Comment by spacephysics | Hacker News Reader

Comment by spacephysics | Hacker News Reader

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Before sanctioning stealing, perhaps the problem is two fold. China wants to have the first vaccine for:

* Becoming the first to market, to try and salvage their reputation

* Using the vaccine as leverage toward the incoming sanctions for violating the Hong Kong treaty during UK handover, as well as the now-declared possible non-peaceful reunification of Taiwan

* monetary gain

* leverage against the US restricting/removing Chinese’s companies from the NASDAQ

I agree research should be open, but it’s hard to say to what degree, and how that might effect the economics of it. Whether we like it or not, capitalistic driven progress requires a reward, and one of the few reasons pharmaceutical companies will take the risk of finding a vaccine is the potential for increased reputation, and being first to market.

Without those incentives, it’s straightforward to not to take a massive monetary risk as others are all working on similar problems, thus the likelihood that your lab will be the first is slim.

Further, the crisis is a worldwide pandemic, but if the rate of natural immunity is as high as some predict, the efficacy of these vaccines may lead to less ‘sales’ than initially expected.

Oxford running out of people to test their vaccine on: https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-05-25/COVID-19-disappearing-...

China report about Taiwan has “peaceful” removed: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-parliament-taiwan/c...

China breaking the handover treaty: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/05/ch...

> * to try and salvage their reputation

Really? They just recently ban Australia trades because Australia inquire about Covid19 origins.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/13/australia-chin...

Australia is heavily economically dependent on China, so it's not really comparable.

> Oxford running out of people to test their vaccine on: https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-05-25/COVID-19-disappearing-....

I'm not a medical expert, but can someone in the know comment on this? Can I volunteer to get the Oxford vaccine in the US? Can I volunteer to fly to UK and get the vaccine immediately upon arrival?

The problem is not the absence of volunteers, the problem is that as the first wave of the epidemic recedes, most volunteers won’t catch the disease by themselves and thus will add no information as to whether the vaccine works. And challenge trials (deliberately infecting people) are apparently a big ethical no-no.

While that's true, it is still possible to get data by giving the vaccine to as many people as possible and seeing if the virus recedes faster than previous models predicted. If the slope of the trend suddenly buckles when people start taking the shots, there's a good chance it did something.

Although I'm also strongly against deliberately infecting people, if there is a high chance there is no danger to take the vaccine, and a strong possible upside (i.e. possibly save lives in the next 2 weeks), I don't see why we it isn't okay to volunteer to take it today, even if it isn't a fully conclusive data point. Hell, if there are 5 candidate vaccines, and they are all non-dangerous, I'd love to take all of them just to protect my own life, even if that makes me not as useful of a useful data point. There's a nonzero chance the virus will kill me in 2 weeks, 4 weeks, 6 weeks, and I think it is only ethical to reduce that chance even if that means 5 shots (pun intended) in the dark.

Of course, I see people downvoting me and it seems HN doesn't welcome this type of discussion anymore.

There’s a few premises that are hard to get by, for one mass-testing vaccines defeats the purpose of the safety axis of trials. If we knew it was non-dangerous, then there wouldn’t be the need for small scale trials. Instead large scale trials could be done just to try efficacy, rather than both safety and efficacy.

Yes there’s a non-zero chance of death, but assuming you’re a part of the average population (assuming US or UK for example sake), then you’re more likely to die getting in a vehicle.

Personally I’m for vaccines, but I do not want to be the first 10k they try it on. I’m in good health, so I’ll wait months or longer if one where released in their hopeful expedited timeline. By nature of the pandemic, this is rushed, and the risk to reward ratio favors waiting a bit (for myself), given the low mortality rate for people with no preexisting conditions.

Further, I’m near a hot spot, so it’s highly likely I have the antibodies, given others in my household are less careful, and thus my exposure profile essentially equals the lowest common denominator.

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