AstraZeneca lowers efficacy claim for COVID-19 vaccine, a bit, after board's rebuke:
Seeking to quell a controversy of its own making, AstraZeneca yesterday issued new data from the latest clinical trial of its COVID-19 vaccine, slightly downgrading its previous estimate of how well the shots protect people from symptomatic disease. The update came after an extraordinary rebuke issued late Monday night by the study's independent monitoring board, which complained that the company had used potentially misleading and "outdated" data in its initial analysis.
The two-dose vaccine, made by AstraZeneca with technology developed by the University of Oxford, had 76% efficacy against symptomatic COVID-19 among the 32,000 trial participants in the United States and South America, the company stated in a press release distributed late last night. That's 3% lower than AstraZeneca reported in a press release on 22 March. The new analysis is based on 190 COVID-19 cases that occurred in people who had received the vaccine or a placebo; the previous one evaluated 141 cases, which AstraZeneca says was a pre-specified cutoff point for an interim analysis.
[...] The harsh criticism from the Data and Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB), combined with a string of communication blunders by AstraZeneca, has given many researchers pause about the company—and, in turn, the vaccine. "The new revised numbers are reassuring, but at this point, they have lost so much of their credibility that I'm reserving judgment about what their trials showed until the FDA has a chance to evaluate it," says Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health. (AstraZeneca says it will soon submit its trial data to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to obtain emergency use authorization of the vaccine.)
[...] Peter Hotez, a researcher at Baylor University whose team is developing its own low-cost COVID-19 vaccine, says he worries about the public losing faith in the AstraZeneca-Oxford product. "We have almost no vaccines to immunize the 1.7 billion people living in Africa and Latin America, and we need this one," says Hotez. He hopes the new numbers will help restore confidence but would like to see a fuller explanation of the controversy: "Some clarity and frankness as to what happened and an accounting for the discrepancy might be helpful."
"I can only hope that the controversy ... will serve as a reminder to all about the importance of good communication," adds Nicole Lurie, a former U.S. government health official who works with the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations—"and how critical it is to vaccine confidence."
Also at The Wall Street Journal, the BBC, and STAT.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by hemocyanin on Friday March 26 2021, @08:09PM (13 children)
I ran across this interesting AC comment the other day, but it was properly marked OT in the context in which it was posted and so I did not list it. In this thread however, it would be on-topic. I haven't investigated the legitimacy of the claims made, but it might be interesting to dig into this.
https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=21/03/19/1353204&cid=1126618 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday March 26 2021, @08:26PM (1 child)
And it's the AstraZeneca that the US wants to
offloaddonate to Canada and Mexico. What a mess! [imgix.net]La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 26 2021, @11:55PM
There are a lot of white people in Canada - don't sweat it if they get a substandard vax. It's Mexico that pisses all us good Wokers off!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 26 2021, @08:41PM (9 children)
It is also the only one without the artificial double proline mutation at the top of the S2 central helix.
(Score: 1) by hemocyanin on Friday March 26 2021, @08:43PM (8 children)
I'm not a bio-geek -- any chance the significance and meaning can be explained for the ordinary among us?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 26 2021, @09:04PM (7 children)
The spike protein has two regions, S1 and S2. The S1 region mutates much faster and the antibodies towards it wane about 30% faster than S2.
The more conserved S2 region antibodies also cross react with cold viruses, etc which give natural immunity boosts.
So for robust long lasting immunity you want anti-S2 antibodies, but for most of the vaccines they mutated S2 to have two prolines because this was found to induce more antibodies *at first* towards the part that binds ACE2 (receptor binding domain, rbd). The effect this has on effectiveness of the more robust anti-S2 antibodies remains unstudied and unknown.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 26 2021, @09:53PM (4 children)
And now who will explain that one level lower for the AC retards?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 26 2021, @10:24PM (1 child)
There is reason to think the AZ vaccine will be more robust over the long term than the others, but the data is lacking.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 27 2021, @07:31AM
OK and now even lower - two steps - for the Trumptards. Try to use hydroxychloride in your answer.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Tork on Friday March 26 2021, @10:43PM (1 child)
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 27 2021, @07:29AM
Oh that was you!? I thought it was one of the animals.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 26 2021, @10:22PM (1 child)
Also, the RBD is in S1.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 26 2021, @10:37PM
and ye slythy toves
Did gyre and gymble in ye wabe:
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 27 2021, @10:03PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scorpion_and_the_Frog [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Friday March 26 2021, @09:23PM (1 child)
If things were normal your vaccine would end up on the shit heap of failures. But things being as they are your vaccine is better than nothing, so welcome to the club.
