4 ms·

UK covid handlig/research is full of grossly incompetent things. First they went for herd immunity because their flawed models predicted that it'll be okay, the

by sydd 6y ago

UK covid handlig/research is full of grossly incompetent things. First they went for herd immunity because their flawed models predicted that it'll be okay, then they backtracked the last moment. Then they announced that their vaccine will be ready by fall when every other respected scientist said that it'll take a year. Something if off to me with the UK academic standards in medicine.

Someone 6y ago
I don’t follow British corona policy closely, but as far as I can tell, the they in those sentences, in most cases, were politicians (that also _had_ to make choices based on very much incomplete information, but that’s a different subject). You can’t blame UK academic standards for that.
rsynnott 6y ago
The herd immunity thing was the UK’s admittedly shambolic government; scientists and the medical profession immediately raised concerns. And I don’t think anyone’s saying the Oxford candidate vaccine will actually be available and approved for mass use this year?
- chimprich 6y ago
  > And I don’t think anyone’s saying the Oxford candidate vaccine will actually be available and approved for mass use this year? That genuinely is the goal. The current aim is October I believe. A quote from their website says "deliveries starting by the end of 2020". https://www.ovg.ox.ac.uk/news/astrazeneca-to-supply-europe-with-up-to-400-million-doses-of-oxford-university2019s-vaccine-at-no-profit https://www.ovg.ox.ac.uk/news/astrazeneca-to-supply-europe-w... That assumes everything goes well, which is a big if, but seems possible. The fact we've had no bad news so far despite the advanced trials is good news.
  - jcahill 6y ago
    Theirs is AZD1222, fka ChAdOx1 nCoV-19. It has goofy delivery dates for multiple markets. We've had no bad news because it's a simple design that bets on robust immune response doing the job. It's in contractors' interest to push ferocious timetables regardless of whether this vaccine strategy is viable: if it isn't, payouts are still secured prior to evidence of this coming to light, so they don't get stuck holding the bag. If it is, they're getting to market by next flu season. https://www.precisionvaccinations.com/vaccines/azd1222-sars-cov-2-vaccine https://www.precisionvaccinations.com/vaccines/azd1222-sars-...
    - chimprich 6y ago
      It's in everyone's interest to make any vaccine available as soon as possible if shown to be both safe and efficacious. The vaccine is being produced at no-profit: https://www.precisionvaccinations.com/400-million-coronavirus-vaccine-doses-supplied-no-profit https://www.precisionvaccinations.com/400-million-coronaviru... > We've had no bad news because it's a simple design That makes no sense. We will have news if it fails to stop people getting badly ill, in which case they'd have to go back to the drawing board.
      - jcahill 6y ago
        >a simple design that bets on robust immune response doing the job. That means greater surveillance time, because so little has been established about activity thresholds that might be deemed properly immunizing. Greater reliance on strong immune response than more complex designs means greater uncertainty with respect to each step of the trials, including projecting general population results from challenge trial results. So the bad news can't come as fast as it might for other designs. So far, the main worry has been poor activity in monkey challenge testing. But that's not enough to call "bad news" yet. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.05.13.093195 https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.05.13.093195 There's no downside to proceeding with manufacturing at full speed provided the financing is secured, yes. That's what I was getting at. "Produced at no-profit" still comes with significant opportunities for contractors and liabilities if they haven't been paid yet. It would be a nightmare for a public-private partnership to fall apart with manufacturing costs left uncovered because a vaccine platform has fallen out of favor. At the scale of multinationals, even issues like brexit having been pseudo-postponed until the end of 2020 right before all of this stuff hit might have something to do with how they're trying to structure delivery timetables. It's hard to say how any particular firm structures multiple deals with billion dollar pricetags.
  - rsynnott 6y ago
    That's deliveries of a vaccine which may never be usable. Is there any indication that it'll actually be _approved_ by then? Manufacture of this promising candidate in advance of full trials and approval probably isn't the craziest thing to do, but my understanding was that there was a significant risk that it would never be approved, never mind by October.
- ageitgey 6y ago
  I'm in the Phase 2/3 trial for the Oxford vaccine. They really are doing everything possible to have it ready ASAP (as early as October) if they can. They are reviewing trial results in real time and have scaled the trial to many cities in the UK. They quiz us on exposure and test us for COVID weekly. But they are also clear that the vaccine might not work at all or that it might take longer to find out. One big issue is that the rate of the virus is the community is dropping quickly in the UK. We are down to less than 1 in ~1,700 having it. So with a trial size of 10-20k people, you can see that the whole trial hangs on a single digit number of people who will be exposed, hence the constant testing to flag those people. To increase the chances of getting a result, they have stood up a new wing of the trial in Brazil where the virus is more prevalent now.

