from WHO. [1][1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.who.int&#x2F;publications&#x2F;m&#x2F;item&#x2F;draft-landscape-of-covid-19-candidate-vaccines" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.who.int&#x2F;publications&#x2F;m&#x2F;item&#x2F;draft-landscape-of-c...</a>

This may be true for urban&#x2F;suburban US&#x2F;Europe&#x2F;China&#x2F;India, but this is not true for large parts of the world.There are parts of rural US&#x2F;Australia for example where despite people having cars, they may need to take a plane to get to a vaccine treatment centre with enough density to get stock. They may not be able to afford that travel even if the vaccine is free.Much of the African population is spread over small communities where roads may not be reliable, let alone car access. If your minimum distributable unit is 10k vaccines, as it looks like it could be to begin with, that rules out a significant number of the population.

You don&#x27;t have to deliver the vaccine into every community. People can travel to nearest next place that has it.

Skip to 3:20 if you don&#x27;t want to hear a few minutes about why COVID is a big problem.

interesting... vid suggests that we have to use cryogenic techniques to store vaccine partly because there hasn&#x27;t been enough time to test how they store at higher temperatures.so perhaps the infrastructure requirements will relax as time goes on

Great video about this exact topic <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=byW1GExQB84" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=byW1GExQB84</a>

Should be fine, insulated &#x2F; liquid nitrogen containers are nothing new.

Would also expect there to be some kind of &quot;drive in&quot; vaccination points, like there are in some communities for tests.

Fascinating logistics problem here - distributing a vaccine that needs to be stored at -80C.This is significantly colder than the standard cold logistics chain. I believe Pfizer are working on a special transport box that can, unpowered, stay at the right temperature for a week as long as the box is only opened for something like 1 minute a day.That&#x27;s a good thing, but with a capacity of I believe 10k vaccine doses, anywhere with fewer than 10k people to vaccinate, or anywhere that can&#x27;t keep the demand level for the vaccine at the right level each hour&#x2F;day as they progress through their vaccine stock, will have a hard time. This is going to disproportionately affect small communities and developing countries.We&#x27;ve got hard logistical challenges ahead regardless of these details, but they make this even harder. Given this it&#x27;s probably important that we continue to develop more vaccines and diversify our strategy for immunity.

You know exactly what I meant so don&#x27;t pretend otherwise. By the way, 1.26 million is less than 0.02% of the world&#x27;s population.

&gt; I wonder if the people scared of permanent damage caused by Covid (for which there is no evidence)According to Google, 1.26M deaths and counting. If dying is not permanent damage, I&#x27;m not sure what is.

Then please post some of that evidence. Evidence, not anecdotes -- of course there are individual cases among millions of infected, that doesn&#x27;t mean it&#x27;s a phenomenon worth caring about.

There is plenty of evidence and ongoing study of long-term sequelae.Denying such is wildly irresponsible and hostile to the community.Stop trolling.

How do we know there won&#x27;t be any adverse effects after years?

45,000 is an incredibly small sample set and this is an incredibly short amount of time. Look at 1976 and the Swing Flu vaccine:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=4bOHYZhL0WQ" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=4bOHYZhL0WQ</a>45,000 doesn&#x27;t scale up to 100 million or a few billions. The Swing Flu vaccine left major neurological problems in over 4,000 people, many of which were paid out in law suits. We still have vaccine courts.

Experimental vaccine? I disagree.
Nearly 45,000 people have taken this vaccine, and they have been monitored for months to make sure no adverse reactions have happened.
Combine that with the fact that we live in 2020, and that our knowledge of vaccine science is much better than it was just a couple of decades ago, and it&#x27;s hard to believe that this is an &quot;experimental&quot; vaccine.

Thankfully, the US antivax movement is not as strong in the rest of the world, and thankfully not everyone needs to be vaccinated for the R0 figure to drop considerably.If cretins don&#x27;t want to be vaccinated, it&#x27;s their loss.

Previous polling in the US showed only 70% of people would want a vaccine as soon as it comes available. And it keeps going down as time goes on. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.gallup.com&#x2F;poll&#x2F;321839&#x2F;readiness-covid-vaccine-falls-past-month.aspx" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.gallup.com&#x2F;poll&#x2F;321839&#x2F;readiness-covid-vaccine-...</a>

Given that there will be a limited number of initial doses, healthy people have the luxury of taking a &quot;wait and see&quot; approach. It will be interesting to see if vaccines are mandated generally or for travel.

I wonder if the people scared of permanent damage caused by Covid (for which there is no evidence) will be equally scared of the permanent damage caused by this experimental vaccine (for which there is no evidence either).

