Coronavirus Vaccine in Taiwan - May/June 2021

I don’t pay for it. It came with the Pfizer.

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I think Moderna will be self-driving with the next booster shot. At least that’s the rumor on VaccinesAreTheDevil.org.

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You got my hopes up there with that link. That was evil. :smiling_imp:

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I haven’t had a COVID test, but did have a nasal endoscopy after I developed a sinus infection. That’s an entire wire with a camera on it snaking through your nasal passages. I have to imagine that’s even more invasive than the much feared COVID test q-tip. People are wimps if they’re scared of getting tested. It’s over in a second as well.

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they said its 98% effective. how does this compare to other vaccines? Taiwan has the miracle cure. bnt is like 95%.

Lol

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One can only hope.

Who said what is 98% effective?

Not talking specifically about tw vaccines here, but in general, expect new vaccines to be more efficient than original BTN and Moderna against variants. That will include BTN and Moderna boosters btw. It is easier to make vaccine effective against variants once you know what those variants look like.

My understanding is that the Medigen vaccine is based a spike protein that was licensed from NIH in May 2020. So I would expect no inherent advantage against variants here.

Reality is that nobody can predict with precision what mutations will occur in the spike protein and whether or not they will evade the vaccines to the degree that protection is not sufficient. Right now it looks like BnT and Moderna are still performing the best against variants of all the approved vaccines.

The big advantage BnT and Moderna have is that mRNA is basically the fastest platform for developing new vaccines/boosters.

Also, mRNA doesn’t suffer from the issue viral vectors have with pre-existing immunity to the vector, which could become a big issue with the adenovirus based vaccines.

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For new vaccine for sure, for booster it is less obvious. The path from zero to candidate vaccine is way longer than from existing vaccine to vaccine for variant.

you didnt see the cdc come out with a giant sign that said 98.8%?

No.

The good news is, both vaccines use innovative messenger RNA, or mRNA technology, and that means researchers have the ability to change and tweak the vaccines to adapt to new variants more easily than with conventional vaccines. Here’s how that works.

Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett, who led the team responsible for Moderna’s vaccine, has referred to mRNA vaccines as a “plug and play” approach: It’s possible to replace one sequence of mRNA in the vaccine for another in a matter of weeks.

This allows drug companies to jump into action creating and testing vaccines that mimic new coronavirus variants that arise.

Moderna already has multiple booster candidates in trials.

https://investors.modernatx.com/news-releases/news-release-details/moderna-announces-positive-initial-booster-data-against-sars-cov

Edit: and just for additional reference.

mRNA is a game changer in terms of time to market.

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Just don’t look at percentages without knowing what they actually measure. A lot of those efficacy numbers are meaningful in their own contexts, but if you try to compare them without a common point of reference, it is meaningless.

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99.8% 28 days after the second dose…

Phase 2 had 3,000 participants.

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It is seroconversion rate. It’s a good sign, unfortunately immunity is way more complicated than that.

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That’s the seroconversion rate, not the real-world efficacy against a specific endpoint, like reduced risk of hospitalization or death.

Seroconversion isn’t worthless, but here’s an example of why you can’t read too much into it.

So Coronavac (Sinovac) and Sinopharm have high seroconversion rates but countries that have largely vaccinated with these have seen their cases surge compared to countries that have vaccinated with BnT, Pfizer and AZ.

Make of that what you will regarding seroconversion numbers and how it relates to real world efficacy.

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Ok but the time between variants is gonna be in months, similar to the Influenza. Traditional vaccines will be able to adapt in as few weeks, as opposed to the 18+ months needed to build a vaccine from scratch. Time to market is going to be less a critical factor for boosters. Stuff like efficacy, safety and ease of manipulation is going to be as important. It will be good overall to have options.

Please read the articles. mRNA is already light years ahead of the conventional vaccine platforms. The core of the Moderna vaccine was designed in 2 days. Boosters can be designed just as quickly. It’s just moving around synthetic RNA sequences.

Influenza is a horrible comparison. The efficacy of annual flu vaccines is only 40-60%. The vaccine makers basically bet on which strains of influenza are going to be dominant and there’s no turning back. If they predict wrong, the vaccines only help a little bit.

mRNA could be a game changer for flu vaccines as well.

https://www.pfizer.com/news/featured_stories/featured_stories_detail/new_rna_technology_could_get_the_flu_vaccine_right_every_year

The manufacturing process for the RNA vaccine is also simpler that the current vaccine technology. At research scale, an RNA vaccine can be made eight days after the sequence of a new flu virus is first known. The equipment used to make the vaccine bulk could fit in a shipping container. “Experts predict that the vaccine could be made quickly, such that you can pick your strains closer to the actual flu season removing a lot of the guesswork required with the current technology,” says Dormitzer. “Unlike in conventional flu vaccine manufacturing, even if the flu strains change from year to year, the production process remains the same.”