Disappointing Chinese Vaccine Results Pose Setback for Developing World (nytimes.com) 175
Scientists in Brazil have downgraded the efficacy of a Chinese coronavirus vaccine that they hailed as a major triumph last week, diminishing hopes for a shot that could be quickly produced and easily distributed to help the developing world. From a report: Officials at the Butantan Institute in Sao Paulo said on Tuesday that a trial conducted in Brazil showed that the CoronaVac vaccine, manufactured by the Beijing-based company Sinovac, had an efficacy rate just over 50 percent. That rate, slightly above the benchmark that the World Health Organization has said would make a vaccine effective for general use, was far below the 78 percent level announced last week. The implications could be significant for a vaccine that is crucial to China's global health diplomacy. At least 10 countries have ordered more than 380 million doses of the Sinovac inoculation, CoronaVac, though regulatory agencies have yet to fully approve it.
A senior official in Hong Kong, a special administrative region of China that had already ordered CoronaVac, said on Wednesday that an advisory panel would strictly review the vaccine based on clinical trial data before it was rolled out there. "Those countries that have ordered the Chinese-made vaccines are probably going to question the usefulness of these vaccines," said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations and an expert on health care in China. "Countries with opposition parties might use this to challenge the decision made by the incumbent government, and that will likely have domestic political implications in these countries," Mr. Huang said. Sinovac did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
A senior official in Hong Kong, a special administrative region of China that had already ordered CoronaVac, said on Wednesday that an advisory panel would strictly review the vaccine based on clinical trial data before it was rolled out there. "Those countries that have ordered the Chinese-made vaccines are probably going to question the usefulness of these vaccines," said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations and an expert on health care in China. "Countries with opposition parties might use this to challenge the decision made by the incumbent government, and that will likely have domestic political implications in these countries," Mr. Huang said. Sinovac did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
That's a shame (Score:5, Funny)
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They have been selling it in China for a while, although I don't think via Taobao or anything like that. It was basically pay to be part of the study.
Re:That's a shame (Score:4, Funny)
I worry for all the people who will discover it listed as an "Amazon's Choice" product.
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With the efficacy rate the way it is, you're more likely to find it on Wish.
Perfect Opportunity (Score:5, Insightful)
To use "Operation Warp Speed" to step up and help repair the image of the United States by working with Western Europe to provide at-cost, subsidised, or even free doses of what was developed by Pfizer, BioNTech, Moderna, etc. to the rest of the world.
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Re:Perfect Opportunity (Score:5, Informative)
Canada bought vaccines for 5 times their population.
Canada placed advance orders for 5 times their population to be delivered for multiple vaccines from multiple suppliers. Some of the suppliers may never deliver, some of the vaccines may not perform and may be worthless.
Its about as "evil" as setting up a recurring order for toilet paper at walmart; to send you a package biweekly for the next 2 years. And then seeing that walmart is having production issues, and may not deliver, and the toilet paper is a brand new product that may not actually even work as expected -- going to amazon and placing a recurring order their new TP too.
And then the headlines scream..."OMG ... this asshole just ordered 96 packages of toilet paper".
Except they didn't, they didn't clear the shelves, and hog all the paper for themselves at all.
They just put in pre-orders at every company promising a vaccine and committed to buying x amount over the next period of time. Meanwhile if any supplier ends up not working out Canada isn't solely depending on a stockpile that doesn't work, or dealing with a shortage due to a supplier that didn't deliver. That's entirely in developed countries rational self interest.
Can you imagine the headlines if one of the vaccines proves unsafe or just doesn't work; and then the country has to explain to its citizens why millions of citizens are going to get infected, and thousands will die because they bet on the wrong horse?
Fuck canada. And fuck the developed world.
No. Fuck you. And fuck hyperbolic headlines.
Canada committed to buy millions of doses of unproven potential vaccines. It's betting on all the horses. Those funds will allow the vaccine producers to ramp up production and helps ensure they actually get produced and delivered to anyone at all ever; that up front investment/commitment reduces the risk for the producers and ultimately lowers the costs for other customers.
And if the vaccines are all good, and the suppliers all deliver on time in the amounts ordered and Canada does actually ends up with a surplus (something that is by no means assured), dollars to donuts they'll resell the surplus at cost, or even donate it.
There is plenty gained by ordering more than is needed; to ensure more is produced and delivered: RISK MITIGATION.
