> I'm waiting for the J&J results after two-dose immunisation given this vaccine takes a similar (non mRNA) approach and appears to be very effective.
Given the J&J two dose trial (ENSEMBLE 2) only started just recently, and takes 60 days between two doses, this is going to take a while though. (I'm a volunteer. My second those is scheduled for mid-march.)
Thanks! 60 days would still be very interesting to get results for if-only to understand the technology (mRNA vaccines) better for future viruses.
A lot of claims were made about how mRNA vaccination was revolutionizing how we approach these problems - but the Sputnik V results show similar gains with the traditional method.
> No traditional vaccine has finished phase-3 trials anywhere. Everything is something fairly new.
According to the table at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_vaccine both CoronaVac and Covaxin are traditional "inactivated virus" vaccines, and both have finished Phase 3 trials; CoronaVac is already being applied by the government here (started last month, so far only health workers and elderly above 90 years old), and IIRC there have been talks of bringing Covaxin to be applied by private clinics.
What's important is hospitalization and death. Ideally you want the vaccine to protect you against infection, but where we are today, having a vaccine with "only" 66% efficiency against infection but that protects you with > 85% from severe reaction is very promising. I'd take the J&J one shot vaccine in a heartbeat.
Short term yes, but long term I want to get rid of this virus and ensure my children don't get it. Since kids cannot get a vaccine that means elimination, and 95% gets us there a lot faster. I'm not even sure if we can eliminate with a 66% vaccine without covering kids - even 95% is questionable but we can get a lot closer.
My only source is the logically conclusion when we don't have the data how the vaccine will affect children yet we do have data on how many children are suffering serious side effects from the virus.
I don't think this is unreasonable. (I lack the domain knowledge to call it reasonable or not. Though there are few vaccines that are safe for adults and unsafe for children.)
But it's a stretch to brand that as "the science we have so far."
That sounds preposterous. Citation? Or is this some anti-vaxxer propaganda?
Of course the virus can be eliminated. Like every cold that goes around, once R0 drops below 1 it dies out and we never see it again. Completely gone. There is no long-lasting latent virus outside of a living organism, not like bacteria.
If the theory that it made the jump from another animal turns out to be true it means there’s a reservoir of virus in nature and short of developing some vaccine and distribution plan for that species it will be there. Or I guess eradicating the species. But that seems harmful.
Lets not make this sound like some surprising new thing. COVID from animals jump every year and its called 'a cold'. Always a different one. Always quite different ones. This one will never recur.
This is an unknown. We know covid has spread to minks. There have been reports that it can spread to other animals. If covid spreads to something wild we may always have COVID coming back to humans from the wild animals around.
We have 'COVID' spreading every year. Its called 'a cold'. The entire issue is, will this particularly pernicious one return. That is very unlikely (by many decimal places).
Only because we haven't done all the studies to prove the vaccines work.
Vaccines safe for adults are pretty much all safe for children. However the children generally need different doses from adults so work is needed to figure out the correct dose. A some point a child's (baby) immune system isn't mature enough to react to the vaccine, this doesn't mean the vaccine is dangerous, it just means it does nothing but hurt.
Currently we do not give children the vaccine because the relative value of giving it to the elderly vs. children is considerably tilted towards the elderly and it is a limited resource.
It does not imply anything about the safety of the vaccine vs. virus itself in that age group.
Kids are not in risk group for this virus though. Check out graphs at https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps - with all the lockdowns etc going on this year, mortality for 0-14 age group even decreased a bit.
Kids are too big a fraction to dismiss. And they are massive infection vectors. A kid gets sick, everybody else in the family will get sick. People with kids know that. Teachers know that. Doctors know that.
According to an article I read recently, the difference between 66% and 90% isn't actually very important when it comes to ending the pandemic.
The 66% vaccines and the 90+% vaccines were about equally as effective at preventing severe COVID cases. More people get it on the 66% vaccine, but their cases were like a mild to medium flu.
Most experts seem to believe that COVID is not going to be one of those viruses like smallpox or polio that we can for all practical purposes eliminate. They believe COVID is going to like cold and flu viruses.
The long term goal then is to get it so that when we do get it, which most of us inevitably will at some point, it is no worse than a mild flu. The 66% vaccines are as good as the 90+% vaccines for that.
We could probably eradicate a single cold virus if we wanted. The reason why we didn't is that there are a great many.
SARS-CoV-2 is nothing like influenza.
Technically, we could certainly eradicate this virus. It would take years, but it would be possible. It's just that it seems many countries just don't want to.
91.6% is a good efficacy. Do they have plans to test it against other variants (E501Y mutation)?
Ideally this + the adenovirus based AZD122 seems to be the best combination of (efficacy, affordablility, and logistically feasibility) end for the pandemic.
https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/coronavirus-why-combining-... is another such article which talks about it.
I wonder how much the heterologous approach (different viral vectors for first and second doses) contributed to its high efficiency compared to a similar Astra Zeneca vaccine. Conversely, why did Astra Zeneca opted not to do it this way.
