Some Scientists 'Uneasy' About the Race For a Covid-19 Vaccine (theguardian.com) 174
The Guardian ran an article by the author of Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World looking at problems with our own race for a vaccine in 2020:
On 2 August, Steven Salzberg, a computational biologist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, suggested in Forbes magazine that a promising vaccine be rolled out to a wider pool of volunteers before clinical trials had been completed, triggering an outcry (and some sympathy) that prompted him to recant the next day. Meanwhile, a research group with links to Harvard University continues to defend its publication in July of a recipe for a do-it-yourself Covid-19 vaccine — one that only the group's 20-odd members had previously tested...
The accumulation of such incidents has left many scientists feeling deeply uneasy. "I'm more and more concerned that things are getting done in a rush," says Beate Kampmann, who directs the Vaccine Centre at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (and whose work email account was subject to a failed hack in July). On 13 August, the editor-in-chief of the journal Science issued a call to order. "Short cuts in testing for vaccine safety and efficacy endanger millions of lives in the short term and will damage public confidence in vaccines and in science for a long time to come," wrote H Holden Thorp.
He went on to point out that the stakes are higher than with unproven therapies such as hydroxychloroquine, because a vaccine is given to healthy people. "Approval of a vaccine that is harmful or isn't effective could be leveraged by political forces that already propagate vaccine fears," he warned... Kampmann, meanwhile, feels it's important not to let the recent shenanigans in the vaccine community overshadow its huge achievements. If current forecasts are correct, a Covid-19 vaccine will be available in 2021 — smashing all records for vaccine development — and there will be many more reasons to trust it than not to. Still, those with their eye on that glittering prize should remember what is at stake. "We have to be careful," she says, "because what we do with Covid-19 could have repercussions for trust in all vaccine programs."
The accumulation of such incidents has left many scientists feeling deeply uneasy. "I'm more and more concerned that things are getting done in a rush," says Beate Kampmann, who directs the Vaccine Centre at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (and whose work email account was subject to a failed hack in July). On 13 August, the editor-in-chief of the journal Science issued a call to order. "Short cuts in testing for vaccine safety and efficacy endanger millions of lives in the short term and will damage public confidence in vaccines and in science for a long time to come," wrote H Holden Thorp.
He went on to point out that the stakes are higher than with unproven therapies such as hydroxychloroquine, because a vaccine is given to healthy people. "Approval of a vaccine that is harmful or isn't effective could be leveraged by political forces that already propagate vaccine fears," he warned... Kampmann, meanwhile, feels it's important not to let the recent shenanigans in the vaccine community overshadow its huge achievements. If current forecasts are correct, a Covid-19 vaccine will be available in 2021 — smashing all records for vaccine development — and there will be many more reasons to trust it than not to. Still, those with their eye on that glittering prize should remember what is at stake. "We have to be careful," she says, "because what we do with Covid-19 could have repercussions for trust in all vaccine programs."
Is "smashing records" really unexpected? (Score:5, Insightful)
1) The current vaccine candidates that are due to "smash records" are based on vaccines that were already in development for similar diseases, so if you adjust for that it's less of a smash and more of a smack,
2) Never before in modern times has the ENTIRE WORLD put so many resources into finding a vaccine for a disease. Even HIV didn't get this much funding because of homophobia and the fact that it was a lot harder to transmit than COVID-19 is.
3) We're in the year 2020; technology has advanced considerably since we last had to develop a vaccine for a new epidemic. It's only natural that we're better at it as a society.
The fact that we're smashing records is not a huge surprise. We still have to be cautious, but let's not hold things back just because we did things faster than expected.
Re:Is "smashing records" really unexpected? (Score:4, Insightful)
If I'm not mistaken about their progress, the Moderna vaccine is of a new kind, never administered to any population before (RNA vaccine). Although it was in development before, it's considered as being built on a new platform, so trust is to be adjusted in consequence.
I read that other promising vaccines were in fact based on a well-tested platform, however, so they are probably less scary.
