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Medicine

Moderna Becomes Second Firm To Reveal Positive Results With Nearly 95% Protection In Trials (theguardian.com) 119

Posted by BeauHD from the promising-results dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: More than 1 billion people could be immunized against coronavirus by the end of next year with shots from the first two companies to reveal positive results, after the latest vaccine was shown to be nearly 95% effective in trials. With the US's top infectious diseases official, Anthony Fauci, hailing "the light at the end of the tunnel", the US biotech firm Moderna announced impressive results for its mRNA vaccine on Monday, a week after interim results for a Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine showed 90% effectiveness.

The inclusion of high-risk and elderly people in the Moderna trial suggested the vaccine would protect those most vulnerable to the disease, said Peter Openshaw, a professor of experimental medicine at Imperial College London, who described the results as "tremendously exciting." Though it is more expensive, Moderna's vaccine could potentially provide a major advantage over Pfizer's, which requires ultracold freezing between -70C (-94F) and -80C from production facility to patient. Moderna said it had improved the shelf life and stability, meaning its vaccine can be stored for six months at -20C for shipping and long-term storage, and at standard refrigeration temperatures of 2C to 8C for 30 days. Moderna said it could potentially manufacture 1bn doses by the end of 2021, adding to a further 1.3bn from Pfizer/BioNTech in the same timeframe. Both vaccines require two doses and are due to be assessed by regulators in coming weeks. Moderna is planning to apply to the FDA for emergency use authorization in the coming weeks. "The biotech company said it would have 20 million doses ready to ship in the U.S. before the end of 2020 and hoped to manufacture 500 million to 1 billion doses globally next year," reports The Guardian. It's not expected to be available outside the U.S. until next year.
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Moderna Becomes Second Firm To Reveal Positive Results With Nearly 95% Protection In Trials More

Moderna Becomes Second Firm To Reveal Positive Results With Nearly 95% Protection In Trials

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  • Russian data reanalyzed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by lengel ( 519399 ) on Monday November 16, 2020 @04:42PM (#60731866)

    Next week? The Russians announce they reanalyzed their vaccine data and it is actually 96.5% effective.

  • The real problem is that once successful vaccines are available to all and sundry, the global warming crowd will come back again.

  • Better, easier storage requirements (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kitkoan ( 1719118 ) on Monday November 16, 2020 @04:53PM (#60731910)
    This vaccine only has to be stored at -20C, which is a lot better then Pfizerâ€(TM)s vaccine which needed to be held at -70C.

    The worry was Pfizerâ€(TM)s vaccine would make it harder for poorer nations to obtain and hold the vaccine as the equipment to keep anything at -70C is really expensive for long traveling. But at only -20C, your average home freezer would be able to store these, which makes this much, MUCH more accessible for all people to be able to have access.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rossdee ( 243626 )

      If you cool the air to -70C there won't be any active SARS-COV2 cells either.

    • You can buy a 100L -80C freezer for a few thousand bucks. Plug it into a generator if you need it to travel. -20C is definitely way easier, but "really expensive" isn't true

    • Dry ice - solid carbon dioxide - maintains a temperature of ~78 deg C. It's generally available and during transit could be used after delivery or until powered freezers are available at destinations.
      • You are confusing cause with effect. It would be more accurate to say that a temperature of -78C maintains dry ice as a solid. Dry ice itself doesnâ(TM)t maintain any temperature... in a complex system it will simply tend to some average ambient temperature.
        • Dry ice only tends to stay cold because it is kept in containers with good thermal insulation, eg due to partial vacuum. Dry ice itself doesnâ(TM)t maintain -78C.

          As with any other inert passive substance (eg not turning potential electrical chemical or nuclear energy into heat) it will simply heat up or even cool down depending on the surrounding temperature.

          A closed system will tend towards an average temperature, governed by the amount of heat in each substance in the system (eg ice cube and water

    • Dry ice is -78ÂC.
      Unless it needs to be exactly -70ÂC it should be relatively easy.

    • I found out from some friends that you can convert just about any reputable brand fridge/freezer to a -20C .. the compressor is (usually) good enough. Turns out you just have to break/bypass the thermostat, and the temperatures will drop to around -20C. I was skeptical at first, but now I have a number of fridges it's been done on and they have been working fine for years now.

      -80 fridges are a pain though so if you just need to store a few things and don't need to keep get things in and out you can use a li

    • "your average home freezer" - Nope, the average home freezer only goes down to about -17 Celsius.

