I mostly know about it via shareholder presentations, but these seem to cover some of it. Hopefully the sources are legit, most of page 1 on Google is either financial news sources or sites like this.
Moderna says data from Phase 2 study of mRNA flu vaccine will be key
Here’s Moderna’s release:
And here’s a presentation with data and graphs:
I haven’t heard this addressed yet. I’m not on all their presentations, but they seem to be targeting it in general, maybe anticipating future approval for younger kids?
If I were purely self-interested, like, getting an RSV vaccine at the same time as my flu vaccine sounds great (obviously unless there are massively larger side effects compared with any other vaccine we regularly get), even if it isn’t that effective (50% ish, say). Having, like, one less cold every other year on top of flu protection is pretty good! But the people who end up in the hospital for RSV are usually infants and toddlers, so the biggest benefit on that part of the combo vaccine is if this can be given to the very young. If they couldn’t get it, that would be a big disappointment.
the crowdsourced reports were mostly that while vaccine uptake was low, there were no shortages. and at the same time trials of epivac and covivac also started which are completely different vaccines, with the manufacturers obviously well connected to government, but efficacy very questionable. not clear if they even had enough subjects.
anyway, lot of smaller towns run out of sputnik during a very modest increase in demand, and are basically given the other two vaccines. fast forward through early winter, people on social media are reporting that they were double vaxxed, ended up with a severe case. cases and deaths were absolutely awful during delta, and just got hit by omicron.
Right, agreed. Now, if we could get enough uptake amongst adults and older kids to really stomp it out for younger kids, that could work too. But I have no idea of the R0, and no confidence in society to accomplish that. Google says it’s estimated at 3.0, so what’s that? 75% uptake for herd immunity?
50% would be amazing, 75% is not happening anytime soon.
I’m sorry I’m still confused over the part about the Sputnik vaccine being a fraud. Sounds like they only got one shot of it?
sorry, i wasn’t being clear. sputnik is probably a fine vaccine, but there was not enough of it to give to both russia, and whatever countries who bought it from putin. so russian health ministry likely pulled some shenanigans and instead started administering different vaccines widely, likely EpiVac or CoviVac, while also probably confusing the patients who thought they would be getting sputnik. the gamble did not pay off.
C- gimmick
The colorant isn’t present in the test line at the start of the test though, it’s carried there by the sample. Even if some contaminant also bound to the colorant, or just mobilized it generally, why would it stop specifically at the test line and the control line and not elsewhere?
I’m too tired to figure out what you’re misinterpreting in that cdc document. Your understanding is incorrect though
Maybe it’s just a typo and they meant to type ““The specificity of antigen tests is a lot lower than most NAATs.” Oops!
Deleted my ponied post
I’m not sure “dubious” is the right word for that headline.
An Omicron-specific booster was rendered impossible before Omicron was identified. The FDA can’t deliver a rapid authorization for a new vaccine in time for it to matter. I remember before Omicron came around, people were pooh-poohing concerns about immune escape variants because we could just make new vaccines for it. I pointed out at the time that it couldn’t happen, because the trials required for approval take months. That’s still the case, and no one has any appetite for reforming the FDA/CDC. So the best we seem likely to do is seasonal formulations like we do for flu.
Even with a reformed FDA I don’t see how we could have vaxxed fast enough to stop the Omincron wave.
I think this is spurious. OG Wuhan first hit the country in February and we didn’t have widespread vaccines until the following February/March/April and they were quite effective. An Omicron booster available this fall will still be quite useful even if by then we have some sub-lineage variant of Omicron spreading around. Don’t forget that the OG vaccines were quite effective on the Alpha variant and even the delta variant.
That’s it in anutshell.
Sure, stopping the Omicron wave entirely seems impossible, but there were 6 weeks between Omicron first being announced and the US hitting its peak of cases. Is it unthinkable that, say, 50 million doses of a reformulated vaccine could have been administered over the period? And what if the variant wasn’t as contagious and/or it didn’t hit during winter? What could you do with 12 weeks of lead time?
Also, think about OG COVID. If a novel virus with identical properties emerges today, how long would it take before vaccines are widely available? I’d take the over on 6 months. I might take the over on 9 if I’m in a bad mood.
Yeah I don’t think you can formulate a vaccine, approve it, and get 50 million out in six weeks. FDA has plenty of issues, but the timeline still is gonna be longer. Capacity is still what like 5-10 million doses a day between Pfizer and Moderna?
I agree that if we hit a true immune evasion strain and need to start from square one that we need faster approval, but since we aren’t gonna lock down anyways probably gonna he mass death either way.
A decent roundup of the UKHSA findings here within the UK where BA.2 is beginning to outcompete BA.1 via increased rates of household secondary attack.
BA.2 dominance now at ~80% in Denmark.
More here
