December 8, 2020 • 7 mins
We have two vaccine candidates that are on their way very soon to be approved by the FDA for distribution, but while those may begin being administered shortly, the long haul of vaccine results is just beginning. We have another candidate from AstraZeneca that has released preliminary findings with some promising and confusing results, as well as other trials underway. Sarah Zhang, staff writer at the Atlantic, joins us for more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's Tuesday, December eight. I'm Oscar Ramirez from the Daily
Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is reopening America.
We have two vaccine candidates that are on their way
very soon to be approved by the FDA for distribution.
But while those may begin being administered shortly, the long
haul of vaccine results is just beginning. We have another
candidate for master Zenica that has released preliminary findings with
(00:23):
some promising and confusing results, as well as other trials underway.
Sarah Zang, staff writer at The Atlantic, joins us for more.
Thanks for joining us, Sarah, Hey, thanks for having me.
I wanted to focus a little bit more on some
vaccine news. This story has a little more to do
with the Astra Zeneca vaccine candidate. You wrote an article
(00:44):
about how we're gonna be seeing a lot of different
vaccine results, and this is just the beginning. Obviously, we
have the Fiser vaccine candidate, that moderna vaccine candidate, very
good news over effective against coronavirus. But we're gonna need
a lot more than just those two vaccines to vaccinate
the United States and beyond that, the entire world. So
(01:05):
Astra Zeneca had some pretty good results too, but as
you wrote in your article, there's a lot of confusing
things around it. So we're going to be seeing more
news out of them other vaccine candidates. This is kind
of just the beginning from it, but walk us through
some of the news that we found out from Astra Zeneca.
There was different effectiveness rates based on dosing. There's a
(01:25):
lot of confusing things that went on with it. So
with nostro Zanca announcer results that kind of put out
two different numbers. One is that their vaccine is kind
of two shots, so everyone who got two full shots,
but that was sixty two percent effective, and that's pretty interesting.
Way people who got half of the first shot, or
like half dose first shot and a full dose second
shots that seemed to be ninety percent effective. So this
(01:48):
kind of Google exchange at first, right like why is
less vaccine more effective? And we don't really know that.
One of the things that kind of later kind of
came out very quickly after these confusing results is that
actually this past shot it is a mistake. It is
because the company that was manufacturing the vaccine, it was
just a really literally in the manufacturing mistake. There's less
vaccine in the vile that they thought so, and sometys
(02:09):
maybe it is a fluturious mistake that less vaccine is
just not effective or maybe more in effective. But that's
actually one of the other remaining questions is that it
seems to have the numbers seems to based on a
movie small number of events, so we don't actually know
if it's real or statistical fluke. Or maybe we do
know that the people who got to have to depend
it to be on the younger side. So at this
(02:30):
point we just don't really know how to interpret these
results yet. Yeah, I mean, it could have been an
honest mistake that could have been the best thing for them,
or realizing how that vaccine particularly will work. As I mentioned,
you know, we have the two leading candidates, Fiser and Maderna.
Those are m RNA vaccines. This vaccine, the astrogenical vaccine,
is different. It's a vector vaccine and it uses something
(02:52):
called an adeno virus. Can you explain that a little bit?
So Denna virus is one of the virus just that
causes common colds. So basically what oxfor scientists in these
cases they took adnavirus that normally in affects chim canzees.
And the reason you want to take a chim canzee
virus is that we all sort of have a little
bit of a ready to human adenoviruses. So in order
(03:12):
to kind of get something new to the muse system,
you have to go find the chimpanzy adennavirus. And so
what they do is they take basically the genetic coding
for the spike protein of the coronavirus that cause of
cousin eighteens, take that bit of coronavirus protein coding and
put that inside the adenovirus vector. So it's kind of
like you're almost like using the cold virus is like
(03:32):
a children horse get this little piece of protein from
the coronavirus inside. So so this actually kind of gives
us maybe a little bit of a clue of why
less vaccines might be better, though again we don't really know.
It looks vaccine is actually better in this case. But
one of the things that can happen with the specific
type of vaccine is that your new systems can also
learn to recognize that adenovirus sector, that cold virus and
(03:55):
kind of start attacking that instead of just maunching response
against the coronavirus protein. So it could be that if
you just give a little bit less than that, you
kind of thread the needle to kind of keep the
music from just not boost but not so much that
it starts reacting to the vector the dinner virus. But
scientists are kind of interested in hurting that out. Yeah,
and we're gonna have to wait for the trial to continue,
(04:17):
probably with his adjusted dosing model, to see if that
actually works and if the efficiency rate will hold up there.
So it'll take a little more time for that to
come through. One of the other big things with all
of this is transparency. You know, there's a lot of
reluctance on the part of Americans to take these vaccines
in the first place. They felt like things were being rushed.
