outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

Fwiw Astra Zeneca claims to be selling the vaccine at cost. Not sure if that’s uk only. And not sure if r&d is included in the cost or it’s just manufacturing. But in any case I assume that’s why it’s the cheapest. (That and they saved money by not hiring someone who knows how to run a clinical trial.)

Having your company be behind one of humanities great achievements will probably be worth it.

yeah was gonna say how long's it been since one of these companies got good press

AstraZeneca/Oxford's chimp adenovirus can be produced in cell culture, and that's a fairly mature technology used for flu vaccines and the like. The Pfizer and Modern mRNA vaccines are produced by cell-free mRNA synthesis. The capital and ingredient costs can be a lot higher.

mRNA synthesis: an enzymatic reaction involving linearization of pDNA and mixing with enzymes and nucleotides to allow mRNA linearization, transcription, and mRNA capping.
mRNA purification: removal of enzymes, remaining nucleotides, pDNA and defective mRNA.
mRNA concentration and final, sterile filtration.

https://www.statnews.com/2020/11/23/astrazeneca-covid-19-vaccine-is-70-effective-on-average-early-data-show/

If a final analysis, conducted after the inclusion of additional data, concludes the vaccine’s actual efficacy is around 70%, that could be a problem.

“If it’s 70%, then we’ve got a dilemma,” said Fauci. “Because what are you going to do with the 70% when you’ve got two vaccines that are 95%? Who are you going to give a vaccine like that to?”

The problem was also flagged in an analysis by Geoffrey Porges of the investment bank Leerink. “We believe that this product will never be licensed in the US,” Porges wrote.

Fauci cautioned that full datasets — which the Oxford researchers said they intend to publish in a scientific journal — need to be pored over before conclusions can be drawn.

“We’ve got to look at the analyses, the real granular data. It’s always tough when you’re looking at a press release to figure out what’s going on,” Fauci said.

Other experts were more enthusiastic about the findings, suggesting the vaccine could be an important tool in low- and middle-income countries, where substantial production of the vaccine is expected to take place.

I'd still rather be in the UK where everyone who wants it gets a 70% vaccine in what i assume will be reasonably well-organized fashion, vs the shitshow we'll get in the US next year

https://newrepublic.com/article/157704/coronavirus-vaccine-united-states-health-care

The U.S. simply does not have anything resembling the infrastructure necessary to ensure that everyone gets anything, including food or water or shelter, let alone something that requires access to a health care worker. To the extent that we have ever aspired to this sort of capability, those traditions have long eroded, worn down by our debased politics. We do not have a National Health Service–style system, which was able to produce a (poorly handled but nevertheless extant) list of patients who were at high risk for the coronavirus. My mother in Britain, who has received immunotherapy for lung cancer for the past two years, was on this list. She received a text from the government telling her to stay inside for 12 weeks, plus a phone call and two letters, which also advised her of government resources for food and help for the extremely vulnerable and suggested that she spend time with the windows open or sitting on her doorstep. 

America does not really have a health care “system” at all; it has a chaotic array of overlapping systems of private and public health financing, clinics, hospitals, and doctors. This lack of a single system will pose a challenge for administering a vaccine to the entire population. It’s not as simple as adding one more to the list of vaccines that children receive or distributing vaccinations at schools: People of all ages will need one. Can you name a physical institution that every American interacts with and has easy access to and that is prepared to distribute something universal like this? The Social Security office? The DMV? McDonald’s? (Starbucks and McDonald’s bathrooms are often the only place homeless people can go to freshen up, so it’s not like we’re not used to substituting chain restaurants for a society.) The closest thing might be the post office, currently in danger of being left to rot and die because of the virus. It may be that setting up post offices with government-employed pharmacists to distribute the vaccine would be our best bet, given the lack of universal access to medical settings.

libraries?

> I'd still rather be in the UK where everyone who wants it gets a 70% vaccine in what i assume will be reasonably well-organized fashion

ha ha

“If it’s 70%, then we’ve got a dilemma,” said Fauci. “Because what are you going to do with the 70% when you’ve got two vaccines that are 95%? Who are you going to give a vaccine like that to?”

I would suppose the only answer to that would depend entirely on availability. Obviously, the 95% vaccine should be prioritized for high risk populations, but there will be a long line of successively lower priority people who might benefit from a 70% vaccine if it were available to them much sooner. I'm sure the health professionals will figure it out.

i walked into that one, and government services in the UK have room for improvement (lived there for 30 years). but this is one of those things like public transport in london/new york: there's lots of room for improvement but it sure beats the alternative. not sure if people in the UK realize how simply absent and/or maliciously badly run government services are in a lot of the rest of the world.

I'm sure the health professionals will figure it out.

this seems like a job for public health administration in a government. would be cool if the US had one rather than relying on thousands of city/county/state-level services to figure it out, and for-profit entities to do the right thing.

"I'm sure the health professionals will figure it out." -- the march 2020 federal plan for protective clothing and masks

well I trust my local health department more than I would trust a national one, if it existed

the march 2020 federal plan for protective clothing and masks

the health professionals wanted Trump to ask Congress for special appropriations to prepare for the virus in January. he couldn't be bothered and they had no power to bypass him.

This country

> I'd still rather be in the UK where everyone who wants it gets a 70% vaccine in what i assume will be reasonably well-organized fashion

ha ha

LOL yes. Boris, Matt Hancock and the rest of these clowns haven't exactly covered themselves in glory so far.

