Do you think the government/scientists must be confident about the Oxford vaccine to keep mentioning it?

[Whatsthis1515]

Just that really. Don't know how to expand on my question

No. Unless they are completely deluded.
It is the media that picked up on this spinning it in an over optimistic way. The public, naturally, would get their hopes up. Another example of irresponsible reporting throughout the press.
People really need to be told clear and real information without raising expectations.
There should, and probably is, be a real drive in prevention and treatment protocols and these need to be shared with the public. Measures we should all adopt until a vaccine is found. Because it may never be found.
Obviously it’s difficult because nobody knows much but it will come.
Yes, everybody and their dog are working really hard at finding a vaccine.
We might or we might not find a vaccine.
There might never be a vaccine for this
It is unlikely a vaccine would be proved to be working and be safe for at least x years after it is discovered
We will make sure there is production capacity
We don’t know what type of vaccine will be so we don’t know yet what materials we need to stock upon to make sure we can produce it on a large scale as fast as possible.
We might have to buy the vaccine from another country and they might not want to share it with us.
It is one thing to discover a vaccine which may well happen by the spring but not necessarily in the UK.
Etc etc
People need to be told the truth based on past experience and evidence.
It is another thing to test and approve it. Obviously there’s manufacturing, scaling up and distribution but this is not the question here.

I can see the hope argument to an extent but I’ve seen lots of “they’re giving people false hope to get everyone back to work” and I just don’t see the logic on that.

Whilst I appreciate the lockdown is a shit show from a mental health perspective I’m not sure if we are quite at the averting mass suicide stage are we? There seems to be ongoing support for the lockdown if the schools chat is anything to go by.

@Redolent

So are you confident that:

1. The four years work into the MERS vaccine will cut down Covid-19 vaccine development time by the same period?
2. That gearing up manufacturing will cut off 50-75% of the remaining time taken to get to market?
3. The resultant vaccine will protect a sufficient percentage of those vaccinated for a sufficient length of time for the vaccine to actually be useful.

Still a lot of hurdles to be cleared, especially if you are aiming for the reported 3 month time frame.

Or this could be the massive order for unproven antibody tests all over again.

I hope it does work, but I really think it’s massively optimistic and bordering on propaganda. “Just keep going, not long now, cavalry’s on it’s way”.

It’s not a 3 month time frame really, they started work in January so absolute best case it’s 9 months and probably 12 which isn’t that far off the 12-18 month time frame that has been bandied about from the start.

Still a huge number of ifs, buts and maybes. I am glad they seem to be front loading the manufacturing process though.

It is very promising because they didn't start from scratch, it was an already tested mers vaccine. I know people who are working on it and 2 friends are in the trial. 30 million doses by September does sound very optimistic though. From what I'm hearing, it's less about if it conveys some immunity, more about how much immunity and for how long plus how much it costs - normally this is where vaccines fail, they aren't considered cost effective, but money isn't a consideration here.

I’m not confident about any of that - how can I be? I’m not a specialist or virologist familiar with their programme. But the scientists themselves seem really confident - they’re the ones speaking to the media on a regular basis - and the trial on monkeys so far is encouraging. Note that the monkeys were given a much higher exposure to Covid than we would be - the equivalent of walking into an ICU ward without a mask, sticking your head into a patient’s mouth and having them repeatedly cough straight into your face...and they didn’t develop pneumonia.

Personally I don’t want to get my hope for one before the end of the year, but I am optimistic in general, whether that’s a vaccine or treatments. The scientific work and funding poured into these initiatives is on a scale never seen before.

@Redolent My point was that just because some of the information in the article is out of date vis a vis this particular vaccine, doesn’t mean that the history of vaccine development has changed.

Equally, I’m not sure I’d be first in the queue for a medication that has been rushed in such a fashion, even if it is based on something that has worked in another setting.

There are lots of potential medications which show promise, are safe and effective effective in other species that don’t turn out to be effective or safe in humans.

Promising signs and optimism are great. But I have worked with scientists doing ground breaking work in various fields (I used translate research in various fields into written pieces for lay audiences in a University setting, specifically for people who were involved in funding the research over long time periods).

Sometimes, often in fact, promising results and optimism don’t translate into something more concrete quickly. Sometimes they do, sometimes they point research into a more fruitful direction. And it isn’t always linked to the amount of money or personnel thrown into an endeavour.

I think the key thing that has changed is that most vaccines need to be commercially viable. This one doesn’t.

Most people seem to agree it is manufacture and distribution that is the biggest barrier from a time perspective. I’m not sure there has ever been a situation before where a vaccine was put into mass production before the trials were complete? I can’t see how that would ever be commercially viable under normal circumstances.

Nothing can be guaranteed, obviously but neither do I think you can compare the development of a vaccine for COVID with the usual development of vaccines as so much is different.

Of course you can compare them @Sunshinegirl82. Just because a few stages can be condensed by running them concurrently rather than consecutively doesn’t mean the actual underlying work is any different, or that the safety standards or thresholds of effectiveness change.

All it means is that if they find a vaccine that works, they have a jumpstart on production lead times. Doesn’t make it any more likely that the vaccine will work.

Obviously not, I’ve said that.

You cannot compare the timelines of running all steps one after the other (with delays whilst licensing bodies etc get round to looking at your project) to running several steps concurrently (with licensing bodies putting your project to the top of the pile).

Add in the lack of a need for it to commercially viable and I’d say the two processes are pretty different,

Doubts over Oxford vaccine as it fails to stop coronavirus in animal trials

Yes, I read the actual paper the article is based on. It was fairly positive and pretty interesting.

