You can’t vaccinate for corruption

By in Australian Politics, Featured Article

| 30 comments

Via the AFR:

Questions over clinical trial data for AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine have not derailed plans to begin immunising Australians from March, Health Minister Greg Hunt says.

Mr Hunt downplayed concerns over the vaccine may be less effective than initially reported, as AstraZeneca announced it would conduct a further trial.

“Our vaccine timeframe is unchanged,” Mr Hunt said.

When in doubt, lie, at the FT:

Disquiet is growing over the way that Oxford university and AstraZeneca have handled the early readout from trials of their coronavirus vaccine, which much of the developing world may rely on to emerge from the pandemic.

The results were hailed a success for showing an average efficacy of 70 per cent — a figure reached by pooling the results from cohorts on two different dosing regimens.

One set of participants received two identical doses a month apart, while the other group received a half-dose, and then a full dose. The efficacy for the first, larger group was 62 per cent. In the second subgroup, it was 90 per cent.

It has emerged that administration of the half-dose started with a mistake. It was then given to a smaller number of participants than those who received two full doses, making the discovery of its greater effectiveness look like a lucky break.

Yet on Tuesday, Moncef Slaoui, the head of Operation Warp Speed, the US government’s funding programme for vaccine development, disclosed that second subgroup was also limited to people aged 55 or below, a demographic with lower risk of developing severe Covid-19.

Oxford and AstraZeneca did not disclose the age breakdown on Monday, when results were released.

“There are a number of variables that we need to understand,” Mr Slaoui said. It is still possible the difference in efficacy was “random”, he added.

And then there was this:

Morrison has ballsed this right up.

David Llewellyn-Smith
Latest posts by David Llewellyn-Smith (see all)

Comments

  1. Mining BoganMEMBER

    He balls everything up, it’s the media giving him a free pass that lets him get away for it.

    They’ll be forcing us to inject a toxic dose into our arms before next winter, and not one journo will say a word.

  2. adelaide_economistMEMBER

    “Morrison has ballsed this right up.”

    Yes well he got (extra) greedy. Thought he could kill two birds with one stone, both helping out a corporate mate with all kinds of sweet prepaid agreements (despite the idea of a safe vaccine for something like c19 being churned out this quickly being a joke) while also opening the floodgates to ‘students’, ‘skilled workers’ and ‘tourists’ (aka recon work for a later PR bid and/or property purchase) and pleasing another set of corporate mates. Heck, might even have killed three birds by giving himself kudos for getting Australian citizens back to the country, once the floodgates to non-citizens were well and truly open.

  3. Arthur Dukakis

    Medical professionals are aware that COVID has been significantly over-hyped. The coming full-year annual deaths in Europe will show this, where annual deaths will be little different from prior years and probably a bit worse for countries with stricter lockdowns, due to disruptions to aged care (Eastern European nurses fled Western Europe to get back home before borders closed), regular medical treatment, and from destitution.

  4. Matchbox

    Not to mention that early feedback from test patients say that they get fevers, headaches and nausea.
    There are concerns at AZ and oxford that the strong side effects could make people not return for a second dose and also that it might require 1-2 days off from work.

    • adelaide_economistMEMBER

      Any sacrifice the average Australian can make to ensure the elite remain in clover for the rest of their days (and so the floodgates on cheap labour can be reopened) must surely be worth it. OK so we can’t buy a house, get a hospital bed or find a seat on public transport in our own country, but the least we can do is get potentially life altering illnesses (or at minimum, be sick and probably unpaid off work for a few days) from taking an untested vaccine for others benefit. Where’s your Anzac spirit?

  5. AngryMan

    As soon as this version of the Vaccine is release i will be first in line demanding everyone else take it to protect me.

  6. Curious

    Nice thing about being in Australia right now with very low numbers and in our summer is that we can afford to wait maybe a month to get an early read on how the vaccines are tolerated across a broad range of people in real life.
    Also very interested in the progress of the UQ vaccine. Our usual flu vaccine season is Q2 as the weather cools through late April / May. Not sure if UQ will be ready that early.

    • tonyddMEMBER

      I watched Dr John Campbell dissect a covid study of MMR vaccine. There appeared to be only upsides to getting a shot so we did the following day.

    • Djenka

      Who could’ve thought that there will be so many Russian and Chinese Pharma on the list!!!
      No wonder no one trusts them thinking they cut corners and all are looking up to Pfizer and AZ

  11. dennis

    It could be a clayton’s vaccine and scumo wouldn’t care, as long as it gives an excuse to open up.