from Hacker News

Moderna Covid vaccine candidate almost 95% effective, trials show

by m1 on 11/16/20, 12:03 PM with 1328 comments

  • by chakintosh on 11/16/20, 12:51 PM

    The key takeaway here is that this one, unlike Pfizer's, appears to be easier to store as it remains stable at minus 20C for up to six months and can be kept in a standard fridge for up to a month.

  • by Roonerelli on 11/16/20, 12:28 PM

    Excellent news it's so high. For comparison, MMR is 88% effective on Mumps

    https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/mmr/public/index.html#:~:te...

    "One dose of MMR vaccine is 93% effective against measles, 78% effective against mumps, and 97% effective against rubella.

    Two doses of MMR vaccine are 97% effective against measles and 88% effective against mumps."

  • by yread on 11/16/20, 12:33 PM

    CNN has more numbers:

    > In Moderna's trial, 15,000 study participants were given a placebo, which is a shot of saline that has no effect. Over several months, 90 of them developed Covid-19, with 11 developing severe forms of the disease.

    > Another 15,000 participants were given the vaccine, and only five of them developed Covid-19. None of the five became severely ill.

    https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/16/health/moderna-vaccine-re...

  • by basicallydan on 11/16/20, 1:29 PM

    Is it just a coincidence or is Moderna’s name and stock ticker label (MRNA) intentionally supposed to reference the type of research they do? (mRNA)

  • by gravypod on 11/16/20, 12:59 PM

    Vaccine development has progressed far faster than I would have ever guessed. This might be a dumb question but what has enabled a COVID-19 vaccine to be developed in such short time? I was under the impression that developing a vaccine took on the order of 10s of years while this has been put together in 10s of months. I was also under the impression that this was because making vaccines for viruses was much harder than other treatments because interrupting the viruses reproduction chain is essentially requiring you to interrupt your cell's reproduction chain.

    Is there some tool that has been used here that hasn't been available in the past? I know the FDA said they would allow skipping some preliminary testing to fast track a drug. Was that a huge help?

  • by Taniwha on 11/16/20, 10:15 PM

    The big question for me is: what's the difference in the RNA fragment targeted by the Moderna vs. the RNA targeted by the Pfizer one? is there any overlap? mostly overlap?

    What I'm really asking of course is are they complementary? or essentially the same thing? will it make sense having both? how fast will the virus mutate once these vaccines are ubiquitous?

  • by acqq on 11/16/20, 1:20 PM

    What we still don't know for both Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines:

    "A vaccine that prevents infection entirely provides indirect protection to others. If I can't get infected, I can't infect you. But it is possible to have a vaccine that prevents disease but individuals can still be infectious." (1)

    In that case, those at risk are only protected when they receive a vaccine, but still aren't when just those who they are in contact with received it.

    "Most Phase 3 trials are measuring efficacy to prevent disease as the primary analysis" (2)

    Not infection.

    The whole thread with more details, already written in September, before both announcements:

    https://twitter.com/nataliexdean/status/1310613702476017666

    by: "Natalie E. Dean, PhD, Assistant Professor of Biostatistics at @UF specializing in emerging infectious diseases and vaccine study design. @HarvardBiostats PhD." (3)

    1) https://twitter.com/nataliexdean/status/1310613711808278528

    2) https://twitter.com/nataliexdean/status/1310613708557692928

    3) https://twitter.com/nataliexdean

  • by CapriciousCptl on 11/16/20, 2:55 PM

    These interim results are about as promising as you could expect, which is frankly amazing given it was developed in a matter of months (depending how you count, Moderna says "2 months"). Ultimately, its effectiveness depends on if and how quickly SARS-CoV-19 and its spike protein evolve resistance. That won't really be known until after widespread deployment and depends both on different factors inherent the virus' replication, its spike protein, host factors and how effectively the vaccine is rolled out.

    Original article-- https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2022483

  • by fasteo on 11/17/20, 9:58 AM

    Not that I am antivax or anything, but I think this is a good time to remind the great Fred Brooks quote about software development in particular, and product development in general.

    "while it takes one woman nine months to make one baby, nine women can't make a baby in one month". [1]

    Are we missing something in this fast-paced vaccine development ? Are we taking more risks ? Nobody seems to be talking about this and less so now that we have entered into the "mine is better" PR war.

