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34 minutes ago, ricardo said:

They now seem worried the epidemic will die away before they have a chance to try it.

They could try Durham. 

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In the Telegraph today Professor Adrian High, who is the Project Leader for the Oxford Vaccine trial, rated the chances of success as no more than 50/50 and also suggested that the virus is actually dying out. 

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Absolutely agree that this thread benefits greatly from the lack of political point scoring. As most of the point scoring has been at the government’s expense it would be difficult to do so on this topic given the government’s financial support for it.

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14 minutes ago, ron obvious said:

All the reports I've read indicate that there is a series of local tidal waves (Italy's being the worst) which rapidly subsides.

The way this pandemic has evolved will keep the epidemiologists scratching their heads for years. Hopefully it'll provide clues - & warnings - to help against future infections.

I've read similar things....that very virulent outbreaks centre around an event.

Even looking at the graphs of all countries you see the same patterns (with long tails and little evidence of second waves or peaks). 

Such a lot to learn yet but this vaccine thread hints at a very real treatment breakthrough.

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36 minutes ago, Barry Brockes said:

In the Telegraph today Professor Adrian High, who is the Project Leader for the Oxford Vaccine trial, rated the chances of success as no more than 50/50 and also suggested that the virus is actually dying out. 

I think lots of people are being cautious and rightly so, but even if this vaccine doesn’t completely protect you from the virus, I believe it’s very good at preventing it from hitting the lungs and other organs in such a viscous way, so could still be a viable option to prevent lots of people needing icu care or even hospital care in the future.

But for so many countries to be taking this vaccine in such large numbers make you think all those medical scientists can’t be wrong, it must be fairly promising.

Fingers crossed I can say I told you so Ricardo, come September/ October.😉👍💛💚

Edited by Indy
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If Professor High's hypothesis is correct and the virus does actually die out, do we need a vaccine? Sorry, I'm no scientist but just curious. 

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42 minutes ago, sonyc said:

 

Even looking at the graphs of all countries you see the same patterns (with long tails and little evidence of second waves or peaks). 

True but the real test will be when everyone opens up again.

Question is will we get to the point t of mass production before we return to normal?

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Yes that is true.

You might imagine the physical distancing measure is going to be seen as very important ahead. At least parts of the economy can be opened up though.... I expect actually to hear today we are going to Level 3. BJ likes good stories and I'm assuming at the press conference shortly he will announce lots of opening up of the economy.

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1 minute ago, Barry Brockes said:

If Professor High's hypothesis is correct and the virus does actually die out, do we need a vaccine? Sorry, I'm no scientist but just curious. 

I guess so, but that would mean everyone in the world is clear of it and that's a very long way off.

Local extinction is a real possibility for some less globalised areas but the whole world free of it? Cant see it myself.  If it is still out there a world city like London will for sure be a prime candidate for re infection. 

Regardless, this is now the third coronavirus to make a deadly jump so vaccine  development should continue even if it is eradicated as far as I am concerned 

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2 hours ago, Barry Brockes said:

In the Telegraph today Professor Adrian High, who is the Project Leader for the Oxford Vaccine trial, rated the chances of success as no more than 50/50 and also suggested that the virus is actually dying out. 

The figures for hospital and PHE testing shows positive tests in london down from a peak of 1024 to 50 or less. (50 on 19th May) not inconceivable (though unlikely) that it is now not circulating within London 

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2 hours ago, Barbe bleu said:

True but the real test will be when everyone opens up again.

Question is will we get to the point t of mass production before we return to normal?

Denying the virus the opportunity to pass from person to person will reduce the rate of community infection, that doesnt mean that the virus will be gone. I'm getting concerned that people seem to be confusing these two issues. 

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2 hours ago, Indy said:

I think lots of people are being cautious and rightly so, but even if this vaccine doesn’t completely protect you from the virus, I believe it’s very good at preventing it from hitting the lungs and other organs in such a viscous way, so could still be a viable option to prevent lots of people needing icu care or even hospital care in the future.

 

Yes absolutely this, if the vaccine prevents the infection being life threatening then its done its job, its the way many vaccines work.

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1 minute ago, Van wink said:

Yes absolutely this, if the vaccine prevents the infection being life threatening then its done its job, its the way many vaccines work.

No, I would say its done half of its job.

As far as I know a lot of vaccines dont work for the old and the compromised (or those that just have bad luck or a bad batch i guess) so these guys rely on others being vaccinated to sterilization levels to reduce the spread.

The vaccine has to have a protecting effect on those who would suffer most or what's the point?

 

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5 minutes ago, Barbe bleu said:

No, I would say its done half of its job.

As far as I know a lot of vaccines dont work for the old and the compromised (or those that just have bad luck or a bad batch i guess) so these guys rely on others being vaccinated to sterilization levels to reduce the spread.

