Category: Economics

A lot of new information has dropped recently about the efficacy of First Doses First.

First, as I mentioned yesterday, we now have epidemiologists and vaccine researchers saying that for people previously infected with COVID a second dose is not necessary and may be “overkill.” Given how many people have had COVID, this increases the net benefit to First Doses First for everyone significantly.

Second, an important new study verifies that for the AZ vaccine a longer delay for the second dose is better because it generates a more powerful immune response (picture from the FT). This is a common finding for vaccines. The authors write:

ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccination programmes aimed at vaccinating a large proportion of the population with a single dose, with a second dose given after a 3 month period is an effective strategy for reducing disease, and may be the optimal for rollout of a pandemic vaccine when supplies are limited in the short term.

In addition “Analyses of PCR positive swabs in UK population suggests vaccine may have substantial effect on transmission of the virus with 67% reduction in positive swabs among those vaccinated.” In other words, the vaccine cuts transmission risk.

As I have said before “the US failure to authorize the AstraZeneca vaccine in the midst of a pandemic when thousands are dying daily and a factory in Baltimore is warmed up and ready to run is a tragedy and dereliction of duty of epic proportions.”

Third, the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (NERVTAG), a scientific advisory group to the British government, recently considered the risks of immune escape from the delayed second dose strategy and concluded that although the risk is real it is likely small, especially in comparison to other sources of immune escape such as therapeutics and natural infection. Moreover, the risk is outweighed by the measurable benefits of getting more does out quickly.

It is not currently possible to quantify the probability of emergence of vaccine resistance as a result of the delayed second dose, but it is likely to be small.The UK currently has more than 1,000 COVID-19 related deaths each day and has limited supplies of vaccine. In the current UK circumstances the unquantifiable but likely small probability of the delayed second dose generating a vaccine escape mutant must be weighed against the measurable benefits of doubling the speed with which the most vulnerable can be given vaccine-induced protection.

..a single dose of vaccine does not generate a new/novel risk. Given what we have observed recently with the variants B.1.1.7 and B1.351, it is a realistic possibility that over time immune escape variants will emerge, most likely driven by increasing population immunity following natural infection.

Fourth, the British health establishment has largely solidified around First Doses First. Consider this from the Four UK’s Chief Medical Officers.

The 4 UK Chief Medical Officers agree with the JCVI that at this stage of the pandemic prioritising the first doses of vaccine for as many people as possible on the priority list will protect the greatest number of at risk people overall in the shortest possible time and will have the greatest impact on reducing mortality, severe disease and hospitalisations and in protecting the NHS and equivalent health services.

Fifth, the US public health experts are beginning to come around to the economic point of view. Consider Experts tout delaying 2nd COVID vaccine dose as US deaths mount which notes:

“The maximum public health benefit would come from giving a single dose to as many people as possible, and following up with a second dose when supply improves,” said Neal Halsey, MD, of Johns Hopkins University, in an interview. Halsey and Stanley Plotkin, MD, co-authored a letter in Clinical Infectious Diseases last week explaining how delaying a second dose of vaccine would accelerate the US vaccine rollout.

Halsey said data from both companies show the first dose of the vaccine offers significant protection against COVID-19 in the short term, for at least 1 to 3 months after injection. He also said he and Plotkin believe this was the most beneficial public health strategy even before the arrival of new variants of the virus was discovered.

“There are a number of examples of changing [vaccination] course because ACIP takes into account public health impact,” Halsey said. “We asked the ACIP to review in depth this strategy to give one dose as rapidly as possible. Such a meeting should be scheduled as soon as possible.”

The University of Minnesota’s Michael Osterholm, PhD, MPH, said yesterday on “Meet the Press”  that he believes the United States has to change direction on vaccine strategy in light of the possibility of a surge of new infections coming from variant strains.

I believe that the US will go to First Doses First. The only question is will we go to First Doses First soon, when it can still help, or will we be forced to do it later in an act of desperation and agony.

Here is an interview with Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and the lead developer of a COVID vaccine being produced in India. He thinks the AstraZeneca vaccine should be approved immediately, as I have long argued.

