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Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine

ox.ac.uk

341–350 of 569 posts

Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine

#341
post #195
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>At $3 to $4, many countries will jump on board ASAP and stay away from the expensive vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna. The price difference will likely remain substantial, but in case anyone is unaware, the difference is currently greater due to AstraZeneca pledging to the sell the vaccine at cost "during the pandemic", while Pfizer and Moderna have indicated that they fully intend to profit. [1] Once AstraZeneca de…

[flagged]

Pfizer is partnered with a German company

Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine

#342
post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>These two companies have collectively received more than $1.5 billion from the US government [1]. As I understand it, Pfizer have not taken any federal funding. They do have government purchase agreements, but they So where did Pfizer's capital come from to shoulder these costs? It didn't come out of thin air, they've accumulated capital from somewhere. If not from taxpayers, someone is subsidizing Pfizer's expenses…

> someone is subsidizing Pfizer's expenses through Pfizer's revenue stream Companies taking a portion of what they earn from their existing products and investing this money to create new products is beneficial, and we should have more of it. Additionally, while this is probably not the case for Pfizer, another possibility is that a company can take outside investment to fund development of a new product.

Not the OP, but what she/he is probably hinting at is that the majority of Western Governments (i.e. both the US and the EU) have poured trillions of dollars/euros into the market as the pandemic started, money that has helped the capital markets stay afloat (and even more than that).

Without those trillions of dollars/euros most probably the capital markets would have been down by at least 50% (my guesstimate, or at least that's where we were headed mid-March), which means that the money available to companies like Pfizer would have been a lot less.

As such, Pfizer saying that they didn't receive federal money is technically correct, but without federal money most probably their market value would have been a lot less right now.

Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine

#343
post #333

I find it disheartening how many people speculate about possible long term side effects of exposure to Covid, even in asymptomatic cases. Yet those same people seemingly have no reservations about injecting a brand new drug into their veins.

Viruses destroy your cells. Their "purpose" is to do damage to your body. Vaccines don't. If they damage your body it's by accident.

Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine

#344
post #333

I find it disheartening how many people speculate about possible long term side effects of exposure to Covid, even in asymptomatic cases. Yet those same people seemingly have no reservations about injecting a brand new drug into their veins.

It's a simple choice really; being infected with Covid means your body creates thousands of antibodies to fight the virus. Some of those will likely go on and attack your own cells and cause post-covid symptoms. The vaccines only present part of one protein, so not as many antibodies created, less scope for after effects. Key will be seeing when Pfizer and Moderna release their safety data for their testing cohorts. If the effects are minimal, getting the vaccine is a no-brainer.

Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine

#345
post #333

I find it disheartening how many people speculate about possible long term side effects of exposure to Covid, even in asymptomatic cases. Yet those same people seemingly have no reservations about injecting a brand new drug into their veins.

Especially when the "gold standard" PCR procedure has a 97% false positive rate.

This is asserting that the number of incorrectly positive results is equal to ALL truly negative test takers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_positive_rate).

>> Citation needed <<

Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine

#346

Here [1] it says the vaccine was designed mostly over the weekend of 11th Jan 2020. Here we are 10 months later and we know it works. If our knowledge of vaccine design is so good experts can design a vaccine that works over a weekend, what new breakthroughs are required to reduce the time between then and now substantially? A lot of benefit could have been had if we'd been able to get along this path more quickly. […

Challenge trials. https://www.1daysooner.org/ If it were considered ethical to do them, we could have known in a few weeks. "Medical ethics" claims another million lives.

Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine

#347
post #109
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 70% is the combined data, so probably the most reliable estimate. For two high doses, they got 62% effectiveness and for one low and one high dose they got 90%. They don't know why the latter was more effective. 70% is still a great effectiveness rate, specially for a cheaper and easier to distribute vaccine.

The problem with adenovirus vaccines is that body might build immunity against the adenovirus as well. So, you give one jab, adenovirus infects enough cells and creates enough antigens, immune systems notices and does something about it, but it also notices the adenovirus and makes antibodies against that, too. With the second jab those antibodies immediately neutralize the adenovirus so it can't infect enough cells…

Very interesting! Thanks for sharing

Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine

#348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the association between Pandemrix and narcolepsy is because it caused narcolepsy (as with Guillain-Barré it's also plausible the problem is that this is an auto-immune problem and so the vaccine wasn't actually the problem it just highlighted a problem you already had) then the incidence rate was estimated at like 18k patients per case. So if you give the entire US population a vaccine like that, less than twenty…

how about compared to the covid risk of a perfectly healthy young adult?

covid risk varies wildly depending on socioeconomic factors. Educated, WFH, small family, stable or low IRL social interaction: pretty low risk. Low-education, multiple in-person jobs, lots of casual social interaction, large family: very high risk. We've seen it very starkly in England. When entire communities are being ravaged by exponentially-growing transmission, it's hard to argue that a vaccine might be worse, because the chances are really minimal.

Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine

#349
post #306
post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

BioNTech is not a German/Turkish company. It's a German company, two of whose founders are of Turkish descent.

As someone who migrated to Germany from Turkey, people like me (and everything we are involved in) are "German" when we do something they're[0] not proud of, we are "Turkish" if we ever come close to success, and "of Turkish descent" in the normal times. Of course it depends who you are asking :) It's a bit annoying to be honest but not a huge deal.

I suppose all immigrants have similar problems.

[0]: I mean people living in Turkey

Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine

#350
post #5

The key differentiator here is the storage requirements (2-8c ‘normal refrigerator’). That’s much more accessible to developing / low GDP countries as opposed the cumbersome and expensive storage requirements of the other two.

Another huge differentiator is price. At $3 to $4, many countries will jump on board ASAP and stay away from the expensive vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna.

Price is not an issue for rich countries. 500 Million vaccines for USA leaving kids and some other out...cost, what $25 Billion? Peanuts, compared to the damage it did /can do. Same for USA, EU, Japan, CA, Australia etc.
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