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The key differentiator here is the storage requirements (2-8c ‘normal refrigerator’). That’s much more accessible to developing / low GDP countries as opposed

• wereHamster 6y ago
  What are the storage requirements for the other two?
  • dragontamer 6y ago
    -80C for Pfizer, and below 0 for the other one (I forget exactly). -80C is really close to dry-ice temperatures. So I wonder if its actually -80C or if the researchers were just saying "Dry Ice".
    • _Wintermute 6y ago
      -80C is just a pretty standard cold storage temperature in science. I'd imagine they tested stability at 4C, -20C and liquid nitrogen as well.
      • sjwright 6y ago
        The notion of distributing a billion copies of a vaccine at -80°C to every corner of the planet seems rather resource intensive.
        • andylynch 6y ago
          It is, especially for far flung places. This stable vaccine will be very useful in places like the pacific islands, where air transport isn’t always an option.
          • MagnumOpus 6y ago
            Any island that doesn't have air transport doesn't really need the vaccine (if transit take weeks, infections on ships burn out before they get there). Realistically, every major population can be reached in 24 hours by modern transport, and the Pfizer 5000-dose transport package keeps the temperature for 5 days.
        • bluGill 6y ago
          Dry ice is very common, and you get 5 days at refrigerator temperature. Everywhere in the world is reachable in 5 days if you need to. It gets really expensive to charter flights to many areas, but it is possible if you have money to burn. Of course we now have reason to believe that vaccines that don't need dry ice will be approved, so logistics will direct the easier to ship ones to remote places.
          • nojito 6y ago
            There's actually a dry ice shortage in the USA currently. Most of the producers have had their entire capacity bought out in prep for distribution of the vaccine.
          • Zenbit_UX 6y ago
            You can reach everywhere in 5 days but that's not enough. People have to come and get it, there's also a chance there will be a slow start due to concerns over a new drug that the media may emphasize was "rushed". Then there's the logistics of scheduling so many people. If you don't bring yourself a cold storage freezer you're committing to using 100% of your doses within 5 days which may not be possible.
            • bluGill 6y ago
              For the first few months all doses will go to high risk people. Most won't have the option to refuse it. Eventually you are right. If the Pfizer vaccine is to be used in remote places the people getting the vaccine will need to schedule it in advance (and probably pay for it) to ensure that once it arrives it is used.
      • bart_spoon 6y ago
        My understanding is that they actually haven't tested at anything but -80C, and that it is potentially possible that it could be stored at higher temperatures, but it hasn't been examined yet.
    • foepys 6y ago
      The BioNTech vaccine can also be stored for a week at -10°C IIRC. That's enough even for distribution to most remote places.
  • singingfish 6y ago
    -20c and -70c from what I remember
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • pvsukale3 6y ago
    -80ºC for Pfizer vaccine and -20ºC for mRNA vaccine. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/11/17/935563377/why-does-pfizers-covid-19-vaccine-need-to-be-kept-colder-than-antarctica https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/11/17/9355633...
    • kabes 6y ago
      mRNA is confusing to use as short for Moderna here. It's also a type of vaccine. Pfizer vaccine is also mRNA.
    • _Microft 6y ago
      mRNA is a term from molecular biology [0]. "MRNA" is the stock symbol of Moderna [1]. Both Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna use a mRNA based method for their vaccine. You might want to update the comment to avoid confusion. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messenger_RNA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messenger_RNA [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moderna https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moderna
      • trevyn 6y ago
        And initially formed as "ModeRNA Therapeutics"... I think they're enjoying the intentional confusion. :)
• throwawayiionqz 6y ago
  Another huge differentiator is price. At $3 to $4, many countries will jump on board ASAP and stay away from the expensive vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna.
  • bawolff 6y ago
    Maybe for less developed countries, but i think for major economies, the price difference is insignificant relative to the benefits of any vaccine.
    • dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago
      If they actually get to 90% or more, why would anyone bother with the more expensive and cumbersome vaccines? Except that the EU already signed a deal to buy the vaccines from AstraZeneca, Sanofi and Johnson & Johnson.
      • bawolff 6y ago
        Because there is only so much to go around in the initial stages, so they will buy whichever one is available to them. The 10x increase in price is peanuts compared to the ecconomic benefits of getting more people vaccinated sooner. Additionally, lots of countries have already preordered all the major candidates, so in those cases its already spent money.
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      • ulfw 6y ago
        Because 95% efficacy is twice as good as 90%. And some people are willing to pay the $30 it costs to be 5% likelihood to have a non-functioning vaccine vs. a 10% likelihood the vaccine you just got won't work on you.
        • xiphias2 6y ago
          Also so far the mRNA vaccines look to have less side effects. AstraZeneca is not doing charity, it's cheaper because they have the inferior vaccine.
• noneeeed 6y ago
  Yeah, the fact that this doesn't even need a freezer is great news. The fact that we have three highly effective vaccines in such a short period is amazing and between them we might stand a chance of making and distributing them at the scale necessary to get things under some kind of control by August.
  • beagle3 6y ago
    The safety concerns cannot be resolved yet. Effective - yes. Safe? We won’t know for a while. Pandemrix, a flu vaccine, caused a notable uptick in narcolepsy in Sweden, Finland and likely the UK. This was not (and could not) be seen in smaller trial populations. It is not a given that any of the covid vaccines is safe enough. Historically, two cases of rushed vaccines (cutter polio and Gullah barre) were worse than the disease - and these were for diseases worse than covid. Those were 50-60 years ago. Pandemrix was 10-20. I’m not sure we’re that much better on safety now to rush vaccines.