What's sure is some of the recent vaccines had not always been safe. Even if they passed all trials and with sufficient time, they still caused side effects, and in some cases, made the infection with the wild virus worst, which is really bad since it's administered to healthy individuals.
For those reasons, I personally will meet the first released vaccines with suspicion, especially since experts themselves are worried.
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RNA vaccines, which have been around for decades, have been given to people before many times. There just isn't one FDA approved yet though.
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RNA vaccines, which have been around for decades, have been given to people before many times. There just isn't one FDA approved yet though.
According to the wikipedia page for "RNA vaccine", and other sources, it's not true: "Currently, there are no RNA vaccines approved for human use". Maybe you're referring to the current clinical trials for COVID-19 ?
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Please read what I wrote, slowly. I said RNA vaccines have been given to humans before, many times. I did NOT say they were approved by the FDA, in fact I specifically stated they were not.
Here is an example of a past Influenza mRNA clinical trial of an RNA vaccine given to humans (there are MANY, btw):
VAL-506440
https://precisionvaccinations.... [precisionv...ations.com]
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Can you name any?
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Sure I can name a plenty. Here's one, VAL-506440. Google it. I can name more if you like.
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That is a "vaccine candidate". It's hardly been "around for decades", since it's apparently only passed "Stage 1" human testing. I've found it difficult to find any that have worked on or been fully tested for use on humans. So I'll be more specific. Are you aware of any mRNA based vaccienes that have passed human testing, especially that have been in use for decades.
Many technologies have been "around for decades", but never worked well. Cold fusion, the rotary engine, and artificial eyes come to mind as
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I was specific in saying "There haven't been any FDA approved ones" .. I never made the claim that it was approved yet. It costs $3 billion to get anything approved by the FDA .. with only a 10% approval rate .. that's not a gamble investors have been willing to take -- why do you think drug innovation has stalled? Investors are squeamish in trying ideas that deviate from the norm -- even if it's solid in science. https://www.policymed.com/2014... [policymed.com]
RNA vaccines have been tried in humans over the years for a v
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The so called well tested methods aren't that great. Personally I would trust the RNA vaccine more -- it's simpler and can elicit a more robust immune reaction. You can make your own RNA vaccine quite easily too.
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Breaking Bad 2, Jesse Pinkman trying to make up for the harm he's caused starts a bootleg vaccine lab.
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Never before in modern times has the ENTIRE WORLD put so many resources into finding a vaccine for a disease
You obviously have not a FUCKING clue of what you are talking about. Back in 1981, when CDC approached reagan for $50M to stop HIV, he was against that and PROHIBITED CDC from spending any $ on it (and that was when we were CERTAIN that less than 1000 ppl had it; turned out to be around 200). Later on, when the panic set in as HIV went into the hetro population(ryan white anybody? Sharon Glesser, etc.) and battle between nations to be the first to ID it (it was STILL NOT KNOWN that it was a retro virus, th
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https://www.kff.org/wp-content... [kff.org]
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Those are certainly important factors for *developing* vaccines. Testing them gets sped up quite a bit by having lots of people getting infected, and a little bit, but not much, by having lots of money.
Testing hasn't really changed that much. You find some volunteers, shoot them up, then wait to see if they get sick, either with the disease you're trying to prevent, or something else.
Pretty much everyone agrees that that Russians and Chinese (giving an untested vaccine to their armed forces) acted rashly. W
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The Russians and the Chinese certainly weighed off the cost and benefit differently but I am not sure yet they went too far. The cost of delay is huge.
They are both releasing their vaccines for limited use while they keep testing. This is a valid approach but there is also a lot of stretch on it. Too much stretch on the "incremental release strategy" can become abuse.
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Really most of the criticism on the Russian/Chinese(vaccine)/Trump(plasma) announcements is a kneejerk reaction to the PR points they hope to score with it. There is a strong reflex that this should not be allowed. But that does not mean the strategies by themselves are wrong.
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The right answer is do a risk reward calculation. The more people you test it on and the longer you observe them without seening any negative side effects or instances of disease it should have prevented the lower the risk is to everyone else.
