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Medicine

The Oxford Vaccine Is 70% Effective, Cheaper and Easier To Store and Distribute (bbc.com) 129

AmiMoJo writes: The coronavirus vaccine developed by the University of Oxford is highly effective at stopping people developing Covid-19 symptoms, a large trial shows. Interim data suggests 70% protection, but the researchers say the figure may be as high as 90% by tweaking the dose. The results will be seen as a triumph, but come after Pfizer and Moderna vaccines showed 95% protection. However, the Oxford jab is far cheaper, and is easier to store and get to every corner of the world than the other two. So the vaccine will play a significant role in tackling the pandemic, if it is approved for use by regulators. "The announcement today takes us another step closer to the time when we can use vaccines to bring an end to the devastation caused by [the virus]," said the vaccine's architect, Prof Sarah Gilbert. The UK government has pre-ordered 100 million doses of the Oxford vaccine, and AstraZeneca says it will make three billion doses for the world next year. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said it was "incredibly exciting news" and that while there were still safety checks to come, "these are fantastic results."
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The Oxford Vaccine Is 70% Effective, Cheaper and Easier To Store and Distribute

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  • by nomadic ( 141991 )

    So far, far less effective than the other two vaccines?

    • Re:heh (Score:5, Informative)

      by fred6666 ( 4718031 ) on Monday November 23, 2020 @01:04PM (#60757578)

      They got 62% efficiency with 2 doses, and 90% with a first half-doze and a second full dose. They tested more people with two full doses, so the overall average is 70%.

      Also the cost is about 10% of the other two vaccines, and storage is a lot easier (standard fridge).

      • Re:heh (Score:5, Informative)

        by iserlohn ( 49556 ) on Monday November 23, 2020 @02:22PM (#60757948) Homepage

        The Oxford team also measured infections in all participants with a PCR test, which captures even very mild infections, whereas Pfizer and Moderna both measured only symptomatic infections in their figures. It could very well be that the Oxford vaccine is as effective, or more effective than the mRNA vaccines.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          The effectiveness data is relative to the control group which has the same monitoring regime. So while you're right that the data is not entirely comparable, it could actually go either way (i.e mRNA being even better at reducing asymptomatic infections). But the Oxford data is definitely more thorough in this respect. However, I'm not sure it matters, as we don't seem to have a good idea of how infectiousness correlates with symptoms at the moment. There are a bunch of theories but these sorts of things ar

      • In addition to the points already brought up:

        The tests aren't challenge tests: The subjects aren't deliberately exposed to the virus, but left to be exposed to it from community spread in their normal lives. So (in addition to issues with whether the experimental and control group get the same rate of exposure), even with a large group you only get a few cases.

        In the Oxford study, with only 30 infections in the study group and 101 in the control group, statistical noise is going to play havoc with the num

    • Re:heh (Score:4, Insightful)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Monday November 23, 2020 @01:06PM (#60757590) Homepage Journal

      70% is still very useful if it's cheap and easy to distribute. Remember back when Dominic Cummings was planning for a million or two dead to achieve herd immunity? You could get there with a 70% effective vaccine that is widely deployed.

      Unfortunately there may be enough people who believe the conspiracy theories to prevent widespread deployment but we shall see.

      For developing nations the choice could be between everyone getting a cheap 70% vaccine or a few people getting a 90% one. Hopefully richer nations will step up to help them.

      • You don't need to believe in conspiracy theories to be wary of a v1 virus. Even if the science and testing is 100% correct, manufacturing can be a problem (see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1383764/ for what happened with the first Polio vaccine - out of 200,000 vaccines given to children, 40,000 developed Polio - oops. This was due to poor manufacturing). Given the enormous logistical task ahead, I have a feeling there will be a number of major problems early on. Hopefully not as bad as that

        • Re:heh (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Immerman ( 2627577 ) on Monday November 23, 2020 @02:26PM (#60757970)

          I assume you meant a v1 vaccine.

          I don't think the polio vaccine problem is relevant - polio vaccines use a weakened or deactivated (dead) version of the virus to confer immunity - fail to weaken it properly and you'll get infected instead of just teaching your immune system to recognize its dead or dying corpose.