I have been asking this the last week, only to receive downvotes and no proper answers: Why EU/UK/USA did not even consider the Russian and Chinese vaccines?
They all can go "realpolitik" but have their economies crushed and citizens lost for the sake of political rivalry then fight with each other who gets the Western vaccines first?
I'm sorry for asking it, I get that you don't like the question but I feel like it is a fair question. I'm not deleting this.
Of course EU/UK/USA consider it. But none of these vaccines have provided any trustworthy data of their efficacy and safety. And none of the makers of these vaccines even applied to be used in EU/UK/USA.
If today's publication changes that status for Sputnik V remains to be seen. Still many open questions.
The Moderna vaccine had been designed by January 13, 2020 [1] -- before a single case was confirmed in the US. It took only a weekend to finish. In contrast it took nearly a year to finish testing, and even this was an abbreviated schedule.
I haven't seen anything to suggest that the Russian or Chinese vaccines were safer or more effective, or that they could be more easily produced in large numbers. Indeed, according to the data here [2], neither Russia nor China has vaccinated as many of their citizens as has the US.
Isn't the Occam's razor answer here just down to logistics?
1. Theyre just publishing phase 3 results now, so they were slower than the mRNA shots
2. The Chinese and Russians will probably use their supply for themselves first (understandably), and so by the time they would have any to give us, we'll be almost done anyway.
Just seems like there's mostly no point.
Moderna and Pfizer are both American companies, and AstraZeneca is swedish/british with R&D in the US. These companies also have experience dealing with the FDA and EMA, which can't be underrated.
Russia and China are no stranger to playing politics with their exports (see: Gazprom and the various China-Japan scuffles over rare earths) so if I was a Western policymaker I would not make any sort of vaccination strategy dependent on that.
Distrust. There are results now, but somehow approval already happened 08/2020. Chances are that if trial results turned out significantly worse the 2020 approval would be the last result we ever heard.
Actually Canada's government first agreement was with a Chinese company to develop the vaccine (instead of supporting local companies). That deal blew up spectacularly and we had to order from others very late in the game. That is why Canada's vaccination campaign is a total mess.
Would they even be able to get those vaccines faster than their own vaccines? I'm assuming that Russia and China don't have a giant surplus sitting around, since they have their own people to vaccinate, so the West would have to manufacture them.
They would be starting from scratch, where with their own vaccines, I believe they had already started manufacturing them in anticipation that they would soon be approved.
These seem to be preliminary results; it is mentioned in the paragraph at the top and throughout the report. The estimated completion date is May 1st, according to the clinicaltrials.gov link.
J&J only announced phase 3 results a few days ago and will be up for approval shortly. the Astrazenaca vaccine's results were a mess of p-hacking and mixing methods (they reported a result on a half-size first dose which occurred by accident and in a non-representative population because it looked good).
Personally it makes me more confident in the FDA that they have yet to approve that vaccine.
The AZ vaccine has had data issues in its trial and the FDA is waiting on the US trial arm to finish (likely a month from now) before making a decision. The J&J vaccine has just released data and will likely be authorized in a couple weeks, but manufacturing issues mean that we won’t see tens of millions of doses until April. Novavax is in a similar boat, they won’t have much manufacturing available until late spring and their US trial only started in December so it will run until April.
The Russian Sputnik V vaccine [1] distinguishes itself from other two-dose Adenovirus vector vaccines [2] (Oxford–AstraZeneca and Chinese CanSino) by using different vectors (Ad26 and Ad5) for each dose. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine [3] is an Ad26 single-vector single-dose vaccine.
In my opinion, the outstanding question is production capacity. Given the supply chains and geopolitics involved, I think the rational choice is to get whatever approved vaccine is available to you as soon as possible.
It's all nice and good, but Putin made this vaccine's effectiveness a political issue. If it's significantly less effective than its western counterparts it would result in a severe loss of face for Putin's propagandists and the regime in general. Considering the historical record of Putin's regime love for truth and integrity, it wouldn't be surprising if many people would choose to take these results with a grain of salt.
Unfortunately everything became political in this pandemic. Nothing wrong with a bit of national price. Russia inherited a very good scientific base for vaccine research and didn't squander it all, so I think they had a good case to be so risky.
>Unfortunately everything became political in this pandemic.
Western leaders don't call vaccines developed in their countries as "the best Covid vaccine in the world". More so before any statistically relevant studies (faked or not) even ready.
>Nothing wrong with a bit of national price.
I think there is a difference (at least there shoudl be) between national pride and a fact distortion field.
Does the funding source have some bias impacts in this kind of thing? (i.e.: Moscow City Health Department, Russian Direct Investment Fund, Sberbank, and RUSAL.)
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 105 ms ] threadI'm waiting for the J&J results after two-dose immunisation given this vaccine takes a similar (non mRNA) approach and appears to be very effective.
(Not ignoring that 66% efficiency is still significant but much less so than 91.6%)
Given the J&J two dose trial (ENSEMBLE 2) only started just recently, and takes 60 days between two doses, this is going to take a while though. (I'm a volunteer. My second those is scheduled for mid-march.)
