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Medicine

Vaccine Hopes Rise as Oxford Jab Prompts Immune Response Among Old as Well as Young Adults 77

Posted by msmash from the moving-forward dept.
One of the world's leading COVID-19 experimental vaccines produces an immune response in both young and old adults, raising hopes of a path out of the gloom and economic destruction wrought by the novel coronavirus. From a report: The vaccine, developed by the University of Oxford, also triggers lower adverse responses among the elderly, British drug maker AstraZeneca Plc, which is helping manufacture the vaccine, said on Monday. A vaccine that works is seen as a game-changer in the battle against the novel coronavirus, which has killed more than 1.15 million people, shuttered swathes of the global economy and turned normal life upside down for billions of people. "It is encouraging to see immunogenicity responses were similar between older and younger adults and that reactogenicity was lower in older adults, where the COVID-19 disease severity is higher," an AstraZeneca spokesman said. "The results further build the body of evidence for the safety and immunogenicity of AZD1222," the spokesman said, referring to the technical name of the vaccine. The Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is expected to be one of the first from big pharma to secure regulatory approval, along with Pfizer and BioNTech's candidate, as the world tries to plot a path out of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Vaccine Hopes Rise as Oxford Jab Prompts Immune Response Among Old as Well as Young Adults More

Vaccine Hopes Rise as Oxford Jab Prompts Immune Response Among Old as Well as Young Adults

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  • Finally some good news. I'm tired of Covid Doom and screwy life changes. F U Covid!

    • If you want some more Covid Doom, it's likely that the vaccine only gives 2-3 months' worth of protection and we probably won't have vaccinated the whole population before the first group is susceptible again.

      • So far there have only been a handful of possible Covid reinfections, and only two have been genetically confirmed. For both of those, the 2nd infection was a different strain.

        So the evidence for a short immunity duration is weak.

        A 2-3 month duration is possible, but not "likely".

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Tablizer ( 95088 )

          I agree. The evidence for re-infection is weak at this point. But if we have to re-take a Covid booster say every 2 years, that's acceptable. Better than isolation and economic stagnation.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dgatwood ( 11270 )

          So far there have only been a handful of possible Covid reinfections, and only two have been genetically confirmed. For both of those, the 2nd infection was a different strain.

          So the evidence for a short immunity duration is weak.

          A 2-3 month duration is possible, but not "likely".

          I don't think it's possible, much less likely. A 2–3 month period of neutralizing antibody availability in the bloodstream is possible, but the whole point of the adaptive immune system is that it will then recognize that pathogen more quickly and produce the right antibodies more quickly if it sees it again. And that secondary immunity (partial as it may be) should last much, much longer than any three months.

        • Isn't there also the idea that many vaccines target the protein spikes which have shown very low mutability? It may be the vaccine provides a more durable immunity than acquired immunity from infection.

          And really, any immunity of at least a year is probably manageable from a vaccination perspective. Plus it may be that over a few years of vaccination, the virus is driven to extinction in humans.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by rtb61 ( 674572 )

          Can you not already see the error in you thinking. Different strain, the vaccine protects only against one strain, so no protection at all. Then they want $3,000 dollars a dose, 7.8 billion people, trillions of dollars and it works only against one strain. You can see why they greedy fucker wee willie gates the turd is pushing it so hard, trillions of dollars each time, multiple doses, the billionaire git still does not have enough. It is well and truly all about the money for a tiny few apparently eugenici

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by isdnip ( 49656 )

            The price is more like $100/dose, and governments will pay for it. This Oxford vaccine is also being mass produced in India by Serum Institute for low-cost delivery to lower-income countries.
            There is real science around Covid; it just isn't coming from Donald, Boris, Vlad, or Joao.

      • If you want some more Covid Doom, it's likely that the vaccine only gives 2-3 months' worth of protection and we probably won't have vaccinated the whole population before the first group is susceptible again.

        Vaccine FUD..

        Truth is NOBODY knows this. You can theorize anything you want, but unless we test this theory of yours, it's not worth the 2 cents it's worth to you. If testing this requires a couple of years, what are we going to do? Wait? What if it turns out to be very effective for a couple of years? Your theory would condemn hundreds of thousands of people to death while we wait to prove you are wrong.

        Personally, as long as we have established no likely adverse effects, I'd put just about any vaccin

        • I never said we wouldn't use the vaccine. Don't grab the wrong takeaway from this. Just avoiding excessive optimism where it may not be warranted.

