Results of Russia's COVID-19 Vaccine Produced Antibody Response (reuters.com) 140
Russia's "Sputnik-V" COVID-19 vaccine produced an antibody response in all participants in early-stage trials, according to results published on Friday by The Lancet medical journal that were hailed by Moscow as an answer to its critics. Reuters reports: The results of the two trials, conducted in June-July this year and involving 76 participants, showed 100% of participants developing antibodies to the new coronavirus and no serious side effects, The Lancet said. Russia licensed the two-shot jab for domestic use in August, the first country to do so and before any data had been published or a large-scale trial begun. "The two 42-day trials -- including 38 healthy adults each -- did not find any serious adverse effects among participants, and confirmed that the vaccine candidates elicit an antibody response," The Lancet said. "Large, long-term trials including a placebo comparison, and further monitoring are needed to establish the long-term safety and effectiveness of the vaccine for preventing COVID-19 infection," it said.
The vaccine is named Sputnik-V in homage to the world's first satellite, launched by the Soviet Union. Some Western experts have warned against its use until all internationally approved testing and regulatory steps have been taken. But with the results now published for the first time in an international peer-reviewed journal, and with a 40,000-strong later-stage trial launched last week, a senior Russian official said Moscow had faced down its critics abroad. "With this (publication) we answer all of the questions of the West that were diligently asked over the past three weeks, frankly with the clear goal of tarnishing the Russian vaccine," said Kirill Dmitriev, the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), Russia's sovereign wealth fund, which has backed the vaccine. "All of the boxes are checked," he told Reuters. "Now... we will start asking questions of some of the Western vaccines."
The vaccine is named Sputnik-V in homage to the world's first satellite, launched by the Soviet Union. Some Western experts have warned against its use until all internationally approved testing and regulatory steps have been taken. But with the results now published for the first time in an international peer-reviewed journal, and with a 40,000-strong later-stage trial launched last week, a senior Russian official said Moscow had faced down its critics abroad. "With this (publication) we answer all of the questions of the West that were diligently asked over the past three weeks, frankly with the clear goal of tarnishing the Russian vaccine," said Kirill Dmitriev, the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), Russia's sovereign wealth fund, which has backed the vaccine. "All of the boxes are checked," he told Reuters. "Now... we will start asking questions of some of the Western vaccines."
100% (Score:5, Funny)
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non Putin voters don't get an placebo then get poison
Russia is not ahead in vaccine development (Score:4, Informative)
Russia has published the results of phase I and phase II trials which look promising. They have also announced the beginning of phase III trials, about a month behind similar trials in the US, UK, China and elsewhere. Their announcement that the vaccine has "been approved" is just meaningless noise. They do not have a vaccine that is proven safe and effective through phase III trials with enough subjects and infections.
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The announcement that the vaccine has been approved is an overstatement from Putin (I don't recall his exact phrasing) to score political points. But it has been approved for emergency use and that is not exceptional. If the tests succeed the plan is to release the vaccine begin 2021. The russians are simply doing an acceptable job on the vaccine and that is all there is to it. Maybe they will cut corners and push it through when for others it is not good enough because you know, more authoritarian, differe
Re: Russia is not ahead in vaccine development (Score:2)
The mortality rate is dropping. Theyâ(TM)ve figured out a lot about treating it, and people who would have died previously are now being sent home after just a few days in hospital. I canâ(TM)t help suspecting the most vulnerable people are also already dead. Furthermore, âoesecond waveâ cases appear to be predominantly amongst younger people, unlike the first wave ... or maybe it was that way before and itâ(TM)s just that testing has improved and so actually the âoesecond w
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Re: Russia is not ahead in vaccine development (Score:5, Interesting)
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I agree that people know the risks better and those that are vulnerable know to avoid the virus and how to avoid the virus.
It probably also helps in the northern hemisphere that it's summer, people are getting more vitamin D, that makes a big difference to survival rates.
And last but not least, after months of treating people doctors are learning what works and what doesn't. Some treatments like interferon beta look very effective at reducing mortality.
I think winter coming will have a triple wammy, decreas
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I canâ(TM)t help suspecting the most vulnerable people are also already dead.