          I'm not certain, but I don't believe any of the current COVID vaccines actually incorporate the virus, instead using specific proteins or mRNA. No virus = no possibility of being infected with the disease.

          There's still the possibility that manufacturing flaws could accidentally incorporate toxic substances, or be accidentally contaminated with COVID or some other virus, but that's true of any vaccine, there's no special risk for this one.

          There's also the fact that (I believe) this is the first time an mRNA vaccine (Pfizers?) has been approved - and it's remotely possible that there might be some long-term complications that haven't yet shown up in the test subjects. But that's a really long shot.

          Personally I'll take great comfort in the fact that the first round of vaccines will almost certainly go to those most at risk - the doctors and nurses fighting on the front lines. Those are the people who are both best able to evaluate the risks, and best able to recognize any complications that may develop.

          You'll rarely go wrong ignoring politicians, media personalities, etc. and basing your decisions on what the the experts choose for themselves and their loved ones.

        • ... what happened with the first Polio vaccine - out of 200,000 vaccines given to children, 40,000 developed Polio - oops. This was due to poor manufacturing.

          As I had heard it:
          - The Salk vaccine is made by using formaldehyde to kill polio virus, destroying their innards and leaving the protein shell which provokes the immune response when injected along with an irritant,
          - At a particular range of pH, the Polio virus crystalizes. If polio crystals are exposed to formaldehyde some of the viru

      • 70% is still very useful if it's cheap and easy to distribute.

        Also, of the other 30%, they all had mild symptoms.

        So 70% reduction in cases and ~100% reduction in severe cases.

        • 70% is still very useful if it's cheap and easy to distribute.

          Also, of the other 30%, they all had mild symptoms.

          So 70% reduction in cases and ~100% reduction in severe cases.

          The big question though: how infectious is that 30%? The big goal with vaccines during a pandemic is herd immunity, so what's most relevant is how effective is a vaccine at preventing someone from passing the disease along to someone else.

      • by nomadic ( 141991 )

        Sure, but the fact that the results of apparently more effective vaccines came out right before took a little wind out of their sales. And Oxford was the golden child of the media for most of the year. But you're right, a cheap vaccine could do wonders for the developing world.

    • by gtall ( 79522 )

      Your implication relies upon the figures being reported for all the vaccines are accurate. Both Pfizer and Moderna are susceptible to pressure from the alleged administration and are American companies. They alleged administration has shown they care more about optics than about actually doing the right things to combat the virus. Astra-Zeneca is a British-Swedish firm.

      • While I hear you, the fact that the announcements were made after the election, which REALLY pissed off 45, makes me a little less worried about them having been pressured by the administration; or at least not very effectively pressured. Hell, at this point 45 would love it if Biden didn't get a functioning vaccine any sooner than possible because he'd have something to crow about after he's evicted.

        But again, I hear you and I too am concerned about just the overall general pressure by all parties to get s

      • Please take off your tin foil hat. Pfizer is working on this vaccine with BioNTech, a German company, and it didnâ(TM)t take any money from the US government.

      • by k2r ( 255754 )

        > Both Pfizer and Moderna are susceptible to pressure from the alleged administration and are American companies.

        I‘m confident that a “German“ company like BioNTech is not susceptible to pressure from the US administration. The funders and owners are scientists.

        (I‘m as confident about Moderna, though.)

      • Re:heh (Score:4, Informative)

        by Immerman ( 2627577 ) on Monday November 23, 2020 @02:29PM (#60757980)

        The alleged administration?

        They may be only allegedly competent, and only allegedly working in the best interests of the nation, but until January 20th they are undeniably the administration.

      • by nomadic ( 141991 )

        The U.S. administration is made up of incompetent sociopaths, led by a man of almost unimaginable ignorance and mental instability. But there's no evidence of the American manufacturers succumbing to pressure, especially as someone else mentions the results were announced after the election.

    • You can get the Chinese vaccine if you prefer. They say it's 100% effective and has been used on 1 million people already.

      Personally I'll wait for one of the peer-reviewed vaccine (likely not developed in China or Russia), even if it's only 70% effective.