We know some things about COVID-19. We know for certain that elderly populations are most at risk. We know certain co-moribidities up risk a lot. We know certain professions are likely to result in increase contact with covid-19-positive people...
There are clearly pop
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Vaccines "in development for decades" don't necessarily work now simply because we want them to and because we "assign our top minds ot the project". It's disingenuous The fact that people are taking potentially disastrous risks, not only for themselves but for millions of other people in order to be the first or in pursuit of a Nobel prize, should not surprise us. For example, a live vaccine that, itself, mutates in use to create another pandemic would be disastrous as re-opening schools too soon and crea
Re:Is "smashing records" really unexpected? (Score:4, Informative)
However, the entire world is not working together. There's a lot of nationalism, everyone wants to be the first, lots of distrust and rivalries and conspiracy theories.
Things take time. You need time to incubate and grow the virus in the lab. You need time to test on humans, you don't just give a shot and then check back on them the very next day. Some things just can't be sped up. At the same time, there are high level political pressure to go as faster than is prudent. Russia clearly has either a hoax or something that is not well tested. Trump seems to want to cut a lot of corners and he's certainly proven that he will make big announcements prematurely.
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Creating a vaccine candidate does not take long. Testing it does. The short time for testing means that any longer term effects have to be guessed at from similar types of vaccines.How long will it work, will there be health effects? Scale that up to billions of healthy people and then find out the time of protection is limited so you have to start over, and you're taking quite a gamble. You generally can't speed up time to throw more resources at it.
The argument of taking a gamble affecting the reputation
The breakthrough will be on 4 Nov 20 (Score:2)
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3) We're in the year 2020; technology has advanced considerably since we last had to develop a vaccine for a new epidemic. It's only natural that we're better at it as a society.
Oh yeah, do tell me about this remarkable time dilation technology we have that lets us magically see what long term effects vaccines and drugs have?
Some things simply can't be speed up; at least not until you have complete model of the entire system that you are utterly confident in and can run. Which of course when it comes to human auto-immune responses we have not got because if we had, a whole range of other disease would have either cures or have much more effective therapies for.
Re:Is "smashing records" really unexpected? (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you think 14,053 people had pre-existing sepsis and then got COVID-19, or they had COVID-19 and it contributed to developing sepsis, and both were responsible for their deaths? Same question for cardiac arrest, cardiac arrhythmia, ARDS, etc.
Sycodon is lying (Score:2)
The post you are replying to is essentially a lie.
Covid - respiratory failure" does not mean they didn't die from covid. It means covid caused respiratory failure.
"Covid - respiratory distress" doesn't it wasn't covid, it means covid caused respiratory distress.
6% ia the number that didn't say HOW covid killed them.
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The only thing about the 6% figure is that it bolsters the argument that if you are
1) Young
2) Healthy
You probably have little to fear from COVID-19. Sure there is still a small risk you will have one of those severe cases - you could die falling out of bed too, does mean you should sleep on the floor.
What it certainly does not mean is that 150K people that are said to have died of COVID-19 in the states here would not otherwsie be alive still. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. We can see that
Re:Is "smashing records" really unexpected? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is the CDC Lying? Probably not.
Is the CDC following the orders of an evil, orange bastard who is so delusional he may believe he is telling the truth: YES
The CDC has lost all credibility at this point. The latest abrupt change to its recommendations suggesting that people without COVID-19 symptoms should not get tested was the final nail in that coffin.
Re:Is "smashing records" really unexpected? (Score:5, Informative)
6% is the number that do NOT mention "covid - respiratory failure", or "covid - respiratory distress", or "covid pneumonia".
6% just say "covid", without mentioning that it caused respiratory failure or whatever.
https://science.slashdot.org/c... [slashdot.org]
Re:Is "smashing records" really unexpected? (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't forget, Trump called the FDA part of the deep state and said they were trying to slow down vaccine productions until after the election. Pure paranoia and delusion. Our health system, not just the payment methods, has become politicized based upon fantasy.