The most vulnerable people are the elderly. In the US, there's over 20 million people over the age of 75. At less than 200K deaths, there's a long way to go before the most vulnerable are dead.
Tautology. (Score:5, Funny)
So, the results produced the results? Drop the initial "Results of," and it would make sense.
Yet another
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I hope they're all volunteers
We have enough evidence that BeauHD is actually nothing more than a computer algorithm. And not some fancy AI trained one, but a Bash script with some bugs that lead to constant reposts.
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Yet another /. "editor" fail.
Do you realize any slashdot user can post a story? I suppose if they're all this horribad, the editors wind up picking the best of the worst and still end up with dreck.
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Do you realize that an editor's job is to edit?
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That is his complaint letter.
Russia will beat the US and UK (Score:2, Funny)
They'll have a vaccine first and get their economy going before the rest of the world. Except Russia doesn't really have an economy outside of energy production. If Europe isn't buying fossil fuels then Russia isn't getting paid.
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Look at it this way; Russia might actually contribute one positive thing to the world this century.
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Yes, something positive. COVID positive.
They stole the vaccine from Oxford (Score:2)
Considering the vaccine is based on the oxford one, we already knew it would be able to induce an antibody response. The question is that response reliably protective or off target? Usually the order of science is the test that in the lab before rolling the dice on a human safety trial
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Well they're in luck then because fossil fuels are really popular in Europe right now. Good job they haven't been doing anything stupid like poisoning the opposition leader with military nerve agents.
Hello Russian Troll farm, what do you have to say?
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Well the vaccine could turn into a big export for them..
Don't worry. You can be assured the con artist will funnel tens of millions of dollars of hard U.S. currency to his Russian handler. He has a well known penchant for overspending when it comes to the taxpayers [thehill.com].
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Oh wow. We "overpaid" for something world + dog suddenly thought was important. Good thing no one has ever paid $200 for a hammer or $500 for a toilet seat...
Re: Russia will beat the US and UK (Score:2)
The UN will become a farce of a scene from the godfather with the five families gathered in conference after Sonny was shredded in the toll booth.
Umm that's what the UN already is. Have a look:
https://thediplomat.com/2020/0... [thediplomat.com]
Basically we have a human rights council that votes against what the UN itself defines as human rights. The UN has been a joke for a long time now.
The big question is (Score:4, Interesting)
How well it can deal with Covid mutating?
After all, it's virus, it can and will mutate, so will this vaccine be "wide" enough to deal with it?
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How well it can deal with Covid mutating? After all, it's virus, it can and will mutate, so will this vaccine be "wide" enough to deal with it?
These are some of the many open questions. Safety and efficacy are the two biggest, but effectiveness against assorted mutations a big concern.
Ever since mutations were being tracked in Feb/March the question was if (assuming it wasn't stopped) the mutations will make it more like seasonal influenza, where enough strains are floating around the world that you can be infected by other variants, or if it would mutate slowly.
Based on the first few re-infections by mutated strains, it is probably the terrible
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How well it can deal with Covid mutating?
After all, it's virus, it can and will mutate, so will this vaccine be "wide" enough to deal with it?
For the most part it doesn't need to. Viruses mutate all the time. Those mutations cause a very wide variety of different results. In some cases it leads to a virus which is unable to spread. In others it leads to a virus that has little to no effect on people. In many cases it leads to a virus that is covered by the same vaccine as its genetic parent. In some very rare cases it may lead to a pandemic.
There are already two mutations of the SARS-COV-2 widely spreading in this pandemic. And both D and G mutat
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I'd say the big question is - are there any side effects beyond 76 people. For all the Russians know the virus could kill 1 in 80 people but they haven't done extensive testing yet.
The Thalidomide deaths and defective births are a good example of how badly things can go wrong if a treatment isn't tested properly.
Re: The big question is (Score:2)
It mutates much less than influenza
Sputnik IV vaccine (Score:5, Insightful)
Now with less Novichok!
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You're joking, but if the Russian vaccine is for real and successful, I do wonder if there is some disturbing connection to Russian know-how in terms if biological and chemical warfare. There's a ban, officially, but it seems obvious that research if ABC weaponry is fine and well in Russia.
