5 ms·

I've been following Moderna's vaccine from the beginning. It was developed in 25 days from first virus DNA synthesis. https://www.modernatx.com/modernas-work-po

I've been following Moderna's vaccine from the beginning. It was developed in 25 days from first virus DNA synthesis. https://www.modernatx.com/modernas-work-potential-vaccine-against-covid-19 https://www.modernatx.com/modernas-work-potential-vaccine-ag... but it's going to take maybe a year to be approved by the FDA. All phase 3 trials are looking good. I personally would take this vaccine right now but the FDA will not allow me to do this. How is the FDA's reputation going to hold up when they approve all these vaccines a year or more after they were created and cost the lives of millions and trillions of dollars? The FDA had no pandemic vaccine approval protocol which could have speed up the process. They could have used challenge trials with young healthy people. I can think of a pre approved process for mRNA vaccines where the delivery methods are approved but the only thing that changes is the mRNA payload. I blame the government healthcare organizations for a lot of the impact from covid-19. First, they were anti-mask during the first major increase in the virus and now they are being overly cautious in approval of vaccines. They are way off on their cost - benefit math.

XorNot 6y ago
Unlike COVID-19 which is spreading a lot in the US (due to lack of coordinated government action) and which other countries have more or less stamped out and are controlling (Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Australia, Taiwan etc.), a vaccine will actually be given to something like 80-90% of the population. So whereas the US has currently had a total of about ~10 million cases to date, this represents about 3.3% of the total population. There have been about 200,000 deaths so far, so the US case-fatality rate is about 2% - note, the mortality rate is most likely quite a bit lower overall since it's spreading so much. This is simply deaths vs. observed cases. EDITED(got the math off by a factor of 10 here previously - at 0.01% fatality it's not 360,000 - that said, see comments below, actually establishing that in clinical trials is not easy): Let's suppose we rush through a vaccine that turns out to cause fatal complications in 0.01% of the population, and we give it 90% of the population. Straight up - we've just killed 36,000 people. But that's assuming that the complications are binary - but COVID-19's complications aren't binary, and neither would negative side-effects be. So we might kill a bunch of people, and injure tens of thousands more seriously. Or we might have inadequately diverse trials and miss a whole population of potential negative side-effects (a classic problem in a lot of trials: university aged students with the distribution of whichever university developed the product are over-represented in samples). You cannot rush clinical trials. To even stand a hope of getting to 0.01% risks you need a population of at least several thousand in your trial. You need to monitor them aggressively because hopefully you have good data that whatever can go wrong will be slow enough you can intervene, but...there are always risks. Clinical trials can and do go badly wrong and people involved in them are taking a selfless risk for the betterment of the rest of us - and that's a very different proposition to declaring "this'll probably be fine" and not collecting the data.
- fasteddie31003 6y ago
  I am all for finding a vaccine with the lowest possible fatality complications. I believe we should "rush" a vaccine during a pandemic by modifying testing protocols which will ultimately save more lives by speeding up the approval time. The FDA should have done challenge trials with a healthy population to better determine the vaccine's effectiveness. I believe the silver bullet for future pandemics will be pre-approved mRNA vaccine pathways with the only change to the specific vaccine being the mRNA payload that targets the pathogen. Then testing could be a lot more straightforward and quicker which could end future pandemics.
  - XorNot 6y ago
    I mean this would be the dream by AFAIK mRNA vaccines (like kind of a lot of this stuff) ended up not being as useful as it was hoped I believe?
- bhickey 6y ago
  > To even stand a hope of getting to 0.01% risks you need a population of at least several thousand in your trial. Phase III trials don't run with enough participants to detect 0.01% effects with any confidence. These are generally found postmarketing, like Vioxx. In terms of vaccine harm, a badly behaved swine flu vaccine caused 3 cases of narcolepsy per 100k juveniles vaccinated. This effect simply would never be seen in Phase III trials. Finally, beyond the raw CFR we need to consider other adverse outcomes from covid: cognitive impairment following mechanical ventilation and cardiac damage are two that really worry me.
- john_artemis 6y ago
  Let's suppose we rush through a vaccine that turns out to cause fatal complications in 0.01% of the population, and we give it 90% of the population. Congratulations: you just killed more people to date then coronavirus has. Might wanna check that math, dude. Even with your preposterously deadly made-up vaccine, you’re only hitting about one month’s worth of COVID deaths.
  - 6y ago
flavor8 6y ago
Thalidomide.
- flavor8 6y ago
  Bah, I think that's a perfectly fair response. Arguing against drug trials is simply answered by history.

