
Coronavirus: Putin says vaccine has been approved for use - amai
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53735718
======
gregoriol
This reminds me a lot about the Moscow theatre siege
([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_theater_hostage_crisi...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_theater_hostage_crisis)):
they thought they had the best stuff, and ended up killing so many.

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Slartie
Basically, Putin just renamed what we usually consider to be a Phase 3 trial
to "general availability", while knowing that availability will most likely be
seriously constrained anyway in the next months, effectively limiting the
deployment of this vaccine to some tens of thousands of hand-selected people,
which - there's the catch - is very much in the ballpark of how many
participants proper Phase 3 studies also have.

This gives him a quick propaganda win, because it looks like Russia was
somehow further along in the race for getting a vaccine broadly available,
while they actually aren't - they're just jeopardizing their citizens' health
for that quick win, because I bet the early adopters of this "approved
vaccine" will not be monitored as well as participants in a proper Phase 3
study commonly are. Also, with no control group inoculated with a placebo, the
results are not going to be as conclusive as those of a real study.

This is all based on my assumption that Russia will be unable to snap their
fingers and have millions of doses of this vaccine ready within weeks.
Unfortunately I haven't seen any reliable information regarding the production
constraints and timetable of this particular vaccine. Does anyone know more
about that?

~~~
tinus_hn
Some countries may be realizing that they can’t afford to drag along for ‘just
a few more months’ while their economy is tanking. There is some risk here but
it avoids other risks.

~~~
Slartie
The thing is that just "approving" a vaccine doesn't actually avoid anything,
especially not economic slowdowns.

Actually having a vaccine widely available at scale and having it injected
into a significant proportion of the population is what allows you to avoid
all the direct negative effects of COVID-19 (with the economic angle being in
large parts actually an indirect effect, since any country is dependent on the
world economy and not just whether its own citizens are susceptible to
COVID-19 or not). That's why I asked whether there's any tangible information
regarding production timetable and availability schedules of this particular
vaccine, which are in my opinion much more important to its impact than
whether Putin - or anyone else really - signs off on it or not.

~~~
tinus_hn
> Officials have said they plan to start mass vaccination in October.

Sounds like a better timetable than the wests ever shifting promise that now
seems to be scheduled for ‘as soon as mid-2021’.

~~~
calmworm
Better how?

------
amai
"Vladimir Putin, the country's president, announced one of his daughters has
already been inoculated."

[https://www.euronews.com/2020/08/11/vladimir-putin-claims-
da...](https://www.euronews.com/2020/08/11/vladimir-putin-claims-daughter-
inoculated-after-russia-registers-coronavirus-vaccine)

------
gnusty_gnurc
I get the sense that the US regulatory pipeline is seriously slow - approvals
take indefensibly long, killing innovation and progress in medicine,
treatments, etc. that _would_ help people that can't wait around because
they're dying.

But this seems to be the opposite.

------
megamike
Russia Covid-19 Vaccine Release Could Put People at Risk, Industry Body Warns
- Bloomberg
[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-10/russian-c...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-10/russian-
covid-19-vaccine-is-pandora-s-box-industry-body-warns)

------
curation
Putin is holding up the propaganda mirror. The vaccine is called Sputnik 5 and
the syringe-race is called.

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thehappypm
Wow. Putin is basically making Russia a test bed for the rest of the world.
Imagine if they start inoculating people en masse and it just plain works.
Would the rest of the world follow?

~~~
gregoriol
Imagine if people die en masse 6 months later?

or even if they don't die, they could develop many kinds of problems; that's
why testing vaccines must take time and procedure, it doesn't seem to be the
case here..

~~~
Miner49er
I'm not a doctor, but I'm curious how likely that is? It seems to me that with
a vaccine most problems would show up quickly after receiving the vaccine, but
I imagine we do testing the way we do for a reason. Does anyone know of
examples of failed vaccines that caused problems months after receiving it?

Edit: Found some: [https://www.aamc.org/news-insights/here-s-why-we-can-t-
rush-...](https://www.aamc.org/news-insights/here-s-why-we-can-t-rush-
covid-19-vaccine)

Although some of these seem to be production errors.

~~~
gregoriol
There was for example research not so long ago about an H1N1 vaccine and cases
of narcolepsy: it seems it was finally determined that the vaccine is not a
cause, but it was important to verify
([https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/history/narcoleps...](https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/history/narcolepsy-
flu.html)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemrix#Narcolepsy_investiga...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemrix#Narcolepsy_investigations))

~~~
vesinisa
No, the Pandemrix vaccine was almost certainly the cause of the narcolepsy
epidemic in Finland and Sweden in 2009-2013. The case seems to have been a
very unfortunate coincidence of a specific booster used in this vaccine
(squalene), genetic susceptibility of the population (large incidence of a
specific autoimmunity mutation), and one protein in this specific vaccine
evoking an autoimmune reaction against orexin-producing neurons in the brain.
Orexin is a naturally occurring hormone in our bodies that regulates
wakefulness, and the lack of which is the cause of type I narcolepsy.

My understanding is had any _one_ of these three unfortunate factors (the bad
booster, the bad population genetics, or the bad protein) been removed, the
vaccine would have likely been safe. Further, only children and adolescents
were ever susceptible to the harmful side effect.

The specific vaccine (Pandemrix) was not used in the United States, as the CDC
notes.