About those Side Effects... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Going from a pool of 76 people to vaccinating the entire country is a bit risky, IMHO. There is a reason drug trials go from small groups to larger groups.
RTFS. The next step is testing it on a group of 40,000.
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No side effects doesn't mean anything, how many test subjects got the real covid-19 virus without getting sick?
The risk with Vaccines is that you'll create a vaccine that creates a sensitivity in the immune system without conveying immunity. This happens by stimulating the immune system without giving the immune system the ability to develop anti-bodies that target the actual virus.
When this happens the immune system responds to the virus but in all the wrong ways. Rather than producing anti-bodies for the
I hope people remember this discussion... (Score:2)
... when in the future people express skepticism about the risk/rewards and thoroughness of testing of various other vaccines.
A related book by Peter C. GÃtzsche, a medical doctor and a co-founder of the Cochrane Collaboration:
"Vaccines: truth, lies and controversy"
https://www.amazon.com/gp/prod... [amazon.com]
"There is substantial misinformation about vaccines on the Internet, particularly from those who reject all vaccines, but also from official sources, which are expected to be neutral and objective. The book i
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Yes, but it's also true that usually we don't know which version of a vaccine against a disease we are getting. And different versions have different risks AND different payoffs. There are currently seven major vaccines against COVID being developed. They clearly have different risks, they may well have different payoffs. Some look as if they won't provoke a sterilizing immunity, but only ensure that any infection will result in a mild case. (Though see also one report recently of a reinfection where t
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No side effects doesn't mean anything, how many test subjects got the real covid-19 virus without getting sick?
Exactly. And from this "announcement" we also do not know if they actually got infected and also have viruses in their body and the antibodies were produced that way.
Don't forget the Novichok Booster Shot (Score:2)
, (Khoroshaya popytka, russkiye trolli.)
Re:Don't forget the Novichok Booster Shot (Score:5, Insightful)
Lancet are Russian trolls now. Wow. Russia Collusion Hoax hit some people harder than I thought.
Not a single primary vaccine candidate developed in accelerated regime today follows standard protocols for vaccine development, because standard protocols would require many years of development. Everyone compressed, skipped or used novel, unproven technologies to massively shorten multiple steps.
A much bigger red flag in Russian vaccine is the fact that after it was published, their head state medical official resigned in protest. That would be someone who actually has inside information on the vaccine, and in Russia academic circles tend to be culturally extremely distrustful of both political and moneyed interests to what Westerners would consider to be an absurd degree. I.e. it's likely that announcement is political in nature rather that medical, and head medic as a typical Russian academic refused to play ball with political actors and quit.
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Is this the part where I go for a snarky "looking at slashdot, they may have had a point" in spite of said study having been pulled as incorrect on re-examination, or point out that this is not a study on some novel, highly controversial (at the time) discovery but simply publishing of results of tests looking for a binary "is this antibody present or not after injection" question?
Because last I checked there's zero controversy about this particular testing regime or this particular thing being tested. Like
Re:Don't forget the Novichok Booster Shot (Score:5, Interesting)
The Lancet also claimed that vaccines caused autism, so there's that.
No. The Lancet claimed no such thing. A researcher who published a paper in The Lancet made that claim. [nih.gov] And it was debunked and withdrawn.
Science is messy. Mistakes happen, even with peer review. And when they do, scientists look at what happened, learn from it, and fix it.
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They're also responsible for when they own up to their mistakes and correct them.
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No it isn't. They pulled the flawed autism study.
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>So what you're saying is
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
+AC
Your trolling game is weak.
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Bad idea (Score:5, Interesting)
First, they are using an adenoviral vector .. that is a bad idea. Adenovirus vectors Ad5 and Ad26 (booster) are being used .. those are some of the best vectors we have, especially for in vivo transfection, (except maybe Ad35) .. but, the problem is that THEY ARE ONE SHOT VECTORS. When you take a shot, your immune system develops antibodies against the vector itself .. so next time you take an Ad5 or Ad26 based vaccine it will get destroyed by the immune system. That means if we get a worse pandemic than Covid-19, or, you need gene therapy .. and you took this vaccine you're fucked and will have to use a shittier vector.