There's over 5 billion in less developed nations who would be thrilled by a 70% effective vaccine that doesn't require extraordinary measures for distributi9on. Almost no dose of the AstraZenica/Oxford vaccine will go wasted.

The most interesting thing about the mRNA vaccines is they took a couple of days to design, many months to ramp production to scale. The fact that they worked is a epochal event. Once that mRNA vaccine manufacturing infrastructure is in place, there's no reason not to try vaccines against numerous nuisance infectious diseases or chronic diseases perpetuated by unfortunate signaling cascades. By 2030, I expect we'll see two dozen mRNA vaccines against both emerging infectious diseases and against dysregulated endogenous signaling. The past month has probably been like Christmas to experimental endocrinologists.

LOL yes. Boris, Matt Hancock and the rest of these clowns haven't exactly covered themselves in glory so far.

i think the latter are handicapped by the former.

3 examples off the top of my head:

100,000 test target met by putting 40k tests in the post hours before the deadline. (and those 100k tests didn't cover 100k people like they originally promised. my theory is that they counted each nostril separately)
https://fullfact.org/health/coronavirus-100k-tests/

20 tonnes of ppe 'on its way' from turkey despite not being ordered yet. none of it met standards, none was used.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/22/delayed-plane-carrying-ppe-from-turkey-lands-in-uk-coronavirus
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/07/all-400000-gowns-flown-from-turkey-for-nhs-fail-uk-standards

track and trace and ppe contracts given without contest to large tory donors.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/09/uk-government-fails-to-publish-details-of-4bn-covid-contracts-with-private-firms

forgot an obvious one - the chaos around testing - non-availability and long delays

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-britain/amid-covid-testing-chaos-uk-says-were-trying-to-fix-it-idUKKBN2670PB

OTM. The politicians are lazy, incompetent and corrupt, they are in charge. The public health officials and civil servants are underfunded, undermined and demoralized, they take their orders from the politicians.

Real “transport in London is shit” stuff here.

Yes, don't listen to us, we've only got a higher death rate than the US, we've got nothing to worry about.

weird ruler to be measuring one's dick by

I don't think you get the nuance behind that “transport in London is shit” crack.

yes it was so hard to parse

So you parsed it was a shitty snide remark to make?

All because the poster had his nose out of joint for being pulled up on a stupid post they'd made?

I think getting into a "we're going fuck this up worse than you will" pissing match is incredibly fucking dumb for everyone involved

like congrats, the end result is that more of all of us die: you win

Only one person was doing that, that I can see.

Then... open your eyes

You're both arguing about how much worse everything is where you are than it is where the other one is and there's literally no point to it.

No we're not. koogs and I would never claim that things were worse in the UK, in terms of health provision, we were only countering the idea that everything was hunky dory over here and it'll be a breeze handing out vaccines to all and sundry, like candy. koogs gave a whole shopping list of reasons why this was an overly rose-tinted view of the UK. That's all.

caek coming back with that 'transport in london is shit' jibe was below the belt

League table of shitty national pandemic responses:
1. US
2. Brazil
3. Mexico
4. UK
5. Belgium, apparently

Certain outliers like Russia and Iran lack robust data for inclusion here.

we were only countering the idea that everything was hunky dory over here and it'll be a breeze handing out vaccines to all and sundry

Forget it. I'll keep out of this thread in future. Another one out of bounds.

> koogs and I would never claim that things were worse in the UK

i might! the death tolls in the uk were like 3rd worst in the world, by population, at one point (and we are still 5th, after belgium, peru, spain, italy)

those things i posted and probably 10 times more would be proper scandals in other years and contributes to the 400+ deaths a day we are currently seeing. but i know they don't make international news and so foreigners might be unaware.

I've been either looking at the Worldometer Coronavirus page (sorted by deaths/1M) or @KagroX's daily top 10 thread daily since May, like some kind of macabre sports rankings. Only SE Asia, Oceania, and in Europe, Scandanavia ex-Sweden, the Baltics, Greece and Germany have been doing well at all. Everywhere else is either a shitshow, or (in the case of most of Subaharan Africa) probably doesn't have reliable stats.

https://calmatters.org/newsletters/whatmatters/2020/11/california-edd-fraud-claims-inmates/

Bloomberg: Astra Vaccine’s 90% Efficacy in Covid Came in Younger Group

The dose of AstraZeneca Plc’s Covid vaccine that showed the highest level of effectiveness was tested in a younger population than a bigger dose that showed less efficacy, according to the head of the U.S. Operation Warp Speed program.

The vaccine being developed with Oxford University was 90% effective when a half-dose was given before a full-dose booster, the partners said on Monday. However, that regime was administered to participants in a group whose age was capped at 55, Warp Speed’s Moncef Slaoui said Tuesday in a phone call with reporters.

Researchers have been puzzling about the AstraZeneca report since it was released, wondering why a smaller dose of the vaccine might have appeared to be more effective than a larger one. Most of the people in the trial received a placebo or the regimen of two full doses, which was 62% effective. That group included people who were older than 55, Slaoui said.

jfc

Britain’s best brains are on it 🇬🇧

Oops.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/25/culled-mink-rise-from-the-dead-denmark-coronavirus

mmmm delicious

astra zentake-a minute to check your work willya??

lol

astra not-zen eca