    • Not far far, just slightly less effective. 70% is still really good and the big difference here is the cost and the storage and distribution costs.
      For third world countries, having something that you can throw in a fridge, or a cooler with dry ice is the difference between getting a vaccine
      and not getting a vaccine.
      We do something similar with polio. The inactivated vaccine is less effective at protecting the individual person but is safer so because
      polio is now well controlled, the odds of getting sick f

    • University of Oxford used Vaccine!
      It's super effective!

      But it didn't completely eradicate the virus in one attempt, so we should probably just disengage and go back to the gym.

    • So far, far less effective than the other two vaccines?

      I'd prefer the Pfizer to the Oxford vaccine, but for other reasons. (The effectiveness numbers are not that big an issue, as discussed elsewhere in the thread.)

      They both work by converting some of your cells to make the spike protein, but they differ in how they get the info into the cells. (If they succeed they should produce essentially the same level and type of immunity.)

      The Pfizer uses mRNA carried by a nanoparticle (eaten by or cutting its way i

  • by fred6666 ( 4718031 ) on Monday November 23, 2020 @01:01PM (#60757564)

    This could be the best vaccine so far. Effective, cheap, and mass-produced in 2021.
    To get 90% efficiency, the first doze must be a half-doze (which is great news, you save a half-doze for someone else).

    • They have not tested to validate their 90% claim and even at the current dosage the side effects are much harsher then the other vaccines.

      • here is why there is an "if" in my post. It could be 90% effective, but has not been fully proven yet.

      • They have not tested to validate their 90% claim and even at the current dosage the side effects are much harsher then the other vaccines.

        The side effects do appear unpleasant (you basically get a cold) but they are not harmful. I'd probably take the Oxford vaccine over the mRNA ones, purely because while I think the mRNA is pretty amazing and unlikely to have issues, it is new tech, whereas the Ebola vaccine currently uses the Oxford vaccine's delivery mechanism, so we have more experience with it. They also have data from the original SARs work (though I don't think it made it into human trials on that one) so it's been around for a while n

    • by hawk ( 1151 )

      > (which is great news, you save a half-doze for someone else).

      count me out.

      I either take a nap, or I don't . . .

  • Not only 70% effective, but also 70% cheaper, and 70% easier to store and distribute?
    • by mlyle ( 148697 )

      I know you're being cheeky, but it seems about right.

      70% cheaper is a good estimate of the difference: pretty easy to culture and purify a viral vector.

      And this is the difference between refrigerated transport stable for 6 months vs. requiring -80C cold storage for Pfizer.

  • 70% as effective as the normal brands, but cheaper. Personally I'm not really super scare of a disease that you have more than 99% chance of survival if you catch it, so I'll just wait a few months to see how it all washes out before I run to get the stick.
  • by Thelasko ( 1196535 ) on Monday November 23, 2020 @01:18PM (#60757642) Journal
    Keeping the vaccines cold while being transported isn't a problem. Just have my wife carry them! Her hands are always -70C.
  • by smooth wombat ( 796938 ) on Monday November 23, 2020 @01:47PM (#60757780) Journal
    We were told, nay, guaranteed that after the election, if Joe Biden won, covid would no longer be covered [youtube.com]. That governors across the nation were in reality part of a grand elaborate scheme to bring down the con artist by implementing lockdowns and mask mandates and would, when Biden was elected, miraculously lift all restrictions.

    Honest. We were told this would happen so why do we care about vaccines when any moment now, everything will be back to normal? Any minute. Just hang on. It's coming.
    • by Max_W ( 812974 )
      The president is elected by the United States Electoral College in December https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] . So it is still several weeks. Maybe longer due to legal issues.
    • But, clearly, it IS back to normal by now! Otherwise, Trump would not go golf so much. That would be irresponsible!

    • We were told, nay, guaranteed that after the election, if Joe Biden won, covid would no longer be covered [youtube.com].

      I don't mean to alarm you... but what if the President of the United States and possibly some US Senators were being dishonest? It's a preposterous hypothetical but I keep getting this nagging feeling there may be some truth to it. ;)

      • Everyone should get a got dose of misinformation. Misinformation is like a vaccine that gives immunity against blunt lies.

