Sputnik V vaccine peer reviewed with efficacy of 91.6%
sputnikvaccine.com
sputnikvaccine.com
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/02/08/the-sputnik-v-...
It covers the development of the vaccine as well as some of the controversy.
After reading the article, I'd probably accept the vaccine if offered it. The author of the article did.
To those downvoting the "I don't trust Russia" comments: step back and realize that this is HN and not Parler. If the HN crowd is this skeptical, how would something like this go over with the broader American/UK/EU/etc. public? My guess is not well. Trust but verify is probably the only realistic scenario if this vaccine is to be used in the West without a (larger) political storm.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-astraz...
It works well without the Phase III? So be it. Isn't it about the very people of Russia?
Now, they tell quantitatively that it has been just as good all along (wait, it's cheap too!). Well, even better - protect your people, maybe even start with the government. Russia is big!
Unfortunately, Sputnik V is associated with Putin-the-Underpants-poisoner, 2014 Sochi Olympics, Civil war in Syria, Civil war in Ukraine, invasion of Crimea... and that association is not good.
Unfortunately what the world witnesses so far about Russian 'pharma' is the continuous streak of poisonings and denials. No wonder lots of people have doubts.
As for anything visible happening currently 'en masse' is the protestor arrests. Holding cells overflowing to the extent that people are being ferried to distant police stations, in some cases over 100km away. No way this is helping to contain the virus spread.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia-naval...
Good health to you!
Russian medical factories were pretty much wiped out after USSR collapse and foreign corporations took the market.
Only in recent decade domestic product started to see the light of day, but still not enough production power.
So for now, Russian factories produce Sputnik shots just for Russia, but we’re selling license and ‘precursor’, so buyer can produce shots itself.
Unless there is political pressure from US to not do that - https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2021-01-29/ukrain...
Sorry but this data is coming from a totalitarian country where everything is directly or indirectly state controlled. I’m quite skeptical that the Kremlin didn’t put their thumb on the scales at least a little bit when compiling these results.
Since this vaccine is being sold left and right around the developing world we might in due course obtain more independent data about it. Until then it’s safer to say that the efficacy of this vaccine is basically unknown.
I don't pretend to know how involved the Russian government was in the process, but it's a shame the scientists who designed this vaccine are tainted by the corrupt government of the country they live in.
The Sputnik name and the glowing data we’ve heard about it.
Besides, it’s not like you can trust big pharma only if has a Western brand slapped on it. Some of the worst drugs, possibly all of them (that I’m aware of), came from us.
What do you mean by "the good money?" When I think of supposedly savvy investors backing biotech, I think Theranos.
> The Sputnik name and the glowing data we’ve heard about it.
Your justification is the name itself, and the data that OP is questioning. I don't know if it's a good vaccine or not, but I don't find this convincing. And after the Russian government went to such ridiculous lengths to cheat during the Olympics, I think it's fair to question their data.
All we can do is see how this shakes out.
I also don't understand why the name is relevant. At least in the US, things with patriotic names - aka the Patriot Act - are almost always obvious propaganda attempts.
It was a turn of phrase. The good money is a good bet, i.e. I think a tenable and wise position would be to believe what I do, but understand if you do not and recognize my own propensity to be wrong.
As for the name, I felt immediately that it was significant because I knew Russia wouldn’t stake so much national pride on it if it was a dud. Indeed, the evidence coming in seems to suggest that it isn’t, so I feel doubly confident in that assessment.
That’s all.
I will be ok with getting even the sputnik vaccine; I will be ok with J&J, Pfizer or Moderna or whatever that is approved. They are playing games in distributing the vaccines though. They are selling vaccines that they don't plan to distribute while playing territorial wars.
Russia had been first to market in August, yet most of the richly developed countries held out for an American company to give them a vaccine.
Russia didn’t have enough resources to even distribute it to their own people back then.
What a waste for Russia, as usual, with both PR, mindset and completely botched worldwide sales campaign. And so many people could have been already helped around the world.
