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Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

reuters.com

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Re: Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

#391

Post by EpicEng »

ponker wrote: post #387
nate510 wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally speaking, experimental drug trials are run first on healthy groups and then in at-risk groups (old, young, those with co-morbidities). From the article, my guess is that they are expediting the sensitive groups trials, but unfortunately there's a lack of technical detail. Source: My partner is an infectious disease specialist and we talk about this pretty much daily because I'm so curious.

But for this disease that's particularly bad because Covid has shown to be worst in 55+, obese, comorbidities, etc... which means that the trials on healthy groups are proving very little, since the virus itself is so much weaker on healthy groups.

>But for this disease that's particularly bad because...

Doesn't change the fact that, when you're developing a new drug, you want to test it in a way which will cause the least harm. You don't begin trials with those most at risk for obvious reasons. The primary goal of this phase it to asses the safety of the vaccine candidate.

I'm also unaware of any disease that isn't more threatening to people in relatively poor health.

Re: Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

#392

Post by mandelbrotwurst »

ponker wrote: post #387
nate510 wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally speaking, experimental drug trials are run first on healthy groups and then in at-risk groups (old, young, those with co-morbidities). From the article, my guess is that they are expediting the sensitive groups trials, but unfortunately there's a lack of technical detail. Source: My partner is an infectious disease specialist and we talk about this pretty much daily because I'm so curious.

But for this disease that's particularly bad because Covid has shown to be worst in 55+, obese, comorbidities, etc... which means that the trials on healthy groups are proving very little, since the virus itself is so much weaker on healthy groups.

Isn't that true for most if not all diseases?

Re: Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

#393

Post by ta1234567890 »

ponker wrote: post #387
nate510 wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally speaking, experimental drug trials are run first on healthy groups and then in at-risk groups (old, young, those with co-morbidities). From the article, my guess is that they are expediting the sensitive groups trials, but unfortunately there's a lack of technical detail. Source: My partner is an infectious disease specialist and we talk about this pretty much daily because I'm so curious.

But for this disease that's particularly bad because Covid has shown to be worst in 55+, obese, comorbidities, etc... which means that the trials on healthy groups are proving very little, since the virus itself is so much weaker on healthy groups.

But even if only healthy people get the vaccine, it could prevent the virus from spreading as much, thus protecting the people who cannot get the vaccine and saving countless lives.

Re: Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

#394

Post by CyanLite2 »

ponker wrote: post #387
nate510 wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally speaking, experimental drug trials are run first on healthy groups and then in at-risk groups (old, young, those with co-morbidities). From the article, my guess is that they are expediting the sensitive groups trials, but unfortunately there's a lack of technical detail. Source: My partner is an infectious disease specialist and we talk about this pretty much daily because I'm so curious.

But for this disease that's particularly bad because Covid has shown to be worst in 55+, obese, comorbidities, etc... which means that the trials on healthy groups are proving very little, since the virus itself is so much weaker on healthy groups.

There's a protective effect of 'herd immunity'. E.g., if we vaccinate all the ordinarily healthy people, then it should slow spread to better protect the at-risk groups. Sort of counter-intuitive, but it buys us time until we can figure out if this vaccine is safe for those groups.

Re: Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

#395

Post by knappe »

ponker wrote: post #387
nate510 wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally speaking, experimental drug trials are run first on healthy groups and then in at-risk groups (old, young, those with co-morbidities). From the article, my guess is that they are expediting the sensitive groups trials, but unfortunately there's a lack of technical detail. Source: My partner is an infectious disease specialist and we talk about this pretty much daily because I'm so curious.

But for this disease that's particularly bad because Covid has shown to be worst in 55+, obese, comorbidities, etc... which means that the trials on healthy groups are proving very little, since the virus itself is so much weaker on healthy groups.

What is the alternative? Skip testing it on healthier groups first? Imagine what would happen if the trial was going awry _with_ healthy people. You certainly wouldn't want to test this on vulnerable populations.

Re: Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

#396

Post by standardUser »

xwdv wrote: post #348
maxehmookau wrote: post #341

I'm in the trial. It's really exciting, not least because form a purely selfish point of view, I might be immune already! ...or not. But it's exciting either way! AMA?

What if something goes horribly wrong and the vaccine trial causes unwanted side effects? Why risk it, what are they paying you?

