Novavax and the lack of Vaccine Choice

QFT. This vaccine lark is incredibly partisan with smug overload on both sides of the room.

+1. Much of this, online at least is a defence to authority, "science" so long as it agrees with the position, a gra for the novel and not a little of some having a near allergic over reactive response to what they see as "anti vaxx". Are there anti vaccine types about? By god there are, but taking the allergy/immune system analogy further some need to recognise the difference and not overreact to the wrong thing. To quote a part of that article your linked:

Based on the results of Novavax’s first efficacy trial in the U.K., side effects (including but not limited to fatigue) aren’t just less frequent; they’re milder too. That’s a very big deal for people on hourly wages, who already bear a disproportionate risk of getting COVID-19, and who have been less likely to get vaccinated in part because of the risk of losing days of work to post-vaccine fever, pain, or malaise. Side effects are a big barrier for COVID-vaccine acceptance. The CDC reported on Monday that, according to a survey conducted in the spring, only about half of adults under the age of 40 have gotten the vaccine or definitely intend to do so, and that, among the rest, 56 percent say they are concerned about side effects. Lower rates of adverse events are likely to be a bigger issue still for parents, when considering vaccination for their children.

Don’t get me wrong—the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have been extraordinary lifesavers in this pandemic, and we may well be heading into a new golden age of vaccine development. (This week, BioNTech started injections in an early trial for an mRNA vaccine for melanoma.) But even the best experts at predicting which drugs are going to be important get things wrong quite a bit, overestimating some treatments and underestimating others. Pharmaceuticals are generally a gamble.

But here’s what we know today, based on information that we have right now: Among several wonderful options, the more old-school vaccine from Novavax combines ease of manufacture with high efficacy and lower side effects. For the moment, it’s the best COVID-19 vaccine we have.

That would be largely my view too. Would I have taken the mRNA vaccines if nothing else were available? Yes, being 53 the risk/reward is still in play. Even though my chances or serious illness, hospital and death are very low. I think it far better to have little or no symptoms if, rather when I'm exposed to this pox(though chances are I have been already as in the early part of this year I lost my sense of smell and taste. Well I've no taste anyway... 😁. That's not come back, save for of all things the smell of fresh cut grass). Still because I had a choice I went for the J&J. One and done, older tech and not mRNA based. Well at least I had that choice. Today and going forward I would not. The Irish gov have set their stall out and it's all mRNA. No choice. Odd, given the mRNA stuff requires two jabs compared to the one of J&J, is much harder to store and costs more. Hopefully when newer and better vaccines come along like the Novavax, enterprising people will bring some in and give back some choice. I'd certainly be willing to pay for that choice.

However - and this is defo going to have some pearls clutched - If I were under 30, with no comorbidities, obesity, asthma, diabetes, chronic illness would I go for vaccination? Unless I was living with the vulnerable or anti vaccine types, quite honestly no, I wouldn't. And I certainly wouldn't be vaccinating children. Pigeons --- Insert cat. For me anyway that so many parents are lining up to vaccinate their teenage kids with a vaccine and vaccine tech that's only been in play for a year beggars my belief tbh. I'd be 100% behind it if the risk to that age group was real, but it's not. It's beyond tiny. Plugging a 20 year old male of average weight and height with no chronic illness into this risk calculator from the University of Oxford https://qcovid.org/Home/AcademicLicence?licencedUrl=%2Fcalculation (it doesn't allow for any age below 19) and the results are:

COVID associated death 0.0001% 1 in 1000000 0.0001% 1 in 1000000

COVID associated hospital admission 0.0031% 1 in 32258 0.0031% 1 in 32258

These are the big numbers of absolutely miniscule risks and this lack of risk is reflected in real world stats too. If the vaccines stopped or massively reduced transmission I'd have more enthusiasm going on, but they don't, not nearly to the degree needed and certainly not warranted in young people and it's increasingly looking like we'll need boosters after six months. So the same kids are going to need more of this next Spring? How long will this go on, when the actual illness is about as likely to affect them as a random lightning strike?