How long, exactly, are they good for once they warm up?I assume you aren&#x27;t injecting people with something at -80C. How big of a window is there for injections?

medical freezers of this grade seem to be pretty pricey, in the $6000 range<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.labrepco.com&#x2F;product-category&#x2F;cold-storage-products&#x2F;laboratory-medical-freezers&#x2F;medical-freezers-for-clinical-labcomma-pharmacy-doctors-offices&#x2F;page&#x2F;2&#x2F;?paged=1&amp;pg=2&amp;s&amp;facet%5Bproduct_cat_taxonomy_id%5D%5B0%5D=6619&amp;facet%5Bpa_temperature_taxonomy_str%5D%5B0%5D=-70%C2%B0C%2F-94%C2%B0F+%7C+COVID-19&amp;solr_tax_id=6619" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.labrepco.com&#x2F;product-category&#x2F;cold-storage-produ...</a>

I know that several of the vaccine candidates require similarly cold storage for their entire distribution cycle until they are being used. Disclaimer: I work for big pharma.

Is that the nasal swab? I did one last week and dropped it in an outdoor quest logistics metal box.

COVID PCR tests waiting to be sent to a lab also need to be frozen.

low temp storage was also required for the ebola vaccine and yet it was successfully administered to more than quarter of a million people in equatorial Africa<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Kivu_Ebola_epidemic#Vaccination" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Kivu_Ebola_epidemic#Vaccinatio...</a>should be quite doable

&quot;However, there are logistical challenges as the vaccine has to be kept in ultra-cold storage at below minus 80C.&quot;Does anyone know how many of the other vaccine candidates have this limitation? It seems to me that a vaccine with easier logistics might still end up having a bigger impact overall, despite not being the first - although that of course needs to be combined with the ease of production too (I don&#x27;t know how easy it is to mass produce these new RNA vaccines compared to more traditional ones).

Nature (from August) for the Phase 1&#x2F;2 trial results of this vaccine (Pfizer&#x2F;BioNTech): <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nature.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;s41586-020-2639-4" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nature.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;s41586-020-2639-4</a>

There are reported cases of people who built up immunity against the Chinese strain and got infected with the European strain while still having antibodies for the first one.Danish are killing 17M minks because of a novel mutation that infected 12 people (reported).

Rate of mutations is directly proportional to number of viruses out there. We&#x27;re having exponential growth in the amount of COVID19 (with a slow exponent, with social distancing, but exponential none-the-less). That we&#x27;ve seen mutations back when there was a tiny fraction of the cases we have today is a very bad sign.If it jumps species, as we saw with mink, we may have a reservoir in nature with no control. It will mutate and periodically jump back to humans.

The mutations seen so far are minor and don&#x27;t appear to impact our ability to vaccinate against them.

There is no evidence of recombination in Sars-cov-2

The virus is (heavily) mutating folks.
Heavy mutations likely related to recombination with rhino-viruses.
This vaccine will likely be outdated when generally available.

My point was the validation and peer-review. There are many possible confounding factors, including isolation and mask use.Also I might have misread the protocol, since I&#x27;m no medical scientist, but wasn&#x27;t the efficacy of the vaccine measured only in a 1 month timespan? Are we even sure the effects are long lasting?I just don&#x27;t want to get the hopes too high too soon. The crash after a positivity high can be quite bad. Reuters is even live streaming Wall Street because of this announcement!

It&#x27;s a highly formalized clinical trial, it would be nonsensical to misrepresent or exaggerate the results. The preliminary analysis is based on 94 cases; not a huge number, but totally reasonable to draw conclusions from.

&gt; The data released by Pfizer Monday was delivered in a news release, not a peer-reviewed medical journal. It is not conclusive evidence that the vaccine is safe and effective, and the initial finding of more than 90 percent efficacy could change as the trial goes on.The title is quite sensationalistic for such preliminary results. Especially when they have only been reviewed by an &quot;outside panel of experts&quot; [1] who sometimes have undisclosed conflict of interests.[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;11&#x2F;09&#x2F;health&#x2F;covid-vaccine-pfizer.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;11&#x2F;09&#x2F;health&#x2F;covid-vaccine-pfiz...</a>

We don&#x27;t know that. It might be that your body just doesn&#x27;t become symptomatic, but you are still able to spread. In this case everyone vaccinated should be considered a super-spreader because they will continue to do what they were before.Note, the above scenario seems very unlikely. However we don&#x27;t have enough data to rule it out.

I wonder if any of the other vaccine candidates offer 100% protection, or near it at least? Still, if everyone got this vaccine, then the infectiousness of the virus would be decimated, so if currently every infected person infects 5 people, in a vaccinated population they would instead infect 0.5 people, causing the pandemic to decline instead of accelerate exponentially like it does now.

Or just keep it in liquid nitrogen. Its is cheap and cold enough.