But there is nothing gained by hoarding vaccine they don't actually need.
Re:Perfect Opportunity (Score:5, Informative)
Here's a list of what the EU is paying:
Oxford/AstraZeneca: â1.78
Johnson & Johnson: $8.50
Sanofi/GSK: â7.56
Pfizer/BioNTech: â12
CureVac: â10
Moderna: $18
Brazil is paying $10 for CoronaVac.
This vaccine is not particularly cheap but could be subsidised. Clearly the Oxford/AstraZeneca one is by far and away the lowest cost but it is only about 75% effective.
It's not that simple though, both CoronaVac and the Oxford/AZ one might not stop you getting COVID but have been shown to lessen the symptoms even when they "fail". So even if all you can afford the cheapest one it's worth having, even if you don't get full immunity it will help you.
Re:Perfect Opportunity (Score:5, Informative)
Oxford/AZ was 75% effective but the reason for it was highly likely vector immunity: the first jab made you immune against the second one. then they switched to a different vector for the second jab (cooperation with the Sputnik vaccine) and this should provide a pretty good protection. I don't recall how fast they will be able to roll that one out.
Re:Perfect Opportunity (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's a list of what the EU is paying:
Oxford/AstraZeneca: â1.78 Johnson & Johnson: $8.50 Sanofi/GSK: â7.56 Pfizer/BioNTech: â12 CureVac: â10 Moderna: $18
Brazil is paying $10 for CoronaVac.
This vaccine is not particularly cheap but could be subsidised. Clearly the Oxford/AstraZeneca one is by far and away the lowest cost but it is only about 75% effective.
It's not that simple though, both CoronaVac and the Oxford/AZ one might not stop you getting COVID but have been shown to lessen the symptoms even when they "fail". So even if all you can afford the cheapest one it's worth having, even if you don't get full immunity it will help you.
China will sell it to any country that wants it at $10 on a huge loan, and have them by the balls. China will hang the debt over their heads anytime they even think of step out-of-line of China's international policies.
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Re:Perfect Opportunity (Score:5, Informative)
Even Pfizer and Moderna do not stop you getting COVID.
One has 52% efficacy for stopping the infection and the other is 67%.
The 95% figure they have is about them stopping the disease (severe symptoms, need for hospitalization, death).
The above figures are from the Emergency Use Authorization documents at the FDA.
According to the BBC [bbc.com], the Butantan Institude in Brazil says the CoronaVac vaccine is 100% effective in preventing severe cases and death. And it should be effective, since it has an inactivated virus, so more proteins the immune system can make antibodies and memory for ...
What is frustrating is the lack of full expert panel reviewed test results for CoronaVac for everyone to see. You have different countries quoting different figures without backing data on how the tests were conducted, efficacy measured, ...etc.
Only Pfizer and Moderna did that. Maybe Oxford/AstraZeneca in the UK only.
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Indeed. I have Reactive Arthritis that, as the name suggests, reacts to infection. If I get a minor infection, sometimes so minor I don't even notice any other symptoms, it can kick off arthritic pain and swelling, blurred vision and other things.
So even once I have been vaccinated I won't be going back to the office or taking other risks I can avoid. Not until this thing is almost completely eradicated around here.
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Exactly.
As things stand right now, the vaccines' main benefits are:
- Prevent vaccinated people from getting severe illness or dying
- Ease off the load on the health system, which are being overwhelmed right now
People should continue to distance and wear masks, because the infection may end up killing someone.
Once a significant majority ha
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That's not what people are hearing and likely NOT what they're going to do.
Once folks get vaccinated, they're likely thinking they can and WILL go back to their old normal every day habits.
Frankly, the only reason I think you're still seeing the cooperation levels and obedience to the ongoing shut down and lockdown rules is, that people perceive the vaccines coming out now, as the light at the end of the tunnel for having to have this severely altered life
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You're a liar. Nowhere in the FDA EUA does it say that, and it says that the Pfizer vaccine is 95% effective at stopping COVID-19 infection:
>FDA’s review has
considered the safety and effectiveness data as they relate to the request for emergency use
authorization in individuals 16 years of age and older. FDA’s review of the available safety data
from 37,586 of the participants 16 years of age and older, who were followed for a median of
two months after receiving the second dose, did not identif
Vaccine Efficacy: Disease vs. Infection ... (Score:5, Informative)
Before calling people names, you should stop being ignorant, and understand what the terms are.