Astrofool: Personally, I'm honestly not worried about the long term effects of mRNA (they could have picked a better name, as Liam Neeson says, just wait till they find out that SARS-COV2 is full blown RNA being injected into your living cells), and neither seem to be the scientists who worked on it, the mRNA itself is absent from the body a while post dose leaving just the antibody and t-cell memory, there is no concerns about build up in the body or rejecting future versions (which matters for adenovirus), it would be like me worrying about the effect of an apple I ate a year ago on my body. But I do understand that some people are worried by this and new technology is just not liked by some (whether it's nostalgia or just going with what they know and trust).

It's certainly nada to do with some posited fear of "new technology", as far I'm concerned anyway. I'm a big fan of it as a general principle and I despise nostalgia with a vengeance. RNA isn't the issue. Viral vector vaccines do essentially the same thing. Hell, catching a headcold does the same thing. The issue is the vector. As noted a couple of years ago in that article I linked previously.

Delivery — actually getting RNA into cells — has long bedeviled the whole field. On their own, RNA molecules have a hard time reaching their targets. They work better if they’re wrapped up in a delivery mechanism, such as nanoparticles made of lipids. But those nanoparticles can lead to dangerous side effects, especially if a patient has to take repeated doses over months or years.

This delivery method was considered so risky it set back the whole area of mRNA therapies within the industries, a direction that was once hailed as The Next Big Thing and with big money behind it. Investors left, as did many other big names in the pharmaceutical business. The ones that remained, chastened by the earlier failures for the tech to live up to its promise moved into the not nearly so lucrative arena of vaccines, because they reckoned the lower doses and one off applications would be less risky. The real world use of this technology in humans is pretty much a year old. It's hardly tinfoil hat territory to be wary of possible long term issues, when the long term quite simply doesn't exist yet and today immediate side effects are higher than for the non mRNA vaccines. That is undeniable. It certainly doesn't exist for annual if not biannual boosters going forward.

The "early days" were a few years ago. The article on Moderna I linked to was from 2016. We're not talking about the 1980's here. The companies involved in the research either abandoned it entirely because of the risks around the vector(which hasn't changed BTW), or moved into vaccine research, the poor cousin, where because of the one(or two) injections the risks were considered low enough to plough on.

As I said; do I think the long term risks are high? Nope. However when it comes to otherwise healthy children or adolescents whose bodies are still growing where the actual virus itself has such a low level of risk of injury or death as to be barely quantifiable, I consider it a tad foolish and premature to be going about mass vaccinations in that demographic with this year old actual use technology.

Oh I hear you Rev. I'm not trusting the virus more, or rather it depends on context. For the over 40's or those already suffering from conditions that make them more vulnerable I "trust" the vaccines far more. In the under 40's not suffering from such conditions I'd be more on the virus' side. In the under 20's far more. The stats are in; the risks of serious illness and death from covid 19 for those under 20 are vanishingly small. Oh well it'll help stop transmission. OK, yep it reduces transmission alright, but on the other hand we're also being told that we'll all be exposed to this pox, it's more a question of when than if. We were also told that transmission among schoolkids was not a big concern, so if it's not then why call for mass vaccinations of older schoolkids? There's quite a lot of contradictory stuff around this virus.

Though I suspect much of this confusion and variability is because we're really looking hard at this virus and have the tools to do so compared to outbreaks of the past of flu etc. I'd bet if we looked at seasonal flu as hard and with the current tools we have we would find that the "simple" flu wasn't as simple as we thought either. EG say flu and you'll have the inevitable "oh you'd know if you had the real flu" because of severity, yet flu can present in people quite differently, from asymptomatic, through little more than a headcold, to thinking you're dying and then wishing you were. And of course every year people can and do die from it, or complications from it and there are years when ICU beds are running low because of it. "Long flu" can be a thing too. I know someone who ended up with heart trouble after a bad dose of it a few years back.