Originally Posted by
Downtime
Yeah so those side effects were minor enough they allowed it to move forward. It does seems we will have one or more vaccines next year. The bigger questions will be assuming the manufacturers have the hundreds of millions of dollars will we do better then we did with testing or remedesvir who knows.
Minor enough to allow it to move forward when you are testing a group (or three groups) of fifteen gives no guarantees whatsoever for a group of a thousand, far less for 330 million. The point is the hype that makes people think this is really significant - and drove a spike in Stock price - was unwarranted.
The rate of side effects INCREASED between the first and second immunizations. That might be good - implying that antibodies were being quickly formed. That might be bad, implying that vaccine enhancement might be at risk:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-h...-idUSKBN20Y1GZ
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/706717_8
https://cvi.asm.org/content/23/3/189
In 1967, infants and toddlers immunized with a formalin-inactivated vaccine against respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) experienced an enhanced form of RSV disease characterized by high fever, bronchopneumonia, and wheezing when they became infected with wild-type virus in the community. Hospitalizations were frequent, and two immunized toddlers died upon infection with wild-type RSV. The enhanced disease was initially characterized as a “peribronchiolar monocytic infiltration with some excess in eosinophils.” Decades of research defined enhanced RSV disease (ERD) as the result of immunization with antigens not processed in the cytoplasm, resulting in a nonprotective antibody response and CD4+ T helper priming in the absence of cytotoxic T lymphocytes. This response to vaccination led to a pathogenic Th2 memory response with eosinophil and immune complex deposition in the lungs after RSV infection
This is not a trivial concern, and a 15 person study does little to alleviate such a concern. Not saying vaccines are bad or that we shouldn’t be searching for one. Just saying it’s very early days and this tiny study doesn’t deserve the hype (or the stock boost) it is getting.