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....
Contrary to some views here, I am very heartened by a press release which doesn't gild the lily. This restores a lot of faith in reporting.
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?
We (Britain) may have totally screwed up our general response to COVID. But at least weâre still pretty good at science. Thanks Oxford for saving the day.
This statement seems a big deal: "There were no hospitalised or severe cases in anyone who received the vaccine"
Is that also true of the Pfizer and Moderna trials? Are the various trials measuring 'effectiveness' in the same way? Is there a standard for 'effectiveness' in these Covid-19 trials?
It will take some digging and real effort to compare the risks and benefits of the various vaccines coming to market.
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.
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/23/coronavirus-sc...
Correct me if I am wrong, Oxford uses traditional Vaccine design technique (using a weaker virus and adding spikes or something similar) while Biontech(Pfizer) and ModeRNA use MRNA which is completely new technique (messenger RNA).
This is awesome for more than just vaccinations. Traditionally the groups allocating govt funding to science and industries are very risk averse and this could be one more example where taking risks can payoff.
From AstraZeneca:
> One dosing regimen (n=2,741) showed vaccine efficacy of 90% when AZD1222 was given as a half dose, followed by a full dose at least one month apart, and another dosing regimen (n=8,895) showed 62% efficacy when given as two full doses at least one month apart. The combined analysis from both dosing regimens (n=11,636) resulted in an average efficacy of 70%. All results were statistically significant (p<=0.0001).
Also:
> and no hospitalisations or severe cases of the disease were reported in participants receiving the vaccine.
https://www.astrazeneca.com/media-centre/press-releases/2020...
I think I read (and I may be wrong) that the costs for the vaccines per dose were roughly as follows:
Moderna: ÂŁ45, Pfizer: ÂŁ20, Oxford: ÂŁ3,
The Oxford one is also easier to store and transport.
That headline is not quite correct. From the article:
> Phase 3 interim analysis including 131 Covid-19 cases indicates that the vaccine is [on average] 70.4% effective when combining data from two dosing regimens ... In the two different dose regimens vaccine efficacy was 90% in one and 62% in the other
And to be clear, it's not just one dose vs two:
> tests on two different dose regimens showing that the vaccine was 90% effective if administered at a half dose and then at a full dose, or 62% effective if administered in two full doses.
So "Oxford vaccine is up to 90% effective", perhaps?
Is there any research or early guestimates about risks (or benefits) of getting multiple different vaccines for Covid? E.g. What if one gets this, and then later moderna vaccine? Will they fight each other, or work together or is it unknown whats going to happen?
In case anybody was wondering what this actually is: âThe ChAdOx1 vaccine is a chimpanzee adenovirus vaccine vector.â 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 âinvasiveâ effect is decreasing in that order. Oxfordâs ChAdOx1 infects your cells to create RNA, then protein, then T-cell recognition/apoptosis, then epitopes trigger B-cell antibody production. Moderna RNA skips the infection part. BioNTech epitopes go right to B-cells.
But, they also have deceasing stability and manufacturing scalability in that order.
The press release is interesting. Not the best way to present their data. Immediate conclusion of many newspapers is "oxford vaccine is less effective then...".
Incoming possible Silly, Stupid and Lazy Questions,
1. Are there any vaccine ( of any Disease ) that are 100% effective? Or do we operate ( as I would assume ) something like 5 Nines effective rate and call it 100%?
2. Across all type of Vaccine, what are the average or median effective rate? i.e Should we expect Vaccine to be 90%+ effective in the first place? Or is that a wrong expectation to make?
3. What happens in the case of 10% ineffective, do they take a third dose?
"These preliminary data indicate that the vaccine is 70.4% effective, with tests on two different dose regimens showing that the vaccine was 90% effective if administered at a half dose and then at a full dose, or 62% effective if administered in two full doses."
So important: "A key element of Oxfordâs partnership with AstraZeneca is the joint commitment to provide the vaccine on a not-for-profit basis for the duration of the pandemic across the world, and in perpetuity to low- and middle-income countries."
Title is misleading. They tested few configurations, we should use the most optimal one, not the average. Much better source: https://www.astrazeneca.com/media-centre/press-releases/2020...
Good:
+ likely 90% effective if we use optimal dosing
+ no significant side effective. Looks better than Pfizer or Moderna.
+ already pre-produced at huge scale, 3 Bln doses in 2021
+ easy to store and administer, just regular fridge required
+ several times cheaper than mRNA
+ more traditional vaccine than novel mRNA, less tail risk in production and scaling up the process
Not good:
- two doses, efficient one month after first injection
- likely public will be confused about efficiency due to dosing regime
Beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak, with coroanvirus.
Every positive announcement raises my spirits slightly.
In general or specific to Covid-19 vaccines, does anyone knows what happens if you get vaccinated after you got the virus?
How many different viruses are there that cause the common cold? About 200? If we can get an effective vaccine for this coronavirus in under a year why aren't we working on all the other coronaviruses and rhinoviruses? I know nothing about biology but let's say it costs $1 billion to develop and test a successful vaccine for a common cold virus, worldwide for $200 billion that isn't that much to not have to deal with colds anymore. Plus it seems like one vaccine might provide protection for multiple different viruses. Or do they mutate too quickly to keep up?