Efficacy for the current vaccine is about preventing disease, not infection. This means that you can get infected, but the immune system trained by the vaccine kicks in and attacks the replicating virus to prevent the infection from progressing to disease. In the mean time, you may be shedding the virus and may infect others.
The VRBPAC committee that approved the Pfizer vaccine said in its report [fda.gov]:
Here is a summary of a peer reviewed paper on Moderna's vaccine [nih.gov]. The relevant part is:
And here is an article [npr.org], and another [fivethirtyeight.com], and yet another [forbes.com] explaining the difference between efficacy in preventing disease, vs. infection, and the need to continue with the social distancing and masks even as vaccines are being rolled out.
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Okay, so where did your 52% and 67% numbers come from? The 95% is NOT "severe symptoms hospitalization and death". I've read large parts of the FDA document you link to. The 95% is for the disease the way it is usually detected: symptoms+testing. And, I expect, intentionally so. None of the individuals in the vaccine group (some of which got covid, that's the other 5%) showed "severe" symptoms. So it appears to be even more effective against that. By contrast there were a number of severe cases in th
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There is an important distinction indeed. There are different types of efficacy to keep in mind. Infection, contagiousness, symptoms, severe symptoms.
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So Corovac still appears to be in the right ballpark in terms of efficacy despite topic suggesting otherwise - but we need better review?
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There are some countries that are posed to get the SinoPharm vaccine, and even trials there are underway (e.g. Egypt, Turkey). There are other countries that have conducted tests (UAE and Indonesia are already rolling it out, and Brazil just announced results).
It is a conventional inactivated vaccine, so it should work well, because, in theory, it contains the full virus,
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Sources please. Emergency Use Authorization by the CDC states results "confirms the vaccine was 94.1% effective
(95% confidence interval (CI) 89.3, 96.8) in preventing COVID-19 occurring at least 14 days
after the second dose (with 11 COVID-19 cases in the vaccine group compared to 185 COVID19 cases in the placebo group)."
Ironically in Africa... (Score:3)
... the virus is have limited effect. Perhaps growing up in a 3rd world continent with generally piss poor sanitation and living conditions for the majority gives you a first class immune system (if you don't die young) that has to fight of really serious diseases such as ebola, malaria, yellow fever etc and therefor will take something as relatively mild as covid in its stride.
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The last thing I read seemed to indicate the COVID on surfaces was basically FUD. While detectable virus material remains a long time live/infection material is gone almost immediately in most conditions. This things is just super contagious/infections but pretty well spreads to droplets in vapor person to person.
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younger population.
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I firmly advocate vitamin D supplementation for most people in non-equatorial climates, especially people of color. Apart from eating organ meats or supplementing, we simply cannot get enough vitamin D any other way.
However, individuals' needs for oral D supplements, and ability to absorb vitamin D orally, are HIGHLY variable. And blood levels that are too high can be toxic, particularly over time.
In anyplace with accessible health care, it's highly recommended to use blood testing to determine the optima
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Africans in Africa have more than enough sunlight for their vitamin D needs.
Africans in northern countries with little sunlight are the ones who are in deficit.
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... the virus is have limited effect. Perhaps growing up in a 3rd world continent with generally piss poor sanitation and living conditions for the majority gives you a first class immune system (if you don't die young) that has to fight of really serious diseases such as ebola, malaria, yellow fever etc and therefor will take something as relatively mild as covid in its stride.
Sort of.
I think that it's not that those diseases strengthened people's immune systems (if that's even a real thing), it's that the deseases killed off so many people before they get to be old, so it's just the young that's left. Young people have better immune systems than old.
As for Covid-19, the death rate of the elderly is much worse than the young. Most of Africa has less than 5% of the population over the age of 60 and less than 1% over 80. Europe has almost 20% over 60 and 5% over 80. So even if ever
Entirely possible. SARS-CoV-2 one of many corona v (Score:2)
There are many different components to the human immune system, some that are very specific to a particular virus and some that are more general, dealing with classes of virii.
It's entirely possible that a level of exposure to SARS-CoV (aka SARS) could have the immune system better prepared for SARS-CoV-2 (aka covid). Same with other corona viruses.
I don't know of any peer reviewed studies on how previous exposure to a particular virus affects immune response to SARS-CoV-2, but it's definitely plausible.