The CDC foot-in-mouth disease feels like a lot of high level politicizing. Strong pressure to supply good news for the election? Or strong pressure from a toady who took Trump's advice seriously about testing less to look better in the ratings?
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The CDC has lost all credibility at this point. The latest abrupt change to its recommendations suggesting that people without COVID-19 symptoms should not get tested was the final nail in that coffin.
Actually NO. A huge English study published in June that looked at more than 4000 chains of infection found NO examples of an asymptomatic covid-19 infected passing on the infection to someone else. The researchers suggests that asymptomatic covid-19 carriers probably don't have enough contagion in their system to pass on a dose large enough to infect someone else. This is actually quite similar to what we've found with other diseases caused by other variants of corona virus.
Re:Is "smashing records" really unexpected? (Score:5, Insightful)
COVID doesn't appear to spread by 1 person giving it to 2 others; but rather 1 out of 10 giving it to 20. Most people are just fine, but a minority become walking disease clouds.
Unfortunately, the US isn't doing enough testing to catch those few in time.
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On the subject of super-spreaders, it is worth reading the story of Typhoid Mary. She did not show any symptoms, but spread typhoid fever because of her job as a cook in various well-to-do households. This went on for years. She was eventually forcibly detained in a hospital.
There does seem to be a hope that, with sufficient testing, the equivalents of Typhoid Mary can be detected and quarantined, so the rest of us can get on with our lives. All we know so far is certain people having a lifestyle that produ
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We have that same recommendation in most places here in the EU though. Without any orange bastards pressing the buttons. Isn't this all just WHO recommendations?
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Actually, the WHO said that asymptomatic people should be tested. At least that was their guideline as of August 28.
The WHO has taken a credibility hit for many misstatements as well---but not like the USA. However, you could say that those pressing the WHO buttons are red, not orange.
No, "it affected their lungs" isn't a lie (Score:5, Informative)
No, it's not a lie when the CDC says that in most cases the reports say their lungs were affected by covid.
"Respiratory failure" doesn't mean "it wasn't covid". It means covid caused respiratory failure. "Respiratory distress syndrome" doesn't mean "it wasn't covid", it means they couldn't breath - because they had covid.
Pneumonia means "fluid in the lungs caused by any type of infection". That's the most common item, most of the ones other than the 6% that didn't give any additional information.
Anybody with two brain cells knows that "covid - respiratory failure" does not mean "it wasn't covid". Which means I have a question for you. Are you a total moron, or were intentionally lying to us, trying to spread misinformation about covid in order to put us in danger?
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This is a major talking point for right wingers all over Twitter today.
Re:No, "it affected their lungs" isn't a lie (Score:4, Funny)
It says
"covid - respiratory failure"
covid minus respiratory failure. So no failure.
Otherwise it would have said
"covid + respiratory failure"
Obviously.
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In the UK, cause of death reporting appeared to attribute deaths to Covid-19, which were more likely due to some other underlying cause. As far as I know the law in the UK, a doctor is obliged to record a suspicion of Covid-19 in medical records, as this this is a legal requirement regarding Notifiable Diseases. So a patient that has a terminal heart condition, and happens to get Covid-19 months before they die, gets recorded as a Covid-19 death. This appears to have been corrected recently.
Pneumonia is a v
Re:Is "smashing records" really unexpected? (Score:5, Insightful)
Do yo think the CDC is lying?
No, but I think that a person with a weakened respiratory system who comes down with a COVID-19 infection and subsequently dies from respiratory failure would most likely not have died at that time we were it not for the COVID-19. Same with coronary issues; same with diabetes; same with hypertensive issues.
Re:Is "smashing records" really unexpected? (Score:5, Informative)
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Lots of people are not dying of flu because of Covid-19. (Restrictions also stop flu.)
I think it is a slippery slope when you start to talk about consequential issues.
Re:Is "smashing records" really unexpected? (Score:4, Interesting)
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I have come to the conclusion excess deaths compared to previous years is a more reliable measure of the effects of Covid-19 than reported causes of death. There is no doubt that there has been a surge of excess deaths, far exceeding a bad flu episode. The excess deaths measure includes side effects of social distancing, such as lack of normal health care, and loss of income. I think that is fair, but it does mean that additional information is needed to decide between intrusive infection prevention measure
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a single, unremarkable sentence, "For 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned."
