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Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine

ox.ac.uk

381–390 of 569 posts

Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine

#381
post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here comes my old publicly traded corporation rant: a company with a well defined owner, even with a well defined group of owners, would, given the opportunity, profit handsomely. But not overdo it. They'd rather be seen as a global saviour, not as a global ransomer. Enter public trading: the opportunity alone for global ransoming will inevitably become the projection that defines the street price for shares and once…

I don’t think this is a very good rant. Private companies have investors too, and board leadership varies from company to company.

So true! Anonymous masses vs private fiefdoms. Almost everything commercially successful is run by tyrants.

I wish regulating anti-social behaviour out of industry was more popular.

Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine

#382

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.

Knowing the efficacy in few weeks is not going to speed up the vaccine trials (see my other comment).

Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine

#383
post #189

An important fact that I haven't seen mentioned in this thread is that 3m doses have been manufactured already and are available in the UK supply chain today. "All" that's required is the approval from the regulator - but I guess that is still a little way off. 3m would do a lot of good though - frontline staff, the most vulnerable, hotspots....

[deleted]

Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine

#384
post #374

In case anybody was wondering what this actually is: “The ChAdOx1 vaccine is a chimpanzee adenovirus vaccine vector.” They put a corona spike sequence into it. By comparison, the Moderna is making a RNA vaccine, and BioNTech an epitope vaccine (the actual protein). The ‘invasive’ effect is decreasing in that order. Oxford’s ChAdOx1 infects your cells to create RNA, then protein, then T-cell recognition/apoptosis, the…

Quite a typo in your last sentence.

Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine

#385
post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Knowing the efficacy in few weeks is not going to speed up the vaccine trials (see my other comment).

Even once safety is established, our current protocol requires waiting for wave of infections to sweep so thoroughly through the population that some of the study volunteers are infected by chance.

Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine

#387
post #384
post #374

In case anybody was wondering what this actually is: “The ChAdOx1 vaccine is a chimpanzee adenovirus vaccine vector.” They put a corona spike sequence into it. By comparison, the Moderna is making a RNA vaccine, and BioNTech an epitope vaccine (the actual protein). The ‘invasive’ effect is decreasing in that order. Oxford’s ChAdOx1 infects your cells to create RNA, then protein, then T-cell recognition/apoptosis, the…

Quite a typo in your last sentence.

Ha! I’m leaving it.

Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine

#388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also so far the mRNA vaccines look to have less side effects. AstraZeneca is not doing charity, it's cheaper because they have the inferior vaccine.

Fool, they literally are doing charity as they've pledged not to profit from the pandemic. It's was stated multiple times in the article that they will sell it at cost in perpetuity to poor and mid income countries and until the pandemic is considered over in rich countries.

Sure, maybe I just don't understand this whole charity thing. When governments can print trillions of dollars to ,,help the people in the pandemic'', why a few tens of billions of dollars matter when real companies with real experts are doing real work all day and night without sleeping. Instead of buying back bonds, governments should pay companies that help in this situation.

Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine

#389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I studied pharmaceutical sciences ten years ago, the rule-of-thumb was that it cost around 1 billion dollars from idea to the product being launched. That's only r&d costs and regulations have become stricter over the years, so I imagine the cost has risen since then

I’ve seen this number with some justification being the amortized cost of a successful product, which covers r&d and marketing but also the failed attempts that lead nowhere in between. There are plenty of 50-100M pharma startups; they wouldn’t exist if your number was right.

The usual course for a biotech is multiple raises as the drug progresses through trials and an early IPO. At each step investors see it as a surer shot.

Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine

#390

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.

We've subsequently learned that even young healthy and initially asymptomatic people can become permanently ill from so called "long COVID". The ethicists were right to say no.
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