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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

#521

Post by eumenides1 »

arcticbull wrote: post #257
eumenides1 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that we should reconsider giving (temporary) monopolies to companies that are based public research. I suggest that we should give merek the for profit monopoly, but allow for non profit manufacturing. If another organization wants to make the vaccine but not derive profit from the process, let them. Manufacturing takes time and money to develop. Revenue should pay for those costs. The non-profit gains e…

> The point is that we should reconsider giving (temporary) monopolies to companies that are based public research. Now we can disagree on term length, but, a temporary monopoly to a company is what a patent is defined as and lasts 20 years.

the problem is for a competitor to emerge, they have to do a lot of work after X years.

My proposal is to have a company parallel develop processes so we can have competitor after expiry immediately. The competitor can't profit from it, but it can do work at 0 cost.

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

#522

Post by rgbrenner »

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.

You have a built in assumption in your statement that you haven't acknowledged: that the drug helps rather than harms. A new drug may help or it may harm.

If the drug turns out to harm people, a healthy person may be able to deal with it and recover. While a person that is barely hanging on to life may be pushed over the edge. There's no data to support a new drug raises the survival rate. It may in fact lower it from low to zero. During testing you generally want to kill as few people as possible.

Once more data has been collected on the drug, then the balance starts to shift toward giving it to at risk groups.

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

#523

Post by EliRivers »

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.

You don't want people to drop dead from your experimental vaccine . As a general rule, the people least likely to drop dead from your experimental vaccine are young, fit, healthy people. Start with them. If they drop dead, well shoot. If they nearly drop dead, lucky you didn't start with the people who are one bad day away from the grave already.

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

#524

Post by mantap »

faitswulff wrote: post #33
dbetteridge wrote: post #3

OK, someone tell me why this isn't the good news it sounds like

Well, it's still good news, but an injected vaccine may not lead to sterilizing immunity - i.e. vaccinated persons might still be able to transmit the disease: > Without a strong mucosal response, injected vaccines may be less likely to produce so-called sterilizing immunity, a phenomenon in which a pathogen is purged from the body before it’s able to infect cells, Dr. Durbin said. Vaccinated people might be protecte…

It seems that COVID-19 is often passed at superspreading events. If the vaccine could nevertheless prevent people from superspreading then it might still have a substantial effect.

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

#525

Post by kevinventullo »

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.

Does it prevent young healthy people from being carriers? If so, that would be huge.

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

#527

Post by aphextron »

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?

>AMA?

Have you experienced any side effects, even mild like injection pain or fatigue? I'm in the Moderna study and feel pretty disappointed that I may have gotten the placebo.

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

#528

Post by Brakenshire »

0df8dkdf wrote: post #453
samwillis wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you please indicate where you heard that Merck has any ownership of the patents to the Oxford vaccine? The cited article indicates that it’s is AstraZeneca who have done a deal with Oxford and that the deal with Merch, while an early option, fell though. Is would seem “US BigParma” are not involved, as AstraZeneca is a British/Swedish company.

AstraZeneca is BigPharm! May not be as Merck or Pfizer, but they are on the big ones.

Yes, but it’s bizarre to complain about the deal while not knowing enough about it to even accurately remember which company was a signatory to it.

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

#529

Post by davidhowlett »

lostlogin wrote: post #452
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…

> I'm also unaware of any disease that isn't more threatening to people in relatively poor health. I had to think a while - sickle cell anaemia and malaria. I’m sure there will be others.

I believe the 1918 flu also had the unusual property of killing people in their 20s at a higher rate than the middle aged and old. https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/12/1/05-0979-f3

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

#530

Post by aphextron »

rlpb wrote: post #381
xwdv wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> Why risk it? It's worth pointing out that during a pandemic, while participating in a trial does carry a risk, so does not participating. A participant has some substantially greater probability* than the general population of avoiding an infection which apparently carries a risk of death or long term debilitating effects. * You'll have to incorporate the probability of being in the control group, of course, but th…

>It's worth pointing out that during a pandemic, while participating in a trial does carry a risk, so does not participating. A participant has some substantially greater probability* than the general population of avoiding an infection which apparently carries a risk of death or long term debilitating effects.

Participating also carries risks beyond simply that of the vaccine. Being exposed to any kind of healthcare setting is extremely dangerous right now. I'm taking part in the Moderna trial, and honestly I'm considering dropping out before the second injection. The risk of going into a clinic multiple times where I hear people coughing all over the place is starting to seem unacceptable to me given that I'm fairly certain I've been given the placebo.

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