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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

#531

Post by monkeynotes »

nugget wrote: post #485
monkeynotes wrote: post #481

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. 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 understa…

None of this speaks to the social cancer that is corporations draining the society they function in. Individuals are expected to sacrifice and pull together, do the research, finance pharma production, give away patents, and yet the big pharmaceutical sits back and drains all of this into their stock. It's just not right.

Let them make a profit when we are thriving not while everyone else is suffering and making sacrifices.

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

#533

Post by warent »

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

it seems more like a collaboration. the private sector doesnt have the money or incentive to do such a thing (at an individual business level) but they have the ability to execute on it if incentivized.

the public sector doesnt have the agility or flexibility to do such a thing but they definitely have the money and incentives to make it happen.

the two combine to create a big, powerful, fast-moving machine that solves a problem.

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

#534

Post by HeadsUpHigh »

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.

It does build herd immunity though.

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

#535

Post by wolco2 »

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 test your new feature on the group who is most likely to leave your site. You test on your biggest fans first.

You don't test your new med on the group is most likely to die.

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

#536

Post by dragonwriter »

davidhowlett wrote: post #529
lostlogin wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

For much of 1918, a lot of people in their 20s getting the flu were also experiencing trench warfare, which can't be an optimal situation, both in terms of immediate self-care and co-occurring health conditions.

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

#537

Post by sjg007 »

ilyagr wrote: post #495
Bobblebobble wrote: post #303

I'm in the trial. Here's the participant information sheet, in case anyone's curious: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WB5QPmECchlThnem9wcX0PDaKQW...

I'm surprised they don't seem to do frequent and regular COVID testing of participants to catch asymptomatic infections. Naively, it would seem worthwhile in order to predict how well the vaccine would slow down the spread. I guess the reason is that the study is narrowly tailored to vaccine approval requirements?

It’s a pipe dream. We don’t have enough capacity. People won’t get tested either. This issue would be mute if people wore masks and stayed apart.

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

#538

Post by lbeltrame »

aphextron wrote: post #530
rlpb wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

FTR, most side effects appear (according to what Moderna published so far) only after the booster shot. So IMO you can't tell yet if you were given the vaccine or not.

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

#539

Post by bastawhiz »

Viliam1234 wrote: post #502
Animats wrote: post #499

This is only one of 11 vaccines now in phase III efficacy tests.[1] Six vaccines already have "partial approval", but those are the ones in Russia and China, which may or may not be working, and the governments decided to try anyway. All of those provoke an immune response. Whether it's enough of the right immune response is found out in phase III testing. Something is probably going to work. The big question is how…

> A 50% effective vaccine might be an overall lose - only half are protected but more than that abandon masks and social distancing. I remember a similar argument being used against face masks. (That they are not perfect, and may cause harm by giving false sense of security.) Perhaps we should be more careful about perfect being the enemy of good.

The availability of masks is far higher than vaccines, though. You can order a box of masks on the internet and have them same-day delivered to your home. The scarcity and logistics of delivering a vaccine once it becomes available are both factors that make the effectiveness that much more important.

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

#540

Post by xxs »

garmaine wrote: post #316
mromanuk wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

at what point you know (or will know) if you were given a placebo or the actual vaccine?

when the trial is ended.

...or in this case if you get infected with the real thing as medical history is important.
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