      • so worst case the vaccine will have to be refreshed a couple of times
        big fucking deal

        • That's not the issue - the issue is that we may not be able to stop the virus in its tracks the way we want to. Because there's no way we can manufacture that much vaccine fast enough, we may not ever reach a majority of the population being immune at the same time.

          • "Because there's no way we can manufacture that much vaccine fast enough, "

            Astrazenica was given $1.2B by the US Gov't last May to pre-manufacture their vaccine in 2 billion dose quantities to be ready at the time the approval is given.   If they've manufactured it already, which is likely, then that's almost 7X as much as we need in the USA.  US was contracted to receive 300,000,000 doses.  Don't know how reality has unfolded to this point, but that was the plan.

          • More to the point, the vaccine hurts like hell and makes some people very sick. I will get it anyway, but there's that.

      • Antibodies, B cells, and T cells (it'll last) (Score:4, Informative)

        by raymorris ( 2726007 ) on Monday October 26, 2020 @06:22PM (#60651950) Journal

        One might very well think that if you only hear "antibodies last a few months". If that's all you know, it kinda sounds like immunity only lasts a few months. But there are B cells and T cells involved in our immune system, and that's what gives long-term immunity.

        Antibodies fight a current infection. For any pathogen, they don't need to stick around forever fighting an infection we don't have.

        Memory B cells and memory T cells provide the long-term protection by basically remembering how to fight the infection. The B cells basically remember how to make the antibody while the T cells convert to effector T cells to fight the antigen if it comes back.

        Basically, it's fine for the antibodies themselves to go away - they are supposed to. The body remembers how to make them for next time.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        That might be enough if combined with a great effort to trace people and eradicate it. The WHO managed to get rid of smallpox that way.

      • Epidemiologically, even that might help.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Krishnoid ( 984597 )

      There's a Covid Doom? Man, they can port that to anything [smbc-comics.com]!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tablizer ( 95088 )

        Not too long ago I posted a photoshopped Battle-Bot bout with a Covid shaped bot on a discussion board. It got modded so far down it threw the page formatting off. I thought it would lighten the mood, but nobody wanted to be reminded of that friggen virus.

        Keep that in mind if you want to Covid-mod a popular game.

      • Does Doom ported to an alien computer feature humans as the enemy?

    • Russian Hackers stole this one from Astra Zeneca a long time ago. It's the basis for the "Russian" vaccine. So this means there's already a lot of this in use in Russia and elsewhere so we'll know if it works and if it does already have a manufacuting pipeline set up in Russia.

  • Oxford Jab?? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Fly Swatter ( 30498 ) on Monday October 26, 2020 @04:00PM (#60651482) Homepage
    WTF is that? A quick search shows similar headlines elsewhere, but it just sounds dumb and wrong. Just say vaccine.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      Are you taking a jab at the headline?

    • “The Oxford Jab” sounds like a dance from an Astaire and Rogers movie.

    • It's the colloquial term for an injection in the UK. In the US we would call it a "shot", and I suspect the Brits would be equally horrified.

      • It's the colloquial term for an injection in the UK. In the US we would call it a "shot", and I suspect the Brits would be equally horrified.

        Certainly true, but it'd be better in this case to say "Oxford vaccine" and avoid the potential confusion.

        Of course, that would require having good editors, and this sort of thing is quite far down the list of ways in which the /. editors fail.

      • If they had called it an "Oxford Shot" I would wonder what drink this is. It's the location modifier that's throwing me off. It's an Oxford Vaccine.

    • Jab is "shot" in the Queen's version of English. So to the Brits among us (Oxford being in England and all) this is referring to getting an injection of vaccine.

      They speak a bit differently over the pond.. Biscuits, Scones, Cookies, and Crackers are all very different things on the various sides of the pond... Don't get me started on the various ways they spell stuff.. Color or colour, Gray and Grey? But hey, it's the colonies over here that caused the whole issue when we thumbed our noses at King Geor

      • They speak a bit differently over the pond.. Biscuits, Scones, Cookies, and Crackers are all very different things on the various sides of the pond...

        How can you list those and not list "fag"? Or "pants"? :-)

        Pant-less subway riding means a whole other thing in UK English (and it's almost definitely illegal)

    • Just say vaccine.

      Why? It's known as a jab, especially in the area where Oxford university is based. You don't get a flu jab ever year?

