OV9

Broccers wrote: ↑Tue Nov 24, 2020 8:45 am A dosing error by researchers on the AstraZeneca-Oxford University vaccine trial led to a huge boost in the jab's success rate, the firm's vice president has revealed.

Mene Pangalos, head of AstraZeneca's non-oncology research and development, said: 'The reason we had the half dose is serendipity.'

Volunteers in Britain were expected to receive two full doses of the vaccine as it was trialed in the hope of funding a cure.

Dr Pangalos says researches were perplexed when they noticed volunteers were reporting much milder side effects, such as fatigue, headaches and arm aches, than were originally predicted.

He said: 'So we went back and checked ... and we found out that they had underpredicted the dose of the vaccine by half.'

Dosing error and we are supposed to willing let these nutters inject us.

Some of the greatest scientific and medical breakthroughs have been discovered entirely by accident, or by chasing errors.

Accidentally gave people the wrong dose. That in itself is terrifying.

Fair play, it must have been difficult to find something to complain about in this news, so it's a good effort!

I does have that feel of "we rushed it through and hope for the best" about it!

Broccers wrote: ↑Tue Nov 24, 2020 9:03 am Accidentally gave people the wrong dose. That in itself is terrifying.

That's why taking part in drug trials is voluntary .

Not sure that exculpates someone for negligence in administration of the experimental drug...

But I guess better they were given a half dose than a double dose!

ZedLeg wrote: ↑Tue Nov 24, 2020 9:26 am

Broccers wrote: ↑Tue Nov 24, 2020 9:03 am Accidentally gave people the wrong dose. That in itself is terrifying.

That's why taking part in drug trials is voluntary .

Exactly. And I doubt they start off with a bucket full of the stuff

ZedLeg wrote: ↑Tue Nov 24, 2020 9:26 am

Broccers wrote: ↑Tue Nov 24, 2020 9:03 am Accidentally gave people the wrong dose. That in itself is terrifying.

That's why taking part in drug trials is voluntary .

I would imagine payment was made and in these times how voluntary was it?

My point is, as Rich alludes to, its all a bit soon. I am happy for the positive news dont get me wrong.

We live in what was tier 3, I fully expect us to come out of lockdown 2 into tier 3+. As soon as this ends I will be well pleased.

Part of me is curious if some weird shit will happen like Thalidomide. So many new vaccines with such limited testing it’s pretty likely.

It's not pretty likely, there's no way any medication would be released to the public without thorough testing. They might be speeding up the process for the vaccine but no one in government or the industry wants to be responsible for killing anymore people.

You can't test for things that are delayed onset post administration. It is possible for side effects to show months or years later. Not arguing that that's likely, but you can't say it won't happen unfortunately.

You can't say it won't happen, there will be side effects on tiny fractions of the population that they haven't envisaged as with any vaccine. However, I believe they have a pretty comprehensive idea of the impacts on the body.

It will certainly save an order of magnitude more lives both directly and indirectly than it will negatively impact.

I'm not disputing that some side effects could come up later. The idea that we could have something on the scale of the Thalidomide fuck up happening with this is verging on anti-vaxx scaremongering though imo.

Well, yes. I wasn't responding to that suggestion but to your post. I think what you do need to appreciate is that this an mRNA vaccine which is the first of its type so saying that "no way any medication would be released to the public without thorough testing" doesn't really get to the heart of the fact that sometimes there are unknowns that crop up with new vaccinations that aren't always apparent at the outset.

There is very interesting literature on the (again, rare) potential issues with certain vaccinations causing autoimmunity (particularly around the use of adjuvants (response boosters to make the immune system react more vigorously to the attenuated virus/rna particles in the vaccine). A good summary here https://www.nature.com/articles/cmi2017151

If you were 60+, very overweight or had diabetes, etc. etc. then getting the vaccination is a no brainer. More difficult to answer is whether you would, for example, vaccinate your 4 year old child who has practically no risk anyway? Similar rationale behind other countries vaccinating for chicken pox whereas we don't as we see it as a low risk childhood virus.

Its all an academic argument as only the most at risk are likely to get the jab to start off with anyway so I would imagine most of the low risk groups will never need to worry their heads about whether it is worth it or not.

My post was in response to Mito's though. I'm not trying to claim that a vaccine would be perfectly safe for 100% of the population, but something happening like what happened with Thalidomide (only finding out a drug is unsafe for one of it's suggested uses due to lack of testing) is very unlikely.

Agree.

Let's also not forget that, at least in the case of the AZ/Oxford vaccine, this isn't actually a wholly brand new vaccine. The mechanics of the vaccine, the viral vector IIRC, have been around a little longer as it was originally developed some time ago, and most recently utilised to create a vaccine for Ebola.

Interesting article here actually on what the AZ findings might mean - this could be one of those accidental discoveries (as I mentioned above) that actually leads to a fundamental reappraisal of how all vaccines are dosed.

Well this whole Christmas bubble malarkey is a about as well thought out as the rest of the schemes....

Milton Keynes is likely to exit Lockdown into Tier 3, up from Tier 1 from before the current lockdown

If reports in some news media are to be believed...

Its a whole fucking joke as tier 1s 2s and 3s can all suddenly mix over xmas, They haven't even said dont meet up if youve really old ill people there. Bonkers. In this instance it needs spelling out not to do it even if it might be great grannies last christmas, don't make it certain death when youths return from uni.