OpMidClimax

Production is going to be key for whichever candidate makes it through development. Moderna does not have the facilities to top do this scale of production. It will be subbed and pharmed out. Moderna does have allot of skill with this particular vaccine as they were very close with the original SARS already. All they did was change a small part of the vaccine to attribute to the spike protien. Smart people up there in Mass.

Technology will be stolen from foreign agents unfortunately.

rickair7777

Long-established vaccines (the ones you got as a kid, flu) have long ago amortized all of their development costs.

New vaccines will need to include development, as well as production, costs in the price.

Flu vaccine is made out of eggs. Chicken eggs, dime a dozen wholesale.

But what I think Mesabah is alluding to is that if a vaccine requires very advanced techniques, it could end up expensive with no way around it. If instead of an egg, you need a machine capable of processing genetic material, it could be orders of magnitude more costly. But that's all hypothetical at this point, need to see what they come up with. I'm sure even if the first one out of the chute is expensive, they won't stop until they develop one that can be produced economically on the scale of the billions needed for the whole world. That may or may not take longer.

rickair7777

Maybe, hopefully. But any bio-med product can surprise you by failing some key part of the testing/certification process. It's good that *everybody* is working on a vaccine.

I'm sure others are too, in fact it's been discussed. It was a fairly obvious to anyone with industry insight what parts of the process should be compressed, and what parts of the process might have to be compressed at risk if the crisis was bad enough (it is IMO).

I bet they'll find ways to do it faster.

Excargodog

Even supposing MM&R DOES work, we are screwing over a lot of kids who because of the lockdown simply aren’t getting their immunizations:

https://www.statnews.com/2020/05/08/...irus-pandemic/

There isn’t any no-risk scenario. It’s all a trade off of risks.

rickair7777

That can slide for a few months, there's enough people already vaccinated against the usual bugs to provide herd immunity (plus most kids aren't hanging out with the herd anyway right now).

Now if nobody gets the flu shot this fall, THAT could be a big problem, depending on what comes out of asia this year.

Excargodog

It isn’t just this, Rick, it’s a multitude of things. Pap smears, mammograms, screening colonoscopies, PPDs, Dental exams, we’ll baby exams, childhood immunizations, Optometry exams, blood pressure checks, the whole basics of public health have been put on hold for 330 million people. And for you and me you are right, it probably won’t make any difference, but for a small fraction of the population, and a small fraction of 330 Million people can be a whole lot of people, it WILL make a difference. Roughly 3 million new serious (not basal cell skin cancers) are discovered annually and we have about a million cancer deaths annually. A three or four month delay doesn’t translate into all of those people dying, but some will and others will advance enough to require more invasive surgery or a more intensive program of chemotherapy and/or radiation.

And for the very young kids shots, they actually DO need those for their own protection once maternal antibodies have worn off. And if you believe every working mom out there uses a licensed childcare provider that will actually require them to have proof of immunization, you are wrong. Nor does the pediatrics clinic have the surplus capability to surge and promptly catch up once this is over. They may we’ll be looking for staff themselves having furloughed their previous personnel.

You mention flu immunizations. Only about two out of three kids get them annually now. For adults it’s even worse, just over 50%.

https://www.drugtopics.com/vaccinati...going-flu-shot


Not everybody out there was in the military and not everybody puts the emphasis on it that you or I do. There are lots of parents out there just plain inadequate even if you make it easy on them. Immunization numbers even for things like Tdap we’re not 100% even before what has amounted to a three month moratorium on immunizations

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/68/wr/mm6841e2.htm

so no, I’m not claiming the deferred shots or other routine preventive medicine means that everybody is going to be dying en masse and their corpses littering up the streets, but it would be just as wrong to pretend there is no human cost to this. There is and will be and the longer it continues the higher that toll will be.

rickair7777

Yes I agree on the broad human cost, while a few months of delayed vaccines for kids will probably have no measurable affect, delayed preventative care for adults will pile up a health toll quickly... adults actually tend to develop health problems and house arrest can't be helping.

Anson Harris

I think this contributes to a credibility problem for epidemiologists and for the public health field in general.

Before covid-19, there were almost countless measures, initiatives, and policies that were pitched as key to public health (Excargodog summarizes many of them nicely). Take some time to browse around CDC's website in areas other than covid-19. There's a whole page dedicated to "Adolescent Connectedness," as an example. A friend of mine is a high school teacher, and he's worried about a lot of kids when things are normal. He has no idea how any of them are functioning now, because he doesn't have any real contact with them.

Now we're told that none of this stuff matters, at least until some undetermined time in the future. The only thing that matters now is wearing your mask, which you absolutely were not supposed to do until a few weeks ago.

If they honestly believe that covid-19 trumps everything else, the messaging and explanation as to why could use some work.

Humbleavi8t0r

Posted on another thread. Moderna shows positive progress where trials show ALL subjects developed antibodies.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/18/moderna-reports-positive-data-on-early-stage-coronavirus-vaccine-trial.html

OpMidClimax

Yes very positive... they should update adverse events and such shortly. They are also drumming up resources and funding for manufacture. They are still figuring out dose titration.

All very positive but a lot of work, and literally a sh!t ton of work to bring this vaccine to market.