What's your point? The healthier a person is the less likely they are for it to push them over the edge? That's always true. Surely you're not suggesting that it actually accounts for only 6% of the deaths.
Bullshit, and I think you know it (Score:5, Insightful)
Absolute bullshit.
"Covid - respiratory failure" does not mean they didn't die from covid. It means covid caused respiratory failure.
"Covid - respiratory distress" doesn't it wasn't covid, it means covid caused respiratory distress.
Spreading misinformation about covid is an evil thing to do. You are lying to the Slashdot community about covid and therefore trying to put us at risk.
Re:Bullshit, and I think you know it (Score:5, Informative)
No, the CDC did not state nor imply that dying from covid-induced respiratory failure isn't dying from covid. That's you. You are intentionally spreading lies about covid, to put Slashdot readers at risk, intentionally.
Re: Bullshit, and I think you know it (Score:2)
Well said, and I think it would be a good idea for you to prove it. Go to your closest hospital and ask a so called "covid patient" to spit in your mouth, and don't forget to swallow. When you don't get covid in two days, that will show them all!
Re:Is "smashing records" really unexpected? (Score:5, Informative)
Have you ever seen a real death certificate?
It's pretty rare that the primary cause of death is listed as whatever disease the patient was suffering from. The primary cause of death is almost always listed as something fairly basic like "cardiac failure" or "respiratory failure". Then whatever disease they were suffering from gets listed as the secondary cause.
"Died due to cardiac arrest, brought on by metastasized colon cancer"
"Died due to respiratory failure, brought on by COVID-19"
If the death certificate just lists COVID-19 as the only cause of death, either someone was in a huge hurry when they filled out that form, or it was filled out by someone that doesn't usually fill them out.
Re: Is "smashing records" really unexpected? (Score:2)
Exactly. The number of people who die because e they were shot is quite small. They die from truama, cardiac failure. Blood loss, etc.
Just because the bullet is what caused those conditions. It may not be the cause. Of death.
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Apparently no one ever died from AIDS or HIV, but only from other diseases that took hold when the immune systems were compromised.
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The elimination just makes it easier for the alleged administration to lean on the FDA to get sparkling headlines. Cutting oversight will tend to do that. By the way, I expect you'll be first on your block to demand any fast-track vaccine, yes? What could go wrong?
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I've been suggesting that when an apparently good vaccine becomes available in the US a round of 'stimulus' checks should be held back for it; no shot, no check.
diy vaccine (Score:2)
First DIY vaccine design was posted on slashdot. https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]
Not surprising (Score:5, Interesting)
could be leveraged by political forces that already propagate vaccine fears,
The con artist is a known anti-vaxxer [independent.co.uk] so this would play into his hands. He gets the best of both worlds if a vaccine rolls out and it fails or harms people. He gets to lay blame elsewhere [washingtonexaminer.com] even though he's the one who has bragged about rapidly getting a vaccine, and his penchant for spreading lies and conspiracy theories will move forward.
putting on tinfoil hat here (Score:2)
What if operation "Warp Speed" is just a way to legitimize anti-vaxxer views.
Can you imagine what one or two vaccines put into mass circulation (with CDC blessings) that are not safe and effective would do?
Greed (Score:3)
Well maybe next time ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Well maybe next time ... (Score:5, Insightful)
The politicians that made it a political wedge issue aren't the ones who feel uneasy. Scientists are the ones always getting the short end of the stick.
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The politicians that made it a political wedge issue aren't the ones who feel uneasy. Scientists are the ones always getting the short end of the stick.
Scientists sometimes turn to politicians thinking their issue will now get attention, and the unanticipated consequences bites them in the ass. They're scientists, they don't understand how politics will corrupt *anything* it touches.
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That still doesn't make it their fault, and since they don't understand what they're doing, they're doubly blameless.
