5 ms·

<70% effectiveness is...not so great to say the least when you have vaccines from BioNTech and Moderna at 95% effectiveness already.

MrAlex94 6y ago
There are many factors at play: * Cost of vaccine * Ease of manufacturing * Ease of distribution * Prevention of severe cases and hospitalisations It seems all vaccines currently approved so far prevent hospitalisations completely. It won’t stop the epidemic completely depending on coverage but it’s enough to stop killing people.
cranekam 6y ago
The half + full dose regime appears to have greater efficacy but wasn't approved because of insufficient data. I hope more data comes in and permits this. Also: "However, unpublished data suggests that leaving a longer gap between the first and second doses increases the overall effectiveness of the jab." That may well help too. But at the end of the day, the world needs a lot of vaccine. It's better to have Pfizer/Moderna and the Oxford vaccine at our disposal, particularly when the latter is also much cheaper and easier to store (this will be crucial in developing countries and/or rural populations). What matters is having fewer people get sick or die, not ensuring everyone is given the vaccine with the greatest efficacy.
- grey-area 6y ago
  The world would have 2x the vaccine available if they can fast track approval of the lower first dose. Hopefully given the prevalence in the UK they can now quickly do that work.
  - snovv_crash 6y ago
    That assumes the bottleneck is in the actual vaccine constituents, and not in manufacturing or sourcing the billions of delivery mechanisms.
    - ummonk 6y ago
      Freezers, vials, and syringes are all easily mass produceable and already available in large quantities.
      - snovv_crash 6y ago
        Yes, but this isn't software. Out in the physical world supply chains take time to ramp up.
        hef19898 6y ago
        And they are ramping pretty fast right now. We are not talking about books shipped by Amazon here. I for my part am really satisfied with vaccine distribution right now, quite the opposite to mask distribution and sourcing.
  - mft_ 6y ago
    4/3x?
    - grey-area 6y ago
      2x the initial rate, assuming we are constrained by supply right now but not so later on. In a few months supplies in developed countries will probably be sufficient for other things like logistics to be a bigger constraint.
vjuvvadi123 6y ago
BioNTech and Moderna didn't do weekly swab tests and they only tested the symptomatic ones. The sample size of Astrazeneca is much bigger as well. With Moderna one, some people are loosing antibodies with in weeks.
- throwaway4good 6y ago
  Yes. Maybe AstraZeneca should up their vaccine price by a few dollars and hire the PR-team from Pfizer.
- fastball 6y ago
  > With Moderna one, some people are loosing antibodies with in weeks. That's... how vaccines work? Your anti-bodies don't stick around forever, and they're not supposed to. The purpose of the vaccine is to prime your memory B/T cells so that when the actual virus is introduced to your body the antibodies are produced much more rapidly, enough to kill the virus before it can take hold.
- kenhwang 6y ago
  Where are you getting your source for Astrazeneca's sample size being larger? Everything I've read so far says this result was based off a sample size of ~11k people. Which would be significantly smaller than the ~40k of Pfizer and ~30k of Moderna.
rvz 6y ago
Exactly. I expect and assume everything with the highest standards and outstanding research and development with anything having the 'Oxford' name. But when I see '<70%' effectiveness compared to 95% effectiveness with the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine looks very disappointing and far from the top standard I have expected. That is not good enough.
- ehsankia 6y ago
  That's such a naive way to look at it. It's not like we could've known beforehand which type of vaccine would be more effective. Some tried mRNA, other tried other techniques, and they all have to go through a lengthy phase 3 trial. This is a novel virus, and if everyone just did one kind of vaccine, and that kind failed, they we would've been fucked. Hell, it's even more complex than that, because even given a type of vaccine, even subtle stuff such as dose size and time between the two doses seem to play a huge role, and this is again something that needs to be tweaked over time, using long phase 3 trials. I would attribute it much more to luck than actual skills here.

MrAlex94 6y ago

There are many factors at play: * Cost of vaccine * Ease of manufacturing * Ease of distribution * Prevention of severe cases and hospitalisations It seems all vaccines currently approved so far prevent hospitalisations completely. It won’t stop the epidemic completely depending on coverage but it’s enough to stop killing people.

cranekam 6y ago

The half + full dose regime appears to have greater efficacy but wasn't approved because of insufficient data. I hope more data comes in and permits this. Also: "However, unpublished data suggests that leaving a longer gap between the first and second doses increases the overall effectiveness of the jab." That may well help too. But at the end of the day, the world needs a lot of vaccine. It's better to have Pfizer/Moderna and the Oxford vaccine at our disposal, particularly when the latter is also much cheaper and easier to store (this will be crucial in developing countries and/or rural populations). What matters is having fewer people get sick or die, not ensuring everyone is given the vaccine with the greatest efficacy.

grey-area 6y ago
The world would have 2x the vaccine available if they can fast track approval of the lower first dose. Hopefully given the prevalence in the UK they can now quickly do that work.
- snovv_crash 6y ago
  That assumes the bottleneck is in the actual vaccine constituents, and not in manufacturing or sourcing the billions of delivery mechanisms.
  - ummonk 6y ago
    Freezers, vials, and syringes are all easily mass produceable and already available in large quantities.
    - snovv_crash 6y ago
      Yes, but this isn't software. Out in the physical world supply chains take time to ramp up.
      - hef19898 6y ago
        And they are ramping pretty fast right now. We are not talking about books shipped by Amazon here. I for my part am really satisfied with vaccine distribution right now, quite the opposite to mask distribution and sourcing.
- mft_ 6y ago
  4/3x?
  - grey-area 6y ago
    2x the initial rate, assuming we are constrained by supply right now but not so later on. In a few months supplies in developed countries will probably be sufficient for other things like logistics to be a bigger constraint.

vjuvvadi123 6y ago

BioNTech and Moderna didn't do weekly swab tests and they only tested the symptomatic ones. The sample size of Astrazeneca is much bigger as well. With Moderna one, some people are loosing antibodies with in weeks.

throwaway4good 6y ago
Yes. Maybe AstraZeneca should up their vaccine price by a few dollars and hire the PR-team from Pfizer.
fastball 6y ago
> With Moderna one, some people are loosing antibodies with in weeks. That's... how vaccines work? Your anti-bodies don't stick around forever, and they're not supposed to. The purpose of the vaccine is to prime your memory B/T cells so that when the actual virus is introduced to your body the antibodies are produced much more rapidly, enough to kill the virus before it can take hold.
kenhwang 6y ago
Where are you getting your source for Astrazeneca's sample size being larger? Everything I've read so far says this result was based off a sample size of ~11k people. Which would be significantly smaller than the ~40k of Pfizer and ~30k of Moderna.

rvz 6y ago

Exactly. I expect and assume everything with the highest standards and outstanding research and development with anything having the 'Oxford' name. But when I see '<70%' effectiveness compared to 95% effectiveness with the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine looks very disappointing and far from the top standard I have expected. That is not good enough.

ehsankia 6y ago
That's such a naive way to look at it. It's not like we could've known beforehand which type of vaccine would be more effective. Some tried mRNA, other tried other techniques, and they all have to go through a lengthy phase 3 trial. This is a novel virus, and if everyone just did one kind of vaccine, and that kind failed, they we would've been fucked. Hell, it's even more complex than that, because even given a type of vaccine, even subtle stuff such as dose size and time between the two doses seem to play a huge role, and this is again something that needs to be tweaked over time, using long phase 3 trials. I would attribute it much more to luck than actual skills here.