    • True, instead of, "Have you been to the doctor for your Oxford Jab?"
      It's more like: "In Federal PMITA prison, you don't drop the soap, otherwise you'll be on the receiving end of the Oxford Jab."

  • AZD1222 ... referring to the technical name

    So what's the non-technical name, oh patronising one?

  • Lower than what? And how many how fast? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by tchdab1 ( 164848 ) on Monday October 26, 2020 @04:24PM (#60651590) Homepage

    From the article: "...triggers lower adverse responses among the elderly..." Lower than what? It doesn't say.

    Also says they expect it to be available mid-2021. Does this mean bulk availability? Just the USA needs 20 million per month to vaccinate about 80% of us in one year, then there's the rest of the world that needs it too, at least at the same time.

    This isn't solving itself.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The hope is that front line staff in the UK can get it before Christmas. The UK has ordered a lot of doses.

      Presumably it will be licensed for mass production at other sites around the world. Distribution should be according to need but will probably be influenced by money.

      The Chinese are very close as well, they are giving it to members of the public already. They have said they will help developing nations.

      • Do we have numbers on the Chinese vaccines? Russia made a lot of fanfare about approving their vaccine but only 6,000 people have received it. Compare that to the >100,000 people enrolled in the Western "unapproved" trials and it raises similar questions about China's "approval" of their vaccine. You can approve it and give it to 100 people but that's just a Phase 3 trial with a slick marketing label.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          I don't but they have been trialling it in South American countries. It's now on sale in parts of China but you have to sign a disclaimer.

  • Initial immune response is great, but does the response lead to Immune Enhancement?
    "...reactogenicity was lower..." is a delta, after all, and not a statement about the amount of reactogenicity.

    The key is what happens when you're body encounters SARS-CoV-2 in the wild. Does that immune response help you or put you closer to allergic inflammation...

  • "Get to feeling better or I'll stick you again -- and I might accidentally miss a few times. And then believe me, you won't like it the third time you need to bother me."
  • in case you missed it, russia tried to spread a rumor that it would turn you into a monkey. like that's a bad thing.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      The morality issue aside, it must be fun to be a paid foreign political troll. You can make up wacky crap and see suckers bite, and feed them more. "There's video cameras in your smoke detectors; get your shotguns and shoot them now!"

  • You don't need to just produce an immune response. A syringe full of liquified horse crap will do that quite nicely.

    You need to produce an immune response that will target the virus and ONLY the virus, not your own cells, and not those of the microbiome.

    And that not only won't attack your own cells now, but also won't do so, nor cause any other life-threatening side effects, a month, a year, or a decade from now.

    You need time to test the latter. Years at least. 3 years or so is the generally accepted min

    • you need to do so separately for each of the different groups which may have very different cost/benefit ratios

      Assuming effectiveness isn't 100% then you need to look at cost/benefit of more of the society than just the people receiving the shot. Even if kids had a 0% chance of dying from Ebola2.0 if we needed 100% of the population immunized against Ebola2 there would still be an ethical imperative to vaccinate the asymptomatic carriers to save millions of lives elsewhere.

      • So the purported needs of the many outweight the inalienable human rights of the few?

        That's a very slippery slope.

        Now I will grant that if we were talking about a disease that killed 25% instead of .1%, the math would look different.

        But the general principle would not.

        If in this case some of us may violate the rights of others, then in what case may we not? Where would you draw the line?

  • Sure they do, which kind is the question. But it might go completely off the rails when a real infection happens. We'll know that in a couple of months of years.

  • That is good news, but the bigger issue is how long will the immunity be? If it is a couple of months, then it is near useless for the general population (though may be helpful for specific segments, e.g. health care workers). If it is a year, then we have a shot at halting the spread of the virus.

    Other issues is the use of an adenovirus as a vector. The human body develops immunity to the vector itself, making subsequent booster shots difficult or impossible. In some cases, people have pre-existing immunit

  • Covid did not cause economic issues, governments did (good or bad/necessary or not is another question).

    • U Lynnwood? (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      No covid clearly did. Just look at the places where government did nothing. The people soon woke up when people around them started dropping like flies. People will stay home more by themselves.
      The economies of those places are just as badly affected. Worse in some cases because the government didn't do anything to help.
  • Oh wow, thanks for the detailed analysis on why a vaccine that works is important.
  • Sorry, Oxford. Not gonna make a monkey out of me.

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