    • acqq 6y ago
      2011: https://www.who.int/vaccine_safety/committee/topics/influenza/pandemic/h1n1_safety_assessing/narcolepsy_statement/en/ https://www.who.int/vaccine_safety/committee/topics/influenz... “Even at this stage, it does not appear that narcolepsy following vaccination against pandemic influenza is a general worldwide phenomenon, as no excess of narcolepsy has been reported from several other European states where Pandemrix was used, or from Canada where a pandemic vaccine similar to pandemrix was used. This complicates interpretation of the findings in Finland and Sweden. It seems likely that some as yet unidentified additional factor was operating in Sweden and Finland. The findings from the VAESCO project and further investigations in Finland and Sweden, may help clarify the determinants of any increased risk of narcolepsy, which currently appears to be restricted to the months following vaccination and by age group and country.” What’s certainly true that for some effects to be observable, millions have to be vaccinated first. 2013: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-narcolepsy-vaccine-pandemrix-idUSBRE90L07H20130122 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-narcolepsy-vaccine-pandem... “In total, the GSK shot was given to more than 30 million people in 47 countries during the 2009-2010 H1N1 swine flu pandemic.” “Independent teams of scientists have published peer-reviewed studies from Sweden, Finland and Ireland showing the risk of developing narcolepsy after the 2009-2010 immunization campaign was between seven and 13 times higher for children who had Pandemrix than for their unvaccinated peers.” “Europe’s drugs regulator has ruled Pandemrix should no longer be used in people aged under 20.”
• kul_ 6y ago
  Moderna vaccine also seems to have similar storage requirements with a high price tag. BioNTech otoh has impractical storage requirements for the third world. AstraZenca's price and storage combiation may open possibilities for distributing this globally.
• nbevans 6y ago
  I'd argue that it is more accessible to everyone including developed nations. It only requires a standard technology freezer - like that you have in a residential home. COVID-19 has already cost the UK hundreds of billions, so being able to roll out a vaccine with minimum hassle and without needing specialist storage and training on its handling, is an absolutely enormous benefit. Honestly I feel like this vaccine is going to leave the mRNA-based vaccines trailing in its wake in terms of global government adoption.
  • Ciantic 6y ago
    Moderna's vaccine can be stored in normal refrigerator (at 2 to 8 degrees Celsius) for 30 days. It also can be freezed for longer storage. [1] However for developing world the prices becomes the issue, so you are probably right, this vaccine is cheaper and thus more available. [1]: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/11/moderna-edges-pfizer-coronavirus-efficacy-and-refrigeration/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/11/moderna-e...
• Demiurge 6y ago
  Also worth mentioning, is that Russia is working on a freeze dried version: https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/exclusive-russia-focuses-on-freeze-dried-vaccine-doses-as-transport-fix-2020-11-17 https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/exclusive-russia-focuses-on-...
• gumby 6y ago
  The key differentiator is the mechanism of action, not the storage system. The other two current candidates are mRNA vaccines, an approach which hasn't been used in humans before -- looks like the harbinger of a revolution but we have no past experience. This O/AZ uses the actual spike protein embedded in a simian virus (that does not affect humans and has its own DNA removed). It's possible to generate antibodies to the vehicle (virus) which is why a simian virus is used (humans won't already have encountered it) but also means your own immune system could target the vaccine itself. Loewe speculates that this is why the higher dose was less effective.
  • jeromegv 6y ago
    The storage system is important and a key differentiator, tons of countries cannot effectively distribute a virus at -70° to population in the most vulnerable spots. I don't know why you felt the need to be so dismissive.
    • gumby 6y ago
      I am dismissive because distribution is not big-H Hard. It consists of known unknowns and can "simply" be solved by application of money. Yes, actually it's a systems problem: there is not infinite money, there are political interests. But compared to the science the problems are well understood. On the other hand we still have no idea how well these vaccines will work. First, we have (as I discussed) two different approaches in the three current candidates, one of which is fairly new and one which is completely novel. We have had only limited time to see how well they work and have only limited experience in broad efficacy, duration of effect, and, crucially, how long they last (it takes a long time to learn if you'll need a 10 year booster!). We don't know how fast the virus mutates away from the vaccine's target (though we do currently think we have a good idea). And we simply haven't tried enough people to get a good handle on side effects. One of the difficulties in solving these is that new approaches contain unknown unknown. Look at CRISPR-CAS: got a (deserved) Nobel this year yet may already have been discovered to be ineffective or worse in the real world. That takes time to learn. Now it's not that the people doing the work are idiots -- they know all these problems better than I do. But I am appalled that this is treated by the press as a distinction between, say, a pair of beta implementations of something, one in Python and one in Ruby. Going back to systems issues: when we don't know these factors we take a calculated risk (really an estimated risk). The social aspects of vaccination (close to ubiquitous use, the risk of any side effects increasing the anti-vaxx rate for other immunizations, which itself could become a public health disaster etc) mean these factors are upmost in public health officials, not whether they have adequate refrigeration. Vaccines are particularly difficult for reasons like these above -- there's a reason why they have their own special laws and government-assumed liability insurance. I haven't worked on vaccines, so take this as you will, but I have worked in anti-invectives, have designed preclinical and clinical protocols (including first-in-human) which were submitted and approved by the FDA, run clinical trials, have presented to the FDA and defended protocol design, so I have some idea what's involved and how to read the presented endpoints and findings.