"There were no hospitalised or severe cases in anyone who received the vaccine"
Does anyone know if there's data for this and the other vaccines, whether any of those that still end up infected under the trials have had any of the secondary symptoms such as missing sense of smell, reduced cognitive function, reduced bio-motor functions, cardiac damage and so on? Not dying from a lung infection is obviously the most important, but some of the other organ damage that corona-virus can cause is pretty scary too, and I'd like to know whether the vaccines seem to prevent this too.
I really still hope mRNA vaccines work well and that we keep investing in them. The potential too rapidly create new vaccines and deploy them when needed without requiring a vector will be crucial to counter future pandemics.
Once the oxford vaccine is deployed I suspect they will then have to create a new vector if they need to create another batch in the future as your body might have developed immunity to the vector virus itself making future doses ineffective.
I find it a bit weird that there are fewer asymptomatic cases with this vaccine? Is it somehow increasing the immune response to COVID-19?
Why do they sabotaged their own messaging by using the 70% number? Reading further, it looks like the vaccine is 90% efficient.
Also, "There were no hospitalised or severe cases in anyone who received the vaccine".
Can we infer anything from that statement? They seem to be suggesting that the infection might be less serious in the vaccinated population...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-07-15/oxford-s-... This is a great profile on one of the lead Oxford scientists.
As a trial participant on this vaccine, I'm _very_ pleased by this outcome!
Is that the same vaccine that was approved in Russia? I remember Russia was working with AstraZeneca on their vaccine, but not sure if it's the same one.
Does anyone have a pointer on how the mrna vaccine actually works? I understand basic genetics mechanisms and how mrna works inside cells. In shot form, I assume the modified mrna strands are floating through the blood stream. What happens after the injection?
Btw .. I think public health needs to start educating people on how these things work in order to get high coverage. I am alarmed at the number of highly educated people I know who seem suspicious. This fear is just borne by a lack of understanding and can be corrected IMHO.
Moderna vaccine can be also refrigerated and the efficacy is higher. Something I don't get?
Is this the sort of Vaccine that protects against infection or against the disease?
Big Pharma COVID "Vaccines" Are For SYMPTOMS Not The VIRUS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jEGizsmKLg
Has anybody seen effectiveness numbers? Like if I get this vaccine, is it one and done? Or will it be like a yearly thing.
over 7 billion human population, a 90% effectiveness is what? alright? please enlighten me. does anyone know what was the effectiveness of the smallpox vaccine that we did actually manage to eradicate successfully?
I'm reposting some of my thoughts below to try and genuinely see is someone has an answer to the question: From a utilitarian perspective, why weren't these all approved for the elderly in Q2 2020?
In other words, its May 2020 and you have the option to ban vaccines or allow vaccines for the elderly, what do you pick?
We know the following about vaccines generally: -Vaccines have an extremely high success rate, 33% of vaccines make it through all trials to approval. 50% after phase 1 is complete. -The worst vaccine side effect ever is widely considered to be the swine flu vaccine from 60 years ago, where 1 in 100,000 got GBS, or Pandemrix, where 1 in 18400 got narcolepsy. (1)(2) -Vaccine candidates have 85% chance of making it from phase III to approved (phase III is supposed to be the efficacy check), in other words we expect about a 15% chance that the vaccine is not effective, most of the tests are about safety.
We know the following about COVID: -Unknown long term side effects, reasonably likely to be worse than the worst vaccines ever, but unknown. -The IFR for those over 75 is about 4.6% now(1). Earlier in the pandemic it was about 11.6%(2). -If you assume that people have a 10% chance of contracting the disease, you can say that those over 75 would have approximately a 0.46% chance of dying (4.6 in 1,000 dead) if they don't get the vaccine. This seems to be a conservative estimate.
So if you have to decide whether to ban a vaccine or not in May 2020, and you assume with 100% confidence that this vaccine was tied for the "worst side effects ever", for example it turns out to be as bad as Pandemrix, then you would expect 1 in 18400 to get something like narcolepsy if you give them the vaccine.
Using the IFR and 10% number above, you assume that not giving the vaccine would leave 84.64 dead for the same population. (85x by volume).
I don't know your opinion of "how much worse is death versus narcolepsy?". If you believe death is 10x worse than narcolepsy, then by severity and volume, taking a vaccine with the worst side effects ever would seem about 850x better than not taking it (in elderly populations). Earlier in the pandemic, when IFRs were over 2x as bad, this was well over 1,000x better.
I mean, the numbers so dramatically favor vaccination that I don't get it at all. Why is this not approved already? Why does it take the FDA 3 weeks to even discuss the matter of approval when this made sense to approve in May? Why did all governments opt to ban the vaccines versus allow them?
Sources: (1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemrix (2) https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/concerns-history.... (3) https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.23.20160895v... (4) https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02483-2
While we now get the results from various COVID-19 vaccines I see a societal issue brewing up. How will we deal with the perceived uncertainty of the safety of these vaccines and the surrounding (dis-)infodemic?
I read recently that in some European country (was it Germany?) the willingness to vaccinate against COVID-19 went down from 80% to 60%. With these numbers policy makers will have a hard time convincing the broad population that they can rely on a due process and be safe. In the meantime there is a proliferation of false information and fake news, while in the past there was not much media coverage of significant side effects from a rushed swine flu vaccine [1].
[1] https://www.vox.com/2015/7/27/9047819/H1N1-pandemic-narcolep...
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.
The key differentiator here is the storage requirements (2-8c ânormal refrigeratorâ).
Thatâs much more accessible to developing / low GDP countries as opposed the cumbersome and expensive storage requirements of the other two.