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The exposure to SARS and MERS has been negligeable. There could be a level crossover immunity but you would't notice it in the statistics. If one of the other coronaviruses caused crossover immunity it might be noticable.
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There are many different components to the human immune system, some that are very specific to a particular virus and some that are more general, dealing with classes of virii.
It's entirely possible that a level of exposure to SARS-CoV (aka SARS) could have the immune system better prepared for SARS-CoV-2 (aka covid). Same with other corona viruses.
I don't know of any peer reviewed studies on how previous exposure to a particular virus affects immune response to SARS-CoV-2, but it's definitely plausible.
True, but previous exposure to a similar virus can be a good thing or a very bad thing.
An early exposure to a similar, but different virus can cause the immune system to respond poorly to a subsequent infection. It called imprinting, and here's a basic write-up on flu imprinting.
It's thought the the so-called spanish flu's high fatality among young adults was due to an imprinting in their generation.
https://www.statnews.com/2019/... [statnews.com]
Dengue is another one. There are 4 dengue types, and infection with one ( a
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True, it can go either way. You can't say how they may interact until you do the studies; you can say that interaction is entirely possible.
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... the virus is have limited effect.
Quite likely because there are much fewer people in the older age group that is most affected.
Not that many years ago, India had a very low rate of cancer deaths, because people didn't get old enough to get cancer. Now they get older in India, and more die of cancer.
Quick observation (Score:5, Insightful)
To use "Operation Warp Speed" to step up and help repair the image of the United States by working with Western Europe to provide at-cost, subsidised, or even free doses of what was developed by Pfizer, BioNTech, Moderna, etc. to the rest of the world.
Quick observation: In previous catastrophes, America has stepped in and done exactly that sort of humanitarian act.
For a recent example, when Haiti was hit by hurricane Matthew, the US sent an aircraft carrier and a hospital ship (which set out before the hurricane ended) to help out with the recovery. The carrier served as a landing base for relief efforts, and the nuclear-powered vessel used its desalination abilities to hand out free water. US troops patrolled the country and helped keep the peace for the duration.
...and afterwards we went home. We didn't conquer the country, we left in peace so they could continue their way of life.
The US has a long history of offering and stepping in with humanitarian aid. I have no doubt that once our elderly population is safe, we'll be ramping up production and giving away the vaccine worldwide.
The US definitely does some shit, but just this past year alone we brokered a peace deal in the middle east - something many people thought wasn't possible.
The image of the United States doesn't need repair.
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The things you mention are exactly what I was thinking of when I made the original post. Now would be a very good time to remind the rest of the world that we do this sort of thing as a matter of course.
"Shithole countries" and betrayed allies would beg to differ in opinion that our image needs burnishing.
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I have no issue helping other countries, but IMHO our primary concern should first be to get a vaccine to any citizen who wants one (honestly I'd be fine with a legal mandate to get one, but that may stir up more contention than its worth).
Once we take care of our own people then we can start looking outside our borders, but not before.
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How about we take care of our own citizens with our own tax money first....and THEN, consider helping the rest of the world, eh?
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Please do. Stop messing with other countries like you've been doing since the end of WWII.
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Before Operation Warp Speed, the Experts didn't expect a vaccine until early 2021. What happened is we got it the very end of 2020. That was well in the experts forecast margin of error.
I am delighted it came in a few more week earlier than expected. However I don't see that OWS did that much to speed it up by that much. What was needed was more resources, not just reduction of regulations.
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More parallel development /processing likely: Instead of doing one step after the other doing them in parallel as much as possible.
While developing you can set up production capacity so it scales better. You can work on distribution plans and strategies . Of course that way you may have to throw away a lot of work if things don't go according to plan.
Re: Perfect Opportunity (Score:2)
With a 50% effective vaccine, it's China that has to worry about the future. How pathetic. Typical Winnie the Pooh shit... Oh bother
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He may be silly but I think China's vaccines will turn out quite alright. They have a whole array of them in the pipeline. And I'm sure they will be well placed to help out other countries as well and these countries will remember that.
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Yeah You should hate the Russians
You should hate the Chinese
You should hate Republicans.
Beware of those who show you your enemies.
Not entirely surprising (Score:3)
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COVID19 is the disease (Corona Virus Disease 19)
SARS CoV 2 is the virus and it is actually quite fragile.
Most likely the problem here is that in the process of inactivating the virus they have destroyed too much of it so the body has trouble developing an immune response.
The other vaccines are mRNA vaccines, not inactivated virus vaccines and they don't have this problem.
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SARS CoV 2 is the virus and it is actually quite fragile.
Actually, not really. It's half-life on surfaces, etc is several times longer than most RNA viruses. Long enough to survive on packaged shrimps, salmon and crabs shipped from South America and Russia to China. Hence their several recent Chinese outbreaks - the ones that could be traced, were traced to chilled/frozen food imports and contamination at the processing plant in third countries.
50% isn't great... but (Score:5, Insightful)
It's better than 0. So produce it and move it. We can cut down on a significant amount of the spread of the disease with 50% effectiveness.
If it were FDA approved and available from my doctor, I would take it today.
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It's a question of showing humanity towards other people. There are highly effective vaccines but they are not cheap. The people who can't afford them are already poor and their economies are being wrecked by the virus.
You can see what will happen, the richer nations will recover a lot faster and with a lot fewer people dead or with chronic illness. People who were struggling to improve their lot in life will be set back even further.
Even if you don't care about other people consider that this will just enc
Re:50% isn't great... but (Score:5, Interesting)
Never make your appeal to a man's better nature; he may not have one. Always make your appeal to his self-interest.
We have a self-interest to suppress this sh*t. This is a RNA virus. Left unsuppressed in a vulnerable population it will mutate and 6-12 months later we will be back to square zero looking for a vaccine against the "insert your third world country here" strain.
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Silly question - but given the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are also only about 50% effective after the first shot, did they not try a booster shot to see if its effectiveness goes up?
Also, 50% isn't bad, it could help especially if it can be made quickly and distributed widely. Pfizer and Moderna are supply constrained to the point many governments have said that having a bunch of people with the first shot only is far better than half the number but fully vaccinated.
It may mean people have to get the shot
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One other way to see it is why not use their production capacity to produce a more effective vaccine instead? I know the mRNA vaccines are not produced the same way but surely they could make the AstraZeneca vaccine or the Russian one, isn't it?
If it were FDA approved and available from my doctor, I would take it today.
Not only it isn't FDA approved but likely never will. It isn't approved in any rich western country either.
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Not only it isn't FDA approved but likely never will. It isn't approved in any rich western country either.
It has never bothered to apply for an approval. They have quite deliberately gone for the 3rd world market instead of trying to face the coordinated multiple shite launchers in our media which fire shite salvos at anyone and anything which is deemed encroaching on our birthright to the post-covid world.
I wish I was saying all of this in jest, but the UK ambassador to the USA is proving that I am not: https://www.bloomberg.com/news... [bloomberg.com]
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Would you get a shot that is only approved in China and some 3rd world countries? I wouldn't. There will likely be a lot of skepticism around these vaccines. And with too much skepticism you can't get herd immunity.
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Agreed, though I have two concerns about doing that which the article doesn't seem to address:
1) Does taking this vaccine interfere with other, more effective vaccines? That is, if someone takes CoronaVac will it cause complications when taking the e.g. Pfizer or Moderna vaccine or render those vaccines inert? Particularly in the 50% where CoronaVac fails
2) Could administration of the vaccine with such a high failure rate give undue confidence in the receiving population? If the low rate isn't well understo
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You know what else will cut down a significant amount of the spread? Wearing a mask around others and not gathering in large groups.
Even better, both cost you zero to do. But because it doesn't cost anything, Americans have gone out of their way to show they love spending money by coughing up (no pun intended) tens of billions of their dollars to private companies who will then charge them to get a vaccine
How good does it have to be? (Score:3)
If everyone is vaccinated, how effective does it have to be to keep R under 1? Any ideas?
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I am not an epidemiologist. What follows is just (somewhat educated) guesswork. But you wanted ideas :)
Viol8 is right - in practice R is probably fairly useless. It is a function (of society's behavior and environment), not a constant. Nevertheless, we can do a little speculation. There are also the new strains to worry about which seem to be more contagious, so what was true with the original likely has to be revised upward.
I believe that the best-guess of R without restrictions on behavior is around 3 or
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It depends what other precautions the population takes. If they won't wear masks or social distance then the amount of immunity required to eradicate the disease goes up.
Given the attitude of Brazil's leadership... This may not be the ideal vaccine for them.
