AssassinsMace
Lieutenant General
You also have to consider the West wants the the world to contract for their vaccines so they can be pushing countries where they have influence to delay reporting the efficacy of Chinese vaccines.
Coronavirus 2019-2020 thread (no unsubstantiated rumours!)
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solarz
Brigadier
You need to stop looking at this as a competition. Vaccines exist to save people, not to make pharmaceutical companies rich. Chinese companies are behaving ethically instead of racing for profits.
Brazil anvisa decided not to consider the interim results due to the political pressure from its president and opt for the full results. That's the reason for the initial postponment from early Dec to Dec 23. Sinovac doesn't have problem with countries to report the interim results but ask for the full results to be delayed so that Sinovac could consolidate all data from all clinical trials from various countries and present it to the Chinese government and then release it to the public.
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It was brazil that wanted to announce, but sinovac pushed back. Considering that it was the brazilians and Sao Paolo's governor that wanted to announce, I presume efficacy would have been more than 50%, although probably not as high as the 95% from mRNAs. I think the the turkish announcement was likely unauthorized, they are under the gun to announce results since they want to start vaccinating ASAP.
Again whatever the number, Sinovac shouldn't have asked brazil to hold back, since both turkey and indonesia are under pressure to announce some results which would have either shown a higher result or lower result compared to brazil. Either way, it looks strange. Even if brazil announced at like 70%, and then turkey and indonesia at 90%, it would have been fine, since efficacy result expectations have been reduced so low with astra zeneca fiasco of 62%-90%.
Not sure what you mean. On Dec 14, Brazil anvisa refused to grant emergency use of Sinovac vaccine. Governor Doria decided not to submit the interim results and opt for a request for a definitive authorization with a full result.
On Dec 23, a full result was submitted to anvisa for approval but Sinovac requested a delay of 15 days so that it could consolidate all results to present it to the Chinese government and release it to the public.
Again, Sinovac didn't have a problem for releasing a interim result but did have a problem for releasing a full report because it felt that a full report should be consolidated and not just from one country.
If the media has no problem accepting a consolidated report from Pfizer, Moderna, and Oxford, why should Sinovac be singled out.
I understand that Brazil refused to grant EUA on Dec 14, as well as that "not transparent" element. Sinovac doesn't control what brazil wants to do, and there are elements of brazil that want to sabotage that vaccine, at the cost of Brazilian lives.
Still, Sinovac was in the driver seat on Dec 23, and should have just let the report be released. From a statistical perspective, Sinovac can't just combine more results from brazil, turkey, and Indonesia, as they would have minor variations in testing and measurement protocol and brazils results are good enough to stand on thier own. The brazil data would have been solid, since it has 170 cases which is basically the same number for final analysis from Moderna and BioNtech/Pfizer.
You can combine results if you run a "global mutli-center trial" but it has to be designed that way from the onset. In fact, all the announcements so far are from single center trials. Astra-zeneca also got flack for botching their trial process, which is why they also seemed to have lost ground compared to Pfizer and Moderna.
I will be frank and say that Sinovac made a tactical mistake on this one, and it was likely what forced Turkey to pre-announce results otherwise turkey's citizens would have been in revolt. Scientifically, I see potential merit for Sinovac to combine the results for Chinese regulators but from a practical perspective it wouldn't have mattered. China had already approved Sinovac for EUA months ago, and brazils results would not have changed anything.
If you followed the news previously, Sinovac was actually held even in the west as the most reputable of the Russian and Chinese vaccines (in the sense it was usually the one mentioned with the big 3 western vaccines). This brings dis-repute in a way that was completely unnecessary. This was un-forced error, or even self-sabotage.
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Good observations, but also not completely apples to apples. The 97% from Indonesia was "sero-conversion" which is actually a Phase II measure and does not evaluate whether or not somebody actually got COVID. Turkey's 91% comes from 26 people in placebo group got COVID and 3 from vaccine group. This is a solid result, its just a very small sample size so not necessarily as confident. Interim analysis are usually set at 70-90 cases and primary at 150-170.
Its probably reasonable to assume Sinovac should be 85%-90%, based on Turkeys results and also Sinopharm's high 80's%, since they are similar technology.
Don't agree with Sinovac has that much of a choice. If Sinovac allowed the Brazil agency to announce the full result, then that result would be used to determine the efficacy rate and any critical side effects. Other results or consolidated results would be irrelevant.
From Sinovac's perspective, the most important thing is to gain approval from the Chinese government. It took Sinopharm over one month to satisfy the Chinese government. That means granting EUA is completely different from granting a final approval. The Chinese government demanded enormous amount of data from Sinopharm and it took Sinopharm one month to gather that much data to be accepted by the Chinese health agency.
It isn't a mistake but rather Sinovac made a strategic decision that the Chinese market is far more important than any other markets. Sinovac has no intention to allow the Western media to drive the narrative. By submitting the combined results to the Chinese regulators first, it ensures data integrity and no undue influence.
The Western media basically is running a smear campaign against all non-Western vaccines. Russian and Chinese vaccines have all been put into the category of not transparent and a total disregard of scientific process. Even if Sinovac has fared a little better, what the difference it would make. For example, 27% of Brazilians won't take any vaccines but 47% of Brazilians won't take Chinese vaccine. The damage is already done and the negative publicity and smear campaign have already tainted the reputation of Chinese vaccines. So again what the difference it is going to make if the Western media made anothe accusation, very little I would say.
solarz
Brigadier
I wouldn't say so. Any country that is run by anti-China governments will obviously push propaganda against the Chinese vaccines. However, there is a much bigger world out there. The Chinese vaccines will be the safest and cheapest vaccines out there, and those will be the determining factors for most of the nations of the world.
Look, you guys might be concerned about the reputation of the Chinese vaccines in the Western world, but I'll wager the Chinese vaccine makers themselves aren't that concerned. Just look at the population numbers. The US is not going to use the Chinese vaccines anyway, and most likely the EU won't either. India is trying to make their own vaccines, so let's discount them as well. That leaves a market of around 5 billion people where the Chinese vaccines are already ahead of the Western ones. Brazil has a population of 200 million. So what if 100 million of them "won't take" Chinese vaccines? That's a drop in the bucket.
For the Chinese vaccine makers themselves, their biggest battleground is going to be the Chinese market, with 1.4 billion people. If any one of them cuts corners, they can kiss that market good bye. The other vaccine makers will only be all too happy to pick up their share. Furthermore, does anyone think non-Chinese countries will use a Chinese vaccine that isn't even approved in its own country? So the Chinese regulatory approval is the most important consideration for these vaccine makers.
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