Russian COVID-19 Vaccine Shows Encouraging Results (bbc.com) 81
Thelasko shares a report from the BBC: Early results from trials of a Covid vaccine developed in Russia suggest it could be 92% effective. The data is based on 20 cases of Covid-19 from 16,000 volunteers given the Sputnik V vaccine or a dummy injection. While some scientists welcomed the news, others said the data had been rushed out too early. The Sputnik V vaccine, developed at the National Research Centre for Epidemiology and Microbiology in Moscow, is currently going through phase III clinical trials in Belarus, UAE, Venezuela and India. So far there are no safety issues, with Russian researchers saying there were "no unexpected adverse events" 21 days after volunteers received their first of two injections.
The Russian researchers say their data will be published "in one of the leading international peer-reviewed medical journals." If it's positive, it means there will almost certainly be more than one way of protecting people against the virus. The Pfizer vaccine injects part of the genetic code of the virus into the body to train the immune system. The other two use a harmless virus that has been genetically modified to resemble the coronavirus. Two doses are also required, but one advantage of Sputnik is that it doesn't need to be stored at very low temperatures, around -80C, unlike Pfizer's.
The Russian researchers say their data will be published "in one of the leading international peer-reviewed medical journals." If it's positive, it means there will almost certainly be more than one way of protecting people against the virus. The Pfizer vaccine injects part of the genetic code of the virus into the body to train the immune system. The other two use a harmless virus that has been genetically modified to resemble the coronavirus. Two doses are also required, but one advantage of Sputnik is that it doesn't need to be stored at very low temperatures, around -80C, unlike Pfizer's.
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The media don't decide elections, but the information that is publicly known comes from state election boards. These show that Trump lost. Yes, they aren't yet certified and in principle could these results could change.
I would take a 10-1 bet against Trump in this election. It would be easy money. The odds are much worse than that.
Do count on recounts. Odds are far worse than 1 in 10 for him to change the results. In general recounts change vote counts on the order of a couple of hundred votes. It is very
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and russian gulags are family friendly
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and anyone who calls him friend.
ivan has earned my ire
In Russian voice... (Score:3, Funny)
"That's 2 more better than 90" [youtube.com]
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I don't think we should write it off just because it's from Russia though. They aren't by any means stupid. (With a good government they'd be a powerhouse, I don't know why they are centuries behind in this one area).
Re: In Russian voice... (Score:1)
It's called an enlightenment period. China seems to lack a comparable period in history too. I am not a historian but this period of history seems rather important for western culture and our systems of governance.
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Globally it is certainly hit-or-miss. India, the world's largest democracy, manages to support a huge population, yet the standard of living is mostly lousy.
It is called government controlled economy+society (Score:2, Interesting)
China is a powerhouse because it is complete government control of economy, money value and system, society, able to disappear dissent, no arm race (due to much less historical fear than russia of invasion), no concern for their own citizen's life, varied climate and terrain, good ocean access, much weaker neighbors, non-open society (so government actions more hidden, like in Saudi Arabia), able to apply harsh programs (1-child policy) with minimal outside complaint (effective complaint).
India's population
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Their "economic powerhouse" comes from their complete disregard for the lives, safety, and well-being of their own people. It's easy to make a profit if you don't have to care about or pay your own workers.
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Yeah, the China firewall is not what it used to be. If there were a significant number of Covid infections, we would know about it. And -opposed to what conservative Americans believe for some reason- leaders and ruling parties don't actually benefit from their people getting sick and lying about it.
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National emergencies are the one place where having a competent authoritarian one-party rule would be advantageous to the people. Unfortunately, in western democracies, the "competent" part of that is nearly impossible to achieve because to achieve the status of authoritarian you have to be elected by a wide enough segment of the population that your party won't challenge your authoritarianism. To do that you have to be a populist, which means you have to be a charismatic idiot.
China has a one party system
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In fact Russia does have a pretty good record on vaccines, they pioneered a lot of novel techniques over the years.
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Thanks, Yuri the organ dealer is exactly who I was thinking of. "Russian vaccine is just as good, in fact is better, is 2 more than 90!".