Second, some people may have already gotten similar adenoviruses (a fairly common virus), that means this vaccine won't work for them because their body will destroy the vaccine before it does its job.
Third, when an adenovirus based HIV vaccine was tested about 10 years ago, it actually increased susceptibility to HIV in humans and in primates (apparently by fucking with the innate immune system and/or enhancing the uptake of the virus into APCs though the latter might not be the vector's itself's fault).
No adenoviral vector vaccine has shown to work in humans, let alone been approved for use in humans (although, there's an approved rabies vaccine for dogs).
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The part about Ad5 and AD26-based vaccines being one-time vectors is the important story, and the information that URGENTLY needs to be communicated to people so they can make an informed decision about taking it (and, if they have any sanity, decide it's not worth it).
Which, of course, is why when Dr. Fauci finally goes on TV and talks about it, he'll drone on for 20 minutes about its failure to be proven by gold-standard double-blind randomized controlled trials, and completely fail to say ANYTHING about
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When you take a shot, your immune system develops antibodies against the vector itself .. so next time you take an Ad5 or Ad26 based vaccine it will get destroyed by the immune system.
Not so fast. Adenoviruses are pretty diverse and infection with one of them doesn't preclude infection with another one. It's also not likely for the immunity to them to last forever.
Oxford/Pfizer (Score:1)
The Oxford/Pfizer vaccine in phase 3 trials in the US is also Adenovirus based.
The Moderna vaccine is based on messenger RNA which is an even newer and unproven vaccine method.
(The Moderna vaccine approach is nightmarish - it basically takes over cells to produce the spike protein not the entire virus so if the cell was infected with another virus say HIV it could easily produce an HIV virus with the Covid spike protein - deadly as HIV, infectious as COVID.)
Novavax uses a nanoparticle again an unproven met
Re:Oxford/Pfizer (Score:5, Informative)
"(The Moderna vaccine approach is nightmarish - it basically takes over cells to produce the spike protein not the entire virus so if the cell was infected with another virus say HIV it could easily produce an HIV virus with the Covid spike protein - deadly as HIV, infectious as COVID.)"
That's false for multiple reasons. Just a few of which are here:
1. It's not providing the whole spike protein. .. the vaccine RNA won't do that. .. two of which are: first, the code is too damn long for HIV's error-prone retrovirus transcriptase to handle .. it's about 1/3rd the size of the ENTIRE HIV genome .. which I should point out the transcriptase can barely handle... second, I highly doubt HIV can even package it into its capsid even with some mutation.
2. The RNA of the spike protein or RdRp is not compatible with the the HIV reverse transcriptase, so it can't be reverse transcribed. There is no tRNA3Lys PBS on it, to start with.
3. To recombine into HIV, you need an RNA that can dimerize at the 5' region near the gag gene
4. A retrovirus can't sustain a spike protein's code for multiple reasons
There are other reasons too, but I can't be bothered to type them out ..any person who studied virology 101 should know them (and all of the above).
Anyway, finally how is this recombination risk from the vaccine any different than being infected with any RNA virus, including the COVID virus, while having HIV? You don't think that has happened? No HIV positive person has yet caught COVID? No HIV virus has been shown to have recombined with any of the common RNA viruses in humans -- influenza, coronavirus etc. -- all of which carry replication-competent genomes with all kinds of useful genes!
Re:Oxford/Pfizer (Score:4, Funny)
I understood about 5 words in the above post and I think they were all conjunctions.
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Second, some people may have already gotten similar adenoviruses (a fairly common virus), that means this vaccine won't work for them because their body will destroy the vaccine before it does its job.
That's why you want vaccines like this distributed broadly, so that you still reach the point of herd immunity even if ten or fifteen percent of the people end up being immune to the vaccine.
Third, when an adenovirus based HIV vaccine was tested about 10 years ago, it actually increased susceptibility to HIV in humans and in primates (apparently by fucking with the innate immune system and/or enhancing the uptake of the virus into APCs though the latter might not be the vector's itself's fault).