  • by hey! ( 33014 ) on Monday November 23, 2020 @01:48PM (#60757784) Homepage Journal

    The Oxford trial swabbed subjects regularly looking for asymptomatic cases. Asymptomatic cases aren't looked for in most of the other vaccine trials (including the mRNA vaccines), and so are counted in the "effective" column.

    • by mlyle ( 148697 )

      Oxford looked for them, but the primary outcome measure we're looking at only takes into account symptomatic cases.

      • by ebcdic ( 39948 )
        And asymptomatic cases are missed for the placebo too, so it might not affect measured effectiveness rate anyway.
        • by hey! ( 33014 ) on Monday November 23, 2020 @04:22PM (#60758426) Homepage Journal

          That's actually a good point. Presuming that the fraction of asymptomatic cases were exactly equal in the treatment and control group, the %effectiveness calculation would have the same factor (roughly 1.25) in both the numerator and denominator and that would cancel. But that's a big presumption.

          So this vaccine could be more or less effective at preventing *symptomatic* COVID than the mRNA vaccines, and likewise more or less effective at preventing asymptomatic cases. You can't compare the figures because they're different.

          I do think including asymptomatic cases is the right way to measure, but it depends on what you care about. If all you care about is you personally getting symptomatic COVID-19, then not including asymptomatic cases is a better measure of outcome. If you care about controlling the spread of the pandemic, then including the asymptomatic cases is the right thing to do.

          • by Bengie ( 1121981 )
            Depends on their definition of "asymptomatic". The CDC was caught using the industry usage of "didn't get infected" and not the layman's usage of "didn't show symptoms". This caused all kinds of confusion because the CDC was "saying something" different than what the journalists were saying because many of the journalists were properly translating the terms.
    • Asymptomatic cases aren't looked for in most of the other vaccine trials
      And how do you come to such a bullshit hypothesis?

  • The one question I have is if you take the oxford vaccine, and are later given one of the others, will there be some interaction? Obviously there is no answer to that now, but I can see it as something that could come up, especially if the oxford vaccine is distributed in lower-income countries and the other vaccines in high-income countries, a person moving from the former to the latter might be required to take the more effective vaccines as a requirement for entry.
    • In six months, if you have the money for international travel you will be getting the best vaccine available in quantity, the 85% of the world who does not move beyond 15 miles from home might get less effective. A 70% effective rate and a 70% vaccination rate seems in most places to drop R0 to less than 1 where high cost might be an issue.
  • If it's so cheap, I'll take 2 and have 140%, sweet!

  • by Dr. Spork ( 142693 ) on Monday November 23, 2020 @02:36PM (#60758006)

    When this vaccine finally gets out to users, it will be exactly the same formulation that already existed in March 2020. Now just imagine if we had wiser leaders and wiser "medical ethicists" who went straight into a manufacturing ramp-up mode at that point. If had moral fortitude to ignore the idiot "ethicists" who refused to allow challenge trials for the vaccine, testing could have been done in three months, and millions of doses could have been available by the end of summer.

    We could have saved a million lives, hundreds of businesses, and many months of lockdown. But I guess we chose the more "ethical" path and did everything the slow way, as we would if people weren't dying and our social institutions weren't collapsing under the rules of social distancing. And I don't blame this one on Trump, at least not entirely. There was basically a global consensus of "ethicists" who argued that we must slow-walk the vaccine. It's apparently better to let a million people die than to deliberately expose fifty thousand volunteers to slightly dangerous challenge trials.

    I was one of these volunteers. I live next door to the NIH in Bethesda, MD, and wrote them in March that I would like to participate in a challenge trial, and to urge them to get started. I got a canned response and then nothing. When all is said and done, I hope these ethicists are at least fired. We treat this pandemic as some force of nature, but really, we could have risen to the occasion and blunted its impact. It wasn't our scientists that failed us. Already in March, they had a working vaccine. It was our leaders and our ethicists.

