EU Commission to end AstraZeneca and J&J vaccine contracts at expiry • Hacker News Board

Re: EU Commission to end AstraZeneca and J&J vaccine contracts at expiry

#141

Post by throwawayboise » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 5:56 PM UTC

tempestn wrote: post #129

imchillyb wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost one-third of new drugs approved by the FDA ended up years later with warnings about unexpected, sometimes life-threatening side effects. https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/new-drugs-found-c... Your supposition about likelihood bears no resemblance to reality. It's almost as if you're misleading people on purpose. I certainly hope that's not the case. Fully 1/3 of all medications approved by the FDA tur…

You can't compare vaccines to the overall universe of drugs like that. The main difference is that drugs that are intended to be taken over the long term can develop long term side effects. Vaccines are taken once or a few times, and then they're done. The parent is correct that complications arising from vaccines years after they're taken just isn't something that should be expected to happen.

Would your feeling change if we discover that yearly boosters of the COVID vaccine will be required indefinitely?

Re: EU Commission to end AstraZeneca and J&J vaccine contracts at expiry

#142

Post by stale2002 » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 5:57 PM UTC

estaseuropano wrote: post #66

refraincomment wrote: post #7

Good. But at the same time it should be possible to buy through private channels. So we can circumvent and get rid of the terribly inefficient bureaucrats.

Eu paid just a few euro per dose with other countries (and certainly individuals) paying 20x as much. Seems they are not so inefficient after all..

The end result of the EU saving this small amount of money is that they are now way behind countries like the UK and the US, on vaccinations.

The economic damage to their mistake to do that is will be way larger than any small savings on doses.

Re: EU Commission to end AstraZeneca and J&J vaccine contracts at expiry

#143

Post by throwawayboise » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 6:01 PM UTC

donretag wrote: post #138

parhamn wrote: post #26

Does anyone know how reusable the mRNA infrastructure is in the future for other mRNA based solutions or is this stuff more one-off for COVID?

mRNA is a decade in the making, which is why they were able to target/isolate a COVID-19 vaccine is a very short time. Two weeks I believe, someone please correct me.

I think it was more like two days. Very quick.

Re: EU Commission to end AstraZeneca and J&J vaccine contracts at expiry

#144

Post by jhayward » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 6:03 PM UTC

imchillyb wrote: post #115

shlant wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

although we do not have data yet to show if there are any side effects 1+ years after vaccination, it would be very unlikely that there would be. Serious side effects from vaccines are almost always immediate and seen within a few weeks after administration, not months or years later. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/concerns-history....

Almost one-third of new drugs approved by the FDA ended up years later with warnings about unexpected, sometimes life-threatening side effects. https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/new-drugs-found-c... Your supposition about likelihood bears no resemblance to reality. It's almost as if you're misleading people on purpose. I certainly hope that's not the case. Fully 1/3 of all medications approved by the FDA tur…

> You realize that this new 'vaccine' bears no resemblance whatsoever to any prior vaccinations?

> This new Covid Vaccine is not a true vaccine. This is a drug that modifies the inner workings of cells.

Flagged as misinformation. Complete nonsense.

Re: EU Commission to end AstraZeneca and J&J vaccine contracts at expiry

#145

Post by peytn » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 6:08 PM UTC

hef19898 wrote: post #123

imchillyb wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost one-third of new drugs approved by the FDA ended up years later with warnings about unexpected, sometimes life-threatening side effects. https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/new-drugs-found-c... Your supposition about likelihood bears no resemblance to reality. It's almost as if you're misleading people on purpose. I certainly hope that's not the case. Fully 1/3 of all medications approved by the FDA tur…

Every vaccine uses body cells to a certain extent. Sure, mRNA vaccines are new, but the underlying mechanism is not. Vaccines are behaving differently from drugs. Once they took effect, and your immune system reacted, it is over. And with millions of people vaccinated by now, for months, any adverse effects would have shown. That's why we discuss blood clots, under normal circumstances these rare cases would have gon…

> any adverse effects would have shown

As I understand, the required teratogenicity study in rats with Pfizer is ongoing as of two weeks ago [1]. It’s rather optimistic to claim we’ve seen everything when even animal studies haven’t completed. Vaccine science itself is rapidly developing. Now I don’t think there will be issues with this drug, but surprises may lurk still.

[1]: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/regulatory-approv...

Re: EU Commission to end AstraZeneca and J&J vaccine contracts at expiry

#146

Post by tialaramex » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 6:12 PM UTC

hef19898 wrote: post #123

imchillyb wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost one-third of new drugs approved by the FDA ended up years later with warnings about unexpected, sometimes life-threatening side effects. https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/new-drugs-found-c... Your supposition about likelihood bears no resemblance to reality. It's almost as if you're misleading people on purpose. I certainly hope that's not the case. Fully 1/3 of all medications approved by the FDA tur…

Every vaccine uses body cells to a certain extent. Sure, mRNA vaccines are new, but the underlying mechanism is not. Vaccines are behaving differently from drugs. Once they took effect, and your immune system reacted, it is over. And with millions of people vaccinated by now, for months, any adverse effects would have shown. That's why we discuss blood clots, under normal circumstances these rare cases would have gon…

The effect seen with these two adenovirus platform vaccines seems to be exactly what this would suggest we should expect too.

