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Comment by jameson | Hacker News Reader

> It was not immediately clear who placed the hold on the trial, though it is possible it was placed voluntarily by AstraZeneca and not ordered by any regulatory agency. The nature of the adverse reaction and when it happened were also not immediately known, though the participant is expected to recover, according to an individual familiar with the matter.

What would be a reason why they don't disclose this detail immediately but only to tell public the trial is on hold?

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At least for the details of the adverse reaction, it's not unusual for it take 1-2 weeks to collect all the details and form a complete picture. No sense in rushing out initial details, only to have the conclusion change a week from now.

Don't forget that the drug companies sponsor the studies, they don't actually run them. They are typically run by academic centers supported by third party vendors who handle the data collection, etc.

Someone will likely need to go back and look at the patient's clinical data to see if anything was amiss before this event. Then you'd need to collect a bunch of data to make a determination of the cause - was it the vaccine? was it some unrelated medical condition? a combination of the two?

Investor disclosure. That the trial is on hold is material information to investors but the medical reasons why it’s in hold (like the type of adverse reactions) probably isn’t.

What would be the reason to disclose the details publicly? You can't do anything with the information right now; the vaccine isn't available to you.

The illusion of control. It is the same reason people doomscroll on twitter hoping more information will somehow how change the result. Our brains, all human brains, are not rational but instead are their own thing.

Vaccine progress is of enormous practical consequence. Effective reporting of material information can move markets, and that means it's useful for efficient capital allocation.

Of course, there's diminishing returns and problems with many kinds of noise, and AstraZenica isn't strongly interested in marginal efficiencies in the broader market.

I'd say for transparency reasons. I tend to prefer disclosing information when they are certain to not to unnecessary give false hopes or panic.

This is a medical treatment sort of scenario, trial participant confidentiality regulations probably prevent release of anything specific about the case.

It is big pharm. What else do you expect? A little research you will find no big pharm can be trusted.

What is meant by that is vaccine and all FDA type of drug should not be trusted unless they have several decade if not intergeneration studies to back it up.

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