    • This vaccine development effort has already been far faster than any in history. It's understandable that to further accelerate it would meet some resistance. There's already some backlash from people who feel that these "rushed" are unsafe and are reluctant to take them.

    • by amorsen ( 7485 )

      This is ridiculous. The vaccines have been manufactured in tens of thousands of doses, just for the tests. They are new types of vaccines, so you cannot just reuse the tools for, say, flu vaccines.

      I can guarantee you that they have been scaling the vaccine production as fast as possible. The first mover advantage here is huge, everyone was eager to get it.

    • by hey! ( 33014 )

      2020 hindsight works because its *selective*. There were lots of preliminary vaccine formulations back in March or April, nobody had any reason to believe this one was safer or more effective than anyone else.

      So you're assuming you could *magically* know this particular candidate would work out. But you wouldn't have known this was one of the ones to pick. Inovio had a candidate DNA vaccine literally hours after the virus genome was published back in January. We still don't know whether that one works.

      S

    • Now just imagine if we had wiser leaders and wiser "medical ethicists" who went straight into a manufacturing ramp-up mode at that point.

      I won the lottery and now I'm a millionaire. Imagine if you were as smart as me by taking on the risk of spending money on lottery tickets.

      There's nothing wise about spending money on long shot risks. Companies generally don't advocate throwing away millions of dollars or maiming / killing people because they rush something. Starting production back in march would have been lunacy level of madness. The kind of stupid shit that gets you fired from companies.

    • There's one big problem with the idea of challenge trials. You're right that we could have grabbed fifty thousand volunteers and got a readout earlier. However, those fifty thousand volunteers are likely to all be younger (both because the young are more likely to volunteer, and because there are *much* greater ethical problems with running a challenge trial on 90-year-olds who have a >10% risk of dying if the vaccine turns out not to work very well). So, at the end of the trial you have some good data o

      • So, at the end of the trial you have some good data on the efficacy of your vaccine in the under-60s. However, you want to vaccine the vulnerable older population first, you have no data on the efficacy of the vaccine on that population, and we know that the immune system behaves quite differently in the elderly so we can't extrapolate the data we do have.

        So, at the end of the challenge trial you then need to run a normal trial to check effectiveness across the population, and you've saved yourself precisely zero development time.

        You could start vaccinating the younger people and slow the spread. While waiting for the results of the older people portion of the trial.
        So you wouldn't save time in the final result of the trials. But you'd save lives, and still have useful data sooner.

    • Or they could have deployed it in a large scale and found they had just given X million people a death sentence, made them sterile, given them life long complications etc etc. The testing exists for a reason, There a very real risks of serious side effects that sometimes take time to materialize. The million deaths were just as avoidable by having competent government and health controls in place.
    • I hope these ethicists are at least fired.
      So you want to fire one, who is following the law and medical procedures?
      Ah ha!

    • by jeremyp ( 130771 )

      You're an idiot.

      If you administer a vaccine to people and it turns out to have dangerous side effects, it's bad news not just for that vaccine but for vaccinations in general. The last thing we need to do right now is give the anti-vaxxers real ammunition.

      There's also no way anybody is going to sanction a challenge trial. Think about it for a second: about 1% of the control group (who receive a placebo) are going to die. Who is going to deliberately expose other people to COVID19 knowing that one in 200 of

  • Today's worldometer has worldwide COVID-19 deaths at 1,400,530. [worldometers.info]

    But it also has the cumulative cases per million at 7,625, or about 0.76%. So we're just getting started. Exponential growth puts nearly all the action at the end, just as it approaches a limit and starts leaving the exponential curve.

    Assuming they're reasonably accurate, that immunizations don't get distributed in time (due to the rapid exponential it's on the last couple months), this year's round burns out at around 76% having had it, and the

  • by tflf ( 4410717 ) on Monday November 23, 2020 @07:05PM (#60759272)

    Potentially great news on the vaccine front, but, it will be a long time before any vaccine makes a difference. In the meantime, unless people change their behaviours, things will get even worse. Many of us with family/firends in health care are hearing the same dire warnings reported here.
    https://www.theatlantic.com/he... [theatlantic.com]

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