That's *probably* because we're talking about HIV (or at least I hope so). Trying to vaccinate against a virus that infects the immune system itself is pretty much right on the border between difficult and insane. :-)
That said, what's interesting about that study was that the only people who became more susceptible to
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You're assuming that herd immunity is even possible, and that hasn't been proven for this disease. It varies, and depends largely on the length of the induced immunity. With COVID the apparent length of immunity based on antibodies is about 4 months...too short for herd immunity to happen. But perhaps another arm of the immune system will provide longer immunity. T-Cells, perhaps. But that's hard to test for so it's almost never done. And the "long term immunity" may not be a sterilizing immunity, bu
Much longer than four months. (Score:2)
You're assuming that herd immunity is even possible, and that hasn't been proven for this disease....With COVID the apparent length of immunity based on antibodies is about 4 months
Newer studies say antibody levels had not even declined after four months [bloomberg.com]...
You are going to have to do way better than that to explain why herd immunity is not possible when everything we know about viruses would indicate that it is.
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That's a study that's good to see, but I'll need to see it replicated before I believe it. Several studies have showed a rapid decline in antibodies. Also, Icelanders have a rather homogenous genetic code, so perhaps they are outliers, and not what should normally be expected.
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To clarify, I mean herd immunity from vaccination. I certainly hope that we can get at least 70% of essential workers (i.e. people who aren't working from home and/or aren't mostly staying inside) within four months. If
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That's what that argument sounds like. Withhold a vaccine just in case another pandemic even worse than this once-a-century bad one ravaging the world now shows up before we come up with a better platform? Seriously? Or the risk
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It is not a "a-one-in-a-century-event"!
We already had three this century!
And with human population still growing, but more important: destruction of eco systems and wildlife in closer contact to humans: the frequency of such outbreaks can only be increasing.
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""Now... we will start asking questions" (Score:4, Insightful)
In Putinesque Russia, Research questions YOU!
He says they will question Western vaccines like it is some sort of threat. IT SHOULD BE STANDARD PRACTICE! Maybe publish it after. Repeat as necessary.
Honestly, his statement made me more skeptical of the vaccine.
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You should have more faith in the Russian system.
I'm sure the questioning will result not only in a confession, but also the names of several known accomplices.
Not there yet ... (Score:5, Informative)
It is not a done deal yet ...
From the Lancet: "Large, long-term trials including a placebo comparison, and further monitoring are needed to establish the long-term safety and effectiveness of the vaccine for preventing COVID-19 infection".
Basically, it means that this vaccine has to go through the full gamut of proper testing for efficacy and safety.
We don't need corner cutting here ...
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Lacet so credible . . . (Score:1)
Well if a credible, peer-reviewed journal like the Lancet says it is so [theguardian.com], then . . . .
Having said that, I am optimistic . .
Only if assessed in the west (Score:2, Interesting)
50 years ago, the Russian government told their scientists to build a space program, handed them a lump of metal, 10 meters of copper wire and a campfire, and said "we shoot your family if you fail". Somehow, those people managed to launch rockets. Russian scientists have been absolutely, genuinely, amazingly brilliant at times.
For the most part, that's history. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, most of them fled. What's left there is a small shadow of what
Only your rabid McCarthyism (Score:5, Insightful)
That's as much crap as claiming Stalin killed 100 million people, when their population increased under his reign despite losing 20+ million to the Germans.
And Saddam had WMD's and planned 911. Do not throw stones in a glass house.
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100 million? More likely 20 million.
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That's as much crap as claiming Stalin killed 100 million people, when their population increased under his reign despite losing 20+ million to the Germans.
And your rebuttal is a crap straw man argument. What does any of this have to do with how much of a mass murderer Josef Stalin was or the second US invasion of Iraq?
Re:Only your rabid McCarthyism (Score:4, Interesting)
That's as much crap as claiming Stalin killed 100 million people, when their population increased under his reign despite losing 20+ million to the Germans.
100 million is an exaggeration, sure. Stalin was responsible for "only" 20-60 million deaths through mass murder in addition to the 20 million war victims.
said "we shoot your family if you fail"
Again, an exaggeration, but not a large one. Korolev himself spent time in the Gulag.
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Saddam did have WMDs at one point. We knew because we kept the receipts. We also knew he didn't have them any more because they were past their expiration date.
