[y66]

Covid-19 vaccine makers lobby EU for legal protection by Donato Paolo Mancini and Michael Peel at FT.

Tough call when trust levels are so low.

[pilowsky]

I don't know how many of you have access to The Lancet, so here is a copy of the recent report concerning the new vaccine from Oxford.
I have read it and it looks very promising.

Safety and immunogenicity of the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine against SARS-CoV-2: a preliminary report of a phase 1/2, single-blind, randomised controlled trial

[Zelandakh]

pilowsky, on 2020-August-25, 18:45, said:

I have read it and it looks very promising.

Let's talk after Phase 3 double-blind trials have concluded.

[pilowsky]

Zelandakh, on 2020-August-25, 20:23, said:

Let's talk after Phase 3 double-blind trials have concluded.

Let's keep the Trump administration far away from it.

[johnu]

Zelandakh, on 2020-August-25, 20:23, said:

Let's talk after Phase 3 double-blind trials have concluded.

Yes, too many questions are unresolved.

There was this story making the news cycle.

Some people can get the pandemic virus twice, a study suggests. That is no reason to panic

Maybe no reason to panic, but obvious reason for concern about what this means for vaccines.

Phase 3 trials need to confirm appropriate dosages, whether 2 (or more) doses need to be administered and how long between doses if more than 1 is required. Obviously if 2 (or more) doses are required, that will double the amount of vaccine that needs to be produced and that will have significant effect on the distribution and delivery chain.

There are several approaches taken by the hundred plus vaccine developers. Could taking 2 different vaccines that target different features on the coronavirus be substantially more effective, especially when the FDA has suggested that they would approve a vaccine that was only effective for 50% of those vaccinated.

[Zelandakh]

johnu, on 2020-August-26, 13:22, said:

Some people can get the pandemic virus twice, a study suggests. That is no reason to panic

I honestly do not know why this is news now. It was reported already back in March or April that there were examples of people re-catching coronavirus and there have been plenty of cases documented since then. There was even a case fairly early on of a single patient getting it 3 times. Now it is possible that some of those cases were due to faulty testing - the early tests were not definitive - but the chances of all of them being down to that are vanishingly small, and obviously the more recently known cases come with the more secure tests now available. So it is great to have a study to document how often this happens and how long the antibodies provide immunity in the typical case but to suggest that at this point the headline is that it can happen at all is completely missing the point.

[cherdano]

Zelandakh, on 2020-August-26, 13:54, said:

I honestly do not know why this is news now. It was reported already back in March or April that there were examples of people re-catching coronavirus and there have been plenty of cases documented since then. There was even a case fairly early on of a single patient getting it 3 times. Now it is possible that some of those cases were due to faulty testing - the early tests were not definitive - but the chances of all of them being down to that are vanishingly small, and obviously the more recently known cases come with the more secure tests now available. So it is great to have a study to document how often this happens and how long the antibodies provide immunity in the typical case but to suggest that at this point the headline is that it can happen at all is completely missing the point.

I think you are missing the main difference for the new case. Normally, it's impossible to say whether a patient got sick again from the same virus still running around in his body, or whether they got re-infected from someone else. To put it differently, it is unclear whether the sequence positive test-negative test-positive test is just due to a false negative in the middle. (Just because you have the virus on your body doesn't mean you'll shed it on a throat/nasal swab.) But in the case of the Hong Kong patient, they had sequenced the DNA of his virus back in March; so now they could sequence the virus of his reinfection, and prove that they are different.

Having said that, I think everyone expected that a few people could get reinfected, and the main question was how often that might happen. I.e., on the larger point I agree.

[johnu]

Zelandakh, on 2020-August-26, 13:54, said:

I honestly do not know why this is news now. It was reported already back in March or April that there were examples of people re-catching coronavirus and there have been plenty of cases documented since then. There was even a case fairly early on of a single patient getting it 3 times. Now it is possible that some of those cases were due to faulty testing - the early tests were not definitive - but the chances of all of them being down to that are vanishingly small, and obviously the more recently known cases come with the more secure tests now available. So it is great to have a study to document how often this happens and how long the antibodies provide immunity in the typical case but to suggest that at this point the headline is that it can happen at all is completely missing the point.