XorNot 6y ago

Unlike COVID-19 which is spreading a lot in the US (due to lack of coordinated government action) and which other countries have more or less stamped out and are controlling (Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Australia, Taiwan etc.), a vaccine will actually be given to something like 80-90% of the population. So whereas the US has currently had a total of about ~10 million cases to date, this represents about 3.3% of the total population. There have been about 200,000 deaths so far, so the US case-fatality rate is about 2% - note, the mortality rate is most likely quite a bit lower overall since it's spreading so much. This is simply deaths vs. observed cases. EDITED(got the math off by a factor of 10 here previously - at 0.01% fatality it's not 360,000 - that said, see comments below, actually establishing that in clinical trials is not easy): Let's suppose we rush through a vaccine that turns out to cause fatal complications in 0.01% of the population, and we give it 90% of the population. Straight up - we've just killed 36,000 people. But that's assuming that the complications are binary - but COVID-19's complications aren't binary, and neither would negative side-effects be. So we might kill a bunch of people, and injure tens of thousands more seriously. Or we might have inadequately diverse trials and miss a whole population of potential negative side-effects (a classic problem in a lot of trials: university aged students with the distribution of whichever university developed the product are over-represented in samples). You cannot rush clinical trials. To even stand a hope of getting to 0.01% risks you need a population of at least several thousand in your trial. You need to monitor them aggressively because hopefully you have good data that whatever can go wrong will be slow enough you can intervene, but...there are always risks. Clinical trials can and do go badly wrong and people involved in them are taking a selfless risk for the betterment of the rest of us - and that's a very different proposition to declaring "this'll probably be fine" and not collecting the data.

fasteddie31003 6y ago
I am all for finding a vaccine with the lowest possible fatality complications. I believe we should "rush" a vaccine during a pandemic by modifying testing protocols which will ultimately save more lives by speeding up the approval time. The FDA should have done challenge trials with a healthy population to better determine the vaccine's effectiveness. I believe the silver bullet for future pandemics will be pre-approved mRNA vaccine pathways with the only change to the specific vaccine being the mRNA payload that targets the pathogen. Then testing could be a lot more straightforward and quicker which could end future pandemics.
- XorNot 6y ago
  I mean this would be the dream by AFAIK mRNA vaccines (like kind of a lot of this stuff) ended up not being as useful as it was hoped I believe?
bhickey 6y ago
> To even stand a hope of getting to 0.01% risks you need a population of at least several thousand in your trial. Phase III trials don't run with enough participants to detect 0.01% effects with any confidence. These are generally found postmarketing, like Vioxx. In terms of vaccine harm, a badly behaved swine flu vaccine caused 3 cases of narcolepsy per 100k juveniles vaccinated. This effect simply would never be seen in Phase III trials. Finally, beyond the raw CFR we need to consider other adverse outcomes from covid: cognitive impairment following mechanical ventilation and cardiac damage are two that really worry me.
john_artemis 6y ago
Let's suppose we rush through a vaccine that turns out to cause fatal complications in 0.01% of the population, and we give it 90% of the population. Congratulations: you just killed more people to date then coronavirus has. Might wanna check that math, dude. Even with your preposterously deadly made-up vaccine, you’re only hitting about one month’s worth of COVID deaths.
- 6y ago

flavor8 6y ago

Thalidomide.

flavor8 6y ago
Bah, I think that's a perfectly fair response. Arguing against drug trials is simply answered by history.