The people to find fault with are the politicians who abuse the situation, and The People when they elect asses like that.
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And such ignorance is their fault. Its their arrogance that led them to think only their science matters and is the only thing they needed to study. If you want to interact with politicians you better damn well have done your homework for the political realm.
Scientists
Re: Well maybe next time ... (Score:3)
I think you're confusing scientists with science journalists.
How it changed the world?? (Score:2)
That's why we need politicians (Score:4, Insightful)
It is politics, not science, or maybe social science.
Scientists shouldn't have to worry about the how people interpret their research and the trustworthiness of their field to the public. They should only have to worry about the safety and efficacy of the vaccine they are developing, public opinion be damned.
In order for people to get the right idea, we need competent politicians. To stop people from doing stupid things with "homemade vaccines", but when a sufficiently safe vaccine for the situation is out, get people to be eager to take it. If it turns out badly, they should use their skills for people to regain confidence without putting the blame on researchers. It may imply a bit of lying and manipulation, but for politicians, it is part of the job, they can do it so that scientists don't have to. They already did it with masks, saying they are useless in order to prevent a rush, and once the supply is more or less secure, go the other way.
It is unfortunate that politicians tend to think about themselves first but sometimes, they deserve respect by dirtying themselves for the good of their population.
Note : it is about politics in general, not just about the US, and it is certainly not about Trump specifically, we already talk too much about him.
Benefits to a global problem (Score:2)
I'm just glad that this situation is sufficiently widespread that not only will we likely have many vaccines to choose from, but most of us won't even need to contemplate taking any of them before millions of other people already have.
People are going to bitch no matter what we do (Score:2)
People are going to complain about this no matter what we do which is why the right-to-try act is a good thing.
What goes wrong? (Score:2)
So what can go wrong with a vaccine? Actual examples. And I am not interested in "it may not work so well, causing people to be risky and get it", nor further downstream that stuff like that "causes even more distrust of vaccines."
I'm curious but no articles ever mention anything like "it kills 20% who had the vaccine five years later".
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First of all I want to say this. The vaccine development process today is such that even before first human tests, a lot of carefully animal testing is done. Then the testing is carfeully scaled up. Before the first approval for wider usage, the vaccines have been tested on thousands and thousands of pepole. Even then, the usage is carefully monitored. There is nothing that is being skipped on with COVID-19 vaccines, although some companies are combining for example phase I and phase II trials. On the other
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A Dengue fever vaccine was used and then recalled because it turned Dengue fever more deadly.
(This is likely to be an issue that is specific to the way Dengue fever works, so this specific problem is very unlikely to happen with any Corona vaccine.)
Considering the effort over flu (Score:2)
And you get dubious levels of effectiveness, and this after 100 years.
I reckon itâ(TM)s going to come down to a standard set of medical procedures most likely to save your life if you get a bad dose of Covid.
Covid vaccines, well, probably going to be less effective than a couple of aspirin.
Re:Considering the effort over flu (Score:4, Insightful)
The flu vaccine is highly effective, although the immune response only last for ~1 year.
The process of predicting which strain(s) of influenza to vaccinate against in a given year, however, is much less effective, especially since new strains appear with some regularity.
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But how useful will a vaccine be? (Score:3)
Covid-19 mutates rapidly, and we already have several well-documented cases of people who have recovered from Covid being infected again, with a different strain of the virus, within months of recovering. Can vaccine developers play whack-a-mole fast enough to keep up with these mutations, at a speed that significantly reduces the spread?
I'd like to hear more about the work being done to develop anti-viral drugs - it seems to me that these would provide a much broader spectrum of protection. The development of a Covid vaccine is a terrific and important accomplishment - I'm just afraid it's not going to be the silver bullet that many people are counting on. I also fear that it will give some of those immunized an unjustified feeling of safety, leading them to be careless and engage in risky behaviours.
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AFAIA, the "payload" that mutates is not what's being targeted by most of the vaccines, but rather the "spike protein," which is what allows it to infect cells in the first place. Neutralize that spike, and it doesn't particularly matter what the payload is, or so the theory goes.
