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Oxford vaccine shows sustained protection of 76% in 3-month gap til second dose

ox.ac.uk

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Re: Oxford vaccine shows sustained protection of 76% in 3-month gap til second dose

#131

Post by renaudg »

toyg wrote: post #128
harry8 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

#nzhellhole looks pretty competent to me. Does it not to you? The UK dreams about having a day as good as their biggest disaster. They were very, very conservative in their approach.

NZ is easy mode though. They are not a nexus of international travel and commerce, and their border is quite hard (an ocean). They did well, for sure, but the UK or any other European country could not have followed the exact same strategy - except maybe Iceland or Far Oer.

It's not like Great Britain is an island, after all.

:)

Re: Oxford vaccine shows sustained protection of 76% in 3-month gap til second dose

#132

Post by renaudg »

phatfish wrote: post #119
harry8 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>to be fair ...taking a flyer on an utterly unproven vaccination strategy was a huge, huge risk and had it not come off there would be no vaccination strategy. Relying on being lucky doesn't seem like a "spot on" strategy to me. "We gambled everything on red it and came up so we deserve credit for the strategy." edit: This is in relation to the additional time between first and second jabs that was untested in the st…

To produce the vaccine so fast that had to be done. The issues European production partners (one in Belgium I think) are suffering with the AstraZeneca vaccine are similar to those already solved at the UK production sites months ago because of the risk taken to start production early. Each production facility can have unique issues that effect yield that simply need time to resolve. Maybe AstraZeneca over promised,…

The EU has a contract with AZ that makes ensuring vaccine supply to the EU the company's problem, even explicitly requiring the use of UK plants for this purpose if need be.

The problem is that AZ had also promised the UK it would have priority over the goods produced on its soil :

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/health-pharma/dragging-a...

Re: Oxford vaccine shows sustained protection of 76% in 3-month gap til second dose

#133

Post by snystrom »

xvedejas wrote: post #79
jaynetics wrote: post #50

Even more consequential than the fact from the headline is the preliminary result that a spacing of 12 weeks does not seem to reduce efficiency. I wish my country and others would take note and give priority to handing out as many first doses as possible, but my hope for such quick adoption of scientific findings has been rather diminished by the whole event.

The first dose prevents hospitalization. Right now, for every second dose we give, that's a decision to deny someone a life-saving dose in favor of someone already protected. What a strange prioritization to make. The bright side is that, if the rate of vaccination continues to increase, those denied the first dose now should still get the first dose soon after. Let's hope we don't hit some manufacturing bottleneck.

A strong argument against this is the potential to apply selective pressure for virus variants that escape antibody binding. After the first vaccine dose, antibody titer in the blood is lower than it would be after 2 doses. Some of the new variants are better at escaping antibody binding, but with high enough antibody titer in the blood, they can still be cleared. Using only 1 dose risks not having enough antibody to eliminate an antibody-escape mutant.

Re: Oxford vaccine shows sustained protection of 76% in 3-month gap til second dose

#134

Post by xvedejas »

snystrom wrote: post #133
xvedejas wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first dose prevents hospitalization. Right now, for every second dose we give, that's a decision to deny someone a life-saving dose in favor of someone already protected. What a strange prioritization to make. The bright side is that, if the rate of vaccination continues to increase, those denied the first dose now should still get the first dose soon after. Let's hope we don't hit some manufacturing bottleneck.

A strong argument against this is the potential to apply selective pressure for virus variants that escape antibody binding. After the first vaccine dose, antibody titer in the blood is lower than it would be after 2 doses. Some of the new variants are better at escaping antibody binding, but with high enough antibody titer in the blood, they can still be cleared. Using only 1 dose risks not having enough antibody to…

It will be a strong argument when there's more evidence. Do we have any example of significantly stronger viral adaptation in the presence of a vaccine that successfully stimulates the immune system? Even a full course of the less-effective vaccines would still be risking this. The AstraZeneca and Sinovac vaccines only have an efficacy of around 70% after all.

Re: Oxford vaccine shows sustained protection of 76% in 3-month gap til second dose

#135

Post by renaudg »

adamc wrote: post #19
lbeltrame wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a reduction of the risk of symptomatic disease by 76% once vaccinated. But more importantly, there were no hospitalizations or deaths in the vaccinated people. This is a point the media often overlooks.

It's huge. On the whole, avoiding hospitalizations is far more important than whether people had mild cases.

Not quite when it comes to stopping the epidemic, because transmission seems to be highly correlated to viral load and thus to severity as well.

Re: Oxford vaccine shows sustained protection of 76% in 3-month gap til second dose

#136

Post by harry8 »

chrisseaton wrote: post #130
harry8 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK's has been a gambler's strategy, for mine, seat-of-the-pants I'm-feeling-lucky stuff. This "win" does not compensate the losses nor justify the strategy. The win here is "the decision outcome has not been smashed by a possible downside." There were rather a lot of people suggesting that doing an unproven vaccine strategy of getting the maximum number of people their first vaccine and a longer period between fi…

> By contrast a considered and careful strategy is to be commended even if it turned out to be incorrect based on subsequently available facts. But the EU also gambled - they gambled that more time thinking would pay off, and it didn't. I think this is where you're going wrong with your argument: spending more time for care and consideration is also a gamble. How do you know how much care and consideration is the rig…

Everyone is making decision under uncertainty, all the time.