      • A freezer goes to -30C easily.
        Perhaps you are mixing up a Freezer with a "modified" Fridge, or a fridge with an extra freezing compartment?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jabuzz ( 182671 )

        And that my friend is a -20 Celsius freezer. Usually there is a "fast freeze" option what overrides the thermostat and it will go lower than -20 Celsius at the cost of more electricity.

        A -80 freezer does not get to -80 Celsius in normal operation either, they are in the region of -75 Celsius. They are also not hugely expensive either. Any biomedical research laboratory will have loads of them.

        That's not to say a vaccine needing a -20 Celsius freezer is much easier to deal with than one needing a -80 Celsius

    • ...and yet, Pfizer worked out a whole cold logistics solution for all those hard to reach places. Sure, it's tricker than -20C, but even -20C needs a cold logistics chain too.

      Only a pretty decent domestic freezer will go to -20C and stay there, and only if modified in some way to do so, otherwise it'll aim at -18C. Older freezers, those not maintained or ventilated very well, or those who've lost some of their gas will probably be at -15 or so, and doing a perfectly good job of keeping food preserved (so th

  • thank you President Donny Trump (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymouse Cowtard ( 6211666 ) on Monday November 16, 2020 @04:54PM (#60731920) Homepage
    We are eternally grateful that President Trump had the idea of a vaccine. He is an inspiration to all, from ordinary people to scientists. Such a loss to America that he only serves one term. Some say he was on the verge of curing cancer.

    • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

      by Kitkoan ( 1719118 )
      But don't worry, the people of the US have looked forward, and have cured themselves of the cancer Trump.

      • I've lived a long life and I have never seen anybody as deranged as a Trump hater. The guy's not even some right-wing extremist - he was a DEMOCRAT until only a few years ago and used to be embraced more by Democrats than Republicans - which is why so many self-styled "conservatives" in the Republican party went insane and became "never Trumpers" when Trump approached the nomination in 2016.

        Trump is CANCER????

        WTF is wrong with you people. It certainly is not Trump.

        I had very serious concerns about what Obam

        • Reasonable arguments only exist on one side of the political aisle?

          To see good on only one side of the aisle and only see wrong on the other side of the aisle requires bias. It requires us to look at the facts as a serious of items from which we must carefully select what reinforces our narrative and which truths we must discard. As a reasonable person, you must surely have noticed that bias exists in every corner of the political world, not only on the side you do not vote for.

          So while there were certainly

          • "Reasonable arguments only exist on one side of the political aisle?" - I never said any such thing. What are you referring to here

            Now, as to the points you raised:

            The 2015 Incident: The President, at the time quoted, knew nothing about the incident other than what the press was telling him. He said it would be a shame if it happened (certainly true) and defended his supporters from a hostile press, the rest of his words were also true. Later, when there was more information about the specific incident, Tr

            • You've made an incorrect assumption based on the fact that Mr. Trump's gross immorality appals me. I am not on the left.

              And my disdain for Mr. Trump's commitment to untruthfulness, demagoguery and immorality began when he was a democrat.

              But just as it is noteworthy that there are now detractors who celebrated him in his Democrat days, it is also interesting and disheartening that his becoming a Republican suddenly necessitates his defence by people who would never defend a Democrat.

              • And my disdain for Mr. Trump's commitment to untruthfulness, demagoguery and immorality began when he was a democrat.

                Trump was never a Democrat (or a Republican). He may have said he was, but in reality he is Trump. Nothing else matters to him.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Anonymous Coward

            One sentence expressing disappointment followed by four sentences of PRAISE.

            So Trump's a "the glass is half full" kind of guy. Big deal, there is nothing wrong with trying to look for the bright side of things instead of dwelling solely on the negatives.

            an ambiguous condemnation mixed with elements of praise, followed the next day by a full condemnation. That is neither normal nor helpful behaviour, and it has inflamed a lot of people.

            No, it is normal behavior, for Trump and many other "glass is half full" type people. And it is helpful to be like that, as looking at only the negatives of things is the type of behavior that leads to a shorter lifespan. Trump is the oldest person to have been elected president so far, and despite his age, he's in great health.

            This

        • Trump is like Hitler.

          If you have no "emotional hatred" to hm, you have the same mental sickness the Hitler followers had.

        • You will be happy to see that the Biden smears and hysteria are already ramping up. I have an old coworker posting anti-Biden rants on LinkedIn, and they seem to be getting worse after the election. When he's sworn in you will see a level of Biden hatred that is at least as bad as what you've seen about Trump. It kind of breaks my heart, actually.

  • This is good, but its nowhere near enough to start tamping this virus down.