Meanwhile the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have a huge fawning press telling people a ton of “maybes” and saying basically nothing concrete but urging everyone and their dog to get it, even if they have antibodies, cause you know, stuff and maybe and trust us this is better! Here is a typical example of the cringe:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2020/12/24/should-you-...
Your body normally doesn’t have anything like these little spikes. So the spike protein appearing inside your body can be like a Kanye West fan appearing at a Taylor Swift fan party. Or cottage cheese inside a hot dog. Your immune system then is supposed to say, “hey, this doesn’t belong here,” and generate a response to the spike protein.
By exposing your immune system to a very specific component of the virus, your immune system may be better able to focus specifically on this component, rather than fire off in random directions when it first encounters the virus in a natural infection. This could then potentially lead to a stronger and more persistent immune response than what may occur after a natural infection. Since the immune system is rather complex, more studies are needed to confirm this possibility.
“We have no clue so you gotta get this drug now!! $$$”
They held out for something else because the Russian vaccine had undergone no phase III trials yet. It had only undergone phase I and II trials, which just test whether it is safe to give to people, not whether it actually does anything helpful.
The vaccine underwent Phase I and II safety trials, and was thought to be safe. Russia than began directing the limited quantities being manufactured towards at-risk health care workers, while they ran efficacy trials.
There's nothing magical, or ordained by God that says we must run an efficacy trial with 30,000 individuals. By early January, Russia had only administered a couple hundred thousand doses.
In retrospect, it's highly likely this would have been the correct approach in all vaccines so far in use. In the middle of a pandemic, there's a very strong argument that should be vaccinating as quickly as possible after Phase II trials are complete, before waiting for a long-running efficacy trial. As you said, efficacy trials are not testing for safety. There's already a huge risk to individuals and to society from the virus itself.
If vaccines were widely deployed after phase II with no proof they actually work, there would have be some that did not work that got widely used. The people that got them would they have immunity, and slack off on distancing and masking.
Once you did have a vaccine that you knew worked, there would probably be problems convincing those who got an ineffective vaccine that they need to come in again.
FDA is not a universal regulator. Different countries can have different procedures.
phase 1 : 1-100 phase II 100-1000 phase III 1000-3000 https://d18x2uyjeekruj.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/201...
I think the point is that some societies are BUILT on corruption. It's not the same as places where there's a bit of corruption in somewhat functioning bureaucracies.
Sure, nothing is black or white, but that doesn't mean that some shades are way darker than others.
I agree though that corruption on all levels is a systematic problem in Russia that is not getting better.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War
Russia is making a vaccine, China is making two, India is also making one. India will also probably do a bulk of the manufacturing. We should be testing it all, including the western manufactured ones too.
Also it’s interesting that say a physics paper from China or Soviet Russia would not automatically be regarded as suspect.
Russia is an authoritarian dictatorship with the same guy ruling for 21 years and counting. Which allies did you meant?
> and certainly more democratic than it was under Yeltsin
Under Yeltsin they had freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, separation of powers, state-independent business including large corporations, the federation, and independent press. Putin dismantled all of the above.
> a physics paper from China or Soviet Russia would not automatically be regarded as suspect
Russian government was caught cheating with doping tests of athletes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doping_in_Russia
> Russia is an authoritarian dictatorship with the same guy ruling for 21 years and counting. Which allies did you meant?
Well, compare Russia to America's ally Saudi Arabia.
In Russia, they have national elections. You can complain they are rigged, and there is some truth in that – but, anyway, at least they have them. Saudi Arabia has never had an election in its history, except for local government.
I don't think the rigging in Russia is primarily through direct election fraud (although some of that may be happening). Putin is genuinely popular with a majority of Russians, so he can win a genuine majority of votes, but he engages in manipulation of public opinion through state-controlled media to help build his popularity. Also, the system ensures that the only people allowed to run against Putin are the communists and ultra-nationalists who are unlikely to win; pro-Western/liberal candidates are prevented from running, although it is not guaranteed they'd win if they were allowed, but they possibly could give Putin some more real competition. However, if Putin's popularity were to collapse, he'd be forced to resort to more blatantly fraudulent means to stay in power, and it is possible at that point his allies who keep him in power might turn against him and he might be removed.