There has never been any guarantee that the Oxford vaccine will work. That’s a given.

According to the research paper it does seem to prevent the monkeys getting pneumonia which, if that can be replicated in humans, would put us in a much better position than we are in now. Not a magic bullet but a massive improvement (given that it’s the pneumonia that kills people).

Obviously usual caveats that the paper is in pre print and yet to be peer reviewed, and that there is no guarantee the effects in the monkeys can be replicated in humans.

I'm wondering how they test it without exposing the volunteers to the virus, especially given the reducing cases and social distancing.

I think they are now trying to use hospital staff as test subjects as they are more exposed to the virus. The reason many vaccines take so long is that they have to wait to get enough infections in the trial vaccinated volunteers, which can take years

But there has also been talk about infecting volunteers (with their permission of course!!) as a way to speed this process up.

www.theguardian.com/science/2020/may/08/who-conditionally-backs-covid-19-vaccine-trials-that-infect-people

Before anyone reels in horror, so many people on this forum keep saying how low your risk is of dying with this illness and that we need to carry on and get back to work, that I imagine they would be more than happy to volunteer for this. After all the tiny tiny risk of getting very ill or dying from Covid should be worth taking in exchange for getting the country back up and running very quickly and minimising the economic impact. Any volunteers?

I’d volunteer! I tried to but I’m still breastfeeding so they wouldn’t take me!

The references for normal vaccine development time (eg for SARS and Ebola) isn’t really relevant anymore. It took 8 months to sequence the genome for SARS. Science has moved on.

That said, the Oxford monkey results aren’t particularly promising. It looks like the best that can be hoped for from that is an interim solution for healthcare workers to reduce the severity of their cases. But one of the other candidates might be more effective and the monkey trials at least suggest that the vaccines won’t cause an excessive reaction to the virus.

I would volunteer to do that. I suspect even at the young age of 40 I might be considered too old but if not I would do it. I am desperate to get back to real life. My risk of getting seriously ill or dying as a healthy 40 year old woman IS extremely low, particularly as presumably if you got infected it would be picked up straight away.

I would like to play my part in moving us on from this. I’m sure I’m not the only one.

Everything is being thrown at this so it’s nothing like normal trial times. So yes I think it could be this autumn at least for some key worker groups

No.
I think they want to distract people from the shitstorm they led us into.

I’m not a fan of this government or BJ but I really don’t understand the propaganda argument? What is the logic behind that thinking? I’m quite willing to be persuaded!

Its a distraction from our super high daily and total deaths (after 8 weeks of lock down) and esp infection rates, they did it with track and trace with a "world leading" app, due to be rolled out now but has been put back to sometime never or with telling the world we will test 250k per day or even 100k, its about getting headlines that distract from the realities of what is happening.

Vaccines would normally be tested for efficacy in the community, that takes time especially in a society with social distancing and little normal interaction but with no treatments, you can't really go deliberately infecting healthy people to see if the vaccine works, what if someone died? healthy people have.

i suspect the Chinese will be the first with a working vaccine, they have had a head start with CV and may not be so careful with the testing side of things.

The WHO have sanctioned challenge trials in the right circumstances so it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that they will look to infect people deliberately.

I don’t think the government have covered themselves in glory by any stretch of the imagination. I still don’t see the logic that the promise of an early vaccine will drive people out of lockdown and back to work or back into schools.

I 100% envisage them taking all the credit for any successful vaccine and harping on continuously about how with their great foresight they made it happen etc.

I don’t know, the “road map” talked of needing to plan for no vaccine. I actually felt there had been quite a lot of negativity from the government on the issue of a vaccine. I did wonder if they were being purposely negative to encourage people out of lockdown. Suggestinghalf the population could be vaccinated in 3 months sort of flues in the face of that.

Deliberate infection won't happen, its unethical as there is no treatment and we don't know what triggers a catastrophic response in people with no underlying health conditions, as i said, other countries may not be so worried about that.

The Govt hasn't promised a vaccine, they have talked up one BUT also said it might not happen, therefore giving the impression we are on the verge of a breakthrough e.g Get the good headlines and at the same time giving themselves away out.

Personally, i think the huge danger for the Govt is an early 2nd spike of infections and a harsher return to lockdown, something no other country has so far managed! imho BJ lifted restrictions too early and in a way that encouraged people to return to a new normal very quickly.

Thanks for the link and info Sunshinegirl82 and bumblingbovine49

No-I think they are clutching at straws to try to persuade people back to work

That makes no sense, it’s far more likely to make people say ‘right I’m staying put until there’s a vaccine then’. I think Boris saying ‘there might never be a vaccine’ is designed to get people back out to work, as if there’s never a vaccine we will have to live to learn alongside it, and we may as well start now.

imho BJ lifted restrictions too early and in a way that encouraged people to return to a new normal very quickly

I don’t understand this? The only restriction that has been lifted is that we can have unlimited daily exercise.
The encouraging people to get back to work was just encouraging those who were always permitted to work to actually go. Far more businesses closed and furloughed employees than was intended (or desired).
So how exactly are people going back to normal? They can go outside, and sit on beaches etc (and we know that outdoor transmission is low) but they can’t see friends or family, go to the gym, go to restaurants or cafes, go swimming, people are still mainly encouraged to work from home... so what are these restrictions that have been lifted too early?

Challenge trials are unlikely I’d agree, but not impossible

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/science/2020/may/08/who-conditionally-backs-covid-19-vaccine-trials-that-infect-people