It's worth remembering that Phase 3 trials follow Phase 1/2 trials, and those earlier trials are responsible for assessing the general safety of the vaccine. Phase 3 helps assess safety concerns among a much larger and more diverse group of people, but it is primarily about proving efficacy. They don't give out tens of thousands of vaccines (Phase 3) without a lot of data already showing the vaccine is safe.

Re: Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

#397

Post by a_imho »

tarboreus wrote: post #330
krustyburger wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drug companies also fund their own research, to the tune of massive expenditures. What you’re suggesting would incentive these companies to disengage from partnerships involving public funding. Whoever pays for the research, each company’s goal is to profitably sell a non-generic treatment. If the only way they can do that is to eschew public funds, they will do this and the result will be less cooperation and a far…

Honestly, this is overblown. Most of the budget for these corporations goes to marketing, and the R&D mostly goes to repatenting efforts or incremental repurposings. They rarely come out with anything new, and if you look at recent years you may as well say that they never do.

Maybe I'm mistaken here, but one such case was Sofosbuvir and its pricing was indeed very controversial.

Rant. Prime time TV is now pharma pushing their drugs with the occasional programming jammed between the ads. All those ads are coming from their extreme markups. Placebo and manufacturing artifacts aside, a molecule is a molecule, buying generics should be the default. It is bad enough, but the real disgrace is pharma salespeople masquerading as GPs prescribing meds according to who is sponsoring them. Instead of telling people about the active ingredient they send them to buy BRAND. At least this is my experience in the 2nd world.

Re: Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

#398

Post by prox »

thebruce87m wrote: post #356
fcsp wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering all the excluded groups on the trial (page 3, kids, 55+, obese, weak immune system, a lot more), it's a lot of exclusions, how does one get from results on a study like this to declaring the vaccine safe for general use?

Maybe a stupid question, but do we need to vaccinate everyone? I remember reading that heard immunity is 70% or something - so could we get away with leaving the people out that it wasn’t tested on?

There is no magic bullet, the vaccine is just the best chance of getting the virus under control, since it doesn’t rely on our behavior.

Look up “swiss cheese model covid-19”

Re: Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

#399

Post by guptaneil »

vorpalhex wrote: post #363
guptaneil wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, one party has dedicated itself to making sure the government is dysfunctional for a _long_ time so that it can run on the platform that government doesn’t work and we should privatize everything. This is not a fact of nature, it’s a willful decision. For example, the US used to be a leader in education. The thing that changed since then is one party started defunding education and moving that money to priv…

If your statement was true, Chicago and California would be bastions of government efficiency and capability. Instead we see both Republican and Democratic cities do terribly on most measures, and those cities that generally prosper have very little to do with who is in control other than it not being a single party and they have the right conditions for job growth. School funding happens at the state level too, not…

It's funny you bring that up, because my comment originally even included a bit about how a lot of our current problems can be traced back to Reagan's presidency. He was previously governor of California. Guess when California stopped offering free higher education?

Chicago is in Illinois, which has had a lot of flip-flopping between red and blue governors and has an infamous history of governors going to jail for corruption.

Also I'm not claiming that Democrats haven't done shitty things. Daley bankrupted Chicago and privatized a lot of our public services while running as a Democrat and some of those jailed governors were democrats, but I do think the GOP is more homogeneous in its efforts to break down the government. I mean privatizing everything is a platform they openly campaign on!

If your claim that prosperity has nothing to do with who is in charge were true, we wouldn't see a pattern of blue states outperforming red states economically or a national pattern of economic growth after a democrat president and decline after a republican president.

Coincidentally, I live in Chicago and used to live in California. People love to use both places as punching bags when talking about national problems, despite one being a state and the other a city! It's different types/scales of problems.

Re: Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

#400

Post by zucker42 »

apexalpha wrote: post #134
zoobab wrote: post #116

Good news for US BigPharma Merck holding the Oxford patents, while public funding has paid for its research: https://archive.is/aGUJd

Who cares. I'd gladly give this company a couple of billion if it means they can get us back to normal. Oxford develops the vaccine with public money. We also, god willing, need to manufacture billions of them and transport them around the globe. For that manufacturing, give me a solid existing multinational with a proven manufacturing record and base please, not some non-profit startup.

They don't need the patent in order manufacture the vaccine. Only allowing one company to manufacture the vaccine (or to control who manufactures the vaccine) will likely rise prices.
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