Of course I'm against DEI. Donald, Eric, and Ivanka.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 26 2021, @11:16PM
Um... yeah... 62 years is a bit old to be surprised that doctors don't do background checks on people before administering life-saving drugs. Even Star Trek covered this.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 26 2021, @09:25PM (13 children)
We have vaccines that are 94%+ effective, so why bother with one that leaves a quarter of the population vulnerable and a reservoir for the virus?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 26 2021, @09:32PM
Something is better than nothing? Unless you get a blood clot.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 26 2021, @09:36PM
Reporting one number for effectiveness is not even wrong. You need to account for waning and new variants.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 26 2021, @09:41PM (4 children)
Pfizer/Moderna vaccines' numbers are from trials a good bit earlier, before all these variants started to pop up.
70% efficacy is a home-run - compare that to flu vaccines with 50% efficacy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 26 2021, @09:56PM
> compare that to flu vaccines with 50% efficacy.
OK - it's 20% higher. Anything else I can help you with, Sir?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 26 2021, @10:45PM (1 child)
And numbers since show Pfizer is still effective against the variants, so why use something that we know is far less effective?
Everyone I work with who got vaccinated I was going to refuse anything except Pfizer and Moderna. Because a shitty vaccine now is worth less than a better one a few months down the road. Fucking politicians and their@take whatever is offered” spin.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 27 2021, @07:36AM
Thanks for the data, I'll update my spreadsheet. 1 white male I presume, with hypertension, plus everyone he knows wants a specific brand of vaccine. Consider that box checked.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 26 2021, @10:50PM
(Score: 2, Touché) by Runaway1956 on Friday March 26 2021, @11:59PM (2 children)
Do we really? Forgive me for having doubts.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 27 2021, @07:39AM (1 child)
Would you like a side of data with those doubts?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 27 2021, @10:08PM
Leaving out the NIH syndrome?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 27 2021, @12:11AM (1 child)
The other vaccine studies tested anyone who developed covid-like symptoms during the trials, to determine the percentage failure. The AstraZeneca tested *everyone* and so caught asymptomatic cases, so appears to have a higher rate of failure.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 27 2021, @02:41PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 27 2021, @08:56PM
"that leaves a quarter of the population vulnerable and a reservoir for the virus?"
Your precious experimental gene therapy(not vaccine) turns you dumb slaves into a disease-producing factory. You suck-asses are the threat to human health, not the un-poisoned. You're a fucking coward and you deserve what's coming your way.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday March 27 2021, @01:00AM (12 children)
If we have vaccines that don't prevent the spread of the disease per se but *do* prevent symptoms worse than a mild cold and--most importantly--stop "long covid" from happening, I will count that as a win. I don't think we're going to eradicate this virus like we did with smallpox; the coronaviridae family mutates like mad, and most of our seasonal colds are in the same family.
If this vaccine allows us to think of, and function with, this particular coronavirus the way we do all the seasonal colds and such, I will call it a winner. We don't need to let the perfect be the enemy of the good enough here.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 27 2021, @01:21AM (4 children)
Cool, you want the virus to mutate so no baby can survive unless big pharma approves the vax for it.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/tthis-chicken-vaccine-makes-virus-dangerous [pbs.org]
Me too, I love it when people are treated like chattle.
(Score: 2) by helel on Saturday March 27 2021, @03:10AM (2 children)
That is a genuinely disturbing possibility concerning a "leaky" COVID vaccine. As a matter of personal communication it would help if you spent more (read: any) time expounding on your actual concern and less (read: none) time making stupid accusations that others want to see this pandemic become both more protracted and more deadly.