President Biden himself announced Tuesday that we’re going to have maybe enough additional doses of the mRNA vaccines to fully vaccinate 300 million Americans by the end of summer or fall.

I’m saying, “Well, no, that’s that’s not gonna work.” Telling us “by the fall” is like telling us “when the glaciers are gonna come back down from Quebec.” I mean, that’s not adequate.

We’re going to have to figure out a way to vaccinate the American people by late spring. That’s a tall order. To beat back the virus we need to give two doses to three-quarters of the population, to 246 million Americans. That’s half a billion immunizations. To get there, we’d need a rate of immunizations two or three times higher than what’s proposed.

….We need vaccinations now.

..things have been slowed down with the AstraZeneca-Oxford adenovirus vaccine. My understanding is that the FDA insisted that they conduct a full-scale Phase Three trial in the U.S., and we won’t have results for that until April. Meanwhile, the European Medicines Agency, the EMA, is going to make a ruling on the AstraZeneca Oxford vaccine on Friday based on studies done in Europe and also probably on data from Brazil and South Africa. [The EMA authorized, AT].

Those are large, reliable studies?

Yeah….Because of these new variants, there’s great urgency here in the U.S. So I’m saying that sometimes we have to do things that take us out of our comfort zone in order to save lives. That means, rather than focusing only on the new study that we’re doing in the U.S., we also look at the dossier presented to the EMA.

As a regulatory agency the EMA is up there with our U.S. FDA. They’re the two best regulatory agencies in the world. So if they sign off, I think we should say, “Look, let’s do it. Let’s use that vaccine.”

We’ve already bought 300 million doses of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine. We’ve paid for it — over a billion dollars — so let’s use it.

…And there’s also the recombinant protein vaccine our lab has developed at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital. In India they’re scaling that up to a billion doses. Nobody from the White House has approached us to say, “Hey, Peter, what can we do to bring that vaccine in.”

There seem to be blinders: All they can see is getting the mRNA vaccines. I don’t quite know what’s driving that. We have to figure out a way to bring the other ones on board.

And soon! We’re in the eye of the hurricane.

Hat tip: Jim Ward.

EconLib: Experts in the UK have looked at the AstraZenaca vaccine and found it to be safe and effective. And yet Americans are still not allowed to use the product. So if paternalism is not the actual motive, why do progressives insist that Americans must not be allowed to buy products not approved by the FDA?  What is the actual motive?

The answer is nationalism. The experts who studied the AstraZenaca vaccine were not American experts, they were British experts. Can this form of prejudice be justified on scientific grounds? Obviously not. There has been no double blind, controlled study of comparative expert skill at evaluating vaccines. We have no way of knowing whether the UK decision is wiser than the FDA decision. Instead, the legal prohibition is being done on nationalistic grounds. We are told to blindly accept the incompetence of British experts, without any proof.  (And even if you believed there was solid evidence that one country’s experts were better than another, it would not explain why each developed countries relies on their own experts.  They can’t all be best!)

These debates always end up being like a game of whack-a-mole. Shoot down one argument and regulation proponents will simply put forth another. Their minds are made up.  You say people shouldn’t be allowed to take a vaccine unless experts find it to be safe and effective? OK, the UK experts did just that. You say that only the opinion of US experts counts because our experts are clearly the best? Really, where is the scientific study that shows that our experts are the best? I thought you said we needed to “trust the scientists”?  Now you are saying we must trust the nationalists?

…what’s wrong with the following three-part system of regulation as a compromise solution:

1. FDA approved drugs can be consumed by anyone in America.

2. Drugs approved by any of the top 20 advanced countries (but not the FDA) can be consumed by anyone willing to sign a consent form indicating that they understand the FDA has not approved this product. I’ll sign for AstraZeneca. (The US government puts together a list of 20 reputable countries.)

3. Drugs approved by none of the top 20 developed economies will still be banned.

This is what regulation would look like if paternalism actually were the motivating factor. But it’s not. It’s Trump-style nationalism that motivates progressives to insist that only FDA approved drugs can be sold in America. They may look down their noses at Trump, but they implicitly share his nationalism.

I agree, of course, and have long supported Pharmaceutical Reciprocity.