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agd

I think I read (and I may be wrong) that the costs for the vaccines per dose were roughly as follows:

Moderna: £45, Pfizer: £20, Oxford: £3,

The Oxford one is also easier to store and transport.

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Oxford one is also going to be easier to manufacture given that it is based on existing technology.

Many countries e.g. Australia are licensing the formula so this is an important aspect.

the mRNA style viruses will probably decrease in cost exponentially the same way that DNA sequencing and computer technology have dropped in price.

However, mRNA vaccines require low temperature storage and are in general harder to handle. This translates to additional cost in production, throughout the logistics chain and delivery.

I think it's likely that they'll need to be distributed frozen, but there's a lot that can be done researching preservatives. The the moderna vaccine is higher temperature than the pfveizer one for this reason.

Pfizer are also working on a lyophilised, aka freeze-dried, version of their vaccine, which would not need to be stored at -80 C. This is from July [1], not sure if there is any more news:

> But we also hope to have, as we always do in life cycle management, a new lyophilized formulated vaccine by -- within maybe a year after initial delivery such as fourth quarter 2021 and the lyophilized formulation could be stored in refrigerator.

[1] https://s21.q4cdn.com/317678438/files/PFE-USQ_Transcript_202...

I read the opposite - producing mRNA fragments at scale is supposedly cheaper than producing the inactivated vector viruses with the correct payload.

no real idea, but my guess is that its likely true that mRNA fragment production is cheaper, but inactivated vector manufacturing is already scaled up and out globally and mRNA is not-- existing labs around the world can maybe be more easily equipped to scale up production?

Considering most economies are losing ~£100/person/day by having everything shut, the cost is fairly irrelevant.

Not for developing countries. And ultimately it is important for them to get vaccinated too, otherwise they will form a huge reservoir of COVID that will inevitably mutate and come back around to us.

That is not how it works. The Spanish Flu hasn't "come back" yet and coronaviruses mutate a lot more slowly. It couldn't really come back anyway, because it's still there, downgraded to regular flu.

> The Spanish Flu hasn't "come back" yet

Yes it has, most recently in 2009. From Wikipedia:

“ Well known outbreaks of H1N1 strains in humans include the 2009 swine flu pandemic, as well as the Spanish flu.”

I believe you misread the abstract. After reading the whole article, I believe it should be "include the `2009 swine flu pandemic`, as well as the `Spanish flu`".

How is that different from how you think I read it?

The “Spanish flu” is the name of the 1918 outbreak of H1N1. There was also a major H1N1 outbreak in 2009.

The 2009 outbreak wasn't comparable to the Spanish Flu.

Indeed, for various reasons including no world war and widespread vaccination, it was less bad. But it was literally the same virus.

Your example proves exactly the opposite of the point you think it does. Every year the flu virus comes back slightly mutated, and the immunity process starts all over again. In the summer the southern hemisphere acts as of reservoir of the virus and vice versa in the winter. This exact process could happen with COVID too. You are right that it does mutate more slowly, but there are upwards of 4 billion people in these countries. A very small number times 1 billion is still a much larger number.

Of course it does. But it doesn't cause anything we'd consider a pandemic.

Yes, the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is much cheaper: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-22/astra-oxf...

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