Perhaps efficacy was affected by issues such as length of needle and not the quality of the vaccine? I always have an allergic reaction to flu shots so when the shot with very short needle caused no reaction, I blamed the needle/fat, not the vaccine. Way too many people use obesity as a scapegoat. Annoys me to no end when obesity, diabetes, asthma appear as dx codes for completely unrelated health issues.
Today is day 2 post-flu shot 2020 and my allergic reaction is beginning and that needle was loooong lol. The pharmacy person indignantly informed me that in 25 yrs she has never shot anywhere but the arm. "It has to be in the muscle." I replied that there is a muscle beneath the fat in my thigh so jab and push will work just fine. I dropped my drawers she asked where I wanted it I pointed and everything was fine. Then I told her she is now trained to inject a thigh lol.
There was an elderly couple getting theirs right before me that I had chatted with. When the wife came out after, I idly asked her whether they gave them the enhanced flu shot due to their age. She didn't know and asked someone who also didn't know but glanced at their paperwork and said yes. Not sure about that since they didn't appear to know what the enhanced version was and the couple had not specified it.
I am well-padded :-) so I would like to suggest when they study such issues they also include the variable of the length of the needle when injecting the obese.
I have had flu shots where I swear they hit the bone, flu shots that clearly entered the muscle, and flu shots where the needle was only 1/8" long beyond the syringe (nurse w/bad attitude and my fatty upper thigh site to boot.)
Guess which shot did not produce my usual allergic reaction, my usual 1 day of flu symptoms, and did not protect me from the flu?
So... request a longer needle if they come at you with a short one.
As for studies, they need classes training them to identify study biases and gaps before they themselves design a study. I sat in a conference room once with self-esteemed professionals starting a study. I came prepared with a list of questions. It was amazing how little thought they had put into their study's design. Every time I read a news story about new study findings, I snort.
Paxiled,
I agree with your last statement. I did hear on this last Tuesday the Oxford vaccine trial started phase 3 here in the U.S. I hope for the best for us all. I hope we get our life back. I am going to party like its 1999. LOL
mkh9
There are several vaccines that are coming out of Phase 3 trials by the end of 2020. Two are mRNA vaccines and one is a recombinant Adenovirus vaccine. by Johnson and Johnson. There is also one in Oxford, England etc. Depending on where you live. The mRNA vaccines will be out by end of the year. These are pieces of molecular material that target the spike protein of the Corona Virus (stable section). This vaccine is new and never before been used on humans. So far it has passed safety and efficacy of phase 1/2 trials and is undergoing phase III. We'll see about the data of that one. I am going to make sure the full data is completed and evaluation and accepted by the FDA before thining about this vaccine that hasn't been tested for very long. As for the J&J vaccine it is a vaccine that is similar to the flu vaccine. These are well know types of technology. i don't have a problem getting that one. It uses a piece of the Adenovirus virus so you can't get the virus and it creates immunity because the body see's it as foreign. That is how all vaccines work. But the way they make this latter vaccine is already known. So if it is safe and effective I am going for it. That one is also around the end of the year , maybe beginning of next year. I hope that they have both the flu and Corona virus vaccines by then.
mkh9
It hasn't been my experience that the FDA is an arm of the Commerce Dept. In fact, FDA is bureaucratic to the point that it takes years to get an approval for something that is life saving that they already know works (other than oxycontin which was a one-off that for some reason got some kind of special approval without the data to support it, but that was a one in 50 years event and is more complicated than tabulating vax results). The FDA has been the graveyard for many promising technologies that spent years trying to get approvals and ran out of money giving competitors time for a better technology to appear. I watched a sterilizer approval take 5 YEARS that the analyst following it said it should have taken 2 WEEKS maximum since the company had done rigorous testing with their submission and some of the FDA questions that slowed the process down were repeats of previous ones that had been answered.
The independent reviewers for the vax and the invigilators who conduct the human trials are not paid by the pharma company seeking the approval, and the FDA has to review the independent's recommendations - so Dr. Stephen Hahn would have to intervene and override this committee in front of the entire US media. Perhaps the administration will pressure him for vax approval ahead of time - but there are many people following this who won't take the vax if Fauci et al say it's not safe which is not a good vote getter, even if a gamble-approval works better than expected post approval because the election will be over before anyone knows the results of hundreds of millions of injections. So I think the 90% odds of a proper approval per this article sb closer to 100% but we will see. https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/11/health/october-surprise-vaccine-nih/index.html
i feel like if they don't even know enough about the virus, itself, then how in the world do they know about a vaccine that hasn't even come into fruition yet? starting to wonder what we can and cannot believe these days when it comes to covid.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/05/health/obesity-covid-vaccine-effectiveness-wellness/index.html
"Will we have a Covid vaccine next year tailored to the obese? No way," said Raz Shaikh, an associate professor of nutrition at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Scientists know that vaccines engineered to protect the public from influenza, hepatitis B, tetanus and rabies can be less effective in obese adults than in the general population, leaving them more vulnerable to infection and illness. There is little reason to believe, obesity researchers say, that Covid-19 vaccines will be any different.