Re:What does "effectiveness" mean in this context? (Score:5, Interesting)
No, I'm 92% sure the way they calculate it is as follows:
They have 16k people: 8k in the control group and 8k in the experimental group. In the control group, 250 people got covid. Typically you would then expect to get about 250 cases of covid in the experimental group too. But they only got 20. 20/250 = 8%. So 92% of the people that would've got it were protected.
Re:What does "effectiveness" mean in this context? (Score:4, Informative)
Something similar to that, except those 20 cases are across both the control group and the experimental group. But 1/19=5.3% and 2/18=11.1% So either the math has some additional nuance, or the two groups weren't an equal size.
That is also why some are considering it premature to announce the results. With only 1-2 cases in the experimental group and 20 overall that leaves quite a bit if statistical uncertainty around that 92% number.
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The groups would never be of equal size because some of the people would have died, or dropped out of the study for other reasons.
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In Russia, the problem of people dying or "disappearing" at an unequal rate can relatively easily be fixed ... :P
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In Soviet Putinstan, groups equal size YOU!
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Plus it's not uncommon for the control and experimental groups to be different sizes. They can sometimes be in 2:1 or even 3:1 ratios.
interesting (Score:3)
Russia, or others, may be doing quite a bit of business.
How do they thaw this out? (Score:3)
So this is hard frozen even colder than dry ice (solid CO2)?
How do they thaw this stuff out to administer injections? Do you have to park yourself in a waiting room while this happens?
Re:How do they thaw this out? (Score:5, Informative)
Pfizer has provided these details [twitter.com] to the CDC about shipping and storage of their candidate: the vaccine can be shipped in “dry ice pack” boxes, but that dry ice will need to be replenished within 24 hours of receipt. The shipping carton needs to be closed within one minute of opening, and not opened more than twice per day. Vaccine vials, once removed, can be kept at refrigerator temperatures for up to 24 hours or at room temperature for no more than 2 hours after thawing.
Re: How do they thaw this out? (Score:3)
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You dont know that... for the simple reason that Pfizer dont know the extend of protection, neither does the russians. The product has been on the market long enough for results to be known. Based on the initial reports and counts of antibodies found, we know that rna based vaccines might loose efficacy at some point in the future, because most current rna based vaccines usually do. But for now it's just guessing. What we do know is that the Pfizer vaccine will be difficult to use in underdeveloped countrie
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Edit: Has NOT been on the market long enough....
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Pfizers is probably more effective and will last a lot longer.
You dont know that... for the simple reason that Pfizer dont know the extend of protection, neither does the russians.
The Russians are using dead proteins, as opposed to using the mRNA. We are loaded with proteases that love to chew up proteins. As such, the Russian injection will probably last less than a couple of days to a week at most. OTOH, the mRNA will last quite a while in the cells. The majority will likely still be around after a week. As such, it will be producing its protein for several weeks. What is likely to happen is that the titer on the mRNA produced protein was moderate for several weeks, without requir
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Idiot troll, otherwise known as Caffeinated Bacon, actually got one right (rare for him, since he is a constant liar, but hey, even a stopped analog clock is right 1 or 2 x a day, depending on clock).
Turns out that I was thinking of Sinovac's dead virus. Interestingly, Russia is using 2 different live virus, which will give it similar, or better, lifespan to the mRNA. [wikipedia.org] It will be interesting to see which one (virus or mRNA) does a better long-term job.
Re:No. I'm sorry but you can't belive Russian... (Score:5, Insightful)
There's currently over 300 Covid-19 vaccines being tested around the world. It's not surprising for at least one Russian candidate to be among the early contenders; despite the fact that Russia has an economy about the size of Spain's, it punches considerably above its economic weight in science and technology.
The problem here is not that the science is questionable; early scientific results are *always* questionable. The problem is regulatory. The Russian government didn't even make any pretext of adequately testing the vaccine for safety and efficacy before approving its limited use back in August; they'd only done Phase II testing with only a handful of subjects.
China has done something similar. There's a lot of national prestige in being the developer of the first, and if China or Russia is lucky in their corner-cutting, they can win that prestige without necessarily doing the science faster than anyone else.
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In addition to national prestige, there is money. Lots of it ...
Countries that have government organizations develop vaccines faster are in for a lot of revenue.