    [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month

  • by ttul on 11/16/20, 5:46 PM

    Nature published a relatively easy-to-consume article about mRNA vaccine technology in 2018, which is perhaps good reading as we try to interpret the meaning of these recent announcements: https://www.nature.com/articles/nrd.2017.243

  • by benzible on 11/16/20, 7:14 PM

    Very interesting thread with some caveats here: https://twitter.com/michaelmina_lab/status/13283520291908771...

    Excerpt:

    > [With] these early efficacy results, we may be measuring the effects of an impressive front line army that spins up in response to the vaccine - but then we should be careful not to assume the same efficacy persists to hold that line after most of the troops disappear! [...] Only time and careful follow up will tell how much the >90% efficacy of the two vaccines holds after the early vaccine responses fade away.

  • by Unklejoe on 11/16/20, 3:36 PM

    What's the general consensus on when these will start rolling out to the public?

    I know I can look this up on my own but there's so much conflicting info out there and things are changing so fast.

  • by CodeGlitch on 11/16/20, 1:15 PM

    Given the amount of research happening around Corona-viruses, will we see a vaccine for the Common Cold? Will the vaccination of the Common Cold eventually "pay-back" the money spent on dealing with COVID-19 as fewer people will take time off work to recover from the Cold?

    Pretty exciting stuff in any case.

  • by gtirloni on 11/16/20, 12:54 PM

    The type of good news we need on a Monday. I'm getting optimistic about the future again after almost a year of bad news.

  • by Bharath_MG12 on 11/16/20, 1:29 PM

    It is great that mRNA research is paying off at right time. Both Pfizer and Moderna took bets on mRNA!

  • by fabian2k on 11/16/20, 12:36 PM

    With the first two vaccines above 90% efficacy, this does look very promising in general. If the other vaccines also turn out this well, this makes it look like a more optimistic timeline for vaccinating enough people to stop the pandemic is possible. Moderna is planning for 500-1000 million doses in 2021, BioNTech/Pfizer for up to 1.3 billion doses. Not sure how many more promising candidates there are that can be ready early in 2021, but I think there were a few more.

  • by victor106 on 11/16/20, 7:54 PM

    This is great news.

    Slightly off topic but its interesting that Moderna's market cap is $38bn and Zoom's market cap is $113bn. Obviously Moderna's vaccination directly saves life's and has much more impact than Zoom. A sign of the times/market we live in.

  • by bionhoward on 11/16/20, 5:28 PM

    Really great news for the Biosecurity industry because the mRNA vaccines are far easier to manufacture. Main hurdle now seems to be to freeze dry (“lyophilize”) them for transport, cuz otherwise you gotta keep em at extremely cold temperatures, which adds a ton of cost (and may not even be doable)

  • by Ensorceled on 11/16/20, 2:53 PM

    I have worked at two different companies that have been accelerated by the FDA; once during the HIV crisis for a sequencing application and at a medical imaging company that demonstrated overwhelming quality of care improvements. Acceleration is unusual but not "conspiracy level" unusual.

    My former colleagues in the viral research space (the HIV team above) basically flagged this type of vaccine as our best hope for an 2021 vaccine. No one I know from this space thought a 2020 vaccine was ever in the cards.

  • by fallingfrog on 11/16/20, 1:23 PM

    This is fantastic news! There is light at the end of the tunnel. We are a very resourceful species and I hope that at the end of all this we learn to have a little faith and trust in each other. Sometimes it takes a crisis to force us to innovate but we can do it when we have to. I really think that when we get around to recognizing climate change as an actual crisis, we will deal with it as well, because we will have to, and we have always had the capacity.

  • by yread on 11/16/20, 2:00 PM

    This just goes to show how difficult a problem cancer is. These companies were working on therapies for cancer, switched direction and in 11 months developed and successfully tested a vaccine against a newish virus. What's the progress in cancer treatment in those 11 months with vastly larger resources? Is there even a 1% improvement in survival across all cancer types compared to last year?

  • by tehjoker on 11/16/20, 7:32 PM

    Does anyone know if there is peer reviewed literature out there? I am skeptical of too-good-to-be true statements coming from the PR department.