In Russia, they have political parties. The system is dominated by the ruling "United Russia" party, although other parties (such as the Communist Party and the ultra-nationalist LDPR) are permitted to hold around a quarter of the seats in the Duma. Again, you can complain the Duma is rigged in United Russia's favour, and that complaint may well be true, but still doing better than Saudi Arabia, where political parties are banned.
It isn't just Saudi Arabia. Other American allies in the Middle East, such as UAE, Qatar and Oman also ban political parties.
In Soviet Union they had them as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_the_Soviet_Union Will you argue USSR was a democracy?
> Putin is genuinely popular with a majority of Russians
We don’t quite know that.
> he'd be forced to resort to more blatantly fraudulent means to stay in power
That already happened in 2011 and in all the later ones: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Russian_legislative_elect...
That helped him to stay in power, but only to an extent.
Unfortunately, he decided to resort to even more sinister means to stay in power, military offence against a neighbor country. Apparently, land grab of Crimea boosted his popularity by a lot back in 2014. Only recently the effect has started to fade away, likely a result of macro-economic consequences of international sanctions.
> Other American allies in the Middle East, such as UAE, Qatar and Oman also ban political parties.
Still, that’s 4 countries out of about half of the world. That’s not many of them.
Contemporary Russia has far more of the form of an electoral democracy than the USSR had. 25% of the Duma is controlled by opposition parties. How much of the Supreme Soviet was controlled by opposition parties?
If we distinguish form from substance, contemporary Russia has a lot of the form, but the substance is impaired. By contrast, the Soviet Union was lacking in both.
> We don’t quite know that.
The Nov 2020 Levada poll gave him a 65% approval rating – https://www.levada.ru/en/ratings/ – that seems to support what I said
> That already happened in 2011 and in all the later ones
Looking at that article about the 2011 election, United Russia was polling in the 50s to 60s, and won about 49% of the vote, suggesting they underperformed their polls. There may well have been some fraud, but unless the opinion polls are rigged too (which might be true, but where is the evidence?), it doesn't look like any fraud actually changed the outcome.
> Apparently, land grab of Crimea boosted his popularity by a lot back in 2014
Which seems to support what I said earlier, about him being "genuinely popular with a majority of Russians"
An example, in 2014 100% of state senators (they have two houses in their parliament, duma is another one) approved Putin’s request to invade Ukraine. I think that level of conformity would be impossible with opposition parties there.
> 2020 Levada poll gave him a 65% approval rating
In modern Russia, saying you don’t support Putin or his party is risky. It’s not yet as bad as in USSR (the risk was almost 100% then, people were executed, imprisoned, or later forcibly treated in psychiatric hospitals), but it’s slowly getting there.
We don’t know how these same people would have responded if they would be free to express any opinion on the subject.
> it doesn't look like any fraud actually changed the outcome
In the first paragraph of that article there’s a statement “Statistical analysis of poll data have shown massive abnormalities that most researchers explain by mass-scale electoral fraud”, which has 6 external links.
Saudi Arabia?
> Under Yeltsin they had freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, separation of powers, state-independent business including large corporations, the federation, and independent press.
And how much good did it do to people of Russia? I'd say that going the "democratic" way Russia would end up pretty much in the same place where Ukraine is now, and surely Russians would not want that. And thus maybe Russia way is actually more "democratic". We are learning quite a lot about democracy and free speech here too.
> Russian government was caught cheating with doping tests of athletes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doping_in_Russia
You've got a point here, although nowadays after "Russia interfered in election", "Trump colluded with Russia" etc., I am not sure if I can trust in what is being reported on many issues.
Good point, any others? Because the claim was "many of the US’s allies", one example is not enough.
> And how much good did it do to people of Russia?
These people spent 70 years practicing and exporting communism. They suffered heavy military losses in Afghanistan. They have lost the cold war, and lost many dependent territories.
That's why their quality of life has dropped. Democratic freedoms and human rights did good for people.
Omitting usual suspects - Jordan is a monarchy.