You are the one missing the point. IIRC, there was always some doubt whether those "reinfected" were actual cases of reinfection, or if it they were cases of relapse where the virus had been suppressed to the point where the tests were negative (or maybe the test were giving false negatives) and had come roaring back where the test were now positive, or if the tests were picking up remnants of the virus that were no longer viable, etc.

Out of tens of millions of cases, there are always going to be anomalies. We know that ordinary flu shots are formulated for particular strains of flu (even though not everybody is actually protected from catching the flu) but that if a flu strain becomes prevalent that wasn't expected by vaccine makers then you will have limited protection from the flu shot. One of the unknowns has been whether a COVID-19 vaccine will protect against different strains of the virus. And of course, how long will you get protection from a vaccine. There are currently 6 strains of SARS-CoV-2 virus so how many more will evolve by the time the 1st vaccines roll out and will the vaccines protect against new strains (or all of the current ones)?

I think these are important questions.

[FelicityR]

Soap, alcohol-based sanitisers and now a derivative of lemon eucalyptus oil

https://www.theguard...19-says-mod-lab

No doubt there's already a run of citriodiol products as I write...

[johnu]

johnu, on 2020-August-26, 15:55, said:

You are the one missing the point. IIRC, there was always some doubt whether those "reinfected" were actual cases of reinfection, or if it they were cases of relapse where the virus had been suppressed to the point where the tests were negative (or maybe the test were giving false negatives) and had come roaring back where the test were now positive, or if the tests were picking up remnants of the virus that were no longer viable, etc.

Out of tens of millions of cases, there are always going to be anomalies. We know that ordinary flu shots are formulated for particular strains of flu (even though not everybody is actually protected from catching the flu) but that if a flu strain becomes prevalent that wasn't expected by vaccine makers then you will have limited protection from the flu shot. One of the unknowns has been whether a COVID-19 vaccine will protect against different strains of the virus. And of course, how long will you get protection from a vaccine. There are currently 6 strains of SARS-CoV-2 virus so how many more will evolve by the time the 1st vaccines roll out and will the vaccines protect against new strains (or all of the current ones)?

I think these are important questions.

Nevada man becomes first in the US to catch COVID-19 twice

Quote

He then tested positive for the coronavirus a second time. Another test revealed he had antibodies against the infection.

Dr. Mark Pandori, director of the Nevada State Public Health Laboratory, said in a statement that the fact that a person was reinfected “on such a short timeline” indicates “there may be implications for the efficacy of vaccines developed to fight the disease,” as well as for herd immunity.

The other notable fact is that the patient got sicker the 2nd time he was infected. Other cases of reinfection resulted in milder symptoms. Fortunately for vaccine studies, the Manchurian President and his sidekick from Brazil are doing everything they can do to keep infections rates high so that studies will have enough test cases to get significant results. Way to go Grifter

[pilowsky]

There is nothing surprising or exciting about getting a viral infection twice. There is no need to breathlessly report it on the forum as though the world was about to come to a grinding halt.
In February when nobody was taking it seriously and I was trying to get Bridge clubs to close - and being ignored by the Trump supporters that run them - I came down with an URTI. (upper respiratory tract infection)..
As an ex-smoker prone to developing bacterial superinfection I went to my local GP who sent me for a viral panel. It came back positive for rhinovirus. But negative for sars-cov2.
I started antibiotics for the super-infection and got better.
About two weeks later it recurred. Another test came back with the same result: rhinovirus had struck again.

Don't worry about it. It's going to be with us for a long time - just like the flu virus. My guess is that now that it's here it will start mutating and we'll have to keep ahead of it with polyvalent vaccines in the same way that we do with influenza.

Think of computing as a metaphor. In 1971 we had log-books. In 1974 slide rules. In 1975 HP 125 calculators - this was the computing power that enabled the moon landing.
When I learned Fortran at University in 1975 personal computers did not exist. The story of vaccine development has followed a similar arc.