  • by refurb on 11/16/20, 12:47 PM

    This is a big differentiator versus the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine....

    "Moderna had previously said their vaccines could ship at -20 degrees, refrigerated for up to 7 days, and kept at room temperature for up to 12 hours. Now, the company says they’ve devised a formulation that can stay refrigerated for up to 30 days and kept at room temperature for up to 24 hours."

    https://endpts.com/moderna-says-its-vaccine-is-94-5-effectiv...

  • by marwan-nwh on 11/16/20, 2:37 PM

    I hope rich countries don't make it difficult for poor countries to get the vaccine, whether it is this one or Pfizer's.

  • by dredmorbius on 11/16/20, 12:30 PM

  • by geland on 11/16/20, 9:39 PM

    Is it common practice to measure effectiveness in this way?

    They only evaluated ~90 of their 30000 test group, and out of that tiny sliver of the data there were more in the placebo group that got covid than the vaccinated group. My questions would be:

    Does their small subset have the same number of vaccinated vs placebo? Are the ~90 evaluated cases representative of the whole group, or are they only from one area or health profile? How long have they followed this group?

    It still seems like this early on in the study you could cherry pick the data to show any amount of effectiveness that you want.

    Did I miss something here?

  • by leoplct on 11/17/20, 1:38 PM

    I read the method used to measure efficacy: They have tested 44,000 people. 50% got a placebo, 50% got a vaccine. Then has been giving them the freedom to get the covid. 95% of the 50% who got the vaccine haven't contracted the virus.

    Correct me if I am wrong. Supposing a random person has a 5-10% chance of contracting the virus (according to average cases/testing worldwide), should the efficacy be 5-10% * 95% = 0.7%-0.5%?

  • by cacois on 11/16/20, 5:53 PM

    "No significant safety concerns have been reported, but nothing, including paracetamol, is 100% safe."

    Is it just me, or is this language very irresponsible? They are just talking about having small side effects, like headache and fatigue - just like the flu vaccine has. Likening this to "safety" seems incredibly dangerous to me, as it will give people already predisposed to dislike vaccines more ammunition to speak out against them and refuse them.

  • by jakozaur on 11/16/20, 1:29 PM

    Good:

    + ~94.5% of individuals achieve immunity. Better than Pfizer, though we need more data to be sure.

    + no significant side-effects.

    + no special deep freezing. -20C is good for 6 month storage, -2 to -9 for 30 days comparing to Pfizer -70C all the time.

    Not so good:

    - two doses needed, 4 weeks apart, immunity after one and a half month from first dose. Slow rollout. Pfizer results were after one month.

    Still long-term immunity is a question for every vaccine. Luckily, if two vaccines works then likely other attempts will be successful.

  • by sudhirj on 11/16/20, 1:46 PM

    Does all the vaccine manufacturing happen in the same fabs / factories? Moderna says they can make a billion does by next year, Pfizer says the same, so does that mean we have 2 billion doses available? Or do they share factories and we get either of them but not both? And it seems like there’s many of these companies working on this, so if we have 10 promising vaccines from 10 big pharmas we can get 10 billion doses?

  • by at_a_remove on 11/16/20, 7:14 PM

    I wonder what would happen if you had both vaccines.

  • by westwing on 11/16/20, 12:37 PM

    I'm concerned about the safety of mRNA vaccines, but I'm not at all knowledgeable on the topic.

    What are the assessments of the HN crowd?

  • by DSingularity on 11/16/20, 7:01 PM

    Can someone briefly explain the mechanisms of these mRNA vaccines? I’ve never heard of them.

  • by cblconfederate on 11/16/20, 12:26 PM

    Are these companies going to release more interim data , and how safe are the margins used (~90 infections in both companies)

    I wonder what will be the consensus after other types of vaccines release their results.

  • by mensetmanusman on 11/17/20, 12:19 PM

    Does it make sense to distribute this oldest to youngest?