To summarize, for those that didn't give the above troll their time: Marek's disease is often deadly to chickens so we developed a vaccine. The vaccine protects the inoculated foul from death but Marek's can still replicate in their bodies and spread to others. This, in turn, has allowed Marek's disease to grow more deadly - it's vaccinated hosts don't die but any unvaccinated bird unlucky enough to be exposed dying within ten days.
If a similar scenario played out with COVID-19 we could see a world where anyone vaccinated suffers few or no symptoms but anyone who cannot get vaccinated [nationalpost.com] might find themselves faced with a ubiquitous disease that is far more deadly than the strains we now have. Even in this scenario tho it's not clear what our best option is. For every individual it's best to be vaccinated but for the species as a whole it's best if nobody is so that deadly strains of the virus die off with their hosts and evolutionary pressure leads to milder infections in the surviving variants...
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 27 2021, @03:16PM (1 child)
There's also another simple issue in play as well. When viruses can spread easily and readily, there's minimal evolutionary pressure for mutation. It's only when you start resisting that it creates a pressure for mutation. In the longrun it may turn out that rushing out half assed vaccines for this virus, which has a nominally near 0 mortality rate, could end up being a very very bad idea.
I feel like the past ~80 years living in the developed world where we've never really experienced any sort of mortal danger (war in particular) has really made us, as a society, completely incapable of dealing with matters of life and death. Sometimes the optimal action involves not freaking out when somebody gets hurt, or indeed even killed. Not because we should simply ignore deaths, but because there's every possibility that ill conceived reactions to such regrettable outcomes can yield a far worse outcome, even if only in the longrun, than doing essentially nothing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 27 2021, @08:59PM
It's not an accident. They are using these shameless sycophantic cowards to implement this assault on freedom and health.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Saturday March 27 2021, @10:19PM
The virus is going to evolve regardless of anybody's desire.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by corey on Saturday March 27 2021, @09:54AM (3 children)
I hesitantly agree with you. It would obviously be ideal to eradicate COVID and the only way that can happen is for vaccines to inhibit transmission.
I guess the reason I think this way is because here in Australia it was announced a couple of days ago that COVID had been eliminated as there was no community transmission for a while (a month or two) in the whole country. That’s using phased lockdowns to get on top of widespread community transmission while contact tracers catch up. And if there aren’t many cases, just using contact tracing. That’s now changed as there is one case in Brisbane (due to returned travellers/hotel quarantine as usual) so they’re contact tracing like mad and making close contacts isolate.
But at some stage when most have had the vaccines, we will open up and COVID will come rolling in and we just have to go with the flow.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 27 2021, @10:07AM (2 children)
There are already variants that dont show up on the test and resist the vaccine induced immunity. There are also cases of the fully vaccinated asymptomatically infecting others.
These vaccine passports are going to be quite the farce, as those are the super spreaders and variant incubators.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 27 2021, @02:35PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 27 2021, @09:02PM
exactly. cowardly, umbrella corp zombies getting everyone sick and blaming it on the few who didn't cower like slaves.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 27 2021, @02:44PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday March 28 2021, @01:38AM
Oh, agreed, but we're finding out a large plurality of Americans are goddamn stupid and can't do simple algebra (exponential function). This really may be the best we can do :/ We may be staring at the answer to the Fermi Paradox right here, actually...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Saturday March 27 2021, @10:17PM
Or, another way of looking at it, we don't have so much of a vaccine as a pre-emptive treatment that works well.
Maybe we should call it that to save at least some antivaxxers from Darwin? Some of them can eventually grow up.
I'm afraid that looks like being the case.
I also misread "colds" as "clods" and thought "but antivaxxers aren't seasonal".
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 27 2021, @01:18AM (1 child)
"A smidgen here, an itty-bit there, and maybe the chumps'll believe this BS. Gotta get those long-term degenerative diseases into people's arms. After all, we're God."
-AstraZeneca CEO
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 27 2021, @07:41AM
It's too late, I'm already a degenerate. The vaccine was wasted!! Muahahaaa