The problem we are facing at the moment is that the largest most powerful best-resourced country in the world is handling the largest environmental health and economic crisis history has ever seen with all the dexterity of a five-year-old child performing neurosurgery with a teaspoon.

[barmar]

pilowsky, on 2020-August-28, 18:06, said:

There is nothing surprising or exciting about getting a viral infection twice. There is no need to breathlessly report it on the forum as though the world was about to come to a grinding halt.

I think the point is that it has implications on how well vaccines can be expected to work. The whole idea of vaccines is based on the notion that the immune system learns to fight a pathogen after encountering it the first time.

It's known that in some cases the immunity isn't permanent, so you need to get periodic boosters. But if people can get COVID-19 twice in just a few months, it suggests that vaccines might not work well at all, which is at least troubling, and at worst a real disaster, depending on how anomalous these cases are.

The problem is that we still don't have enough history of this disease to make any clear conclusions. It's not irrational to find these reports unsettling.

[pilowsky]

I don't want to quibble Barry. I think we are on the same side here.


When I say that the problem is that the USA is stuffing it up, I mean that Jared Kushner (who is about six years old in terms of being a medical scientist)/Peter Navarro/Fox and friends and their colleagues in crime are propping up a demented mob Boss whose sole concern is stealing all the wealth in the world.

People say that I should butt out because it's none of my business because I am not an American. Unfortunately, America is a herd of angry elephants in a very small tent. They are pissing me off. They are destroying my world.

That's why I am annoyed.

When Howard Florey invented Penicillin in Oxford he gave it to the world: no charge.
An American drug company promptly patented it and reaped massive profits. One of the phase 1 trial subjects at Oxford became the Dean of Medicine at my University.
Florey was so annoyed at this that when he subsequently invented methicillin he got Oxford to patent it so the University would retain some profit.
Now, Oxford has reached a licensing agreement with Astra-Zeneca and everyone is up in arms.

Amazing!

America is a failed state. Europe was doing quite well so they dumped their children into the 'new world'. The result: 'The Lord of the Flies' - That's what the USA is. Endless re-runs of the Lord of the Flies. It permeates US literature and film. Battle Royale in Japan by Beat Takeshi sent it up.
this was riffed on in that stupid film with the girl who used a bow and arrow.
Now we have a failed real estate agent in the white house pretending he's gods gift to temptation island.
I shouldn't have turned down the offer to go on the Bachelor - it probably would have paid better than Bridge. It would have made as much sense as Trump being President. Tom Lehrer gave up political satire when Henry Kissinger got the Nobel peace prize - we need him back.

[johnu]

Trump task force adviser pushing for 'herd immunity' strategy: report

Quote

A controversial health adviser to President Trump is reportedly pushing the administration to adopt a “herd immunity” mentality to the coronavirus pandemic.

According to The Washington Post, radiologist Scott Atlas is advocating for the model Sweden has used to respond to the COVID-19 outbreak by letting the virus infect healthy people while only protecting the elderly and vulnerable.

The approach taken in the Scandinavian country was meant to let people get on with their lives free of any virus-related restrictions, something that Atlas, who recently joined the White House task force, has been advocating.

Isnt' it "Beautiful" that the Manchurian President is recycling ideas that were were awful the first time around. I think it's about time to start promoting hydroxychloroquine again, or maybe it is Clorox smoothies or UV enemas. I can't keep up with all the amazing ideas coming out of the White House.

[Zelandakh]

pilowsky, on 2020-August-31, 19:26, said:

When Howard Florey invented Penicillin in Oxford he gave it to the world: no charge.

While Florey undoubtedly deserved his Nobel Prize for his work in forging the penicillin mold into a useful medicine, he most assuredly did not invent it. It was famously found and catalogued by Fleming, Craddock, Pryce and La Touche, most likely coming from La Touche's lab downstairs. It is also quite possible that it had been used, admittedly haphazardly, in other cultures previously to this as the use of molds in treatment was quite common in many places.