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It depends what other precautions the population takes. If they won't wear masks or social distance then the amount of immunity required to eradicate the disease goes up.
Given the attitude of Brazil's leadership... This may not be the ideal vaccine for them.
It might be the ideal vaccine for the leadership.
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If everyone is vaccinated, how effective does it have to be to keep R under 1? Any ideas?
To keep R less than 1 implies that: on average, of the people you are in contact with, less than 1 will catch the disease from you.
If all but 1 of the people you contact are vaccinated, then R is exactly 1 and that should be good enough.
Now the complications: Different cultures, and even sub-cultures within the US, have different numbers of contacts. There is no consensus on how transmissible the virus is. Different people take different precautions (masks, washing hands, avoiding public gatherings). Some c
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Of course, at the moment I don't think even 70% of the population wants to get a vaccine in the first place, so this calculation is kind of moot.
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That's nonsense. Calculating R is really simple.
If cases numbers are rising in your country, R>1. If case numbers are stable, R=1. If they are dropping, R1.
If R!=1 and you want to know what exact value it is, you can calculate that based on the rate of increase/decrease, plus the average time from getting infected to infecting another person which is well known from contact tracing. For example, if the time between infections is 5 days (a reasonable estimate), and case numbers are tripling every 5 days,
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The R number is virtually meaningless statistical guesswork
Err no, there's no guess work involved. Simply applying a well known and understood model to easily obtained data that has shown time and time again to model pandemics (including this one) really well.
It has a clear dividing line of 1 because it describes a trend. That's science, not politics.
Were you born like this or did you study extra hard to get your Bachelor of Ignorance?
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If everyone is vaccinated, how effective does it have to be to keep R under 1? Any ideas?
CDC current best estimate of Ro is 2.5 (reference: https://www.cdc.gov/coronaviru... [cdc.gov])
To reduce this to 1 requires that no more than 1/2.5, or 40%, of the population is vulnerable to the disease.
Thus, a vaccine with 60% efficacy would drop R to 1.
How cute, he thinks COVID is going away and the restrictions will lift!
If the population immunity goes up to high enough values that the virus doesn't spread, yes,
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How cute, he thinks COVID is going away and the restrictions will lift!
Cuz you know, those with power absolutely love these restriction right. All of those travel restrictions, increased trade costs, companies on life support since nobody is spending money, entire industries like tourism and travel that are just dead until next Winter. PATRIOT Act restrictions gave politicians the ability to spy easily, barely cost companies anything more than a rounding error. The closest thing this time around is the contact tracing apps which nobody installed and could have already been obt
Total misrepresentation of the facts (Score:5, Interesting)
The Coronavac prevented 100% of deaths and ICU cases. It prevented 78% of mild and moderate cases. It prevented over 50% of extremely mild cases.
Is anyone worried about Covid-19 because of the extremely mild cases? Or are we all worried, calling for lockdowns, because of the deaths and cases where people have to be put on respirators?
How can "preventing all deaths" be a disappointing result?
Specially with a vaccine that doesn't need to be kept in sub-freezing temperatures with specialized freezers, and thus can be easily distributed to remote locations, allowing for millions of vaccinations a day.
It IS a major breakthrough. IT ... STOPS .. DEATHS...
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This. 50% effective makes is sound not all that useful. But preventing severe cases is HUGE. If everyone is vaccinated in a way such that none will develop severe disease, then there's no longer a reason to worry about its spread.
I don't think many folks in the U.S. will end up getting this vaccine, but it's a big deal for the developing world.
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Exactly. Not to mention that Coronavac Phase 3 was THE ONLY ONE that happened during a peak. Specifically, Brazil's second wave. Possibly with some of the UK strain running around.
But the most important fact is Coronavac logistic requirements, that make it much more viable for usage in developing countries. Not needing -70C freezes is huge!
Not everyone live in LA's Orange County and eat kale for breakfast.
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My understanding is that the vaccines generally protected against those sorts of symptoms.
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It's disappointing because it will allow 22% to 50% of vaccinated people to transmit the disease to unvaccinated people, requiring almost everyone to get vaccinated before it comes close to stopping the spread of the disease, and possibly never achieving herd immunity..
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If you have a vaccine that requires -70C freezers and is a logistic nightmare, you are pretty much stopping, or at the very least delaying, a part of the population from getting any protection.