    For next year, lets take their high end estimate as true, so 1b doses would cover 500m people at 2 shots each. But not everyone will end up getting both, so lets call it 480m people vaccinated over the year for easy math. Spread evenly across 12 months, which is the most generous assumption we can make, and we're vaccinating 40m people every month.

    For us to get anywhere near herd immunity, we're going to need 200m+ people immune to t

    • I wonder if there would be any practical value in prioritizing people by their proven level of mobility -- like your access to vaccine is partly accelerated by the amount of mobility tracking from your phone.

      I'm not saying as the only factor, but realistically people who are more mobile are also more likely to spread. It seems like it rewards those who didn't respect the virus, but practically speaking those are the ones you want to make immune earlier.

      People with low mobility have less inherent risk and t

    • The good news is that hopefully by January or February we can get it to everybody over the age of 65 or 70.

      We've brought down the Infection Fatality Rate by about half. If we also protected everyone over say 50 then we would be reducing the IFR by at least another 3/4. Then we're starting to approach a bad seasonal flu mortality and wouldn't need such strict management.

      About 30% of the population of the US is over 50. So just having 100 million people covered would mostly end the danger of mass casualti

    • That depends on what kind of herd immunity you want. If you want it at a per-individual level, sure you need 200m to take it. If you want it at a pet-household level, then the numbers don't have to get that high for you to start seeing results. I work at home. The wife doesn't. Right now, her getting it is going to have the same effect as both of us. Etc.

    • While 20 million doses are reserved for the US initially, that larger 1 billion doses will be distributed *worldwide*. We will need more than just the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines to get the US to herd immunity by the end of next year.

    • There are a lot of things that still are unknown. Unless I'm mistaken, we don't know how long a person who has been infected and recovered is immune. Probably the same thing for the effectiveness of a vaccine - how long is the vaccine effective? Is immunity forever, a year, six months? And there's still the possibility that the covid virus mutates - or not - requiring a modified vaccine and if so, how often will people need to be re vaccinated - annually, every six months, three months? I'm sure there are o

  • The good guy is now the certified winner. Release the vaccine now.

  • Once Biden is elected all the bribes paid to the Republicans become null and void. They have to issue fresh bribes to the Democrats. So maximize the bribes already paid, they are rushing to announce results and get a quick FDA approval from a friendly administration.
  • ..and hopefully they're not inflating their claims of efficacy.

  • 2nd victory for the Trump admin, but too late (Score:3, Informative)

    by schwit1 ( 797399 ) on Monday November 16, 2020 @06:35PM (#60732310)

    Trump noted that the average vaccine development process takes 8 to 12 years, yet “through operation Warp Speed we’re doing it in less than 1 year. This is five times faster than the fastest prior vaccine development in history. Five times faster.” That truly is a jaw-dropping and historic accomplishment.

    Along with the Pfizer announcement one wonders what impact it would have had if released before the election. Was the timing an accident?

    Big pharma is not a fan of Trump after his EO to lower pharma prices [nytimes.com]

    • Re:2nd victory for the Trump admin, but too late (Score:5, Insightful)

      by RazorSharp ( 1418697 ) on Monday November 16, 2020 @11:32PM (#60733068)

      How is this a victory for the Trump administration? That's a clear confusion of correlation and causation. It's a victory for Moderna and Pfizer. The administration's main job—what they actually had control over—was to enact policies that would flatten the curve while the drug companies tried to develop a vaccine as quickly as possible. Giving those companies the leeway to make a vaccine as quickly as possible was the least they could do. In fact, it was the one thing they could do that took hardly any effort and no political courage.

      It's not a coincidence that Trump blitzed through the midwest with campaign rally after campaign rally and now the pandemic is spreading exponentially. Trump not only failed to do anything to deal with the pandemic, but he actively took measures to make things worse.

      The worst thing about how people evaluate a president is that they base everything on correlation. Everyone loved to praise Clinton for his economy even though he had little to do with it. Similarly, people criticized Obama for racial unrest when it was largely caused by the commodification of recording devices (cell phones) that led to an explosion of cops getting caught doing the dirty shit they've done for years. While it may be true that a president often takes all the blame/credit even when it's unmerited, you should show a little more awareness of basic causation.

      You're probably right. If this information had come out before the election it probably would have helped Trump. But only because most voters—especially "swing voters"—are stupid. That's no reason to insinuate a conspiracy, though.

    • Along with the Pfizer announcement one wonders what impact it would have had if released before the election. Was the timing an accident?