The vaccine has to have a protecting effect on those who would suffer most or what's the point?

 

Yes ok, I take that point, the point I was trying to make is that the flu vaccine for example will not stop everyone vaccinated getting flu, but it normally does enough to keep infection rates and mortality well below what it otherwise might be. Perhaps to expect more than that from the first round of CV19 vaccines is expecting too much.

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9 minutes ago, Barbe bleu said:

No, I would say its done half of its job.

As far as I know a lot of vaccines dont work for the old and the compromised (or those that just have bad luck or a bad batch i guess) so these guys rely on others being vaccinated to sterilization levels to reduce the spread.

The vaccine has to have a protecting effect on those who would suffer most or what's the point?

 

The guy this morning said the flu jab doesn’t protect you from getting the flu, it just helps you beat of the worse effects. He then went on to say that’s what this vaccine should do. He also said there will be some trial and error as they work out the doses required or even if you need a booster weeks later. He also quoted ( can’t remember the number but think it was 70 ) that there were loads of other promising vaccines, so still good they are piggy backing this one. I don’t think he meant the virus will disappear when we he said about it disappearing, I think he meant more it’s low here at the moment and it is a race to get it into into areas where it is rife to get a quicker idea of how well it works. 

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12 minutes ago, Van wink said:

Yes ok, I take that point, the point I was trying to make is that the flu vaccine for example will not stop everyone vaccinated getting flu, but it normally does enough to keep infection rates and mortality well below what it otherwise might be. Perhaps to expect more than that from the first round of CV19 vaccines is expecting too much.

R see my answer, he was quite specific that the flu jab does not stop you getting flu, and nor do most vaccines, they stop some of the worse effects. He mentioned ones like MMR said that is one of the few that eradicates it.

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14 minutes ago, Well b back said:

R see my answer, he was quite specific that the flu jab does not stop you getting flu, and nor do most vaccines, they stop some of the worse effects. He mentioned ones like MMR said that is one of the few that eradicates it.

Exactly, thanks. 

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3 hours ago, Barry Brockes said:

In the Telegraph today Professor Adrian High, who is the Project Leader for the Oxford Vaccine trial, rated the chances of success as no more than 50/50 and also suggested that the virus is actually dying out. 

I have a feeling you mean Adrian Hill. The Telegraph as I have already shown are about 3 weeks behind with the vaccine story. Adrian Hill gave an online seminar yesterday and you can read into it how confident he is now from the text below. There is a lot more after this, that mentions things like how easy this vaccine is to mass produce and how the results so far in amusing are so encouraging that the world is signing up. I am no scientist but my understanding of things like this is their public comments are normally very cautious. 

image.thumb.jpeg.6850db0827fdfdb41f7cea96c0496ca7.jpeg

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1 hour ago, Van wink said:

Denying the virus the opportunity to pass from person to person will reduce the rate of community infection, that doesnt mean that the virus will be gone. I'm getting concerned that people seem to be confusing these two issues. 

But isn't that what it means.

Once the virus is infecting less and less people, then it is gone...........for now.

Agreed, that it might raise it's head if it is imported again from somewhere  else later but it can't just reappear withouth a carrier bringing it in.

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17 hours ago, Barry Brockes said:

In the Telegraph today Professor Adrian High, who is the Project Leader for the Oxford Vaccine trial, rated the chances of success as no more than 50/50 and also suggested that the virus is actually dying out. 

I have seen Adrian Hills comments now. If the Telegraph are reporting this then that is really bad journalism as they have changed a quote to mean something else. What he actually said is below. He hasn’t actually said it only has 50/50 chance of working he said we only have a 50/50 chance to see if it works in the U.K. as transmission will be low, hence why their partners such as AstraZeneca are now going ahead with trials in Brazil. The virus dying out in this case he meant dwindling I believe so we will not have a vaccine for the next big hit. If they can’t prove the vaccine works then the likelihood is that the world will be hit by a much bigger wave later in the year. Adrian Hill as you may have seen in previous post is VERY CONFIDENT this vaccine works, it’s just proving it before the world is hit with a second, far more deadly wave.

Oxford scientists working on a coronavirus vaccine say there is now only a 50% chance of success because the number of UK cases is falling too quickly 

Scientists involved in one of the world's leading studies into finding a vaccine for the coronavirus say there is currently only a 50% chance of success because the number of people in Britain with the virus is falling too quickly.

The Oxford University mission to find a vaccine for the COVID-19 virus is in "a race against the virus disappearing, and against time," Adam Hill, director at Oxford University's Jenner Institute, said this weekend.

Hill told The Telegraph newspaper that the number of people in the UK with the virus was falling at a rate that meant there might not be enough people to test the experimental vaccine known as ChAdOx1 nCoV-19.

"At the moment, there's a 50% chance that we get no result at all," he said.

