Moderna Covid vaccine no longer available in Australia | Hacker News Reader

Moderna Covid vaccine no longer available in Australia

covid-vaccine.healthdirect.gov.au

17 pointsJimmc41417 comments

This might be related to the TGA approving Moderna's bivalent vaccine[1]. There was a media release by the Department of Health talking about new vaccines recently[2].

[1]: https://www.tga.gov.au/news/media-releases/tga-provisionally...

[2]: https://www.health.gov.au/ministers/the-hon-mark-butler-mp/m...

I heard the bivalent vaccines were kind of duds

I do want Covid 2022 vaccines, and seasonal refreshers (not necessarily for myself, just an option over covid 2019 vaccines), but I heard these weren't good enough over the covid 2019 vaccines

Any updated maybe peer reviewed comprehensive studies?

I honestly stopped following. I know the internet has an overrepresentation of people still in their prepper bunkers, but outside is basically the opposite for along time now and more closely matches my view of not needing to have strong opinions about any outcome at all.

"Persons who received the BA.5-containing bivalent booster had better neutralizing activity against all Omicron subvariants (especially against BA.2.75.2, BQ.1.1 and XBB) than those who received 1 or 2 monovalent [original] boosters" https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2214293

> “We tested serum samples…”

Newest study about bivalent effectiveness is probably this one: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm715152e1.htm

If you want to stay up to date on vaccine effectiveness without wading through a bunch of misinformation, just listen to the weekly "TWIV Clinical update with Dr. Daniel Griffin" podcasts. Here is the most recent one: https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-967/

For a slightly different perspective on the bivalent boosters, here is Paul Offit (member of the FDA vaccine advisory committee, and one of the two votes against authorizing the bivalent boosters for everybody) talking in detail a couple weeks ago about his current view of the bivalent boosters: https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-special-offit/.

I would try to summarize what I think is the most accurate view right now based on the science, but honestly there is just too much nuance and too many unknowns to do so concisely, other than I don't think saying they are "duds" makes a whole lot of sense. But I would just listen to the experts on the podcasts who will go into the nuance better than I can.

Thanks for these paths to check out

I went and looked and Moderna bivalent was in the list. What am I missing?

The box just below the drop down...

“Moderna bivalent, 18 years +, non-booster” configurations is not on the list. Pfizer is still on the list. Perhaps they are waiting for a “2023 model” for Moderna?

Neither is Sinovac or Sputnik, and Astra is no longer recommended. Corrupt executive branch, no free press, and then they wonder why the best have fled the land Down Under (including myself). It’s beyond belief how the once lucky country can fall so much in one decade.

I'm not sure I understand you.. Do you deplore that Sinovac and Sputnik aren't available in Australia? Really?

My assumption is that his/her problem is quite the opposite: those vaccines were once approved (?) and some might have even been promoted, and now they are no longer available due to low quality, high risks.

I'm really hoping that in twenty years we will not look back at these vaccines as one of the most impactful mistakes (or cases of corruption) of our century.

Sinovac and Sputnik were not approved here.

AstraZeneca was, IIRC, but its effectiveness against newer variants is pretty weak, to the extent of being pretty irrelevant, so it makes sense to withdraw.

I don’t think many people have ‘fled’ the land down under over the issues he brings up. Most folks here seem to think that the pandemic was handled pretty well compared to (for instance) the US or UK. Though that might be a WA thing. It may not though, for example the premiere of Victoria, despite having imposed lots of lockdowns that the wingnuts were very upset about, was recently voted back in with an increased majority.

(Edit — There does seem to have been an issue with motivated liars in other countries (USA) reporting exaggerations and falsehoods about the severity of it all though, for their own partisan gain. Stories about forced vaccinations at sports stadia, for instance.)

Personally I ‘fled’ the UK mid-pandemic to get here, though that was more for general quality of life reasons than anything specific to covid.

I think you’ve misunderstood what the phrase “lucky country” actually meant. It wasn’t a compliment.

It cycled .. the original usage by Donald Horne in his book title [1] was intended as dismissive; there's no talent or skill in Australia other than luck.

Within a very few years after its publication in '64 (?) that interpretation was inverted in common Australian usage, very much as a bit of a fuck you mate [2] to Horne and his Quadrant self aggrandizing intellectual crew.

Addendum: References found and added-

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lucky_Country

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia_the_Lucky_Cunt

Fled to where..

I would guess what you wanted to say -- for anyone who didn't want anything newfangled like mRNA based vaccines, especially considering some of the reports that made their way into mainstream media, there were not many options apart from Oxford AZ.

Oxford AZ at the beginning for the vaccination phase in Australia, already had the initial bad press - it meant many older people opted to go without even when Pfizer became available to the elderly, many still avoided a shot because of horror stories of older people arriving to get a mRNA vaccine, only to be told only Oxford AZ was available.

However Novavax eventually arrived but I'm unsure if it's available as a non booster.

Due to reasons, Oxford AZ was a non starter for me, but I had the luxury to wait for something else and in early phase, hoped any one of the existing widespread Chinese vaccines for the alpha strain might have been available in a limited amount. Something, even not the best, would be better than nothing. As it was, I was moderately lucky in our state ignoring the federal bunch and walled themselves off ... as best they could.

Disclaimer: I'm in Northern Australia and I waited for the mRNA types, given I'd already had most of the side effects listed as complications with Oxford AZ ... it slowly dawned on me I probably caught covid very early in 2020, hence all the similar weird side symptoms of Oxford AZ.

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