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Re:AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine study put on hold due to sus... by stirlo on Tuesday September 08, 2020 @09:17PM (#24415650)
> most epidemiologists think a vaccine won't even be possible

Unsourced statements like this are unhelpful.

The language I've heard is "there is no guarantee of a vaccine" which is very different to thinking it won't be possible at all. I'd suggest with the 200+ plus vaccine candidates being developed that many believe it is possible.

Re:AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine study put on hold due to sus... by cblconfederate on Tuesday September 08, 2020 @09:25PM (#24415706)
There are many different concerns. I havent done a rigorous meta-analysis but they also come from very respectable scientists.

> https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-vaccine-may-be-i...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-diseas...

And notice that there haven't been very exciting news from the vaccine developmnent trials. If anything there were more setbacks than pleasant surprises.

Re:AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine study put on hold due to sus... by ummonk on Tuesday September 08, 2020 @10:10PM (#24416064)
There were concerns because SARS vaccine attempts hadn't been further developed due to apparent cytokine storm problems. I think we're far enough along to be confident that that isn't an issue with vaccines for this virus.

Some people also make a comparison to the common cold coronaviruses which have a lot of strains and might be rapidly mutating. Honestly, it's a bad comparison because it's clear this coronavirus isn't mutating rapidly, and besides we haven't really tried to target common cold coronaviruses - why would we when rhinoviruses are the most frequent cause of the common cold?

Re:AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine study put on hold due to sus... by kuhewa on Wednesday September 09, 2020 @09:16AM (#24420656)
There's a bit more to it. The reason vaccines weren't developed previously for other coronaviruses is because in trials for a RSV vaccine, 80% of treated kids that got infected needed hospitalisation and two died, while something like 5% of the control infections needed hospitalisation. Due to antibody-dependent enhancement.

So yes there are immunopathology concerns with eliciting a T-cell response, and inducing a humoral immune response has the potential to make things worse.

Re:AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine study put on hold due to sus... by lbeltrame on Wednesday September 09, 2020 @10:40AM (#24421516)
That's why most trials take a look at the Th1 vs Th2 response to see if there's any indication of ADE. The currently available data do not seem to point to that.