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On Vaccine Development and Testing

angrysoba said:
******Opinion Warning*******

They could just give it to the Boomers first, in place of animal testing.
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Actually, that's a pretty good idea. Once they figure out the risk/benefit in various populations, it would seem that (assuming limited supplies, at least at first) you start by giving it to the population for whom the expected benefit relative to the risk is the highest, and that population would probably be the oldest people first, since they have the highest risk of dying from the disease. Also other at-risk groups. And then only after that, you start giving it to everyone else.

Still, I would expect this to begin only after phase 3 is complete.

Another thing they could do is to start manufacturing it before the trials are complete. The government could guarantee to buy those ones anyway, even if the trials end in failure. In that case, the only risk is the loss of unusable vaccines that will have to be disposed of.
 
Puppycow said:
Actually, that's a pretty good idea. Once they figure out the risk/benefit in various populations, it would seem that (assuming limited supplies, at least at first) you start by giving it to the population for whom the expected benefit relative to the risk is the highest, and that population would probably be the oldest people first, since they have the highest risk of dying from the disease. Also other at-risk groups. And then only after that, you start giving it to everyone else.

Still, I would expect this to begin only after phase 3 is complete.

Another thing they could do is to start manufacturing it before the trials are complete. The government could guarantee to buy those ones anyway, even if the trials end in failure. In that case, the only risk is the loss of unusable vaccines that will have to be disposed of.
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Thanks Puppycow, these and other suggestions you've been making in this thread all seem like good, non-reckless, ideas that could potentially help to speed up the timeline to development and deployment of a vaccine. Maybe we're only looking at incremental improvements, but every day counts I think.
 
angrysoba said:
******Opinion Warning*******

They could just give it to the Boomers first, in place of animal testing.
Click to expand...

Do you know the joke about the reporter visiting a research lab who finds tiny people in three piece suits running around in little cages? The reporter asks the scientist, “What's this?” The scientist replies, “They are special miniaturized lawyers. To tell you the truth I didn’t have the heart to experiment on rats.”

PS I am a boomer and I resent your post. But I am not a lawyer so I like the joke.
 
Giordano said:
Do you know the joke about the reporter visiting a research lab who finds tiny people in three piece suits running around in little cages? The reporter asks the scientist, “What's this?” The scientist replies, “They are special miniaturized lawyers. To tell you the truth I didn’t have the heart to experiment on rats.”

PS I am a boomer and I resent your post. But I am not a lawyer so I like the joke.
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Human testing has already begun..
45 volunteers between 18 and 55.
Looks like the researchers don’t think boomers are good candidates despite the prejudices shown on this thread.
 
Giordano said:
Exactly. But the complexity with a vaccine is that you give it to healthy people, so a modest risk that would be acceptable in a cancer treatment drug would not be acceptable in a vaccine. You might think that most people will eventually be infected by Covid-19 so any vaccine with a risk below that of the virus infection itself would be acceptable. But we don’t really know the risk/death rate for the virus in every population and for all possible treatments. Many people will never be infected. And many infected will have mild symptoms.

We will need to understand all that, plus the risks of any vaccine in various populations, to even begin to do the calculations of risk to benefit.
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Ebola was the exception for this, because the disease was so lethal, it was deemed ethical by the WHO for an early release of the vaccine.

https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/ebola/frequently-asked-questions/ebola-vaccine
 
EHocking said:
Human testing has already begun..
45 volunteers between 18 and 55.
Looks like the researchers don’t think boomers are good candidates despite the prejudices shown on this thread.
Click to expand...

Yeah, because it's still just a phase 1 trial, but it isn't a prejudice to notice that older people are at higher risk from the disease, and therefore they should get the vaccines sooner than younger people, once they become available.
 
Roboramma said:
Of course it would be valid. It wouldn't tell us what will necessarily happen with this one, but it would establish a base rate at which such complications tend to arise.

Based on current knowledge, there's some probability of complications from an untested vaccine. What is that probability? You think knowledge about past vaccine development doesn't tell us anything about that probability?
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I think the learning is that it's all over the map, is the problem. We've learned that the side effects range from benign to shockingly fatal (more people might *get* the disease than are saved by being immunized against it), sometimes after decades (eg: increased cancer risks). Trivial differences in structure have even paradoxical effects. eg just one mutated RNA pair can change a binding site from repelling to strongly binding.