In any case, the pioneer for the medicinal use of penicillin was Paine. It was not until 10 years later, over 12 years after the discovery, that Florey got involved. His work, in combination with a large team (Chain received the Nobel Prize, the others did not) was indeed instrumental in making penicillin into the life-saving drug it became but give him credit for what he did do and not for something that he clearly did not.

Finally, I will point out that Florey specifically went to the USA to try and persuade pharmaceutical companies to invest in mass production of the drug. He can hardly have expected that they would do that "for the good of mankind" rather than for profit. The point was that the team barely had enough penicillin even to treat adults (the first patient died due to insufficient quantities of the drug) and they therefore did the majority of their testing on children. So the involvement of large American companies was necessary. Is that giving it to the world for free? Perhaps, but you can blame him just as much as Pfizer and co for the patents.

At the end of the day though, if those mass production techniques had not been developed then many, many more people would have died in WW2 and beyond, so it was surely the right thing to have done. In this case we should be thankful for the involvement of American pharmaceutical corporations and not annoyed. Sometimes capitalism does actually work, even in the field of medicine.

[thepossum]

pilowsky, on 2020-August-31, 19:26, said:

Now, Oxford has reached a licensing agreement with Astra-Zeneca and everyone is up in arms.

It's amazing really. People without a business, investment, risk clue lecturing everyone over commercial production of a vaccine when many will fall by the way side losing all investment. Has to be given away for free without covering costs and a reasonable return on those who risk their capital. Expecting a corporation used to investment and medication risk to take all liability commercially when they are fast tracking everything for everyone's benefit. Seemingly those same people think money grows on trees and there are fairies at the bottom of gardens. EDIT I forgot. I imagine they think you can research develop and produce vaccines for 7.5 billion people for nothing

[pilowsky]

Zelandakh, on 2020-August-31, 20:21, said:

While Florey undoubtedly deserved his Nobel Prize for his work in forging the penicillin mold into a useful medicine, he most assuredly did not invent it. It was famously found and catalogued by Fleming, Craddock, Pryce and La Touche, most likely coming from La Touche's lab downstairs. It is also quite possible that it had been used, admittedly haphazardly, in other cultures previously to this as the use of molds in treatment was quite common in many places.

In any case, the pioneer for the medicinal use of penicillin was Paine. It was not until 10 years later, over 12 years after the discovery, that Florey got involved. His work, in combination with a large team (Chain received the Nobel Prize, the others did not) was indeed instrumental in making penicillin into the life-saving drug it became but give him credit for what he did do and not for something that he clearly did not.

Finally, I will point out that Florey specifically went to the USA to try and persuade pharmaceutical companies to invest in mass production of the drug. He can hardly have expected that they would do that "for the good of mankind" rather than for profit. The point was that the team barely had enough penicillin even to treat adults (the first patient died due to insufficient quantities of the drug) and they, therefore, did the majority of their testing on children. So the involvement of large American companies was necessary. Is that giving it to the world for free? Perhaps, but you can blame him just as much as Pfizer and co for the patents.

At the end of the day though, if those mass production techniques had not been developed then many, many more people would have died in WW2 and beyond, so it was surely the right thing to have done. In this case we should be thankful for the involvement of American pharmaceutical corporations and not annoyed. Sometimes capitalism does actually work, even in the field of medicine.

It always amazes how people that know the full story can mangle the truth.
Fleming came back from holidays and picked up a Petri dish and complained to his staff "What's all this then" - not a scientist - not a discovery.
Tyndall was a physicist. He discovered an effect. Part of which included Penicillium Nostatum particles floating in light beams. Also does not count.
It only counts when you do what Florey and Chain did. But then you aren't a Medical Scientist, are you? That's why they got the prize. Of course, if you are sure that the Nobel award committee made a mistake, and it sounds like you think that you have a good case, write to the Karolinska in Stockholm with your concerns. You do understand the terms of Alfred Nobel's will about how many people can get the award etc don't you?
When they write back (if) PLEASE publish the response here I really would love to see it .
Interestingly, when the people at Adelaide University met up with Florey many years later and asked him why he never came back to Australia he replied that they had never asked him. Oh said the vice-chancellor - 'but we put an advertisement in the newspaper - you didn't apply'.
How's it going in the Old Country by the way?

