Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine • Hacker News Board

Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine

#541

Post by WalterBright » Mon, Nov 23, 2020, 10:01 PM UTC

bigmanwalter wrote: post #381

ericmay wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Almost everything commercially successful is run by tyrants.

Sounds like you're simply defining a tyrant as someone who runs a profitable company.

Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine

#542

Post by bumby » Mon, Nov 23, 2020, 10:04 PM UTC

jason0597 wrote: post #536

bumby wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a potential real problem, but the concern should be across the board (i.e., how do we know other countries aren't funding me-too drugs) so it doesn't really help illuminate any disparity between countries (which is the context of this discussion). I'm not trying to be dismissive, I just don't know how it's germane to the discussion unless we view all the other data through the same lens. The data I linked is p…

I do not know how to objectively measure useful research funding. However, this discussion reminded me of a graph I saw on the wtfhappenedin1971.com site [1]. It's not direct measurement of R&D development, but it sure as hell doesn't paint a good picture for all the spending that's going on. I wouldn't be surprised if a similar allocation of funds was happening in medical R&D as well. [1] https://wtfhappenedin1971ho…

Yes, I'm familiar with that graph. There's a similar one for college tuition in the U.S.; interesting that both are industries where costs have been growing at more than GDP year over year.

However, the point between comparing countries still holds. If you use older data, you'll see that the U.S. had even more disproportionate R&D funding

Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine

#543

Post by i_cannot_hack » Mon, Nov 23, 2020, 10:45 PM UTC

beagle3 wrote: post #503

i_cannot_hack wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, the cutter incidence was worse than the disease, because the activated virus was injected into a population, whereas naturally only a tiny part would be exposed at the same level, and the rest would be exposed at a much lower level - that would give them immunity but not disease. This is a more reasonable assessment, but it is still patently false . According to Wikipedia, 0.04% vaccinations resulted in paralys…

> According to Wikipedia, 0.04% vaccinations resulted in paralysis in the Cutter Incident, compared to 0.1-0.5% of wild type polio. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polio_vaccine#1950%E2%80%93195... : "The Cutter vaccine had been used in vaccinating 200,000 children in the western and midwestern United States.[76] Later investigations showed that the Cutter vaccine had caused 40,000 cases of polio, killing 10.[76]"…

You are almost certainly using the wrong numbers. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutter_Laboratories#Cutter_inc... and https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp048180, the faulty production applied to 120.000 doses of vaccine, which lead to 56 cases of paralysis (0.046%) among vaccinated children. These sources further mention "the exposures led to an epidemic of polio in the families and communities of the affected children, resulting in a further 113 people paralyzed and 5 deaths", which tells me that your number of 250 probably includes cases caused by such transmission. This is of course reasonable when discussing the total damage caused by the vaccine, but this number can not be compared to the incidence of paralysis for a single infection, as you do.

You would also have to include further transmissions caused by wild polio if you would like to make such a comparison.

> still patently false. pfft. Perhaps false under some assumptions, definitely not "patently false".

Even with your own calculation, which is inflated by also including transmission within the community for the vaccine but not for wild polio, the vaccine was very much comparable to wild polio (0.125% versus approx. 0.1%). Without vaccination, polio would usually infect virtually all children. So even with your own inflated assumptions it's false that the vaccine was worse than polio.

So under which assumptions would it not be false?

Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine

#544

Post by anoncake » Mon, Nov 23, 2020, 11:15 PM UTC

bb123 wrote: post #455

anoncake wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not how it works. The Spanish Flu hasn't "come back" yet and coronaviruses mutate a lot more slowly. It couldn't really come back anyway, because it's still there, downgraded to regular flu.

Your example proves exactly the opposite of the point you think it does. Every year the flu virus comes back slightly mutated, and the immunity process starts all over again. In the summer the southern hemisphere acts as of reservoir of the virus and vice versa in the winter. This exact process could happen with COVID too. You are right that it does mutate more slowly, but there are upwards of 4 billion people in the…

Of course it does. But it doesn't cause anything we'd consider a pandemic.

Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine

#545

Post by anoncake » Mon, Nov 23, 2020, 11:21 PM UTC

School-Cotton wrote: post #367

lorenzfx wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe you misread the abstract. After reading the whole article, I believe it should be "include the `2009 swine flu pandemic`, as well as the `Spanish flu`".

How is that different from how you think I read it? The “Spanish flu” is the name of the 1918 outbreak of H1N1. There was also a major H1N1 outbreak in 2009.

The 2009 outbreak wasn't comparable to the Spanish Flu.

Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine

#546

Post by refurb » Tue, Nov 24, 2020, 12:11 AM UTC

aquadrop wrote: post #519

refurb wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha! You think big pharma likes spending that kind of money on trials? I’ve been a part of those negotiations with the FDA. It costs that much because the company says “we believe a 6 month trial is sufficient to prove both safety and efficacy” and the FDA says “if you want it approved, you need to collect 2 years of data”. Now, $10-15k per patient-year is for a typical therapeutic. And that is an average across globa…

I don't see a reason they would be really against it. FDA says it to everyone, so all companies in same condition. And they can shift cost to healthcare system and have larger revenue. They probably don't mind their pie as a whole being larger, because having revenue of 50 billions and profit of 10 billions is better than revenue of 5 and profit of 1, even though proportionally it's the same. All big pharma companies…

They probably don't mind their pie as a whole being larger, because having revenue of 50 billions and profit of 10 billions is better than revenue of 5 and profit of 1, even though proportionally it's the same

It doesn't work this way. Pricing of pharmaceuticals is independent of the cost of development. Nobody will pay $200 per Covid vaccine dose just because the cost to develop it went up 10x. Every extra dollar spent on development, is one less dollar of profit.

That's why some drugs never make it to market - the cost to bring them to market and the low price means they'll never be profitable.

Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine

#547

Post by tinus_hn » Tue, Nov 24, 2020, 1:40 AM UTC

mrtksn wrote: post #497

tinus_hn wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, too bad for these millions of people who died from the disease! At least we followed the procedure!

It's not about following arbitrary rules for the sake of following rules. There are people out there that won't hesitate to kill any number of people for the hard cash or fame, some did it before and that's how the rules were born. I am sure that some of rules could be revisited thanks to the new tech but portraying it as "rules kill people" is intellectually dishonest or naive. Look what happened with Boeing 737-MAX…

There is an argument to be made about which odds are better though. Take the risks with a vaccine or don’t and suffer the disease?

It’s just that using the vaccine is an active choice so you run into trouble with ethics.

Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine

#548

Post by bigmanwalter » Tue, Nov 24, 2020, 2:07 AM UTC

ericmay wrote: post #437

bigmanwalter wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The main issue is identifying what anti-social behavior is. It's easy to say "coal is anti-social! don't you care about the environment!", but it's just as anti-social to just shut down an industry and say "best of luck, I heard you can move to California and build websites in JavaScript". Often times there just aren't easy answers. I also want to push back on "everything commercially successful is run by tyrants" ki…

The tyrannical boss is a classic trope due to the necessities of competition.

Companies are unlikely to stay profitable if they’re overly generous. They need to profit handsomely to survive.

Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine

#549

Post by ericmay » Tue, Nov 24, 2020, 2:54 AM UTC

bigmanwalter wrote: post #548

ericmay wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main issue is identifying what anti-social behavior is. It's easy to say "coal is anti-social! don't you care about the environment!", but it's just as anti-social to just shut down an industry and say "best of luck, I heard you can move to California and build websites in JavaScript". Often times there just aren't easy answers. I also want to push back on "everything commercially successful is run by tyrants" ki…

The tyrannical boss is a classic trope due to the necessities of competition. Companies are unlikely to stay profitable if they’re overly generous. They need to profit handsomely to survive.

> The tyrannical boss is a classic trope due to the necessities of competition.

Eh, I think that’s kind of old-school thinking.

> Companies are unlikely to stay profitable if they’re overly generous. They need to profit handsomely to survive.

Yep. That’s fine. (Also ignores low-margin industries that rely on volume, but whatever).

If you want a modern society, people have to be able to take risks with their money in order to make more money. Otherwise we can go back to subsistence farming. Do you work? You’re charging a profit. How evil of you! Being a few steps removed from the transaction doesn’t make you any less guilty of profiteering. You’re just as bad as these tyrannical CEOs, the difference is you’re a sucker for building their product while they make money hand over fist.

(I don’t actually believe the last part, but w/e).

Re: Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine

#550

Post by tomhoward » Tue, Nov 24, 2020, 7:22 AM UTC

guipsp wrote: post #479

dash2 wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't responding to the OP's point, which was that war profiteering (making money by providing weapons to kill people) is morally different from selling vaccines (making money by providing medicines to save people's lives).

I'm not sure I follow? Profiteering off of healthcare has a cost, in terms of people not cared for due to various market reasons.

I'm very familiar with the perverse outcomes that emanate from profit-driven medical research, having been personally affected by illnesses that the mainstream medical science community sees no incentive to invest in.

But the reasons and ethics of the system being the way it is are separate from the reality of what it is for the purposes of getting things done in the here and now.

For better or worse, as things stand right now, pharmaceutical companies, like other companies, need to make profits - or at the very least avoid crippling losses - in order to survive and continue doing their work.

That includes covering the formidable costs of the many research studies that go nowhere and yield no revenues.

I'm sure you wouldn't find a single person in a pharmaceutical company who would feel good about withholding treatment from any person with a life threatening illness. But what they also have to care about is remaining in business so they can treat and cure many more people with serious illnesses.