      With margins so close in the election, it wouldn't have taken much to flip it.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • That took part in Trump's "operation warp speed" effort to get a vaccine in less than the usual 4 years, and after taking the money, and running through all the R&D and then the clinical trials knew full-well over a month ago that they had a solution (since they were through all early trials successfully and were in final trials without having to abort based on bad results) mostly just needed final confirmation, yet held off on telling the public until after the election.

    Makes one wonder if politics wer

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by jezwel ( 2451108 )

      That orange man is certainly bad and stupid and toxic and dangerous, isn't he?

      You have a quarter million deaths so far. Near 20% of overall deaths in the world, with less than 5% of the population.

      So on average if you live in the world leading super power country with the "best" healthcare available, you are 4 times more likely to die.

      Poor leadership is what led you to that, and that sits firmly at the behest of that orange man.

      • First, that 20% of the deaths with 5% of the population line is a dishonest talking point on multiple levels:

        1. Consider this map [jhu.edu]. Huge parts of the planet with large populations are simply less infected (look at the African continent) and in the case of Africa the mortality rates are lower for 2 big reasons: The population is younger (the young are much less at risk), and there is almost certainly far poorer record keeping.

        2. Looking at that same map, consider places like China and Russia. Both have decade

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Nugoo ( 1794744 )

          Oh and next time, try a more honest criteria like "deaths per capita" which would give you something more like this [statista.com] and would show you that the US is doing better than [...] France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Austria, etc.

          You know higher numbers are worse, right?

        • Oh and next time, try a more honest criteria like "deaths per capita" which would give you something more like this [statista.com] and would show you that the US is doing better than Belgium, Spain, Italy, France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Austria, etc.

          Ranking probably changed between your post and now. Like the first wave, the second wave started earlier in Europe, USA death per capita will increase significantly in next weeks.

    • ...and then the clinical trials knew full-well over a month ago that they had a solution (since they were through all early trials successfully and were in final trials without having to abort based on bad results) mostly just needed final confirmation, yet held off on telling the public until after the election.

      IIRC, the companies working on the vaccines did in fact make announcements of their successes at each phase of testing. There was also an announcement of at least one testing phase being paused due to safety concerns. It's my understanding that phase 3 of testing determines the effectiveness of the vaccines, and the results have been immediately announced once the vaccine makers were reasonably sure of the results.

      Here's an announcement from Pfizer [pfizer.com] made on Wednesday, September 09, 2020 that says their

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nagora ( 177841 )

      That took part in Trump's "operation warp speed" effort to get a vaccine in less than the usual 4 years, and after taking the money,

      I thought that too but Warp Speed is just a pre-booking system. No money is handed over until the vaccine is through trials. So essentially all it is is the USG saying "if you have a vaccine we'll buy it" which is sort of "duh".

      And of course, the vaccines would have sold globally anyway, so there was no incentive from Warp Speed to do anything other than what the companies do anyway, so OWS is just a purchase order.

    • That took part in Trump's "operation warp speed" effort

      Yep. All praise "warp speed". Because we all know big pharma generally does not otherwise putting any effort into trying to beat the competition to produce a viable vaccine that would be worth many billions to the first group that succeeded.

      I mean he's so good and in warp speed that he's already setting up vaccination centres across the country right? Right? No? Wait what is operation warp speed about then?

      Russia doesn't have a warp speed and they were the first with a vaccine.
      The first USA based vaccine wa

  • I know there are some biotech professionals on this web site.

    So, I have a question: both the Pfizer/BioNTech and the Moderna vaccine use the same technology: mRNA as the active ingredients, delivered in lipid nanoparticles to allow it to get into cells, so it can create the SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein, which in turn produces the immune response.

    So why does the former require -70C cold chain, while the latter can be stored between +2C and +8C? Initially I thought that it is the stability of the nanoparticles, b

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kbahey ( 102895 )

      Found a partial general answer: different formulations of lipid.

      See this video [youtube.com] (highly recommended channel by the way).

      But no further detail as what the differences in lipids are.

    • It could be as simple as "one company tested the vaccine after storing it at -70C to be safe, while the other company took a business gamble by testing after storing at 5C and it turned out to be OK"

    • A similar question was asked on Reddit. [reddit.com]. Not the most trustworthy source...but it's at least one of the better-moderated subreddits.

      The consensus seems to be a combination of "Pfizer may not have tested storage at higher temps" and "Proprietary black magic that no one outside of Moderna is likely to fully understand."

  • With the US's top infectious diseases official, Anthony Fauci, hailing "the light at the end of the tunnel", the US biotech firm Moderna announced impressive results for its mRNA vaccine on Monday, a week after interim results for a Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine showed 90% effectiveness.

    In other words, we seem to be rounding the corner" [newsweek.com]

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