A lot of claims were made about how mRNA vaccination was revolutionizing how we approach these problems - but the Sputnik V results show similar gains with the traditional method.
No traditional vaccine has finished phase-3 trials anywhere. Everything is something fairly new.
According to the table at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_vaccine both CoronaVac and Covaxin are traditional "inactivated virus" vaccines, and both have finished Phase 3 trials; CoronaVac is already being applied by the government here (started last month, so far only health workers and elderly above 90 years old), and IIRC there have been talks of bringing Covaxin to be applied by private clinics.
The science we have so far says the virus is safer for children than the vaccine.
Almost no virus is impossible to eliminate or eradicate. It’s a question of cost (and reservoirs).
> The science we have so far says the virus is safer for children than the vaccine
Source? We haven’t tested the vaccine on children. We have had children die from Covid. This sounds like bunk.
I don't think this is unreasonable. (I lack the domain knowledge to call it reasonable or not. Though there are few vaccines that are safe for adults and unsafe for children.)
But it's a stretch to brand that as "the science we have so far."
We _could_ eliminate the common cold virus, but the measures taken would be so destructive to society, it's not worth it.
The cost/benefit analysis here seems to be the crux of the conflict around COVID mitigation efforts.
We have no such data.
Vaccines safe for adults are pretty much all safe for children. However the children generally need different doses from adults so work is needed to figure out the correct dose. A some point a child's (baby) immune system isn't mature enough to react to the vaccine, this doesn't mean the vaccine is dangerous, it just means it does nothing but hurt.
Currently we do not give children the vaccine because the relative value of giving it to the elderly vs. children is considerably tilted towards the elderly and it is a limited resource.
It does not imply anything about the safety of the vaccine vs. virus itself in that age group.
Is this because in school they are better at social distancing protocols? Maybe. Is it because they are less infectious on average? Maybe.
There are also reports that the new SA/British variants may change this situation.
The 66% vaccines and the 90+% vaccines were about equally as effective at preventing severe COVID cases. More people get it on the 66% vaccine, but their cases were like a mild to medium flu.
Most experts seem to believe that COVID is not going to be one of those viruses like smallpox or polio that we can for all practical purposes eliminate. They believe COVID is going to like cold and flu viruses.
The long term goal then is to get it so that when we do get it, which most of us inevitably will at some point, it is no worse than a mild flu. The 66% vaccines are as good as the 90+% vaccines for that.
SARS-CoV-2 is nothing like influenza.
Technically, we could certainly eradicate this virus. It would take years, but it would be possible. It's just that it seems many countries just don't want to.
Because it's far more complicated (to manufacture and to distribute), and it isn't clear that it's necessary.
They all can go "realpolitik" but have their economies crushed and citizens lost for the sake of political rivalry then fight with each other who gets the Western vaccines first?
I'm sorry for asking it, I get that you don't like the question but I feel like it is a fair question. I'm not deleting this.
If today's publication changes that status for Sputnik V remains to be seen. Still many open questions.
Of course EU/UK/USA signed deals with their local companies first, just like China and Russia.
And in the case of China we have long history of problems with medical products.
Any sources on the "our long history of medical product problems with China and Russia"?
The Moderna vaccine had been designed by January 13, 2020 [1] -- before a single case was confirmed in the US. It took only a weekend to finish. In contrast it took nearly a year to finish testing, and even this was an abbreviated schedule.
I haven't seen anything to suggest that the Russian or Chinese vaccines were safer or more effective, or that they could be more easily produced in large numbers. Indeed, according to the data here [2], neither Russia nor China has vaccinated as many of their citizens as has the US.
[1] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/12/moderna-covid-19-vac...
[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/covid-vaccine-tracker-glo...
1. Theyre just publishing phase 3 results now, so they were slower than the mRNA shots
2. The Chinese and Russians will probably use their supply for themselves first (understandably), and so by the time they would have any to give us, we'll be almost done anyway.
Just seems like there's mostly no point.
Moderna and Pfizer are both American companies, and AstraZeneca is swedish/british with R&D in the US. These companies also have experience dealing with the FDA and EMA, which can't be underrated.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/canada-china-covi...
They would be starting from scratch, where with their own vaccines, I believe they had already started manufacturing them in anticipation that they would soon be approved.
Astrazeneca, J&J, Novavax, and Sputnik V.
Personally it makes me more confident in the FDA that they have yet to approve that vaccine.
In my opinion, the outstanding question is production capacity. Given the supply chains and geopolitics involved, I think the rational choice is to get whatever approved vaccine is available to you as soon as possible.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_V_COVID-19_vaccine
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_vaccine#Adenovirus_ve...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad26.COV2.S
Western leaders don't call vaccines developed in their countries as "the best Covid vaccine in the world". More so before any statistically relevant studies (faked or not) even ready.
>Nothing wrong with a bit of national price.
I think there is a difference (at least there shoudl be) between national pride and a fact distortion field.