Hacker News Reader

Comment by photochemsyn | Hacker News Reader

Not to go to far off topic, but:

https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-21-319

> "Operation Warp Speed was a federal effort that supported multiple COVID-19 vaccine candidates to speed up development. We analyzed the program's vaccine candidates and found that their development followed traditional practices, with some adaptations. For example, some clinical trial phases overlapped with each other and with animal studies to accelerate development."

Notice this probably played a role in the fact that the clinical trials didn't reveal that the vaccines didn't have much effect in preventing transmission (although severity of symptoms was clearly reduced).

This discussion would have led to a perma-ban on the main Covid subreddits, I believe.

View on HN

> For example, some clinical trial phases overlapped with each other and with animal studies to accelerate development.

Right, but GP was misrepresenting this. Having phases 1 and 2 overlap when phase 1 is clearly going well was at worst a risk to the phase 2 participants. It wasn't skimping on the length of phase 2 or 3, so there was never an increased risk of dangerous vaccines for the public.

> Notice this probably played a role in the fact that the clinical trials didn't reveal that the vaccines didn't have much effect in preventing transmission (although severity of symptoms was clearly reduced).

I don't think measuring reduction in transmission is a primary concern of vaccine trials? It also seems quite hard to do, without a significant proportion of the population being vaccinated.

>Having phases 1 and 2 overlap when phase 1 is clearly going well was at worst a risk to the phase 2 participants. It wasn't skimping on the length of phase 2 or 3, so there was never an increased risk of dangerous vaccines for the public.

Irrelevant "actually"ing after being objectively wrong. Don't cherry pick to shutdown a conversation: and if you do don't be wrong in your attack.

> and if you do don't be wrong in your attack.

OP was clearly said the trials were sped up and that compromised safety. That's nonsense.

That trials were sped up is not nonsense as that is exactly what happened. You disagree it compromised safety but that doesn’t change you were wrong as the other poster pointed out to you. It went against industry norms to get a vaccine out as soon as possible: that an overlap of trials is considered equally safe by some is irrelevant to that point.

Regardless, you did not argue against the posters main point but instead chose to push back against what you thought would be an easy win and you did so with a factually incorrect rebuttal.

Clinical trials are phased for very good reasons, AFAIK:

phase 1 is for safety

phase 2 is for efficacy

phase 3 is for dosage

They're not the same. Shortening Phase 1 is automatically a compromise with safety.

Were the duration of the phases shortened? The quote makes it sound like the duration was kept the same, just that the following phase started before the end of the previous phase.

I'm not sure which "quote" you're talking about. I carefully did not say Phase 1 was shortened.

The reason for sequencing, in the abstract, would be that if Phase 2 looks like "hey, this thing really works!" then the pressure to approve it would become irresistible. Whereas if Phase 1 finds unacceptable side effects, then Phase 2 would never start.

Note again that I'm not saying that's what happened.

Phase 1 wasn't shortened. And all stages assess safety.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com