Wonder how similar the data will be for the Oxford vaccine when we have enough to compare as the above is the other vaccine.
Probably the only thing that will stop the panic being created by the number of hits the Oxford one has had in recent days. BY accident or design it is being billed the loser in the race. And I am not sure it is at all.
I suspect the docs and Hancock tonight will be charged to get across the message that not catching Covid might seem what you want but the reality is not getting ill enough from it to swamp hospitals or die is the actual desired outcome.
The end game here will be a virus that keeps mutating to an equilibrium like that and our annually tweaked vaccine updates can keep under control.
It is not actually about the one thing that differentiates the AZ from the Pfizer vaccines - stopping you catching it at all. But how bad you catch it if you do.
If 99% of the country caught a cold one winter it would not kill thousands or swamp the NHS or leave us living in bomb shelters for life. At most it would be an irritation. But if 1% of people who did catch it needed ventilation or died then it may well need such extreme response (not quite but you get the picture).
We really have to make people see that mitigating Covid to a much less serious illness with minimum need for long NHS care and resulting deaths is way more what we are seeking not to have a vaccine table that says how many it stops catching it and the winner gains all.
It is counter intuitive to most people but there is no current evidence the Oxford vaccine is less successful in that key respect - even if it is less effective in stopping people 'catching Covid at all. And indeed some evidence it might even be better at the thing most people have not yet realised IS the most important outcome. Stopping transmission to others.
If you make Covid a minimally invasive disease and one that is much less easy to pass on then you get things under control. Even if only 10% are stopped from getting it at all. If you stop 90% from catching it but the 10% that do can still infect others as easily and/or get sick enough to die the best vaccine is not the one it appears to be.
There are huge commercial stakes here and this will turn into a bitter international sales pitch. The world needs to see the truth not the PR pitch.