  • by rwcarlsen on 11/16/20, 4:15 PM

    Since top comments here are anecdata about how terrible covid is for a young person, just thought I'd share my experience. Everyone I know who has gotten covid - several neighbors (and their households), most of my wife's hometown (400 people) - including her parents (in their 70s) and two of her siblings and all their children (15 people) all had it. For everyone it was somewhere between nothing and a bad cold. Nobody has any lingering issues. We don't want to paint our picture of the situation using only extremes. How about we include the "average" anecdata too?

  • by lumberingjack on 11/17/20, 10:20 AM

    When they come up with a vaccine to cure tobacco cancer it kills more people than corvid I'll take that

  • by 01100011 on 11/16/20, 3:28 PM

    So after initially saying there's no way I'd take a vaccine that has been rushed to market I'm now thinking that, as a middle aged male with no kids, I sort of have a duty to take the risk. I suppose the vaccines will go to higher risk groups and front line medical staff first, but once they're available I'm signing up.

  • by mlang23 on 11/16/20, 2:21 PM

    Since someone just self-censored, I can only repeat that. As a young healthy individual, I'd much rather catch COVID then get vaccinated with a wide-spread mRNA experiment. In my childhood, I have been used by a doctor for an experiment without consent of my parents, and this cost me my remaining eye-sight. You can bash, downvote, laugh at, deminish, and in general say whatever you want about sceptics, our reasons to not want to be vaccinated are as valid as your reasons to want it are.

  • by BurningFrog on 11/16/20, 2:50 PM

    This also, preliminarily at least, confirms that the mRNA approach can live up to its promise.

    With some luck, this is the start of a new era of fast and safe vaccines for most any virus.

  • by exabrial on 11/16/20, 2:01 PM

    This vaccine is incredible because of mechanism of action! If it continues to prove to be safe, we can treat all sorts of rare diseases easily and cheaply.

  • by throwawaysea on 11/16/20, 4:38 PM

    Genuinely asking - is the timing coincidental or is the decision to release these results after the election politically motivated for either Moderna or Pfizer? COVID has of course hurt Trump’s candidacy and one could see how good news prior to voting would help his chances. There’s a saying that goes “everything in an election year is about the election”. Thoughts?

  • by jonplackett on 11/16/20, 1:08 PM

    Anyone know what has happened to the Oxford Vaccine? That seemed to be way ahead for a long while.

  • by thecleaner on 11/16/20, 6:36 PM

    These numbers are on a sample size of 90 so I would not totally rely on them.

  • by generalizations on 11/16/20, 9:13 PM

    I'm curious if there's any long-term side effects.

  • by tibbydudeza on 11/16/20, 4:28 PM

    Well the anti-vax conspiracy crap already started on my local Whatsapp groups here in S.A - some UK women doing a wikipedia search around the terms recombinant DNA and used a human cell line (MRC-5) from the packaging of the trial Oxford vaccine.

    If it was up to these ignorant people we would still have kids getting polio in 2020.

  • by afjl on 11/16/20, 3:05 PM

    Re-paste from my comments below, because I believe people should share their experiences:

    I currently have coronavirus. I'm a young male in my 20s (don't want to divulge too much info), 6'1", 170 lbs, non-smoker, rarely drink, pretty healthy. Waiting on test results.

    Started off about 2 weeks ago, rash on my chest, lots of night sweats and chills. Didn't think it was covid at first. given the weird symptoms. I did not feel too sick, in general. Slight fever, slight cough and sore throat. For most of the time, it felt mild. Still have the rash, night sweats, and sore throat at the moment.

    However, 4 days ago I started having issues breathing. I felt out of breath multiple times throughout the day, and at times it was hard to even suck in air (like my diaphragm was calcified or something). I woke up a few times at night, trying to suck in air. Today was better but the difficulty breathing is still there. I realized today, that even though it's not as bad as the worst flu I've had, it involved a symptom (difficulty breathing in air) that I have never experienced. Not with strep, not with the flu. This is something to note for everyone, in my opinion.

    I think it's both milder AND worse than people think it is - I'm a healthy young male who exercises and eats well, and yet I'm having trouble breathing. This is a symptom that has continued for multiple days, and while it hasn't gotten worse, it's not getting much better. The rash is still there, my throat's still sore. If you are part of the obese/overweight American population (35% of us, including my family), and are a chronic smoker/drinker, and have chronic conditions (diabetes, hypertension, mental health conditions), I think you should still be careful.

