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Comment by version_five | Hacker News Reader

All author affiliations are Chinese institutions. For Americans it's probably not coming to a pharmacy near you. I don't have a sense of the global vaccine R&D landscape but I don't belive western countries ever got any chinese covid vaccines

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Our mRNA vaccines were 'better' from what I understand.

If mRNA is better, then why didn't the Chinese ever use it or produce a version of it? Maybe you could argue they were slow to get on the mRNA train at first, but years into the pandemic there is no plausible reason for them to not use the best technology.

They are fully capable of producing mRNA vaccines just as well as the West. IP rights have never been an issue for China. The claim that it's stubborn pride is also weak because they could simply tweak a few meaningless details and claim it's superior to the West's version.

mRNA vaccines are still novel enough that proprietary information matters with respect to turnaround time.

Why did a huge company like Pfizer team up with a small one like BioNTech?

China does have at least a couple of mRNA vaccines (Walvax COVID-19 vaccine and CanSino Biologics Inc COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine), but it took them until 2021/2022 to get them to trials. They just didn't seem to have the experience in making and testing mRNA vaccines that Western companies did.

> If mRNA is better, then why didn't the Chinese ever use it or produce a version of it?

You made two mistakes in one sentence.

First of all, Chinese companies have multiple mRNA vaccines in development and at least one of them has been approved. I can get it today in my neighbourhood clinic if I want. See link below.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-65036474

Secondly, when there is something that is not produced or produced in China, it doesn't mean it is useless or fancy. China doesn't make 3nm chips not because it is not cool, it is because the advanced tech is simply not available in China. China does make high end LCD panels which the US doesn't build on its own, it is not because the tech is fancy and the US couldn't do it, it is simply because the industry is not considered economically viable in the US but a good money making business in China.

How often do you actually see news of "research breakthroughs" panning out as far as things you can actually buy later on? Chinese or not.

I don't know about other countries but in Mexico they gave out Cansino and Sinovac among many others.

I count myself fortunate to live in an area where they were administering A-Z.

Yeah, Sinovac was useless; everyone I know in Mexico who got it came down repeatedly with COVID after vaccination, only improving after they were able to get AZ or the mRNA vaccines in the US. Hopefully this signals better vaccines on the horizon for China, given what they went through once lockdown collapsed there.

> everyone I know in Mexico who got it came down repeatedly with COVID after vaccination

This is a pretty common story with the mRNA and DNA/AAV vaccines as well. Did any of them wind up in the hospital?

Just to mirror what the other comment said, the MRNA vaccines were not so great at warding off symptomatic Covid; I'm curious how hospitalizations went w/ people who used Sinovac and the other Chinese vaccines.

I mean, if they really were completely worthless, I'd have expected China to have been much worse off after their lockdowns ended.

>> Hopefully this signals better vaccines on the horizon for China

Better vaccines everywhere would be good. mRNA vaccines were laughably crappy - essentially just a temporary prophylactic.

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