Strongest news yet

[Suff]

That the Oxford covid vaccine works.

A 28 year old vaccine test volunteer has died of Covid-19.

The young man was given a placebo. He did not get the actual vaccine.

The trial continues but, aside from the tragedy of the young man's death, it is good news.

[miasmum]

I cant see any good news in that, none whatsoever its just so terribly sad

[Workingman]

it is good news.

No it's not.

The young person died from unknown causes.

It is said that he was given an existing licensed vaccine for meningitis, a placebo of sorts, and sources say that he was not given the vaccine.

His death neither confirms that the vaccine is safe nor does it indicate that it is unsafe. We simply do not know, at present. All we know is that he died. RIP, unknown warrior, and thank you so much for trying to save us..

[Suff]

Nobody who has had the vaccine has died. The vaccine is being given in a place that has tens of thousands of new cases every day and multiple hundreds of deaths.

Now if someone who had received the vaccine had died that would be a catastrophe.

The news shows that people who are in the target group for the vaccine are clearly exposed and are being infected. We won't know the full results until they unblind the results, but there is reason to be cautiously optimistic.

[Workingman]

Suff, there are reasons to be cautiously optimistic about the candidate vaccine from Oxford, unfortunately with the way you worded things you made it ever so easy for us to misread your OP.

[Kaz]

I cant see any good news in that, none whatsoever its just so terribly sad

Absolutely

[Suff]

Agreed WM.

Thanks for clarifying and forcing me to scope it.

I think there is reason to be cautiously optimistic. I guess the biggest message yet will be when they start to mobilise medical staff for inoculation. That should be a big enough noise for it to filter through to the press and should come at least 2 weeks before they actually want to start vaccinating.

Whilst deploring every death, let's be realistic here. 1m dead. Another 6 months and more likely 2m dead. Another 6 months after that, perhaps another 500k dead. This is not going to stop without a vaccine. If we view it from that perspective, this young man's death serves a purpose to help us get a vaccine sooner rather than later.

The sooner we get a vaccine, the sooner hundreds of thousands or millions of people stop dying. Anything which helps that has an upside even if it is the death of someone which the vaccine might have prevented. Such are the facts of life with double blind trials.