[hrothgar]

thepossum, on 2020-August-31, 21:10, said:

It's amazing really. People without a business, investment, risk clue lecturing everyone over commercial production of a vaccine when many will fall by the way side losing all investment. Has to be given away for free without covering costs and a reasonable return on those who risk their capital. Expecting a corporation used to investment and medication risk to take all liability commercially when they are fast tracking everything for everyone's benefit. Seemingly those same people think money grows on trees and there are fairies at the bottom of gardens. EDIT I forgot. I imagine they think you can research develop and produce vaccines for 7.5 billion people for nothing

No one is claiming that vaccines can be researched and distributed for free.

With this said and done, over the years lots of people have argued that systems of production in which fixed costs are extremely high compared to variable costs are incompatible with the necessary assumptions that economists use to describe a free market.

[cherdano]

The specific critique of the Oxford-Astrazeneca deal is a little more complicated. The development and trials of the vaccine are fully taxpayer-funded (in my understanding). Nevertheless, Oxford agreed to an exclusive deal with Astrazeneca to produce and distribute the vaccine. In exchange, Astrazeneca agreed to do so on a not-for-profit basis during the pandemic.
But my understanding is that we (the public) don't really know the details.

I have mixed feelings about this. Why does the deal have to be exclusive? What does "during the pandemic" mean? What does "not-for-profit" even mean? (Can the company raise salaries of those who've worked extremly hard to set up production and distribution of a new vaccine at a completely unprecedented scale? Can it raise their salaries tenfolds?) The stock market certainly seems to think Astrazeneca will end up with a significant profit.
On the other hand, doing this without a corporation would be hopelessly inefficient - can you imagine the EU contracting with individual companies to produce glass vials, etc.? And who cares about wasting some tens of billions if it means getting a vaccine out a few weeks earlier?

[Zelandakh]

pilowsky, on 2020-August-31, 21:35, said:

It always amazes how people that know the full story can mangle the truth.
Fleming came back from holidays and picked up a Petri dish and complained to his staff "What's all this then" - not a scientist - not a discovery.
Tyndall was a physicist. He discovered an effect. Part of which included Penicillium Nostatum particles floating in light beams. Also does not count.
It only counts when you do what Florey and Chain did. But then you aren't a Medical Scientist, are you? That's why they got the prize. Of course, if you are sure that the Nobel award committee made a mistake, and it sounds like you think that you have a good case, write to the Karolinska in Stockholm with your concerns. You do understand the terms of Alfred Nobel's will about how many people can get the award etc don't you?
When they write back (if) PLEASE publish the response here I really would love to see it .
Interestingly, when the people at Adelaide University met up with Florey many years later and asked him why he never came back to Australia he replied that they had never asked him. Oh said the vice-chancellor - 'but we put an advertisement in the newspaper - you didn't apply'.
How's it going in the Old Country by the way?

Which is why I mentioned not only Fleming but also his team. There are many who believe that La Touche should get more credit than Fleming for the discovery as that is probably where the culture came from but it was Fleming's paper and so, according to scientific precedent, he takes the primary credit.

pilowsky, on 2020-August-31, 21:35, said:

It only counts when you do what Florey and Chain did. But then you aren't a Medical Scientist, are you? That's why they got the prize. Of course, if you are sure that the Nobel award committee made a mistake, and it sounds like you think that you have a good case, write to the Karolinska in Stockholm with your concerns.

Did you actually read my post? Here's the very first sentence:

Zelandakh, on 2020-August-31, 20:21, said:

While Florey undoubtedly deserved his Nobel Prize for his work in forging the penicillin mold into a useful medicine, he most assuredly did not invent it.

My personal opinion is that what Florey and his team did is much more significant for the development of penicillin than Fleming and his team. My point was not that Florey's achievements should be downplayed but rather celebrated for what they are and not embellished. He did not invent penicillin. Acknowledge that you used the wrong word here (privately, if not publicly), learn from it and move on.