All that, these clinical trials are being done in the
(04:39):
best way possible, so people should be confident in the
results once they're finally done. But the transparency part of
it is also an issue. They didn't come out right
away and say this was an error, dosing error, I
manufacturing error and all that. It took a little bit
of time after the results started coming out that we
started realizing all of this and this is going to
(05:00):
be the theme going on for this vaccine candidate and others.
That transparency issue is going to be something that's very
important for sure. And I will say to give credit
where credits do, I think Fiser and Madonna actually did
do a pretty good job with transparency they released. It
was kind of unprecedented, but you know, during precedent of
times they actually released to trial protocols which kind of
(05:21):
let us, now, you know exactly when they're gonna look
at the data, at how many cases, and what they're
looking for. And so when they was released still results,
it was exactly what they told us they were going
to do, and it was all quite clear. It had
enough detail that I think I just felt quite confident
in the percent efficacy number. And as for Danica, also
had Louise trial protocols for their trial in the US,
(05:43):
but in this partically announcement, the data actually came from
the UK and Brazil, and those protocols are also available,
at least the UK one, but it was they were
just the data was just kind of combined in the
way that was confusing. And as you say, they didn't
tell out the half those was initially a mistake, nor
did they specified that you know, the people who got
half those which is a whole both, they were on
the whole younger. So if all this had kind of
(06:04):
just kind of come out right, this is like a mistake,
is sort of you don't want to happen, right, and like,
you know, you might argue that in such a case,
you should really strive for radical transparency. In this case,
they did not do that, and it's only kind of
later reporting that started to clarify what actually happened. Well,
it's going to be interesting to see. We're on track
to approve two vaccines very soon, but Astra Zeneca and
(06:27):
other candidates are still going through their trials. So we're
gonna see more news like this, and sometimes it will
be good, sometimes it will be bad. There might be
a bunch of candidates that drop out because it's just
not meeting the standards that they need to. But we're
still kind of at the beginning of this with all
these vaccines, so we're gonna still be hearing a lot
about it. Sarah Zang, Yeah, Clivi Ala of vaccine used
(06:47):
to come right. Sarah Zang, staff writer at The Atlantic,
Thank you very much for joining us. All right, thank
you I'm Oscar Romeres, and this has been reopening America.
Don't forget effort today's big news stories. You can check
me out on the Daily Dive podcast every Monday through Friday,
So follow us an I Heeart Radio or wherever you
(07:08):
get your podcast
It's Tuesday, December eight. I'm Oscar Ramirez from the Daily
Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is reopening America.
We have two vaccine candidates that are on their way
very soon to be approved by the FDA for distribution.
But while those may begin being administered shortly, the long
haul of vaccine results is just beginning. We have another
candidate for master Zenica that has released preliminary findings with
(00:23):
some promising and confusing results, as well as other trials underway.
Sarah Zang, staff writer at The Atlantic, joins us for more.
Thanks for joining us, Sarah, Hey, thanks for having me.
I wanted to focus a little bit more on some
vaccine news. This story has a little more to do
with the Astra Zeneca vaccine candidate. You wrote an article
(00:44):
about how we're gonna be seeing a lot of different
vaccine results, and this is just the beginning. Obviously, we
have the Fiser vaccine candidate, that moderna vaccine candidate, very
good news over effective against coronavirus. But we're gonna need
a lot more than just those two vaccines to vaccinate
the United States and beyond that, the entire world. So
(01:05):
Astra Zeneca had some pretty good results too, but as
you wrote in your article, there's a lot of confusing
things around it. So we're going to be seeing more
news out of them other vaccine candidates. This is kind
of just the beginning from it, but walk us through
some of the news that we found out from Astra Zeneca.
There was different effectiveness rates based on dosing. There's a
(01:25):
lot of confusing things that went on with it. So
with nostro Zanca announcer results that kind of put out
two different numbers. One is that their vaccine is kind
of two shots, so everyone who got two full shots,
but that was sixty two percent effective, and that's pretty interesting.
Way people who got half of the first shot, or
like half dose first shot and a full dose second
shots that seemed to be ninety percent effective. So this
(01:48):
kind of Google exchange at first, right like why is
less vaccine more effective? And we don't really know that.