    Unless you have a respirator, there isn't anything you can take to resolve "difficulty breathing". It's not like fever/sweats/nausea - where you can just take a Nyquil and it's all gone. Not to mention, we have antibiotics and antivirals to attack the flu/cold/strep infections as well. Covid's a bit different - difficulty breathing can only currently be helped by equipment that's located in hospitals. There isn't some magic pill that will get your diaphragm pumping up and down again. This is something to note, in my opinion.

    I'm not sure how much longer my symptoms will continue. The initial symptoms started 2 weeks ago, but the breathing related ones only started recently. I hope it gets resolved soon - I may provide a comment as an update.

    Please wash your hands, avoid touching your face/eyes with your hands, socially distance if you can, and wear a mask when in public. Having trouble breathing is no joke.

  • by gizmondo on 11/16/20, 2:44 PM

    [deleted]

  • by known on 11/16/20, 3:29 PM

    mRNA type vaccines will soon provide cure to Cancer https://archive.is/LWvx5

  • by ilrwbwrkhv on 11/16/20, 2:59 PM

    Hell yeah. Science bitches!

  • by xwdv on 11/16/20, 1:04 PM

    So what does it really mean for work from home stocks? Will valuations finally come down?

  • by petre on 11/16/20, 2:28 PM

    Does this one also require transportation and storage at -70C?

  • by wskinner on 11/16/20, 3:16 PM

    > In the analysis, 90 of the patients received the placebo with the remaining five the vaccine.

    Why is the trial so small?

  • by dry_soup on 11/16/20, 2:19 PM

    Maybe a stupid question: Is this the standard measurement of effectiveness? I.e. you give the control group a dummy vaccine, the test group the real vaccine, and you just wait for them to be infected? Why not test for antibody development?

  • by mandeepj on 11/16/20, 3:00 PM

    Just watch - these Covid med pharma cos are going to cut each other by few points now - just to acclaim a top spot for themselves.

    Edit - grammatical fix

  • by fasteddie31003 on 11/16/20, 3:19 PM

    Is there any way I could get this vaccine before the FDA approves it? I've looked through the studies and it's good enough for me.

  • by tboyd47 on 11/16/20, 4:03 PM

    I think the real question is, will the distribution of this and the Pfizer vaccine cause the lockdowns to stop? Everyone seems to assume that they will, but we haven't heard any statements from our bureaucratic elite to suggest that vaccines will obviate the need for lockdowns.

  • by m0zg on 11/16/20, 12:34 PM

    This is great, now get some long term safety testing done or else it can't really be responsibly deployed.

  • by beezle on 11/16/20, 5:15 PM

    So what exactly does the 95% protection represent? 95% protection of people who wear masks and are good about social distancing and avoiding crowds/bad indoor situations? Or 95% of people going about their lives in the manner that we all did pre-Covid?

    I really don't know how this is made to be some great news if it is the former and not the latter.

  • by tinus_hn on 11/16/20, 12:41 PM

    The important part is that 15000 apparently did not get serious side effects, so clearly much less people experience problems from the vaccine than they would from the disease.

    So now it’s time to stop delaying and start distributing these vaccines.

  • by Wintamute on 11/16/20, 2:40 PM

    The vaccine candidates are promising.

    But you don't need to be anti-vax to understand the game theory implications of neither vaccine undergoing a normal longitudinal study (waiting >1 years for side effects to develop), and both being based on new mRNA vaccine tech. Better for you and your family not to take the vaccine in the short term, and benefit from people around you taking it. I understand that is anti-social, but the logic cannot be denied if you're interested in optimising risk for you and yours.

    Taking a vaccine that no trial volunteers have lived with for more than a year is a _substantial_ risk whichever way you slice it.

  • by nickgrosvenor on 11/16/20, 3:31 PM

    I read today, they’re saying between this and the Pfizer vaccine. They’ll be 40 million doses available this year. Enough for 20 million people. Because we only have a month and a half left of this year, when were these vaccines going to come online? And where? Obviously it’ll go to at risk people, but when exactly will it start to roll out if it’s already Nov 15th?

  • by caeril on 11/16/20, 2:14 PM

    Can someone versed in immunology explain to me why both this and the Pfizer vaccines are both borderline-experimental mRNA vaccines (versus attenuated or recombinant)?