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Why there's a rush on. (Score:5, Informative)
Want to know why there's a rush on? If worldomerters' [worldometers.info] numbers are anywhere near accurate, over the last few weeks:
- Total number of COVID-19 cases has reached 25 million. That's about one in three hunderd, so we have a LONG way to go before it would burn out by infecting something like 80% of the population.
- New infection rate has gone about level at about 250,000 per day. That's somewhat less than population growth, so it could keep THAT up FOREVER.
- The death rate has also gone about level at roughly 5,000 per day.
So that means, for every week of delay in deploying an effective vaccine, you have an extra THIRTY FIVE THOUSAND PEOPLE DEAD. (It gets 'way worse if the new infection rate starts to climb again, even a little.)
That means you can accept some risk of even substantial hazard from an immunization and still come out far ahead.
The pandemic is ALREADY IN PROGRESS. The drill is not to spend an extra year or two testing to be sure it's safe - and kill an extra couple million people every year you delay. It's to start deploying when you have some good candidate immunizations that look effective and reasonably safe, and collect more data as they are rolled out.
And if possible you deploy SEVERAL of them that take somewhat different approaches, immunizing different people with different candidates, and suspend use of any that turn out to be harmful. (That covers you for things like the slight chance of rolling out an immunization that turns out to sterilize the recipients or kill them five years later. That way you don't give it to the whole world and THEN find out we're all doomed, doomed I say.)
That's how it worked for smallpox.
That's how it worked for rabies.
That's how it worked for polio.
That last one is personal: I was in elementary school when first the Salk (killed virus), then the Sabin (attenuated virus) vaccines rolled out.
- Some early batches of Salk actually gave you polio. (That's when they discovered that the virus could form crystals if the pH was just wrong, and the virii in the middle of the crystal didn't get killed.)
- Occasional batches of Sabin (both then and to this day) would give you polio. (An early one may have been contaminated with the UNattenuated virus, and the attenuated virus occasionally back-mutates into a deadly form).
Nevertheless I got them BOTH in the early rollout. And I'm glad of it to this very day.
(I also insisted on getting one last smallpox booster, after its general use in the US was discontinued except for people going abroad. The risk from the vaccine was considered a bad bet because smallpox was no longer circulating in the US. But it wasn't wiped out in the wild yet, and it turned out both the US and USSR biowar labs had samples. So I preferred the risk of one more booster to the risk of having lost immunity if it ever started circulating again.)
I "come from a medical family". So my perception of medical risk management is somewhat different from that of the general public. But IMHO mine is a good one to use when betting my own life or the lives of all of humanity.
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"So that means, for every week of delay in deploying an effective vaccine, you have an extra THIRTY FIVE THOUSAND PEOPLE DEAD. (It gets 'way worse if the new infection rate starts to climb again, even a little.)"
If the "effective vaccine" results in a few million cases of ADE we'll remember those 35000 fondly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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I agree. (Just as we remember the Thalidomide flipper babies but not the cured cancers and arrested cases of severe psoriasis {most of which didn't happen because it was off the market}. Thalidomide
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The problem with mass vaccination is that you are administering a possibly risky treatment to healthy people.
Indeed. But the problem with a pandemic is that nearly all of them, absent an immunization, WON'T be healthy people at some point.
Sequestration doesn't PREVENT infection (once community spread takes hold and infection sources are common and stay common). It just (on the average) DELAYS it - by lowering the probability that you get it on any given day so it takes far longer to "win the nasty jackpot
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However, there have been plenty of infectious diseases that did not eventually spread to 100% of the population, but died out due to various measures, vaccination being only one of those. When polio was prevalent, not everybody got polio, before an effective vaccine was introduced.
Unfortunately, nearly everybody DID get polio. It's just that only a few of them got PARALYTIC SYMPTOMS. You only got it once, typically in childhood. So when most of the local supply of susceptible kids had been infected the o
The reason there is a rush.... (Score:2)
An early vaccine is the best hope that we have at an getting our lives back to a semblance of normality before many people who have been hardest hit economically by this run out of the ability to weather these circumstances.