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From what I can tell, Stalin killed about 6 million people on purpose, in addition to the losses during WWII. If the population went up during that time, it meant that lots of babies were made. Fine, but it doesn't change the whole "millions murdered" thing. He counts as one of the most brutal murderers in history no matter how you slice it.
Yes, my own government plays fast and loose with the truth, and has it's own share of blo
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Just like in the USA most minds behind the russian space program were Germans.
And no: they were not threatened to get their families shot.
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Ok, I admit, that the whole "we shoot you" thing is a bit of hyperbole, but I'm sure that they had fewer resources to work with, and that government was perfectly comfortable to lean on whoever they needed to. I'm willing to bet that MANY of those scientists were driven partly by justifiable fear.
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A scientist(every person) does not work even half at the top of hi/her performance if you threaten to kill his/her family if he fails. A no brainer.
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Russia's lack of credibility is of their own doing (Score:3, Insightful)
your Western Exceptionalist projection is noted (Score:2)
Skripal, the super deadly poison that......didn't kill anyone in the case in question.
You had a fake vaccination program to try and catch Bin Laddin, giving credence to every third world conspiracy theory about the "real" purpose of western vaccine programs. Fuck off.
Re: your Western Exceptionalist projection is note (Score:2)
There were multiple casualties in addition to the targets, including one person who died and a policeman who had to retire due to the long term medical impact.
Re: your Western Exceptionalist projection is note (Score:2)
The Salisbury attack made the GRU look utterly incompetent. In fact they made the whole Russian government look incompetent and totally undermined them for many years.
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By design. False flag, Google it.
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Actually, I consider assassins a cut above war mongers. But that's damning with *very* faint praise.
An immune response doesn't mean it works (Score:2)
The adjuvant creates a strong immune response and is basically saying to the immune system: look at me here drawing attention to the active ingredient.
A good example is Shingrix, the shingles vaccine. Its basically 50% effective without the adjuvant but 98% effective with it.
The fact that a vaccine causes an immune response doesn't mean its safe and effective.
That said, its good to see widespread test
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Russia, Bravo for your Corona Virus vaccine (Score:2)
Sounds like Captcha (Score:2)
Re:Oh, wow, I can't believe it! (Score:5, Informative)
Indeed. Seriously, how is this an answer to critics who pointed out that it's a Phase 2 vaccine, and as a general rule, you don't approve Phase 2 vaccines for general use?
It's one of many vaccines in development. Get in line. [nytimes.com]
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Virus is real, you should mask up.
But at the same time you should make it clear you're using it because you want, not because some retarded mini-dictator basking in the imaginary power told you so.
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Mike Pence, in a phone call with college and university presidents today, was in a *panic*. He was begging schools to keep their students on campus and not let them go home for the holidays. (How he things that'll work is a mystery to all.)
Even Trump's lap dog is taking the virus seriously! The only people who aren't are psychopaths and Trump supporters.
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Yes, obviously. My point was that, in less public settings, he very clearly seems to understand the threat. This is in contrast to the administration's cavalier posture.
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I know nothing about you. I'm guessing that you're a middle-aged (35-44yo?) male in the US. Of this demographic group [cdc.gov] during the COVID era, there have been 132 influenza deaths, 2369 COVID deaths, and 37380 total deaths. Your odds of dying of COVID would be 18 times higher than dying of influenza (let alone a "coronavirus cold", colds generally being significantly milder than influenza), and represents a bit over 1 in 16 of all deaths in this age group.
It's not the end of the world, but it's also not just
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How is ruining the economy through high handed legislation a middle ground?
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I literally just stated my view that "It does not warrant panic or heavy collateral damage". What makes you think I support lockdowns, given that statement?
I support masks, social distancing, and restrictions only high risk activities only.
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I should also add that the above death figures are inclusive of the impacts of extensive measures taken to hinder the disease.
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Don't confuse the scientific community with "the Russians"
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Umm, they don't test whether you have random antibodies, they test whether your blood's immune cells specifically produce antibodies in the presence of SARS-COV-2 proteins (ELISPOT), and if you have antibodies that specifically bind strongly to SARS-COV-2 proteins (ELISA). How are you going to pass those tests just by injecting alum? You need to have provided the target as well.