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Efficacy is irrelevant. Rolling out AZ vaccines will not slow down Pfizer/Moderna vaccination rates, because the bottleneck is supply. Even assuming J&J + Novav

Efficacy is irrelevant. Rolling out AZ vaccines will not slow down Pfizer/Moderna vaccination rates, because the bottleneck is supply. Even assuming J&J + Novavax there's still a drastic supply bottleneck. At worse, we'll just give a bunch of people a placebo. I don't believe there's lack of efficacy, but with millions of subjects, the answer will be apparent in a matter of weeks. If so we'll simply re-innoculate those people with Pfizer/Moderna. There's literally zero cost to this scenario, besides monetary spending that's a rounding error in the federal budget. The only consideration should be safety. I'm so confident in safety that I'm willing to give you 10-1 odds, up to $500/$5000 that there will be no more than 35,000 deaths attributed to the AZ vaccine globally within five years.

quantgenius 6y ago
What about increased deaths due to people taking more risks because they think they are safe? Most deaths are in over 65s. AZ has released absolutely no data on over 65s, nada. There is independent data from Germany that shows the AZ vaccine is essentially indistinguishable from placebo in over 65s. What you are suggesting may be the right thing to do somewhere other than the US, so long as its accompanied by an effective warning that the vaccination may or may not work so you still have to be careful. The important operative word regarding the warnings being effective. My comments are entirely in response to an earlier commenter stating that the FDA should approve AZ, which means it's US specific. The single biggest bottleneck right now is vials, not vaccine production. AZ vaccine production will compete for this. Besides, do you really think AZ is going to be able to magically scale up from 0 in the US with the UK and EU already fighting over production and do this faster than an absolute lazer focus on increasing Pfizer/Moderna production and distribution? The US is currently doubling the number of people vaccinated per day every 2 weeks. We did this despite a massive snowstorm on the East Coast. It might seem bad but the rate of vaccinations is growing exponentially. It's mostly a solved problem. You just don't see it yet. Exponential growth! It's the same thing that makes high R0 epidemics so bad, only in reverse.
- PartiallyTyped 6y ago
  > What about increased deaths due to people taking more risks because they think they are safe? Most deaths are in over 65s. AZ has released absolutely no data on over 65s, nada. There is independent data from Germany that shows the AZ vaccine is essentially indistinguishable from placebo in over 65s. Then why not allocate AZ to the population it is most effective? The whole argument with efficacy across different brackets appears like a (simple) maxflow problem.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- mft_ 6y ago
  Would you mind sharing the references underlying your points? (This isn’t ‘citation required’ snark - I’m genuinely interested.)
- danhor 6y ago
  There is data from germany? There was a media blitz about low covid infection prevention in ages over 65, but the confidence interval was between something like -130% to 90%, so it's more of a case of missing data
  - morsch 6y ago
    There is no data from Germany. The German commission on vaccination concluded, based on the data provided by AZ, that a) there is no reason to believe that AZ is unsafe and b) there is currently insufficient data on efficacy in ages over 65 to recommend vaccination.
  - quantgenius 6y ago
    Most deaths are in over 65s. If the confidence interval on the vaccine working on over 65s is -130% to 90%, how can you possibly claim this vaccine will do anything. Their conclusions were based on data submitted by Astra Zeneca and data Astra Zeneca did not initially submit. Breaking news this AM: South Africa just halted the use of the Astra Zeneca vaccine. It's being spun as being done because of evidence it doesn't work on the new strain. I strongly suspect once all the data is in, this vaccine will be found to be indistinguishable from placebo.

quantgenius 6y ago

What about increased deaths due to people taking more risks because they think they are safe? Most deaths are in over 65s. AZ has released absolutely no data on over 65s, nada. There is independent data from Germany that shows the AZ vaccine is essentially indistinguishable from placebo in over 65s. What you are suggesting may be the right thing to do somewhere other than the US, so long as its accompanied by an effective warning that the vaccination may or may not work so you still have to be careful. The important operative word regarding the warnings being effective. My comments are entirely in response to an earlier commenter stating that the FDA should approve AZ, which means it's US specific. The single biggest bottleneck right now is vials, not vaccine production. AZ vaccine production will compete for this. Besides, do you really think AZ is going to be able to magically scale up from 0 in the US with the UK and EU already fighting over production and do this faster than an absolute lazer focus on increasing Pfizer/Moderna production and distribution? The US is currently doubling the number of people vaccinated per day every 2 weeks. We did this despite a massive snowstorm on the East Coast. It might seem bad but the rate of vaccinations is growing exponentially. It's mostly a solved problem. You just don't see it yet. Exponential growth! It's the same thing that makes high R0 epidemics so bad, only in reverse.

PartiallyTyped 6y ago
> What about increased deaths due to people taking more risks because they think they are safe? Most deaths are in over 65s. AZ has released absolutely no data on over 65s, nada. There is independent data from Germany that shows the AZ vaccine is essentially indistinguishable from placebo in over 65s. Then why not allocate AZ to the population it is most effective? The whole argument with efficacy across different brackets appears like a (simple) maxflow problem.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
mft_ 6y ago
Would you mind sharing the references underlying your points? (This isn’t ‘citation required’ snark - I’m genuinely interested.)
danhor 6y ago
There is data from germany? There was a media blitz about low covid infection prevention in ages over 65, but the confidence interval was between something like -130% to 90%, so it's more of a case of missing data
- morsch 6y ago
  There is no data from Germany. The German commission on vaccination concluded, based on the data provided by AZ, that a) there is no reason to believe that AZ is unsafe and b) there is currently insufficient data on efficacy in ages over 65 to recommend vaccination.
- quantgenius 6y ago
  Most deaths are in over 65s. If the confidence interval on the vaccine working on over 65s is -130% to 90%, how can you possibly claim this vaccine will do anything. Their conclusions were based on data submitted by Astra Zeneca and data Astra Zeneca did not initially submit. Breaking news this AM: South Africa just halted the use of the Astra Zeneca vaccine. It's being spun as being done because of evidence it doesn't work on the new strain. I strongly suspect once all the data is in, this vaccine will be found to be indistinguishable from placebo.