by sydd 6y ago

Someone 6y ago

I don’t follow British corona policy closely, but as far as I can tell, the they in those sentences, in most cases, were politicians (that also _had_ to make choices based on very much incomplete information, but that’s a different subject). You can’t blame UK academic standards for that.

rsynnott 6y ago

The herd immunity thing was the UK’s admittedly shambolic government; scientists and the medical profession immediately raised concerns. And I don’t think anyone’s saying the Oxford candidate vaccine will actually be available and approved for mass use this year?

chimprich 6y ago
> And I don’t think anyone’s saying the Oxford candidate vaccine will actually be available and approved for mass use this year? That genuinely is the goal. The current aim is October I believe. A quote from their website says "deliveries starting by the end of 2020". https://www.ovg.ox.ac.uk/news/astrazeneca-to-supply-europe-with-up-to-400-million-doses-of-oxford-university2019s-vaccine-at-no-profit https://www.ovg.ox.ac.uk/news/astrazeneca-to-supply-europe-w... That assumes everything goes well, which is a big if, but seems possible. The fact we've had no bad news so far despite the advanced trials is good news.
- jcahill 6y ago
  Theirs is AZD1222, fka ChAdOx1 nCoV-19. It has goofy delivery dates for multiple markets. We've had no bad news because it's a simple design that bets on robust immune response doing the job. It's in contractors' interest to push ferocious timetables regardless of whether this vaccine strategy is viable: if it isn't, payouts are still secured prior to evidence of this coming to light, so they don't get stuck holding the bag. If it is, they're getting to market by next flu season. https://www.precisionvaccinations.com/vaccines/azd1222-sars-cov-2-vaccine https://www.precisionvaccinations.com/vaccines/azd1222-sars-...
  - chimprich 6y ago
    It's in everyone's interest to make any vaccine available as soon as possible if shown to be both safe and efficacious. The vaccine is being produced at no-profit: https://www.precisionvaccinations.com/400-million-coronavirus-vaccine-doses-supplied-no-profit https://www.precisionvaccinations.com/400-million-coronaviru... > We've had no bad news because it's a simple design That makes no sense. We will have news if it fails to stop people getting badly ill, in which case they'd have to go back to the drawing board.
    - jcahill 6y ago
      >a simple design that bets on robust immune response doing the job. That means greater surveillance time, because so little has been established about activity thresholds that might be deemed properly immunizing. Greater reliance on strong immune response than more complex designs means greater uncertainty with respect to each step of the trials, including projecting general population results from challenge trial results. So the bad news can't come as fast as it might for other designs. So far, the main worry has been poor activity in monkey challenge testing. But that's not enough to call "bad news" yet. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.05.13.093195 https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.05.13.093195 There's no downside to proceeding with manufacturing at full speed provided the financing is secured, yes. That's what I was getting at. "Produced at no-profit" still comes with significant opportunities for contractors and liabilities if they haven't been paid yet. It would be a nightmare for a public-private partnership to fall apart with manufacturing costs left uncovered because a vaccine platform has fallen out of favor. At the scale of multinationals, even issues like brexit having been pseudo-postponed until the end of 2020 right before all of this stuff hit might have something to do with how they're trying to structure delivery timetables. It's hard to say how any particular firm structures multiple deals with billion dollar pricetags.
- rsynnott 6y ago
  That's deliveries of a vaccine which may never be usable. Is there any indication that it'll actually be _approved_ by then? Manufacture of this promising candidate in advance of full trials and approval probably isn't the craziest thing to do, but my understanding was that there was a significant risk that it would never be approved, never mind by October.
ageitgey 6y ago
I'm in the Phase 2/3 trial for the Oxford vaccine. They really are doing everything possible to have it ready ASAP (as early as October) if they can. They are reviewing trial results in real time and have scaled the trial to many cities in the UK. They quiz us on exposure and test us for COVID weekly. But they are also clear that the vaccine might not work at all or that it might take longer to find out. One big issue is that the rate of the virus is the community is dropping quickly in the UK. We are down to less than 1 in ~1,700 having it. So with a trial size of 10-20k people, you can see that the whole trial hangs on a single digit number of people who will be exposed, hence the constant testing to flag those people. To increase the chances of getting a result, they have stood up a new wing of the trial in Brazil where the virus is more prevalent now.