Coronavirus

[Dude#1279435]

Any comment on it taking 10 years to reach global vaccination? Seems to me fix the side effects, get past winter and the second strain, and compulsory required. Easier said than done I imagine.

 

[Mr._Clark]

It's starting to look like many doses of the vaccine will expire before they are administered.

>>>Though refrigeration capacity varies from location to location, vaccines are only cleared for 30 days of storage in the most common units (including those in which they have been shipped). . . . in many places, this first batch of vaccine is set to expire in late January . . . on the current pace, by that point about 6 million Americans — perhaps 10 million — would have been vaccinated. And, depending on local bureaucracy and storage capacity, perhaps many million doses will be set to expire.<<<

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/americas-vaccine-rollout-disaster.html

 

[Swerd]

Good. That'd have to be at least a felony.

That's 3 felony charges: reckless endangerment, adulterating a prescription drug, and damage to property.

It's now also clear this guy was a hospital pharmacist. Even if he isn't convicted of those charges, he'll no longer have Wisconsin pharmacist credentials.

I wonder if he watched too much Faux News.

 

[Swerd]

Any comment on it taking 10 years to reach global vaccination? Seems to me fix the side effects, get past winter and the second strain, and compulsory required. Easier said than done I imagine.

Predictions of what might happen in 10 years are rarely, if ever, worth making.

Global vaccination leading to complete disease eradication has been achieved only for small pox. Polio, measles, among others are close to being eliminated. Unfortunately close to eliminated still means not eliminated.

Fixing side effects is something that probably won't happen anytime soon. Those side effects aren't easily 'fixable' without impacting the vaccines efficacy. They don't seem to happen often enough and aren't serious enough to warrant changing the vaccines as they are now.

 

[TLS Guy]

Any comment on it taking 10 years to reach global vaccination? Seems to me fix the side effects, get past winter and the second strain, and compulsory required. Easier said than done I imagine.

As I said in a previous post, these vaccines with an onerous cold chain will NOT get the job done. India has just approved the Oxford vaccine. They will roll it out imminently and start immunizing the world. Do not under rate India. India is the world's largest parliamentary democracy. Just watch what happens when the really mobilize, like they did in the two world wars.

China have a lot to answer for in this, and they can not be trusted. We need to move away from China and keep them at a quite a few arms lengths. We need to build a true partnership with India. In the recent traffic crisis at the Kent ports, is was the Indian community more then any other that steeped up and prevented a terrible humanitarian crisis, delivering meal in batches of 800.

If that Pharmacist had pulled that stunt on the Oxford vaccine, it would have been fine, because it has designed in resilience.

We need resilient vaccines fast. We need a unit dose in each syringe. That way we can quickly train lots of citizens to administer them at speed.

There need to be big changes made fast to our approach. This pandemic needs stopping before we get a worse mutation, and the two recent ones are bad enough, that in and off themselves are cause for drastic action to try and outrun these new strains.

 

[panteragstk]

As I said in a previous post, these vaccines with an onerous cold chain will NOT get the job done. India has just approved the Oxford vaccine. They will roll it out imminently and start immunizing the world. Do not under rate India. India is the world's largest parliamentary democracy. Just watch what happens when the really mobilize, like they did in the two world wars.

India does not mess around. Even with voting they get the job done. It's really quite something. I expect the same effort with the vaccine. They'll get their population vaccinated well before just about any other nation.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/13/world/asia/india-election-results.html

 

[Swerd]

The story about the guy in Wisconsin, now identified as Steven Brandenburg, a licensed pharmacist, continues to shock me. It was shocking enough that he deliberately destroyed more than 550 doses of the Moderna corona virus vaccine. But then I read that investigators who interviewed him said his motive came from his belief that:

"people who received the vaccinations would think they had been vaccinated against the virus when in fact they were not".​

Pharmacist Arrested, Accused Of Destroying More Than 500 Moderna Vaccine Doses

The now-fired hospital employee later said he knew "that people who received the vaccinations would think they had been vaccinated against the virus when in fact they were not," investigators said.

www.npr.org

This level of sheer ignorance is jaw-dropping. That he graduated from a college with a degree in pharmacy, became licensed in Wisconsin, and worked in a hospital is mind numbing.

The idea that mRNA is required for protein synthesis was established, if I remember correctly, by 1957 by Nobel Prize winner Francis Crick. By the time I was in high school, in the 1960s, this so called 'Central Dogma of Molecular Biology' was widely taught. No one serious has ever come up with a competing idea, much less a better one.

The science behind mRNA used as a vaccine first became clearly understood in the 1990s, and was rapidly widely accepted.

 

[KEW]

But then I read that investigators who interviewed him said his motive came from his belief that:

"people who received the vaccinations would think they had been vaccinated against the virus when in fact they were not".​

Maybe I am missing something, but that seems more like an admission of understanding the consequences of his action than a motive.
I usually look for a motive to explain "why?".
The only (and kind of worst case) motive I can think of to fit would be if he wanted there to be empirical evidence that the vaccine was not as effective as advertised!

 

[Tomorrow]

It has been said that the 501.V2 Variant African strain is more infectious than the original. (I hesitate to call it that since so many get lathered up over the term 'China virus'.) What metric(s) is used to make that assertion?

 

[Swerd]

Maybe I am missing something, but that seems more like an admission of understanding the consequences of his action than a motive.
I usually look for a motive to explain "why?".
The only (and kind of worst case) motive I can think of to fit would be if he wanted there to be empirical evidence that the vaccine was not as effective as advertised!