If everything else was the same then, sure, 50,4% overall protection would be a bad thing. But If you can't get vaccines to people, the protection is 0.
Brazil, as an example, has the infrastructure (although, right now, not the political will) to vaccinate millions each day using a vaccine that doesn't require -70C fr
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The 50% efficacy against asymptomatic/very mild case is actually twice as good as the same metric of AstraZeneca's vaccine [thelancet.com], which is the only other vaccine releasing this figure.
As I have read, all vaccines were approved based on effectiveness against symptomatic infections.
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The Coronavac prevented 100% of deaths and ICU cases. It prevented 78% of mild and moderate cases. It prevented over 50% of extremely mild cases.
Only if you get the vaccine. The problem is you not have a bunch of people with mild cases that have becoming spreaders of the disease. Depending on where they go, the vaccine could do more harm than good.
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We don't know what the long term effects are of having a mild case protected by the vaccine are, that's the problem. If a significant number of people are left with things like decreased cognitive ability or breathing issues it could still be a disaster for them.
Re:Total misrepresentation of the facts (Score:4, Insightful)
Is anyone worried about Covid-19 because of the extremely mild cases?
Yes. Tons of mild cases means tons of people infected means huge chance of a mutation that makes things worse.
Is that 50% after one or two doses? (Score:2)
I don't see from the article if that 50% rate is after a one-dose or two dose regimen, and my googling has left me confused as to what dosing they're doing down there.
The study I saw in Lancet of the vaccine from China was a two-dose study.
So, I'm wondering how they could know the efficacy of a two-dose regimen in the general population when this is only Jan 13,
They have an obvious problem... (Score:2)
If you do this in a country where you beat the virus with brutal social distancing, then the numbers are 0 infections vs 0 infections, so you have no idea if the vaccine works. The only way to check that it works is give it to people and wait.
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If you do this in a country where you beat the virus with brutal social distancing, then the numbers are 0 infections vs 0 infections, so you have no idea if the vaccine works. The only way to check that it works is give it to people and wait.
As a note, this is the problem with smallpox vaccination.
As people should know, smallpox was one of the first diseases to have a vaccine developed for it, and it has been eliminated in the wild by vaccination. However, note that smallpox is basically the first disease we vaccinated for, and the vaccines used to eliminate it were among the first. They're nasty compared to modern vaccines. Side effect wise, that is, and that includes the live polio vaccine that used to give around 1 family a year polio in
Communism? (Score:2)
Made in China (Score:2)
Chinese Quality (Score:2)
Said no one ever.
Their entire economy aims for a price point. I'm guessing none of these developing nations are getting refunds. Just like every time I've bought a Chinese tool from Harbor Freight that broke after 2 months.
I understand that governments of developing nations don't have a lot of options. But when you buy cheap you pay twice.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm old enough to remember when the same thing was widely said about Japanese products. And at that time not without reason.
Fast forward about 20 years later, and Japan was the world's quality leader in many areas, most notably cars. In many markets it has retained that leadership ever since.
China's economy will not mature as quickly because communism, even "with Chinese characteristics," stifles much of the economic activity that would otherwise occur.
But don't assume that because they make a lot of junk
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But don't assume that because they make a lot of junk now, they will keep doing so forever.
Russia still makes a lot of junk that even Russians won't buy unless there is no other choice. They all think it's amusing that American hipsters pay 3x the price for a Russian motorcycle that is a slow oil-leaking rolling piece of garbage.
Some aspects are cultural and not overcome simply with an improved economy.
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Yes, it's cultural, but we are talking about two very difficult cultures.
Russia has a long history of feudalism, followed by several generations of overt communism, during which it endured the Cold War, followed by a form of "privatization" that resulted in a fire sale of much of Russia's means of production to the politically well-connected and powerful. It just doesn't seem from my point of view like a culture or mindset well situated to free enterprise. They seem to max out at "crony capitalism," and a
They'll still take it (Score:2)
China (Score:2)
so they lied about efficacy just as they tried to cover up the virus in the first place and have been lying about their case #'s from day 1? Recently claiming 0 cases in Wuhan? I think I saw them at one point say they had 4,000 cases total. Absolute. Fucking. Bullshit.
I can't even feign surprise at this point. Can we stop allowing Wall Street to fund them with our 401Ks? Please?