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"Getting back to normal" needs to be put into perspective. One thing I like to say is that history has no undo function. It appears that my workplace is expecting people to work from home if they can, at least for the rest of the year. And when I raised the topic with my boss, he thought continued home working after that would be entirely feasible for many employees. The world is changing. People have to adapt. I think we might end up better off.
Always look on the bright side of life.
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That's fine for industries that can still operate at normal business levels during this climate. Not all can.
Employment insurance will eventually run before the middle of next year for so many people who are using it as life support while desperately trying to find another job. If the economy doesn't start to open back up before then these people will no longer just be barely treading water, they will drown.
I mean, it's l
difficult to trust vaccine produced quickly (Score:3)
I simply cannot trust a reliable vaccine will be available in less than two years. I think politicians and drug companies will push this "early release" for their own purposes rather than public safety. I trust Dr. Fauci on what he has to say (freely without undue external pressure). Afterall our leadership hasn't produced much of any trustworthy policies. Some have in certain regions but there is no national strategy.
There is this PBS article about 1946 ‘polio summer’ featured quarantines, canceled events, and remote learning. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/... [pbs.org]
I learn that a polio outbreak often looked a bit like COVID-19 has so far. Some 95% of patients were asymptomatic; only around 4% experienced minor illness. And it was a fraction of those that were left paralyzed—the majority children.
Damn, and these days there's a lot of people who think this latest event is overblown, i.e. "I feel fine and I don't know anybody that has CV."
Re:difficult to trust vaccine produced quickly (Score:4, Interesting)
Right -- we've quarantined societies and/or children numerous times in the past millennia, and we know it's effective. While I concede that it was likely a clear benefit to children in the past (who have typically been more susceptible to the debilitating effects of various diseases and wars, not less), there is also some benefit in not having a bunch of orphans and/or grandparent-less children because they brought COVID home from school one day.
Remote learning and/or catching up on education later is an obstacle, but likely a lesser obstacle than losing caretakers, not to mention educators, many of whom are understandably quitting out of self-preservation. Perhaps the discussion should be around how best to support those who cannot work because they are helping society by quarantining themselves and their children. Individualism can be a virtue, but not when it weakens the fabric of society.
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They're likely to be tested quite well.
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Given the history of front page fraud and medical fraud from China and other Communist nations, I'd not trust their reported testing any ore than I trust their claims that they do not harvest organs from political prisoners for transplants. Look up the convictions of the company "Chinese Medical Technologies" for examples of medical fraud.
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Meh. It's hard to hide mass zombification.
Also, the last part of your post is silly. It's pretty easy to find examples of companies (or governments) that commit fraud. That's why the plural of anecdote is not data.
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Court convictions and national news reports are not generally considered mere "anecdotes", especially when they include testimony from the guilty and from the surviving victims.
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Am I allowed to trust the Chinese and Russian vaccines while questioning the ethics behind them?
Of course, provided you trust the data from people with questionable ethics.
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So don't trust drug companies or politicians at all.
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The problem is vaccine production will still be slow. So even if it were "approved" early it would still only be beneficial to a very small number of people.
So the benefit is very small since production is very low initially while the backlash could be severe if it turns out it's actually dangerous.
I agree with the author who retracted their opinion article. I agreed with the original article and agreed with the retraction. If we could actually vaccinate everybody immediately there is a case to be made th
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The problem is vaccine production will still be slow. So even if it were "approved" early it would still only be beneficial to a very small number of people.
The way around that is that for some vaccine in some countries they'll start production BEFORE the phase 3 trials are finished, so they have stocks ready to go when the 'OK' comes. And if not, just dump it all in the bin.
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See the Cutter Incident for what went wrong with the Polio vaccine when it was rushed out. That is the type of thing that can go wrong with a vaccine. It basically gave Polio to 40,000 children (of a total production run of 120,000 - not sure how many were actually administered).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutter_Laboratories
Going too quickly can cause a lot more problems than will be solved.
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The CIA is a state sponsored terrorist group.