One of the things that kind of later kind of
came out very quickly after these confusing results is that
actually this past shot it is a mistake. It is
because the company that was manufacturing the vaccine, it was
just a really literally in the manufacturing mistake. There's less
vaccine in the vile that they thought so, and sometys
(02:09):
maybe it is a fluturious mistake that less vaccine is
just not effective or maybe more in effective. But that's
actually one of the other remaining questions is that it
seems to have the numbers seems to based on a
movie small number of events, so we don't actually know
if it's real or statistical fluke. Or maybe we do
know that the people who got to have to depend
it to be on the younger side. So at this
(02:30):
point we just don't really know how to interpret these
results yet. Yeah, I mean, it could have been an
honest mistake that could have been the best thing for them,
or realizing how that vaccine particularly will work. As I mentioned,
you know, we have the two leading candidates, Fiser and Maderna.
Those are m RNA vaccines. This vaccine, the astrogenical vaccine,
is different. It's a vector vaccine and it uses something
(02:52):
called an adeno virus. Can you explain that a little bit?
So Denna virus is one of the virus just that
causes common colds. So basically what oxfor scientists in these
cases they took adnavirus that normally in affects chim canzees.
And the reason you want to take a chim canzee
virus is that we all sort of have a little
bit of a ready to human adenoviruses. So in order
(03:12):
to kind of get something new to the muse system,
you have to go find the chimpanzy adennavirus. And so
what they do is they take basically the genetic coding
for the spike protein of the coronavirus that cause of
cousin eighteens, take that bit of coronavirus protein coding and
put that inside the adenovirus vector. So it's kind of
like you're almost like using the cold virus is like
(03:32):
a children horse get this little piece of protein from
the coronavirus inside. So so this actually kind of gives
us maybe a little bit of a clue of why
less vaccines might be better, though again we don't really know.
It looks vaccine is actually better in this case. But
one of the things that can happen with the specific
type of vaccine is that your new systems can also
learn to recognize that adenovirus sector, that cold virus and
(03:55):
kind of start attacking that instead of just maunching response
against the coronavirus protein. So it could be that if
you just give a little bit less than that, you
kind of thread the needle to kind of keep the
music from just not boost but not so much that
it starts reacting to the vector the dinner virus. But
scientists are kind of interested in hurting that out. Yeah,
and we're gonna have to wait for the trial to continue,
(04:17):
probably with his adjusted dosing model, to see if that
actually works and if the efficiency rate will hold up there.
So it'll take a little more time for that to
come through. One of the other big things with all
of this is transparency. You know, there's a lot of
reluctance on the part of Americans to take these vaccines
in the first place. They felt like things were being rushed.
All that, these clinical trials are being done in the
(04:39):
best way possible, so people should be confident in the
results once they're finally done. But the transparency part of
it is also an issue. They didn't come out right
away and say this was an error, dosing error, I
manufacturing error and all that. It took a little bit
of time after the results started coming out that we
started realizing all of this and this is going to
(05:00):
be the theme going on for this vaccine candidate and others.
That transparency issue is going to be something that's very
important for sure. And I will say to give credit
where credits do, I think Fiser and Madonna actually did
do a pretty good job with transparency they released. It
was kind of unprecedented, but you know, during precedent of
times they actually released to trial protocols which kind of
(05:21):
let us, now, you know exactly when they're gonna look
at the data, at how many cases, and what they're
looking for. And so when they was released still results,
it was exactly what they told us they were going
to do, and it was all quite clear. It had
enough detail that I think I just felt quite confident
in the percent efficacy number. And as for Danica, also
had Louise trial protocols for their trial in the US,
(05:43):
but in this partically announcement, the data actually came from
the UK and Brazil, and those protocols are also available,
at least the UK one, but it was they were
just the data was just kind of combined in the
way that was confusing. And as you say, they didn't
tell out the half those was initially a mistake, nor
did they specified that you know, the people who got
half those which is a whole both, they were on
the whole younger. So if all this had kind of
(06:04):
just kind of come out right, this is like a mistake,
is sort of you don't want to happen, right, and like,
you know, you might argue that in such a case,
you should really strive for radical transparency. In this case,
they did not do that, and it's only kind of
later reporting that started to clarify what actually happened. Well,
it's going to be interesting to see. We're on track
to approve two vaccines very soon, but Astra Zeneca and
(06:27):
other candidates are still going through their trials. So we're
gonna see more news like this, and sometimes it will
be good, sometimes it will be bad. There might be
a bunch of candidates that drop out because it's just
not meeting the standards that they need to. But we're
still kind of at the beginning of this with all
these vaccines, so we're gonna still be hearing a lot
about it. Sarah Zang, Yeah, Clivi Ala of vaccine used
(06:47):
to come right. Sarah Zang, staff writer at The Atlantic,
Thank you very much for joining us. All right, thank
you I'm Oscar Romeres, and this has been reopening America.
Don't forget effort today's big news stories. You can check
me out on the Daily Dive podcast every Monday through Friday,
So follow us an I Heeart Radio or wherever you
(07:08):
get your podcast
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