Hill's colleague Sir John Bell, an Oxford University regius professor of medicine, made the same observation in a weekend interview with The Times of London newspaper.

"You wouldn't start [trials] in London now for sure," Bell told the newspaper. Cases of the coronavirus in England's capital are currently falling faster than anywhere else in the country.

Read more: The untold story of Moderna as the biotech's coronavirus vaccine faces a test that could make it one of the most consequential startups of all time

Bell said that scientists might have to "chase" the virus around the nation for the vaccine trials to be successful.

"The latest figures show 634 confirmed cases in the capital in the past fortnight," Bell told the newspaper.

"In contrast, there was an increase of 163 on Friday alone in the northwest of England, taking the total in the region to 24,295 confirmed cases.

"The question is: can you chase the disease around the UK? Then there's the question about whether you chase it internationally."

Scientists at Oxford are working with global pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca Plc to produce the vaccine. It's one of several studies around the world with the aim of developing a vaccine for the COVID-19 virus.

The Oxford Vaccine Group says it hopes to complete human trials on the hAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine in September.

The first two humans were injected with the vaccine at the end of last month. About 1,100 people in the UK are expected to take part in the trial, which is funded by Boris Johnson's UK government.

 

 

 

 

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In view of us having a vaccine that probably works, but possibly no way of testing it until we get the second even deadlier wave, some scientists are now pushing in the U.K. for there to be human challenge trials. From what I am reading what sounds a good story that the virus is dying out, is really bad news, as the likelihood of a bigger outbreak with still no protection at the end of the year when it returns bigger than ever. I still think it is likely there will be human challenge trials but in the USA or some third world company where the participants just need the money they would be given to take part.

UK scientists want to infect volunteers with Covid-19 in race to find vaccine

Trials could be speeded up by using risky strategy of deliberately introducing the virus 

Robin McKie

Sun 24 May 2020 08.27 BST

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Image of coronavirus Covid-19  Human challenge trials may be used to find a vaccine against Covid-19. Photograph: Stanca Sanda/Alamy

Scientists have warned there could be major delays in producing a Covid-19 vaccine if current UK infection rates remain low and lengthy waiting times are needed to show if candidate products are working. As a result, some researchers insist that ministers must now consider implementing radical alternative measures to speed up vaccine development.

In particular, they argue that Britain should consider deliberately infecting volunteers involved in vaccine-testing projects – in line with World Health Organization proposals to set up such human challenge trials. Earlier this month, the WHO issued a 19-page set of guidelines on how these trials might operate.

However, other UK scientists have reacted with horror at the proposal to implement human challenge trials for a Covid-19 vaccine on the grounds that these could cause serious illness and possibly deaths of volunteers who had been deliberately infected with the virus.

The dilemma was summed up by Jonathan Ives of the Centre for Ethics in Medicine at Bristol University. “If we were to do this, we would be asking healthy people to put their wellbeing and their lives at risk for the good of society at large. On the other hand, taking that risk could speed up vaccine development and save many, many lives. So I think there could be grounds for going ahead with challenge trials, though it would be based on a very finely balanced argument.”

Figures released last week suggest about 7% of the UK population may have already been infected with Covid-19 virus, a relatively low level of infection that poses problems for testing vaccines. A sufficient number of volunteers has to be exposed to the virus to see if a vaccine protects them or not. But if their chances of being in contact with an infected person are low, it will take a long time to demonstrate the efficacy of a vaccine candidate.

 

Little bottles labelled vaccine Covid-19 and a syringe

 WHO says the least risky group for trials comprises healthy volunteers aged 18-30. Photograph: Dado Ruvić/Reuters

As a result, scientists have proposed that human challenge trials could be introduced to test a vaccine quickly and so save thousands of lives by preventing future infections. “Levels of infection in the community are already low, and if this virus behaves like other respiratory diseases and coronaviruses, there may be even lower levels over the summer,” said Professor Lawrence Young of Warwick University Medical School. “There will not be enough people secreting the virus to be in contact with volunteers in vaccine projects. It is just not going to work.”

Young argues that human challenge trials should be considered “very seriously” for the UK. These would involve giving volunteers either a placebo or a vaccine, as is normally done in trials. But instead of waiting to find out how the two groups fare without interference, scientists would deliberately infect them with the Covid-19 virus. This would very quickly show if a vaccine works or not.

“Only very healthy young people – around the age of 25 – who have given informed consent would be used,” added Young, who points out that such trials have already been used to test the efficacy of vaccines for flu and the common cold.

 

Only very healthy young people – around the age of 25 – who have given informed consent would be used

Professor Lawrence Young, Warwick University

However, these ailments pose relatively low risks to volunteers. Covid-19 can have serious side-effects, mainly for the elderly but also in a few rare cases of young, apparently healthy people. This point is acknowledged by Young. “Before we went ahead with challenge trials, we would need to have developed some very effective therapy – an anti-viral drug perhaps – that could be used in the few cases where something went seriously wrong.”

