This potentially incredibly good news

Twitter is about to be full of articles about "herd immunity" again, but now with words laced in honey rather than shouting and hissing

Some things we now need to consider...

1/6 https://www.statnews.com/2020/11/09/covid-19-vaccine-from-pfizer-and-biontech-is-strongly-effective-early-data-from-large-trial-indicate/?utm_content=buffer16a2e&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=twitter_organic

We need to see the data

I note it is a difference between arms of *symptomatic* infection - this might mean reduction in disease severity, but we need to know about transmission

Why is that important?

2/6

With only ~90 events there's no way we'll be able to see efficacy in the highest risk groups who we are trying to protect (and who we're most worried won't mount an effective immune response)

Nice to turn COVID into a cold for younger people, but not what we're aiming for

3/6

On which note - we need to determine priorities for vaccination

We can't roll out 7bil vaccines all at once

The UK JCVI have a guide on their priorities, which is generally the elderly and those who look after them

Kids likely way down the list

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/priority-groups-for-coronavirus-covid-19-vaccination-advice-from-the-jcvi-25-september-2020/jcvi-updated-interim-advice-on-priority-groups-for-covid-19-vaccination

4/6

Some other vaccines are not far behind - what happens when we have several licensed?

What happens to people we enrol in clinical trials?

Combination trials are being planned for this circumstance

Which are more/less effective alone/in combo and for who?

5/6

In any case, it's great to finally see some fledgling data on clinical efficacy on the back of the published reports on immunogenicity

Hopefully a good sign for the other candidates in the pipeline too!

6/6