If my impression of risk-loving decision making is wrong and there really was careful analysis of risks I'd love to hear it. It would restore a /lot/ of faith.

What was the assessed risk that that an increased period between first and second jabs would greatly reduce the coverage?

What was the advantage of the increased period? (ie is it likely that one jab will keep more people alive and/or do less damage to more covid survivors).

Is the risk of going with a longer period between first and second worth it? With the benefit of hindsight there appears not to be a downside. To be totally clear: this is very, very, very welcome news. Now it's a proper asymmetry and it seems like this strategy is all upside from here.

The alternative was to give people the two vaccine jabs the exact amount of time apart as had been tested and was known until this data came in. Then switch to this strategy. That is the conservative decision as you pretty much know what you're going to get. Is the longer period between first and second to get more people a first jab faster going to pay off? Again to be 100% clear let's hope so. Really let's hope it's a huge, huge win.

This analysis of UK vaccination policy and the maximum coverage of first jabs that the new 3-month data helps to further (but not completely) inform has nothing to do with the EU or New Zealand or Taiwan or Brazil.

Assessing the UK's gamblers' strategy of taking flyers is a reasonable thing to do in comparison to other EU nations, or NZ or Brazil...

There are other aspects to the UK's various strategies that don't have much to do with the Oxford vaccine showing sustained protection of 76% ...

If the UK has made some good calls in there based on risk asymmetry and balances of probabilities to go with the plethora of terrible ones they probably should trumpet them very loudly just restore people's faith that it's possible and that we can do better than 'gut-feel' or taking a flyer or "if she comes home we'll be loaded!" Which is how it's looking.

Re: Oxford vaccine shows sustained protection of 76% in 3-month gap til second dose

#137

Post by renaudg »

iainmerrick wrote: post #111
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #26

It’s interesting how the Astra Zeneca vaccine is such an emotional topic. In the UK it’s seen as the greatest weapon against the pandemic, in the US it is not playing much of a role and in the EU public perception is super negative.

The EU’s current behavior is very sad to see, when up to now they had seemed much more sensible than the UK government. AZ had production problems in the EU -- perfectly understandable as it’s a complex operation and they started somewhat later than in the UK. The EU Commission responded by threatening legal action (??) and almost bypassing the hard-won Northern Ireland border agreement (!!??!!) before backtracking.…

I've found UK media coverage of this row disturbingly one-sided (even amongst pro-EU journalists)

You may want to read this for a more balanced view :

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/health-pharma/dragging-a...

It was really AZ's screw up. The fact is that the EU had a contract with AZ that explicitly required the use of UK plants for fulfilling the EU's orders if need be. But the problem is that AZ had also promised the UK it would have priority over the goods produced on its soil...

Re: Oxford vaccine shows sustained protection of 76% in 3-month gap til second dose

#138

Post by ummonk »

ineedasername wrote: post #125
ummonk wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how the immune system works though; you aren't "throwing away" the currently administered doses if you wait until after immunity declines to give the booster dose. Unless this virus is magically different from every other virus we create a vaccine for, waiting longer for the booster will create a better / longer-lasting immunity afterwards.

No, some vaccines wear off relatively quickly: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/04/how-long-do-vaccines... So it's very important to follow the protocol here as much as possible until we know otherwise.

Immunity wearing off doesn't mean a booster won't work. The memory cells will still hang around at some level, so when you apply the booster, you'll get longer lasting immunity at that point. In fact if anything, providing the booster within 3-4 weeks is likely to hamper the durability of the booster-induced immunity.

Re: Oxford vaccine shows sustained protection of 76% in 3-month gap til second dose

#139

Post by blibble »

renaudg wrote: post #132
phatfish wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To produce the vaccine so fast that had to be done. The issues European production partners (one in Belgium I think) are suffering with the AstraZeneca vaccine are similar to those already solved at the UK production sites months ago because of the risk taken to start production early. Each production facility can have unique issues that effect yield that simply need time to resolve. Maybe AstraZeneca over promised,…

The EU has a contract with AZ that makes ensuring vaccine supply to the EU the company's problem, even explicitly requiring the use of UK plants for this purpose if need be. The problem is that AZ had also promised the UK it would have priority over the goods produced on its soil : https://www.irishtimes.com/business/health-pharma/dragging-a...

they might have a contract with AZ, but it's very likely to be the wrong AZ...

instead of AstraZeneca plc (.uk parent company) their contract is with AstraZeneca AB (.se subsidiary)

the UK vaccine operation will be under the control of AB plc

I would bet the commission insisted on having it with an EU entity without having thought the ramifications

Re: Oxford vaccine shows sustained protection of 76% in 3-month gap til second dose

#140

Post by [deleted] »

renaudg wrote: post #131
toyg wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NZ is easy mode though. They are not a nexus of international travel and commerce, and their border is quite hard (an ocean). They did well, for sure, but the UK or any other European country could not have followed the exact same strategy - except maybe Iceland or Far Oer.

It's not like Great Britain is an island, after all. :)

[deleted]
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