That is why Russia is waging information warfare against the Oxford vaccine [slashdot.org] because of the latter's use of a monkey virus as a vector
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These aren't coincidental. It's their inheritance of Soviet era institutions and know-how.
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You misspelled the CIA.
Re:No. I'm sorry but you can't belive Russian... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Not a "booster," a vector. It's based on an adenovirus vector (actually two different ones because it's a two dose vaccine), which your body will develop an immunity to along with the vaccine target proteins, making it a one time deal.
Re: No. I'm sorry but you can't belive Russian... (Score:2)
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The problem here is not that the science is questionable; early scientific results are *always* questionable.
Questionable science is exactly the problem here. The Pfizer trial originally planned to do a preliminary analysis after they had 32 cases [arstechnica.com], but after discussions with the FDA they agreed that just wouldn't be enough data to get meaningful results, so they waited until they had at least 62 cases. The other major trials are also waiting for larger numbers of cases. Pretending to draw conclusions after only 20 cases is just nonsense. And look at the time frame:
So far there are no safety issues, with Russian researchers saying there were "no unexpected adverse events" 21 days after volunteers received their first of two injections.
This analysis is based on people who haven't e
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Fake vaccine. (Score:2)
How DARE you question Russian science! (Score:2)
I'm sure this is every bit as solid and peer-reviewed as Batyr the talking Soviet elephant [wikipedia.org] (which in a sign of my geezerhood, I actually remember reading about at the time, which is how I could look it up here now). Back during the Cold War some elements of the Soviet Union seemed to have a genuine sense of insecurity about their place in the world of science, and so they would periodically tell the outside world about some of their scientific wonders. I recall thinking at the time that this elephant thing
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Everyone knows the Russian "vaccine" hasn't gone through any clinical trials and hasn't produced any results. This just typical propaganda.
It's just Vodka, anyways. That's been tested for a long time.
Dry ice? (Score:2)
Isn't dry ice -78C? They'd need a lot of it, but it does provide a ready temperature in the needed range.
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Those who propose these ultra-low-temperature vaccines are already planning for the complex logistics.
And as you guessed, it involves a lot of dry ice.
I predict... (Score:3)
I predict the next vaccine will announce 94% effectiveness.
We'll know they are messing with us when someone accidentally claims 102% effectiveness.
Jokes aside, I hope these results hold up under longer analyses, but it's super promising to see what appears to be high-ish confidence that it'll be effective enough (>70%) to drop R0 well under 1.
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The more vaccines the better. More production, and hopefully countries that promised to help developing nations (mainly China at this point but also Russia) will follow through. The Pfizer one seems to be entirely bought up by Europe and the US at the moment.
No vaccine for you Democrats (Score:2)
Thought we forgot about the Hillary Russia bashing troughout this pandemic?
Loaded Statistics - fake 90%'ers (Score:4, Interesting)
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As the 90% number is calculated as a ratio between the placebo and vaccine groups, I don't really understand your criticism.
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Side effects (Score:3)
no unexpected adverse events
So there could have been side effects - extremely severe side effects at that - but as long as they were expected that makes it okay? What if they were expecting some of the test subjects to die from it?
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no unexpected adverse events
So there could have been side effects - extremely severe side effects at that - but as long as they were expected that makes it okay? What if they were expecting some of the test subjects to die from it?
Adverse events aren't necessarily effects of a drug. Anything that happens during the test is considered an adverse event. So given a hundred people, it's expected that some will get headaches this month. Those reports are among the expected adverse events. This is because we can't readily establish that a treatment causes these effects except in aggregate.
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Geez man, relax. Expected side effects from vaccines (and adjuvants) are local pain, headaches, fevers and flu like symptoms over a day or two.
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but as long as they were expected that makes it okay?
Yes. Because then the relative risk of inoculation vs not inoculating can be judged. Even if one of the known risks is death in x percent of cases the result may still be medically useful if the drug which may cause death could otherwise prevent a guaranteed death.
Wikipedia bias (Score:1)
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Aren't humans grand? (Score:1)
Additional benefit (Score:2)
In line with current Russian standards, you will be able to run 100m in 9.41 seconds...