ADVERTISEMENT

Thread on testing & treatment research for COVID-19

Yet not a single mention in the article about what the cost would be.

some things really don't need to be spelled out. Creating the vaccine in eggs is quite inexpensive. That's how influenza vaccines are created. Most of the big US drug companies, who pretty much all used to make and distribute flu vaccines, dropped out of the flu market in the past 20 years due to how inexpensive the process had become, and as such how low the profit margin was on the flu vaccine. The "low-cost" that is mentioned in the title is implied by some of the info in the article. Plus, at this stage in the development, it's unlikely that the drug company even knows how much it will cost to produce the vaccine. I'm sure they're looking at it, but until they get through Phase II trials, they won't have a good handle on the costs, and they'll still have to wait for the Phase III trials to see if anything needs to be tweaked.
 
  • Like
Reactions: tgar
Good research although I doubt it will have much effect on how the world fights this Covid 19 pandemic as based on what I read, they are ways off to get approval of a vaccine made that way for Covid-19. And considering the current production rates of P/M/AZ/J&J and soon to be Novavax combine with Russian Sputnik and the several the Chinese are putting out, the math says by the time they go through a Phase III trial and get results and get approved that all the aforementioned vaccine makers will have already have produced enough vaccine as is needed. So might be good research for a future vaccine similar to the way a lot of work was done a while back on mRNA that now is so important and relevant.

fortunately for the population of the planet, scientists and drug companies have not adopted your approach. In the past week, three COVID vaccine candidates entered Phase I trials, and one COVID vaccine candidate entered a Phase I/II trial. If you expand the timeframe to two weeks, the numbers are four candidates entered Phase I trials, one candidate entered Phase II trials, and two candidates entered Phase I/II trials. And if you expand the timeframe to 16 days, you have the numbers from the prior sentence plus one candidate entering Phase III trials.

On a micro level, the Pfizer and the Moderna vaccine temperature requirements remain a big problem for their use in many areas of the world. The J&J vaccine doesn't have those issues. The AZ vaccine also doesn't have those issues, but there is reluctance by a lot of countries to use it, or in populations within countries where it is adopted to get vaccinated with it, due to the blood clot issues that raised in a small number of recipients.

On a macro level, there is a need for a number of vaccine options to reach herd immunity around the world. The data on all of the approved vaccines is only available for less than one year, so it remains to be seen if the vaccines you mentioned provide permanent immunity. Plus, variants are a natural occurrence in vaccines, so even if the existing vaccines provide long-term immunity against the wild and the currently existing variants, in time that may not be the case.

Also, as mentioned in the article, some people have more confidence in a vaccine produced within their nation than in a foreign vaccine. If there are a plethora of options available from a variety of countries, and an issue like that is what it takes many folks to get vaccinated, then the people of the planet are better off for having a wide arrange of vaccine options.
 
  • Like
Reactions: tgar
fortunately for the population of the planet, scientists and drug companies have not adopted your approach. In the past week, three COVID vaccine candidates entered Phase I trials, and one COVID vaccine candidate entered a Phase I/II trial. If you expand the timeframe to two weeks, the numbers are four candidates entered Phase I trials, one candidate entered Phase II trials, and two candidates entered Phase I/II trials. And if you expand the timeframe to 16 days, you have the numbers from the prior sentence plus one candidate entering Phase III trials.

On a micro level, the Pfizer and the Moderna vaccine temperature requirements remain a big problem for their use in many areas of the world. The J&J vaccine doesn't have those issues. The AZ vaccine also doesn't have those issues, but there is reluctance by a lot of countries to use it, or in populations within countries where it is adopted to get vaccinated with it, due to the blood clot issues that raised in a small number of recipients.

On a macro level, there is a need for a number of vaccine options to reach herd immunity around the world. The data on all of the approved vaccines is only available for less than one year, so it remains to be seen if the vaccines you mentioned provide permanent immunity. Plus, variants are a natural occurrence in vaccines, so even if the existing vaccines provide long-term immunity against the wild and the currently existing variants, in time that may not be the case.

Also, as mentioned in the article, some people have more confidence in a vaccine produced within their nation than in a foreign vaccine. If there are a plethora of options available from a variety of countries, and an issue like that is what it takes many folks to get vaccinated, then the people of the planet are better off for having a wide arrange of vaccine options.
The Novavax entry might make a big dent in the problem. From what I saw, it was single dose, effective and with low side effects. It also doesn’t have any special low temp requirements. Their CEO said they plan to produce 2 B doses this year.
 
  • Like
Reactions: dailybuck777
This is two of the Chinese vaccines, so I'm posting for general info, though it doesn't impact folks in the USA

 
A study on the Moderna vaccine at 6 months. It appears to pretty much be the same as what was released last week for the Pfizer vaccine at 6 months.

 
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT