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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

#481

Post by monkeynotes »

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.

> Who cares. I'd gladly give this company a couple of billion if it means they can get us back to normal.

This kind of thinking is worrisome to me. It sets a horrible precedent. Previously in times of war private business would be forced into helping the people fight a common enemy. These days a war on a virus has zero help from business and they essentially have a position of power to sit on their hands taking billions of public subsidy and then take the people's money and effort for their own.

Why do we take this with such apathy? Why is it that a country run by the people for the people has no power in the populace hands? We are doing everything we can to help, committing billions of dollars which represents millions of hours of public production to solve a problem that CEOs only want to assist in if they can up their share price.

Since we care so much about our health and the health of loved ones why have we not used these unprecedented times to reform the healthcare industry?

We are paying twice for this. Once to fund the research, which we then give away, and then again for the manufacture and distribution which is priced as if the pharma did all the research. These vaccines are going to cost anywhere between $15 and $37 a shot. You cannot tell me that's how much these vaccines cost to make in quantity. Why is there any profit at all? Let's get ourselves out of this shit without encumbering any more debt on top of an economy that is already falling into a black hole.

This stuff is morally corrupt, and to say 'who cares' makes me sad. We should care, maybe we accept the shit we have, but we should care about it. This stuff should be criticized, we should use our agency to change what is wrong, not to support it.

Every day I fear we are all fucked. This sort of thinking is why we deserve the likes of Trump and Boris. We bring this crap on ourselves and then moan about it.

You talk about getting back to 'normal', well we slowly sold normal. These decisions do not have zero impact on the future, they affirm a shitty attitude and set the path for future generations who won't know any better.

/rant

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

#482

Post by ineedasername »

I'm concerned that, given both effectiveness & willingness to get a vaccine, we may only experience incremental improvements in transmission rates.

The flu vaccine is generally about 50% effective, and only about 50% of (Americans) say they will definitely or probably get a vaccine. If that holds, then combined, that would only cover 25% of the population. Well below herd immunity.

Yes, it would be an improvement, but we should really be embarking on a heavy public awareness campaign that, once available (and assuming a low risk profile) that vaccination is the responsible and safe thing to do.

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

#483

Post by 542354234235 »

cookingrobot wrote: post #402
EpicEng wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

You say it’s “obvious” but it’s the opposite of my intuition. Can you explain the logic a bit more? I would have thought you’d give a risky new drug to the least healthy, most likely to die without it population, to raise the chance of survival from low to unknown.

Because you may not be raising it at all. The side effects could do more harm than the intended effects do good. So you need to do a large very controlled study with healthy people so you can more easily find side effects. Second, many side effects can be tolerated well by a healthy person but could be very dangerous in an at risk person. A drug that causes hypertension might not be a problem for a healthy person, but could kill someone with a heart condition. If you skipped this step, you could put people at risk of heart attacks and make it harder to detect the drugs effect on the heart vs already increased morbidity in those heart condition patients.

You are also evaluating the intended effects (as opposed to side effects), so you can see if it is actually doing what we want it to do, and how well. We could find out that the vaccine is very effective at preventing covid infections. But we could find out that it does not reduce the rate of covid infections, but does reduce the severity, or we could find out it does not reduce anything for reasons we don’t yet understand.

Once that is done, we will have a good understand of A. the level of benefit and B. the level of harm. From there we can make an educated decision to proceed or not. If we do, then it is approved and given to the general population, including those at risk. It is at this stage that the effects on at risk groups can be studied, during the ongoing monitoring of the approved drug.

Hopefully this answers your question and shows why this is the best way to do it.

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

#484

Post by sgt101 »

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

The story appears to tell exactly the opposite of your comment : Merck failed to do a deal because Oxford held out for public good outcomes that Merck wouldn't meet, and AZ did.

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

#485

Post by nugget »

monkeynotes wrote: post #481
apexalpha wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Who cares. I'd gladly give this company a couple of billion if it means they can get us back to normal. This kind of thinking is worrisome to me. It sets a horrible precedent. Previously in times of war private business would be forced into helping the people fight a common enemy. These days a war on a virus has zero help from business and they essentially have a position of power to sit on their hands taking billi…

Do you think that the more profit available to pharma, the more capable the workers attracted to the field will be? And therefore the faster results will be achieved? I don’t mean just the bench scientists, but all the other people - programmers, lawyers, managers, fabrication engineers, supply chain ops, etc - required to take an idea from paper to mass production. Having worked in biotech startups myself I understand how inefficient the current system is, but at the same time I can’t foresee a better one.

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

#486

Post by Florin_Andrei »

cookingrobot wrote: post #402
EpicEng wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

You say it’s “obvious” but it’s the opposite of my intuition. Can you explain the logic a bit more? I would have thought you’d give a risky new drug to the least healthy, most likely to die without it population, to raise the chance of survival from low to unknown.

> I would have thought you’d give a risky new drug to the least healthy

Yes, but at this stage there is no drug. You're in the process of making the drug. And you don't want to test your beta versions on sensitive subjects.

Once nothing obviously bad happens, you can expand the test circle.

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

#487

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

rhino369 wrote: post #274
JshWright wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does that matter if the research and development costs were publicly funded?

Trials and regulatory approvals are a huge cost too. If the government paid for all of that (including opportunity costs + a decent margin), then the government should have asked for the patent rights (or at least a commitment on pricing). Has any serious journalist looked into exactly what the world governments paid for and exactly what the deals with the drug companies look like? All I can find are biased opinion p…

The FT had some coverage of this, but it wasn't massively in depth. The one thing I remember is that the AZ would be sold without profit until the end of the pandemic, which was contractually defined as June 2021.

Incidentally, if you want serious journalism, the FT is worth paying for.

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

#489

Post by dragontamer »

CyanLite2 wrote: post #394
ponker wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Case in point: Doctors and first responders should be immune before treating the sick.

Doctors can get COVID then spread it to their patients. A vaccine, even just for healthy people, would negate this chain of events.

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

#490

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

cwhiz wrote: post #436
DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who know they've been vaccinated will behave more recklessly than people who haven't been vaccinated. You need to have a control group, in order to assess the efficacy (and safety) of the vaccine. If the control group is wearing masks and socially distancing, but the vaccinated group is going partying at bars and clubs every night, then comparisons of how often each group gets infected won't have much meaning.…

What you’re describing as “reckless behavior” is just normal behavior in a non-covid world. If vaccine candidates are social distancing, wearing masks, and staying home how will the researchers get the data they need? If you are following “covid best practices” it is extremely unlikely that you will contract covid. Would the researchers not want people to go out and live their normal lives?

You need both groups to behave in the same way. Phase III trials are enrolling enough people (tens of thousands) so that a sizeable number will likely contract the virus within a few months. They specifically run these trials in places where the virus is spreading (this is why Chinese vaccines are being tested outside China, in places like Brazil).

> Would the researchers not want people to go out and live their normal lives?

That would be great for the trials (assuming both the vaccinated and placebo groups behaved identically). But most people would consider it unethical for researchers to encourage the trial participants to increase their likelihood of exposure to the virus. People who sign up for vaccine trials are not signing up to get CoVID-19.

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