> These people spent 70 years practicing and exporting communism. They suffered heavy military losses in Afghanistan. They have lost the cold war, and lost many dependent territories.
And adding "democratic" institutions like independent large businesses controlled by oligarchs, "free" press also controlled by oligarchs and "free" elections manipulated by oligarchs and external forces, "free" market economy w/o protectionism, was making the country into what Ukraine is today - just country divided into feudal domains controlled oligarchs in turn controlled by western elites.
> Democratic freedoms and human rights did good for people.
Look at the current state of Ukraine.
OK, that’s two out of how many? NATO alone has 30 states, that’s 29 excluding the US. Claiming these two are “many of the US’s allies” is dishonest.
> was making the country into what Ukraine is today
Quality of life, and economy, of Russia started to decline before the transition to democracy. Two main reasons were international sanctions for the war in Afghanistan (like Ronald Reagan’s security directive 75 in 1983), and collapse of oil prices around 1986.
Transition to democracy was not making the country into anything. Causations is directed from earlier to later events, never the other way around.
> Look at the current state of Ukraine.
The economy ain’t great because since 2014 Ukraine is losing many lives and resources defending Russian military aggression. In terms of democratic freedoms the country is way ahead: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index
Sanctions would have no point if they were abandoned whenever they would benefit the sanctioning country. Most (arguably all) trade between the EU and Russia would benefit the EU too, but the belief is that the harm to Russia is more severe and more likely to bring about political and diplomatic changes.
It’s totally fine to question the data. I’m simply pointing out that it takes some effort to get published in the Lancet. I doubt that any of the participants would like the ignominy of publishing a fake research and being a pariah for the rest of their lives.
Dismissing the data just because it came from Russia seems excessive to me. It’s quite possible that they were successful despite not having gone through the FDA certification process.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
Kindof seems like those “peers” are human beings who are capable of reviewing things in the direction of their priors.
Do I expect them to be correct most of the time? Absolutely.
does this incentive magically not exist for... private for-profit businesses? Why in the public imagination is it always ever only states to which this kind of reasoning applies
I think that its mostly due to the far-rigth dictatorships supported by USA in the whole continent.
So, in the same way USA citizens look at Russia we look at USA.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage_therapy
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/24/world/europe/vaccine-repu...
I suspect it wouldn't be too difficult to fudge the numbers (e.g. candidate selection criteria) in such a way that a mediocre vaccine looks excellent. Until it's reproduced or until other opportunities for falsification arise, trusting a result is largely a matter of the personal credibility of the researchers and, importantly, the system in which they operate.
If the vaccine is completely useless or actively harmful, they’d release numbers like this.
Very interested in reproduced results, but we have many vaccine leads in the West for now, so let’s invest in those.
Any study of a sufficiently large population, like the phase 3 trials shouldn't vary much at all when scaled up to millions of participants.
That's assuming the error bounds are small with the clinical trials, but I think that is universally the case here.
Effectiveness describes what happens in the real world. Some tend to use ‘efficacy’ as if it is synonymous with the concept of ‘effectiveness’. This misuse is even rampant amongst doctors, who should know better.
In fact, vaccine effectiveness is the ability of a vaccine to prevent outcomes of interest in the real world.
For example, the influenza vaccine has been in use since 1938. It is spectacular at causing test subjects to make antibodies to the influenza virus. Now take a look at flu vaccine actual effectiveness (or lack thereof):
There are universal recommendations to give flu vaccine to the elderly starting at age 65. A 2020 study [1] on the influenza vaccine in the UK compared outcomes when persons aged 65 to 75 got their yearly flu vaccines, compared to those of the same age who didn’t receive it. They were all followed for 4 years. The ones who got flu vaccine did not have any lower hospitalization rates or lower death rates (from all causes).
This study showed that flu vaccine may be efficacious in controlled studies, but in real life it is often not effective in reducing death or hospitalizations – the outcomes of interest.
In this case, despite the different terminology, the study efficacy and real world effectiveness should be very similar, because they're measuring the same thing - number of infections and serious disease.