My undergrad was microbiology/immunology, my grad work was research medicine. The subject matter was HIV, and I was lucky to work in the Vancouver CCDC CFE on a pretty much unlimited grant from Upjohn/Pharmacia. That was the '80s.

The idea of expedited therapeutic treatment research and deployment isn't new. In the 80s with AIDS, it was called a Fast Track. I expect the FDA still has that process active.

Here's the thing with this one...

These RNA viruses have a few potential research targets. I would love to learn more about how the research teams might be operating in parallel to give the world options. Some people can't get vaccines, for example. Some people are already infected, it's too late for them to get a vaccination.

I'm thinking, the following approaches:

* antisense
* antibody
* vaccination
* enzyme blockers (antivirals)

... just as a startingpoint.
 
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Puppycow said:
Yeah, because it's still just a phase 1 trial, but it isn't a prejudice to notice that older people are at higher risk from the disease, and therefore they should get the vaccines sooner than younger people, once they become available.
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It is a prejudice to use "Boomer" as an epithet.
It is rather pathetic and lazy. But that's Millennials for you...
 
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EHocking said:
pretty much in the same tenor as “OK Boomer”
And no, I’m not this age group
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Oh, come on! Are you saying I was using the word as an epithet?

Well, I wasn't. I was semi-joking anyway. Obviously I know that these things have to go through thorough testing, but on the other hand, if one were in a very high risk group and believed that a likely cure could prevent a more likely death, it probably would make sense to take the vaccine.

(I remember someone I met from Germany who said that he was once asked to use his Korean language skills in a discussion about sending beef that had been slaughtered as a precaution against BSE, and apparently North Korea had expressed interest in the meat that nobody else wanted. Apparently nothing came of it because you simply cannot send meat like that that may possibly be infected, but the guy I know wondered if people eating the beef would be happier to roll the dice than to die of starvation).
 
angrysoba said:
Oh, come on! Are you saying I was using the word as an epithet?

Well, I wasn't. I was semi-joking anyway.
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I realise that it was a joke - but you admit yourself, it was buying into the current "OK Boomer" meme.
So I wasn't entirely incorrect.

It's just one of those things that irritates me online.
Obviously I know that these things have to go through thorough testing, but on the other hand, if one were in a very high risk group and believed that a likely cure could prevent a more likely death, it probably would make sense to take the vaccine.
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But that is not good medicine/science. You test a vaccine on someone that it wont kill.
Taking something as a last resort (e.g., silver pills) smacks of woo thinking and explotation of the desperate, not good science.
(I remember someone I met from Germany who said that he was once asked to use his Korean language skills in a discussion about sending beef that had been slaughtered as a precaution against BSE, and apparently North Korea had expressed interest in the meat that nobody else wanted. Apparently nothing came of it because you simply cannot send meat like that that may possibly be infected, but the guy I know wondered if people eating the beef would be happier to roll the dice than to die of starvation).
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I lived and worked in the UK during that outbreak.
The Scots had a unique solution for the crisis - they cut the price of beef by 50% 'cos sales were down.:boggled:
 
EHocking said:
Taking something as a last resort (e.g., silver pills) smacks of woo thinking and explotation of the desperate, not good science.
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The complication is that the people putting pressure on the government to expedite testing are usually the patients at risk themselves.

Again, reaching back to my experience, the strongest lobbyists for Fast Tracking HIV drugs were AIDS patients who were running out of time. For them, the tradeoff seemed worth it.

The analogy with COVID19 is probably closer to research involving a treatment rather than a vaccine. In the above list, antisense, antibody, antiviral protein binders, those sorts of things, they're potential treatments post-infection. Sort of like snake venom antidote.

For patients who are infected and have poor prospects, they're being rational if they want to explore something that has credible hope.

This is the thing about science is that especially with medical sciences, a lot of definitions are influenced by culture. Is pregnancy a medical condition? Is chickenpox a disease? Is giving an informed patient a choice of being untreated and probably dying versus participating in a trial for a promising treatment that may save them or kill them faster 'exploitation'? Or is it 'patient autonomy'?

Medical Ethics is a rich field of study, and this is an old discussion that reasonable people hold differing opinions about.
 
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