I read this with a lot of hope. The -80 degree cold storage part won’t be easy. Most vaccines stored at medical offices are nowhere near that and are only around ~0 degrees C.Freezer temps are only ~18 deg C.Possibly will only be able to be administered at special sites or if they find a way to stabilize it at warmer temp.

There are not enough per-orders to vaccinate everyone even if they all pass trials, and nobody has the ability to manufacture enough to vaccinate the world alone in a reasonable time period anyway. If all the early vaccines pass trails we can start opening up the world in 6 months. If they is the only one we are more than a year away.That said, all the deals are contingent on being effective. With this being 90% effective that sets a bar for the others. The FDA has previously said they need your vaccine to be 50% effective to approve it. However with this being 90% effective they are unlikely to approve one that is only 50% effective. Unlikely doesn&#x27;t mean they won&#x27;t: different allergic reactions; usefulness in different age groups; ability to ship to remote groups; difference in effectiveness to some minority: all are factors that may make some vaccine approved even if it is clearly the worse one to get overall.

I wonder what will happen with the vaccine deals that governments have been doing. Like, what if they pre-ordered from one manufacturer whose vaccine proves inferior to the other ones?

True. But seeing a potential path towards making a sifnificant dent to the uncontrolled spread of the virus is a welcomed respite from nearly a year of darkness.EDIT: I upvoted you because you make a valid point. Things will not recover overnight. But at the same time, we can still celebrate the hope of a promising solution.

depends. If this provides spread prevention as well, then places can start opening up in about 6 months as enough locals get vaccinated as to slow the spread to the rest. On the other hand if this provides only some immunity but you are more infectious (ie the body doesn&#x27;t fight the virus off, just makes it less dangerous - I don&#x27;t think this is possible but....) we can&#x27;t open up for years as anyone vaccinated is a risk to everyone else.Of course there are other vaccines in development. If any other them pass trails that changes things too. we can only speculate as to how.No matter what though, there is now a real light at the end of the tunnel.

One of the lead doctors in the UK is saying life will start to look normal in Spring 2021 (albeit, I assume he was referring to the UK alone). There&#x27;s good reason for cautious optimism &amp; patience.Science has done its job; now we need to push for coordination between infrastructure, government, and business to finish it.

It will still take a long time before a sufficient number of people have been vaccinated that life can return back to normal.

Screw the media for pushing this and lockdown as the only possible solution. This will still take ages to be rolled out.

Same here.Congratulations and thanks to everybody who worked so hard on this.

Feel the same. Can&#x27;t stop smiling. Never felt like a more accurate time to use the phrase &quot;light at the end of the tunnel&quot;.The US government is paying like $20 for each dose. I&#x27;d pay 100x that without batting an eye.Thank you thank you thank you to everyone working on this vaccine and related Covid treatments.Can&#x27;t wait to get the needle in the arm!

This is great and all, and I&#x27;m not against vaccinations, but is this safe long term?Am I the only one here who doesn&#x27;t want to get inoculated in basically the first batch?

&gt;We&#x27;ll be seeing the first EUA&#x27;s by December, and shots in the arm before the end of the yearWhat makes you say that? That&#x27;s quite fast, no?

thank god Biden was elected, otherwise this news would have been thrown in the trash.

Yes, this is an incredible scientific achievement. Before calling all humans awesome, I have to point out though, that there are a lot of countries which managed the pandemic really well, especially in Asia, but most western industrial nations quite badly failed at this. A faster and better reaction to the outbreak would have helped a lot. Both with all the casualties which sadly were the consequence and with the ability to eradicate the virus via vaccinations.

&gt;We&#x27;ll be seeing the first EUA&#x27;s by DecemberEmergency Use Authorization, for anyone else who hadn&#x27;t encountered the term yet

&gt;I&#x27;m feeling a deep-seated wave of relief that I never thought possible. Like waking up from a year-long nightmare. Thank God.Moderna is also only weeks behind Pfizer&#x2F;Biontech here with a very similar technology and manufacturing capability of hundreds of millions of doses. We&#x27;ll be seeing the first EUA&#x27;s by December, and shots in the arm before the end of the year. Pretty incredible that we can just science our way out of things like this. Humans are awesome.

Seeing the light at the end of the tunnel means it&#x27;s more important than ever to isolate and stop this third wave ASAP.It&#x27;s hard enough to see loved ones die or to suffer life long side effects if lockdowns only delay it. But to have it happen just a couple months before a vaccine was available would be incredibly hard.The prospect of a vaccine should make isolation much more bearable mentally. We&#x27;re past halfway, folks!

Glad to hear the virus is not dangerous, a pity you&#x27;ve informed us all so late!

I wake up long time ago when I realized the virus is not as dangerous as the media reported it. You too should wake up right now and live your life. Stop being afraid.

I&#x27;m feeling a deep-seated wave of relief that I never thought possible. Like waking up from a year-long nightmare. Thank God.

Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% protection