    I understand that bog-standard protein vaccines don't protect much beyond 3-6 months, but why didn't we pump out tons of S1/S2, N, and E protein vaccines the second this virus was sequenced? At least it would have been better than nothing, and the safety issues are very well known.

    I'm not anti-vax, by any means. Just trying to understand why we chose this path rather than tried-and-true. I'm sure plenty of people would be a lot less conspiracy-minded if the vaccine was just a run of the mill recombinant protein particle one, even if we needed boosters 2-3x a year.

  • by moralsupply on 11/16/20, 1:48 PM

    > The trial involved 30,000 people in the US with half being given two doses of the vaccine, four weeks apart. The rest had dummy injections.

    > The analysis was based on the first 95 to develop Covid-19 symptoms.

    > Only five of the Covid cases were in people given the vaccine, 90 were in those given the dummy treatment. The company says the vaccine is protecting 94.5% of people.

    Aren't those numbers way too small to make any statistically significant claims?

  • by bryanlarsen on 11/16/20, 12:53 PM

    People are taking more risks because the vaccine is close[1]

    When the vaccine is close you should be taking fewer risks. The potential cost to those risks stays the same, you can still kill your elderly relations and/or develop "long COVID" yourself. But the benefit is much less. Going back to normal life now only nets you a few weeks of normal life with the vaccine in sight vs an indefinite time without.

    Also, the hope of a vaccine helps immensely with the mental stress of isolation.

    The end is in sight! Hang in there folks, keep being careful!

    1: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/scotland/coronavirus-in-s...

  • by perardi on 11/16/20, 3:11 PM

    I think there’s going to be a lot of anti-vaccine agitation about this.

    It’s a type of vaccine that has never been approved and deployed past the research phase before, and it’s going to be super easy to wrap “modified RNA vaccine” in scare quotes like I guess I just did there. “It’s genetically modified?!” I can imagine my neighborhood Facebook group blowing up already.

    Me? Get it in my veins, I’m disappointed I was not selected for the trial. But I think the political climate may be toxic for this.

  • by gpmcadam on 11/16/20, 2:31 PM

    As per CDC, survival rates by age group are as follows:

       0-19: 99.997%
   20-49: 99.98%
   50-69: 99.5% 
   70+: 94.6%
    What would be the benefit for people 70 years or under taking vaccine that has "95% protection". Can anyone elaborate on what that figure actually means?

    For example, of the <1% of people who would die with the virus, is a vaccine that is 95% effective going to save 95% of them? Or is this just about reducing severity for the few who have more than mild symptoms?

  • by bboygravity on 11/16/20, 1:59 PM

    Great news. Seems better than the Pfizer vaccine, especially because transportation of the vaccine seems easier (the vaccine can be transported at a much higher temperature, -7C instead of -80C out the top of my head). Both vaccines seem to require 2 doses a couple of weeks apart which is unfortunate but workable.

    But...

    How long does the immunity last? We now know 6 months, but what about after that?

    What are the long term side effects?

    Does it prevent spreading (read: keep wearing masks after vaccination) or does it "only" prevent symptoms? If you don't get what I'm talking about: look up asymptomatic shedding. Kids do it all the time with SARS-CoV2 [0].

    Answer: we don't know. Let's not rush this.

    Also interesting to note: so we can develop and approve vaccines for new diseases within months? It doesn't have to take 10 years if we really want to eradicate a disease badly enough? My conclusion: we're under-funding research in microbiology. "We" as in: the entire world. In general.

    The Moderna press release: https://investors.modernatx.com/news-releases/news-release-d...

    The best source for all things microbiology and Covid (not just SARS-CoV2) that I know of: https://microbe.tv/twiv

    [0] 6-Fold Higher SARS-CoV-2 Exposure Rate than Reported Cases in Children: https://www.cell.com/med/pdf/S2666-6340(20)30020-9.pdf?_retu...

  • by zaroth on 11/16/20, 1:56 PM

    Warp Speed funded ~$800 million in R&D and $1.5 billion for Moderna to make 100 million doses — whether it is approved or not.