This latter point has been stressed by WHO in its guidelines for human challenge trials. It suggests the least risky group to infect would be those aged 18–30 years. Only 1% of this group end up hospitalised with Covid-19, while fatality rates are around 0.03%. “Challenge studies should then be conducted in specialised facilities, with especially close monitoring and ready access to early supportive treatment for participants,” add the guidelines.

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The idea of carrying out human challenge trials for a Covid-19 vaccine was also backed by Professor Arpana Verma, of Manchester University. “Vaccines give us the ability to protect the most vulnerable people in society. That is one of their key strengths. So I think it would be entirely justifiable to go ahead with such trials.”

But the proposal was firmly opposed by immunologist Professor Eleanor Riley of Edinburgh University. “Challenge studies are done for many diseases but only when strict criteria are followed. Firstly, the virus should be really well studied and its clinical behaviour understood in detail. It should also be incapable of causing severe illness in healthy individuals, or there should be a highly effective drug to clear the infection. None of these criteria are met for Covid-19, and I would be very concerned to hear challenge studies were being planned.”

The crucial point is that we should be thinking now whether we want to go ahead with human challenge trials, said Young. “We shouldn’t wait until we have a vaccine candidate on our hands and not know what to do with it.”

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Human challenge trials have their own morality issues which is a separate matter, the main problem though lies in infecting healthy young people with low vulnerability when of course the people we need to protect are older and highly vulnerable. It will give skewed results for the general population but nevertheless of course has some value. Testing in other countries such as Brazil also has its limiting factors but nothing is going to be perfect. The main thing as we discussed earlier is providing some level of protection to those most vulnerable to serious symptoms and anything in addition at this stage is a bonus

Edited by Van wink

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17 hours ago, Well b back said:

R sorry here’s the second part of his summary. 
 

image.thumb.jpeg.fa0efad8268948fec1fd6d6007df2d4b.jpeg

Interesting. 

This is a phase 2/3 trial.   Guess that means that results are good enough for wide scale testing in the fit and healthy but the immune response in the elderly and children is still to be determined.

A long way to go yet but anything is better than nothing at this stage.

I dug the following article up on vaccination.   Good discussion of sterilising immunity. Obviously the gold standard is sterilising immunity as this is the best way to eliminate spread.  

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5011745/

It also hints that you can have (at least to one flu strain) an effective t cell response without antibody production.   In the other thread there was talk (before brexit came to dominate the thinking) about whether or not antibody levels were an effective measure of susceptibility. This study (in my amateur estimation)  might be taken as suggesting that other forms of immunity are important and that the serology studies taken at face value might be underestimating how close we are to  herd immunity  

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21 hours ago, Crafty Canary said:

Absolutely agree that this thread benefits greatly from the lack of political point scoring. As most of the point scoring has been at the government’s expense it would be difficult to do so on this topic given the government’s financial support for it.

Bang on, difficult to critique the government's crisis handling. Particularly as they are doing so well.

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26 minutes ago, BigFish said:

Bang on, difficult to critique the government's crisis handling. Particularly as they are doing so well.

Please don't

 

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1 minute ago, Barbe bleu said:

Please don't

I fully accept your request, but I do wonder at those who want to separate the science from the politics and usually ignore the public health aspects completely. The government's libertarian data driven approach has got us to where we are today. This continues to manifest itself in a technocratic mindset, much in evidence on this thread.

The idea is science can fix this, yet any vaccine is unlikely to complete its trials before September, some three months away (although please correct me if I am wrong, I am not following the regular puff pieces fed out to maintain morale). Even that there is a 50% chance of success in the UK. So three months away we have a 50/50 chance of success. That is ignoring clinicians' ingrained optimism bias.

Herd immunity seems to cause some excitement without any real scientific evidence to back it up again. Sweden, a very different population, is an experiment that got pointed to but the mortality figures seem to discount any successful lessons one could learn, except perhaps that as an approach it doesn't work. The idea of a second wave seems disregarded but there seems to be growing hope that the virus will just go away of its own accord. Again this doesn't seem to be backed up by the evidence.

This means that the question of society under a second (and third, fourth, fifth.....wave) gets sidelined. If the virus becomes endemic what do we do?

All the evidence points to those nations that are dealing with this successfully do so through a rigourous public health approach. This is no surprise, the WTO was telling countries to test, test and test again just as Johnson stopped the UK's testing programme. This, combined with rigourous tracking and isolation reduces both the prevalence and the R number. It is a model for the future, and better than a coin toss in 3 months. That is not to say we shouldn't support the UK's reasearch sector. Just that it isn't the answer to the exam question.

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