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Basically, Putin just renamed what we usually consider to be a Phase 3 trial to "general availability", while knowing that availability will most likely be seri
by Slartie 6y ago
Basically, Putin just renamed what we usually consider to be a Phase 3 trial to "general availability", while knowing that availability will most likely be seriously constrained anyway in the next months, effectively limiting the deployment of this vaccine to some tens of thousands of hand-selected people, which - there's the catch - is very much in the ballpark of how many participants proper Phase 3 studies also have.
This gives him a quick propaganda win, because it looks like Russia was somehow further along in the race for getting a vaccine broadly available, while they actually aren't - they're just jeopardizing their citizens' health for that quick win, because I bet the early adopters of this "approved vaccine" will not be monitored as well as participants in a proper Phase 3 study commonly are. Also, with no control group inoculated with a placebo, the results are not going to be as conclusive as those of a real study.
This is all based on my assumption that Russia will be unable to snap their fingers and have millions of doses of this vaccine ready within weeks. Unfortunately I haven't seen any reliable information regarding the production constraints and timetable of this particular vaccine. Does anyone know more about that?
- tinus_hn 6y agoSome countries may be realizing that they can’t afford to drag along for ‘just a few more months’ while their economy is tanking. There is some risk here but it avoids other risks.
- Slartie 6y agoThe thing is that just "approving" a vaccine doesn't actually avoid anything, especially not economic slowdowns. Actually having a vaccine widely available at scale and having it injected into a significant proportion of the population is what allows you to avoid all the direct negative effects of COVID-19 (with the economic angle being in large parts actually an indirect effect, since any country is dependent on the world economy and not just whether its own citizens are susceptible to COVID-19 or not). That's why I asked whether there's any tangible information regarding production timetable and availability schedules of this particular vaccine, which are in my opinion much more important to its impact than whether Putin - or anyone else really - signs off on it or not.