Current Events > MIT study: Coronavirus vaccines might be less effective for Black & Asian...

(+) Yeah! (+)

...people

https://news.yahoo.com/coronavirus-vaccines-may-less-effective-162845656.html

Promising results from Moderna, Pfizer, and AstraZeneca's coronavirus vaccines have raised hopes that an end to the pandemic may be in sight. But distribution issues aside, a study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology out last week is raising further concerns about those vaccines' effectiveness.

After initial human trials, Moderna reported its vaccine to be 94 percent effective in preventing coronavirus transmission, while Pfizer's was 95 percent effective and AstraZeneca's 90 percent. But these vaccines, along with many others still in development, share a potential weakness, MIT researchers report. Researchers used artificial intelligence and machine learning to examine a vaccine similar to these big developers', and found that while less than 0.5 percent of white trial participants didn't respond strongly to the vaccine, nearly 10 percent of Asian participants didn't. This could mean "people of Black or Asian ancestry could have a slightly increased risk of vaccine ineffectiveness," the study's senior author David Gifford said in an article accompanying the study.

A lack of diversity in the vaccine trial pools may have led developers to calibrate the vaccine to a specific version of human genes white people's genes in particular. But MIT researchers did offer a potential solution: "adding a small number of additional COVID-19 peptides" strings of amino acids that make up proteins, which in turn make up a coronavirus "to a given dose of the vaccine," MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence lab writes.

"The study's results highlight longstanding trends in health care" and clinical trials, Health IT Analytics notes. Minority groups are often underrepresented in trials, making it less certain how effective vaccines and drugs will be for them and potentially leading to the formulation of vaccines that are tailored for white people. That's especially troubling amid the coronavirus pandemic, as Black and brown people have disproportionately been hospitalized with and died of the virus.

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Trump virus strikes again

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If this is true this is pretty blatant systematic racism

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as someone who's sick of SJWs, medical areas is one of the few areas were all people need to be represented equally

I swear I saw a take from some notable figure that efforts to include minority subjects in these tests and trials was virtue signaling, but I can't recall who it was now

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Ah, here we are
https://twitter.com/_Almaqah/status/1331832568082280451?s=19

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I feel like the medical field has been making this same mistake over and over again for a century at this point. This could have pretty negative implications if this is borne out.

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unlucky

I'd be suspicious of any result coming from sub sampling data, if that's what's going on here.

Should probably run a trial estimating efficacy across different minority groups if there's any reason to believe that there would be differential efficacy across them.

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Still have confidence in this?

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https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/07/health/coronavirus-vaccine-trials-african-americans.html

there's a major problem with recruitment for these trials.

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BudDupree48 posted...

Still have confidence in this?

The little green men are not invading

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Whites win! Whites win again!

A jump from 0.5% to nearly 10% is more than a "slightly increased risk of vaccine ineffectiveness," fuck out of here.

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What about the blasians.

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gna647 posted...

If this is true this is pretty blatant systematic racism

@gna647
Actually it has more to do with black people not trusting doctors culturally. They are very unlikely to ever participate in any medical trials.

The lack of Asian participants is because they don't need the money, they are and by large, way more wealthy than every other race.

Though this will just be for Moderna and Pfizer vaccines. Obviously Wuhan's vaccine will be very effective for Asians for example.

bump

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g0ldie posted...

But MIT researchers did offer a potential solution: "adding a small number of additional COVID-19 peptides" strings of amino acids that make up proteins, which in turn make up a coronavirus "to a given dose of the vaccine,"

If they accidentally developed a vaccine that's less effective for people of different ancestry, that's not great, but they sure as hell shouldn't just sprinkle in some extra ingredients after the fact to try and compensate.

Not that I think any of the pharma companies would do that without doing another round of trials, but the whole suggestion is ridiculous. We can't hold up development any longer.

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And everyone was trying to tell me its harmful to question whether or not the vaccine actually works smh


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RedJackson posted...

And everyone was trying to tell me its harmful to question whether or not the vaccine actually works smh

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Shocker.

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as a data scientist, i am 100000000000000% skeptical of any news article that cites research using "ML" or "AI"

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And yet white liberals (especially on Reddit) accuse me and others of being anti-vax just cause I say Im gonna wait a while after its available. Lol

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Im not taking it

Black and Asians combined make up less then 20% of the American population, why are people acting shocked that there were more whites in the trials? Simple numbers will do this. Not to mention if its based off of one races DNA more of course its going to be off the race that is the majority of the citizens, same as any vaccines being developed in any other countries.

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Yikes so they rushed the vaccine without even doing proper trials on POC. That is so fucked up since POC are the most hard hit by the virus.

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2Pacavelli posted...

Im not taking it

same here. if they call it the "trump vaccine".
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AI intelligence and its hardly reliable given so many unpredictable factors involved.

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@BudDupree48 really, act like sample size doesnt matter

Gamerguymass posted...

Black and Asians combined make up less then 20% of the American population, why are people acting shocked that there were more whites in the trials? Simple numbers will do this. Not to mention if its based off of one races DNA more of course its going to be off the race that is the majority of the citizens, same as any vaccines being developed in any other countries.

but this though^

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one more~

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As an Asian, I was never getting the vaccine to begin with.
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Damn racist vaccines

gna647 posted...

If this is true this is pretty blatant systematic racism

Virus is racist confirmed.
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IAmALawyer posted...

@gna647
Actually it has more to do with black people not trusting doctors culturally. They are very unlikely to ever participate in any medical trials.

The lack of Asian participants is because they don't need the money, they are and by large, way more wealthy than every other race.

Though this will just be for Moderna and Pfizer vaccines. Obviously Wuhan's vaccine will be very effective for Asians for example.

exactly

it still stems from systematic racism

because black people are less likely to get a solid education thanks to red lining

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Gamerguymass posted...

Black and Asians combined make up less then 20% of the American population, why are people acting shocked that there were more whites in the trials? Simple numbers will do this. Not to mention if its based off of one races DNA more of course its going to be off the race that is the majority of the citizens, same as any vaccines being developed in any other countries.

Pretty sure that they mean that they were not represented as a percentage of what they are in the larger population.

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gna647 posted...

exactly

it still stems from systematic racism

because black people are less likely to get a solid education thanks to red lining

nah, it's because black people have historically been used as guinea pigs as far as science and medicine go.

there was even a backlash when pharmaceutical companies wanted to do trial testing for coronavirus virus vaccines in Africa.

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