Roughly the immune system says "OK, let's attack things this shape" - which is why it's so useful for defending us against a wide variety of viruses - but alas, the shape it's picking in some patients happens to also match Platelet Factor 4, so now they are mounting an immune defence against their own blood clotting mechanism which is bad.

I don't know (perhaps if I read more papers about this I'd find out) whether it is suspected that the immune system makes this bad matching choice based on the spike protein (which we want it to match because of this coronavirus killing millions of people) or the adenovirus (which even if it could replicate in humans, which it can't, basically gives you the common cold so who cares) which is delivering it. If it's the latter, that's showing an advantage to the mRNA vaccines, since they don't need a viral delivery mechanism at all.

Re: EU Commission to end AstraZeneca and J&J vaccine contracts at expiry

#147

Post by JamisonM » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 6:19 PM UTC

Imnimo wrote: post #135

hef19898 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adeno virus based vector vaccines are a pretty old idea.

I was under the impression that adenovirus vaccines have only been been approved in the past year or two - a few for Ebola and the new ones for Covid. Are there others that have been around before that? It doesn't seem like it really matters if adenovirus vector vaccines is an "old idea" - after all, the idea of using MRNA has also been around for a long time. But if we've only started actually using them recently, h…

Your impression is correct.

The fact that it is an "old idea" is indeed unimportant, but what is very, very important is that large scale study over long periods has already been performed on that vaccination platform so we really do know a lot about it.

That means that the similarity to mRNA is a good thing in terms of any worries about unexpected consequences. Of course it also means that we know that the risk of any unexpected consequences for adenovirus vaccines is also very low.

Re: EU Commission to end AstraZeneca and J&J vaccine contracts at expiry

#148

Post by hef19898 » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 6:19 PM UTC

Imnimo wrote: post #135

hef19898 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adeno virus based vector vaccines are a pretty old idea.

I was under the impression that adenovirus vaccines have only been been approved in the past year or two - a few for Ebola and the new ones for Covid. Are there others that have been around before that? It doesn't seem like it really matters if adenovirus vector vaccines is an "old idea" - after all, the idea of using MRNA has also been around for a long time. But if we've only started actually using them recently, h…

They are tested and researched since at least 2004. Not for Covid-19 of course.

Re: EU Commission to end AstraZeneca and J&J vaccine contracts at expiry

#149

Post by gambler » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 6:20 PM UTC

s_dev wrote: post #46

syntaxing wrote: post #39

Seems like mRNA vaccines is winning the the race against other emerging technology like viral vector. If we manage to figure out the nanolipids to live in better temperature conditions, mRNA will change our generation.

Seems incredible now the University of Pennsylvania told the inventor mRNA that their contributions weren't worthwhile and let them go. https://billypenn.com/2020/12/29/university-pennsylvania-cov... And now on social media they've done a full 180 and are acting as if it were their contribution to the world when the reality is quite different.

>Seems incredible now the University of Pennsylvania told the inventor mRNA that their contributions weren't worthwhile and let them go.

Incredible from common sense perspective, but totally expected if you know how American academia operates these days.

Re: EU Commission to end AstraZeneca and J&J vaccine contracts at expiry

#150

Post by petre » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 6:25 PM UTC

josefx wrote: post #99

jleyank wrote: post #36

Probably every drug has risks, many higher than the 1:1,000,000 reported for AZ/J&J. It's always a balance between the risk untreated vs. treated - many cancer drugs will kill you, but slower than they kill the cancer. Contraceptives have various issues, but their "social good" is deemed worthwhile. I've read that they are doing gene analysis to try and determine why these cases appear - is it gender, age, cross-reac…

This might just be the straw that broke the camels back. As far as I remember the contracts the EU signed turned out to be incredibly one sided, with deliveries getting cut down when someone found out that more dosages could be extracted, no hard delivery requirements leading to constant shortages, etc. . Not getting out of that mess when alternatives exist seems like a bad idea.

This is very likely a political decision. AZ has not honoured their "best effort" contract obligations, the company priortized UK deliveries to honour their other contract and Western Europeans are reluctant to take it because it's less well tolerated than mRNA vaccines and now the very rare blood clot issues. It's too bad, because vaccination rollouts are well behind schedule with less than 10% or so of the EU population vaccinated, while the UK has vaccinated almost everyone under 50 and at risk groups and are out of lockdown. Germany by contrast is imposing additional lockdown measures.

I got my first AZ shot it and I'm thankful it exists and really hope it works against the new variants. Maybe this is a chance for poorer countries like Ukraine, Moldova, the former Yugoslav republics and Albania to get their citizens vaccinated. Western Europe should probably donate part of their stocks to these countries through the Covax mechanism instead of letting it go to waste.