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.
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?