5 ms·
Title is misleading. They tested few configurations, we should use the most optimal one, not the average. Much better source: https://www.astrazeneca.com/media-
by jakozaur 6y ago
Title is misleading. They tested few configurations, we should use the most optimal one, not the average. Much better source:
https://www.astrazeneca.com/media-centre/press-releases/2020/azd1222hlr.html https://www.astrazeneca.com/media-centre/press-releases/2020...
Good:
+ likely 90% effective if we use optimal dosing
+ no significant side effective. Looks better than Pfizer or Moderna.
+ already pre-produced at huge scale, 3 Bln doses in 2021
+ easy to store and administer, just regular fridge required
+ several times cheaper than mRNA
+ more traditional vaccine than novel mRNA, less tail risk in production and scaling up the process
Not good:
- two doses, efficient one month after first injection
- likely public will be confused about efficiency due to dosing regime
- afterburner 6y agoThe two existing mRNA vaccines touted earlier also require two doses.
- tzs 6y agoI wonder what happens if you get two doses, but not of the same vaccine?
- vmurthy 6y agoCan you share your thinking around why someone would want to do that given that a combination won't be tested (at-least rigorously). Are you seeing benefits from a logistics point-of-view?
- tzs 6y agoI'm not thinking someone would want to do it. I'm thinking it's going to accidentally happen to some people, at least if there are facilities that offer more than one vaccine.
- jakozaur 6y agoHard to guess. Likely worth investigating, but as secondary priority: 1. You may end up just getting very short and weak immunity, making this approach ineffective. 2. You may get a combination of immunity which can have different efficiency. 3. For some vaccines of same type this works, but is rarely recommended. 4. Mixing partly mRNA and Adenovirus vaccines doesn't to be winning strategy. It is rather more likely to give another vaccine if after two doses you didn't get immunity.
- twic 6y agoIf the vaccines are for the same antigen (eg the spike protein), i would expect that to work fine. Your B cells don't care how the RNA encoding the proteins got into your cells, just what the protein looks like. A caveat here is that different vaccines might use different versions or modifications of the spike protein, in which case it's possible they wouldn't boost each other. This feels unlikely, though, because i think that would also reduce their effectiveness against the real virus.
- bawolff 6y agoInteresting its cheaper than mRNA, i thought that was one of the benefits of using mRNA, was that it was supposed to be cheaper to manufacture.
- disgruntledphd2 6y agoI don't know much about the chemistry, but most new processes tend to be more expensive due to setup costs.
- andylynch 6y agoIn theory mRNA will be, but it’s a new technology so still going to be more expensive to start with. The other major benefit is that these vaccines can be developed more quickly, which is worthwhile in its own right.
- garmaine 6y agoI don’t know why mRNA would be cheaper to manufacture. It is far less stable and therefore harder to work with.
- lultimouomo 6y agoMy understanding (which might very well be ridiculously wrong) is that mRNA vaccines are a bit like 3d printing; it is incredibly faster and cheaper to build a single one-off item, but if you need to mass produce you still want to go with injection moulding.
- fabian2k 6y agoOne big difference is that RNA is more generic. Within certain parameters it doesn't matter which specific RNA sequence you produce, it always works the same way and you can use the same facilities for this. There are potential cost advantages there, if you can use a generic, validated process to produce different types of vaccines or drugs without having to develop, tune and certify the core production from scratch every time. I don't know the economics here, but I would assume that cost advantages are much more likely to appear for small-scale products here than what we have now, producing a billion doses in large factories.
- 6y ago
- jpxw 6y agoAnother entry in the “good” column: no hospitalisations or severe cases of the disease were reported in participants receiving the vaccine. I agree about the confusion, though. I worry that people will avoid this vaccine, in the hopes of receiving the Moderna/Biontech one instead. That would be a real shame, because the results here are extremely positive. The media’s reporting of this is concerning.
- freeone3000 6y agoDue to the low sample size, it's unclear whether there were no severe cases due to the vaccine -- it's likely that there would have been no severe cases in a given group of 39 COVID-positive individuals even with no intervention.
- mantap 6y agoIt depends on the ages of the 39 people. If those were 39 eighty year olds, that would be seriously impressive. If those were 39 twenty year olds it would be expected. There's no reason to expect that the 39 would have a similar age distribution to the population because it's not a random sample.