    Similarly, Pfizer received $1.95 billion to make 100 million doses whether it was approved or not. (EDIT: Pfizer’s agreement is an advance purchase but unlike Moderna’s it is contingent on FDA approval.)

    Warp Speed provided ~$5 billion in guaranteed prepayments which meant the companies could ramp up manufacturing without waiting for approval first in order to have a large number of doses ready by the end of the year.

    That’s never been done before, but the bet has certainly paid off spectacularly so far.

    Novavax got $1.6 billion and GSK got $2 billion for another 100 million doses each.

    Assuming all 4 companies produce highly effective vaccines, the US has prepaid for 400mm doses / 200mm courses of vaccine. This will save a lot of lives not just in the US but worldwide as well, because it shifts the manufacturing curve sooner until the point where several billion doses have been made.

  • by ne4f on 11/16/20, 8:38 PM

    With a number of promising vaccines, and governments around the world already producing large numbers of doses, the question may become: "which one do I take?".

    After the 737-Max debacle, I am less inclined to trust US regulators (is the FDA less prone to regulatory capture than the FAA?). Or, perhaps I should say, I'd be wary of a vaccine that was cleared by a single regulator, especially given the economic pressure to find a vaccine.

    I'll probably go with the one that has had the most oversight, from the most agencies around the world. Is that information available anywhere?

  • by fasteddie31003 on 11/16/20, 2:42 PM

    This is great news. I've been following this vaccine since February when it was created. https://www.modernatx.com/modernas-work-potential-vaccine-ag... It's a little frustrating knowing this cure was out there so long and some of the pain from pandemic could have been reduced only if we had faster testing. IMO we needed a faster pandemic vaccine protocol.

    I strongly feel that the FDA should have used challenge trials where they deliberately infect healthy people with the virus after vaccinating them. The approach the FDA chose to use was maybe easier ethically for them to swallow where they just let people in experiment get sick naturally in their every day lives. Using challenge trials we would have gotten these results back weeks faster and with less error bars. Weeks with COVID-19 cost 10,000 of lives.

    The FDA still has not approved this vaccine. Everyday that the FDA does not approve this vaccine after results like this is SOME blood on the hands of the FDA.

  • by jmnicolas on 11/16/20, 2:16 PM

    > The analysis was based on the first 95 to develop Covid-19 symptoms.

    > Only five of the Covid cases were in people given the vaccine, 90 were in those given the dummy treatment. The company says the vaccine is protecting 94.5% of people.

    Is it me or it's incredibly light to shout victory yet and to announce any number? Unless you literally expose people to the virus in a laboratory setting you can't guarantee that both groups had equal exposure to the virus.

  • by sul_tasto on 11/16/20, 2:26 PM

    The protection rate oddly correlates with the hearsay that ~95% of people testing positive experience mild to moderate symptoms. I think I’m in the wrong business.

  • by rs999gti on 11/16/20, 2:24 PM

    With COVID's 99% survival rate and the newness of this vaccine, I would treat this vaccine like LASIK - let the first adopters take it and wait 10 years for the effects.

    https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/926089

  • by unnouinceput on 11/16/20, 2:02 PM

    Hold on a second. The Russian vaccine has 92%? And is available for months already. WTF is happening actually? Did the governments around the world smeared Russian one on previous months mocking it and ridicule it in order to allow a Western company to achieve the same protection for the love of money? If that's the case I hope people with deaths in their families will sue their governments/health organizations to hell and back. This screams of greed for money not on back of ordinary citizen, but literally on their life.

  • by anonunivgrad on 11/16/20, 2:16 PM

    Is this also an mRNA vaccine like the Pfizer? No genetic vaccine has ever been widely deployed. As a young healthy person who could yet have more children, I’d rather get covid than take a genetic vaccine that might affect me or my offspring.

    DNA vaccines have never been deployed because of serious concerns about the patient’s genes being modified by the vaccine. Scientists are saying they’re “sure” that mRNA vaccines can’t do that, but that seems overly sanguine. There is still so much we don’t know about genetics. How can you possibly have that certainty when observed epigenetic effects, for example, challenge many of our preconceived notions about the body’s genetic machinery but are so poorly understood. It seems that at least some processes currently thought to be “one-way” are actually not.