COVID vaccines — clever Russians — maybe smart science and higher moral ground

© 2020 Peter Free

 

11 December 2020

 

 

Back in September's first week . . .

 

. . . when the Russians announced their Sputnik V vaccine against COVID-19 — the United States reacted by imposing economic sanctions on the Gamaleya National Center of Epidemiology and Microbiology that helped originate it.

 

Our motive was, we can infer, to protect Big Pharma's government-subsidized — yet purely for-profit — fingers on the soon-to-exist global COVID vaccine market.

 

So much for world cooperation against SARS-CoV-2.

 

Exhibiting international nastiness for its own sake was (and remains) very typically "American Government" in spirit.

 

 

Today, the Russians quietly took the moral high ground

 

You can safely bet that the rest of the world will be watching what happens.

 

AstraZeneca (in the United Kingdom) has accepted Russia's gracious (and geopolitically clever) offer of an adenovirus vector for Oxford-AstraZeneca's own COVID vaccine.

 

The Russian "gift" is aimed at helping Oxford-AstraZeneca sort immunological difficulties that it had run into, while testing the varying efficacies in its own two-dose vaccine regimens. I've discussed the problem they ran into, here.

 

In essence and by mistake, Oxford-AstraZeneca used a half-dose for a first administration of a two-dose sequence, during one of its vaccine trials. This produced 90 percent efficacy.

 

Another arm of the trial used two full doses, which is what the company had intended. The full-full sequence surprised AstraZeneca by resulting in only 62 percent efficacy.

 

 

Now, with basic governmental ethics in mind . . .

 

Recall that the AstraZeneca vaccine is a joint Oxford University-AstraZeneca cooperation. The two have promised to keep their vaccine pricing at cost, so as to assist the Third World in affording it.

 

And, in essence, we now see the Russian Federation stepping in to assist an arguably good-hearted United Kingdom-based effort to save the world some pain.

 

Meanwhile, the reliably obtuse and Big Pharma-leashed United States is presumably still economically sanctioning the Russians that came up with the Sputnik V vaccine.

 

So, tell me, who are the real devils?

 

 

Who's attempting to suck gargantuan profits from human misery?

 

And who is attempting to squash those who are not?

 

 

Pertinent aside — Sputnik V creators' arguably astute reasoning

 

This part is for folks, who are interested in medicine.

 

Oxford-AstraZeneca used a chimpanzee adenovirus to carry the company's anti-COVID DNA into the human cell nucleus.

 

As I noted a couple of weeks ago, that approach is not guaranteed smooth sailing. What, among other things, happens if humans negatively react to the foreign chimp adenovirus itself?

 

 

For instance, what happens when vaccine recipients' immune systems recognize the AstraZeneca-modified chimp adenovirus as foreign and degrade it?

 

Would such degradation not eliminate both the adenovirus carrier and the AstraZeneca DNA packaged inside it?

 

 

The Russians seem to have had the same concern with regard to designing their Sputnik V vaccine. They reportedly use two different human adenovirus delivery vehicles. One for each of the two vaccine doses.

 

Their idea — I am guessing — is that a human adenovirus may cause less immune system reaction than one from a foreign species (chimpanzee). Using a different, second human adenoviral carrier for the subsequent (second) dose would reduce potential carrier-destroying immunological responses still further.

 

This reasoning is why they're giving AstraZeneca one of their adenoviral vectors. Oxford-AstraZeneca can insert its DNA modification into the Russian adenoviral carrier. And then substitute this Russian vector for either the first or second dose in AstraZeneca's vaccination sequence.

 

Using two different adenoviral delivery carriers should reduce the body's ability to build a vector-recognizing and destroying reaction, during the period between the two doses.

 

 

The moral? — True devils and "stupids" are only rarely the folks that US propaganda pinpoints

 

I have no idea whether Sputnik V works. But I recognize that the Russian Federation looks more respectable — in this matter — than the interfering, avaricious United States does.

 

Strategically speaking, soft power may eventually turn out to matter again in the world.

 

If so, we Americans are faced with a long climb out of Ethics' Toilet.