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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.