Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine

ox.ac.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

421–430 of 569 posts

Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine

#421

Post by bumby »

tssva wrote: post #286
bleepblorp wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

And when the next pandemic hits no drug company will develop, manufacture and distribute a vaccine because they know there is no profit to be had.

While I think the current system helps, let's not pretend that profit is the sole reason people decide to work in medicine or research.

We all have things (and people) in our lives who are probably a net negative in terms of financial outcome, but we enjoy them anyways because our value systems are more complex than just "maximize profit"

Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine

#422

Post by thehappypm »

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #75
bawolff wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe for less developed countries, but i think for major economies, the price difference is insignificant relative to the benefits of any vaccine.

If they actually get to 90% or more, why would anyone bother with the more expensive and cumbersome vaccines? Except that the EU already signed a deal to buy the vaccines from AstraZeneca, Sanofi and Johnson & Johnson.

The mRNA vaccines are better and protect more people. AZ leaves 10% unprotected, mRNA leaves 5%. That's a big difference if trying to get to herd immunity.

Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine

#423

Post by Smaug123 »

jonplackett wrote: post #417

We (Britain) may have totally screwed up our general response to COVID. But at least we’re still pretty good at science. Thanks Oxford for saving the day.

Tyler Cowen made this point a few months ago (https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/07/wh...): the public health response has been "generally poor" but the UK was first on the mark with dexamethasone and has been among the first with the vaccines. He went as far as saying the UK has had the best response to COVID despite the public health response.

Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine

#424

Post by Frost1x »

bumby wrote: post #371
paganel wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Can you help me understand your point a little better? I think the OP was reflecting on cash flow being used for R&D but your post seems to be more about market capitalization.

The question was simply to stimulate a more holistic view of the example at hand: that Pfizer did this on their own and essentially didn't need/get any financial help. Sure, Pfizer didn't receive direct subsidy in the short term related to COVID R&D and is taking on risk.

But let's look at this more holistically. Pfizer and pharma benefit a reasonable amount from public research. Pfizer has received their fair share of governmental funding in the form of products, services, and research: https://www.usaspending.gov/search/85a918fa6adf5152dbac723d2...

They've also been subsidized by people with illness over the years that isn't related to COVID (directly or through their insurance provider pools). It's in other cases the previously sick that have padded Pfizer's profit margins enough to enable them to accumulate enough capital they could take on this sort of risky R&D. Theres also the costs of enabling laws and defending their IP rights from external pressures the US pushes.

It may not be direct subsidy but there are plenty of indirect subsidies that enabled Pfizer to do this. Let's stop pretending these businesses pull themselves up by their bootstraps to success and take on all the risk: they don't. They very often take low risk returns and transfer to high risk and use subsidized activity (e.g. federally funded research) to their advantage. Anything high risk like pharma is prone to failure and needs assistance.

Should we continue assistance? Absolutely, I think so, it's good for everyone. As one parent mentioned, it is good to see these businesses reinvest in further R&D that lead to new discoveries in therapy and treatment as opposed to simply hoarding capital.

Apparently the thought of the narratives that Pfizer didn't pull themselves up by their bootstraps financially makes some people cranky. Everyone needs assistance (especially in high risk arenas), let's not pretend that assistance doesn't exist simply because its indirect, time delayed, and being shifted around.

Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine

#425

Post by beagle3 »

tialaramex wrote: post #236
beagle3 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The safety concerns cannot be resolved yet. Effective - yes. Safe? We won’t know for a while. Pandemrix, a flu vaccine, caused a notable uptick in narcolepsy in Sweden, Finland and likely the UK. This was not (and could not) be seen in smaller trial populations. It is not a given that any of the covid vaccines is safe enough. Historically, two cases of rushed vaccines (cutter polio and Gullah barre) were worse than t…

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…

The association in Sweden is strong enough to say “it does”.

And yes, the mechanism is likely that Pandemrix activated a predisposition. But it was not activated in statistically equivalent kids who did not get Pandemrix.

Why is it so hard to acknowledge that not all vaccines are perfect, and that there’s a risk involved? I am not avtivax. I am pro vaccination. I am anti religious “a vaccine can never be bad” thinking which seem to be prevalent among otherwise rational scientific people.

Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine

#426

Post by skocznymroczny »

MagnumOpus wrote: post #276
photon-torpedo wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not an epidemiologist, but I think the goal of mass vaccination if to make R drop to well below 1. If everybody is vaccinated with a 90% effective vaccine, then R drops by a factor of 10 (I think) so that sounds pretty good?

Yes, R is at 1.3 with WFH and other restriction. In March, R was 3-5 without restrictions. If everyone got vaccinated with 90% effectivity (or even 70%), it would be enough. However, availability won't be sufficient to get to 100% within a year, and compliance seems to be somewhere around 50-70% at most given polls. (There are a huge number of people even in this forum who are antisocial - "I won't get vaccinated unt…

Antisocial? Let me decide about myself. How did it go, "my body, my choice"? Also, I find it interesting how everyone suddenly trusts 100% every claim made by big pharmaceutical companies, even though most of them don't have a good history. Volkswagen was also complying to all the laws and standards, until it turned out it actually didn't.

Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine

#427

Post by beagle3 »

yodelshady wrote: post #304
beagle3 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>which covers r&d and marketing but also the failed attempts that lead nowhere in between. How do you account for the failed attempts? As yomly alludes to, pharma startups exist because they don't own the risk - their investors bought it when they were funded. Big pharma does own the risk.

You sum the expenditure and divide by number of successes, with some accounting for the delay. It is actually much easier than trying to figure out the cost of a specific drug, because research is sometimes shared.

Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine

#428

Post by BurningFrog »

bleepblorp wrote: post #126
ddeck wrote: 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]

I think it should always be insanely profitable to save the world!

That is something we want to encourage!

Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine

#429

Post by thehappypm »

summerlight wrote: post #131

It's interesting to layman's eyes that the dosing regime using 1.5 doses is more effective than the one using 2 doses as I would expect the inverse; are there any plausible explanations for this?

It's because of the way the AZ vaccine works. It uses a different virus to infect cells which then create the antigen to stimulate the immune response. These are a bit unstable, since the vaccine itself, being a virus, is an immune system trigger. The immune system might snuff out the vaccine itself after a huge first dose, then the second dose is wiped out.

This is I think why the mRNA vaccines are doing better. They don't use a virus as a vector, they use a less convoluted vector of a more basic mRNA instruction set. They're also in a way more "scalable" in that a future disease or a mutation of Covid with a new spike protein could have a new vaccine made quickly by tweaking the mRNA sequence.

Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine

#430

Post by thehappypm »

jl2718 wrote: 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…

BioNTech / Pfizer is also mRNA.
Post reply on HN