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Their numbers were even more fabricated:
https://www.reddit.com/r/datai... [reddit.com]
A simple polynomial fit from late January 2020's data had a near perfect fit for the reported values over the first 2 weeks of February 2020 before the inexplicable slowdown. Repeating the predictions from a later post:
Date, official (predicted), official (predicted)
05/02/2020 24,553 (23,435) cases 492 (489) fatalities
06/02/2020 28,278 (26,885) cases 565 (561) fatalities
07/02/2020 31,349 (30,576) cases 638 (639) fatalities
08/02/2020 34
Dicktator? (Score:2)
Is there evidence China hyped it out of pressure to move on from their Wuhan suppression fiasco? If so, it means they used incompetency to cover other incompetency. When you are a dictator, your bad local-full-control habits often leak to world issues that you have less control over.
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To remind you, Trump issued an executive order that the rest of the world should bugger itself gently with a chainsaw until USA supply is 100% secure. Eu has similar directives on export.
This rather limits 3rd country choices. A good example here is Ukraine which "independently" (it just happened that the USA ambassador tweeted it on behalf of their government and stated it as policy) decided not to use Russian or Chinese vaccines. It now had to revert that on the Chine
Re: (Score:3)
Johnson & Johnson plans on manufacturing billions of doses in the next year, and so do other vaccine companies. If it makes you feel better, there is no vaccine available for me in the US right now, either.
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Johnson & Johnson plans on manufacturing billions of doses in the next year, and so do other vaccine companies. If it makes you feel better, there is no vaccine available for me in the US right now, either.
In the US your front-line health care and others are getting vaccinated (at a significantly slower than expected rate according to the expectations that this administration clearly set), and that is still extremely beneficial for you personally in the case that something were to happen to you and you need care, as the ability of the health care workers (and their like, police/etc) to be healthy enough to perform their duties is strongly related to their general ability to care for you. They aren't just a bu
Re:Unfortunately there's a bias in the reporting. (Score:5, Informative)
The truth is these vaccines probably won't be able to stop people from getting infected, at most they can stop people cases from becoming mild or even severe cases.
They will all stop people from getting infected for 3-4 months, longer if pandemic persists.
Basic fundamentals of immunology:
If you have not seen an antigen, it takes you 14-21 days to develop a fully featured immune response. After that you have high IgG titre which will bind the antigen and force the rest of the immune system to kill it. That titre in the absence of the antigen falls exponentially to zero over ~ 6 months. If you encounter the antigen again, the mechanics are different. You have some residual immunity - "programmed" white blood cells. They will kill it (if you are lucky) and trigger large scale synthesis of IgG. That takes ~ 7 days in a worst case scenario.
COVID19 incubation period is 90% at 5 days, start of being infectious is 90% at 4 days. Hence, freshly vaccinated people will not have a contagious phase (IgG will not allow the infection to develop) and people who have been vaccinated 6+ months ago will have one. This is pretty much textbook material - some countries study this in high school/college.
It will however, be much shorter and they are not likely to go on and develop the nasty form of the disease.
In the specific case of people in the middle of the pandemic (f.e. medical personnel) - they get constantly boosted, so their IgG titre will not fall.
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The low 50% efficacy rate includes also asymptomatic cases, while other reported rates by Moderna and Pfizer, etc. didn't include asymptomatic cases.
I'd be quite interested in seeing a citation for that statement.
Citation needed (Score:2)
Sorry, I was looking for a citation to your statement that Moderna and Pfizer efficacy rates didn't include asymptomatic cases, not the statement that the Brazil tests did.
In my experience, every time somebody responds to a request for a citation with the statement "you can google it", it invariably means "I can't find any citation to that fact."
(when people got information from a reliable source, it would be in their browser history, and it would take only 30 seconds to dig up the citation.)
Re: (Score:3)
Try taking a look at this. https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021... [bmj.com]
None of the vaccines have been thoroughly studied whether they lowered the rate of infection. What they were looking for in cases were mild to severe cases. Of course this doesn't mean they are useless, and obviously still should be employed as they would drop the level of disease to something more akin to a common cold rather than the need for hospitalization.
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China makes everything, from cheapest poor quality products to top quality products (at a price... but still half what it costs to manufacture the same item in the US). We are all familiar with the cheap end... plastics that break, rough edges, fakes, etc. However if you almost never buy more expensive stuff, you have probably not seen the other half of the China's industrial output. I happen to use a few best-money-can-get class things, and some of them are made in China.