But there was abundant empirical evidence that the vaccine was effective. It wasn't fake.

His statement was ambiguous. "People who received the vaccinations would think they had been vaccinated against the virus when in fact they were not", could mean one of two different things:

1. That he couldn't accept the idea that the vaccine contained no virus, but could immunize against the virus. The injection contained a mixture of mRNA (encoding the virus spike protein) and lipid nanoparticles, but no virus. Only a devout anti-vaxer could believe such nonsense. That's how I understood his admission – as a plea for others to recognize his wisdom – that he was trying to save people from the evil drug companies.
   
   
2. Or, that he intended to degrade the vaccinations by deliberately allowing them to warm up over two nights, rendering them useless. That would not only be an admission of his destructiveness and his guilt, it would also be an admission that he knew the vaccine was potent before he sabotaged it.

I favor the first.

 

[Dude#1279435]

As I said in a previous post, these vaccines with an onerous cold chain will NOT get the job done. India has just approved the Oxford vaccine. They will roll it out imminently and start immunizing the world. Do not under rate India. India is the world's largest parliamentary democracy. Just watch what happens when the really mobilize, like they did in the two world wars.

China have a lot to answer for in this, and they can not be trusted. We need to move away from China and keep them at a quite a few arms lengths. We need to build a true partnership with India. In the recent traffic crisis at the Kent ports, is was the Indian community more then any other that steeped up and prevented a terrible humanitarian crisis, delivering meal in batches of 800.

If that Pharmacist had pulled that stunt on the Oxford vaccine, it would have been fine, because it has designed in resilience.

We need resilient vaccines fast. We need a unit dose in each syringe. That way we can quickly train lots of citizens to administer them at speed.

There need to be big changes made fast to our approach. This pandemic needs stopping before we get a worse mutation, and the two recent ones are bad enough, that in and off themselves are cause for drastic action to try and outrun these new strains.

What makes the Oxford vaccine better?

 

[highfigh]

I would charge for attempted manslaughter. It is my understanding that 57 people were given vaccinations with the temperature compromised vials.

The hospital has said that the vaccine is harmless in this case. I certainly hope they tested that theory, too.

 

[highfigh]

That's 3 felony charges: reckless endangerment, adulterating a prescription drug, and damage to property.

It's now also clear this guy was a hospital pharmacist. Even if he isn't convicted of those charges, he'll no longer have Wisconsin pharmacist credentials.

I wonder if he watched too much Faux News.

At 46, he screwed himself well- let's see what kinds of jobs he'll land in the future. OTOH, with the short attention span of many people, they'll forget about this by the next news cycle.

 

[TLS Guy]

What makes the Oxford vaccine better?

Speed of rollout is the difference.

It is much cheaper by a factor of 6 to 7. It is easier to manufacture. The bog deal is that there is no difficult cold chain. The vaccine only needs long term storage. at 2 to 6 degrees C. So it is not frozen. There is no thaw time. It does not require dilution. It is stable at room temperature for 6 to 8 weeks. That makes it easy to roll out world wide fast.

Lastly the phase three trials had multiple arms. There was no difference in long term immunity, or failure to prevent serous disease or death with dose spacing of 30, 60 and 90 days. So that means with spacing of 90 days between doses we can get to her immunity much quicker. So it is a much more ideal candidate for getting to herd immunity faster than the others.

 

[Dude#1279435]

Since the initial outbreak, what has China done that makes them untrustworthy?

 

[Mikado463]

Since the initial outbreak, what has China done that makes them untrustworthy?

and what have they done that makes them trustworthy ?

 

[Dude#1279435]

and what have they done that makes them trustworthy ?

I meant what else have they done AFTER the outbreak.

 

[Mikado463]

I meant what else have they done AFTER the outbreak.

like Russia, N Korea, Iran and the list goes on, I wouldn't trust them as far as I could throw them ......

 

[Swerd]

Speed of rollout is the difference.

It is much cheaper by a factor of 6 to 7. It is easier to manufacture. The bog deal is that there is no difficult cold chain. The vaccine only needs long term storage. at 2 to 6 degrees C. So it is not frozen. There is no thaw time. It does not require dilution. It is stable at room temperature for 6 to 8 weeks. That makes it easy to roll out world wide fast.

It's easy to agree that the Astra Zeneca vaccine is more stable. But this says nothing about it's efficacy.

Lastly the phase three trials had multiple arms. There was no difference in long term immunity, or failure to prevent serous disease or death with dose spacing of 30, 60 and 90 days. So that means with spacing of 90 days between doses we can get to her immunity much quicker. So it is a much more ideal candidate for getting to herd immunity faster than the others.

So far, there is no statistically significant clinical trial data that tells us the efficacy of the Astra Zeneca vaccine. There is only data from much smaller groups of immunized people that suggests good efficacy, but not from large enough groups of people to allow useful, statistically valid, conclusions. The data presented to UK drug regulators for their approval of this vaccine has, to my knowledge, not been made available to the public. When Astra Zeneca completes it's US clinical trial, this data will be made available to the public as it is reviewed by the FDA.

Although there is some scientific data that suggests the Astra Zeneca vaccine can have similar efficacy as either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, there is no clinical data that directly answers the question – is the Astra Zeneca vaccine as effective as the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines? The only valid way to do this comparison would be in a randomized, double-blind, 3-arm clinical trial directly comparing these 3 vaccines in the same population of people. I doubt if it would be a good idea to perform this trial now during the pandemic emergency. Instead it would be wise to use all available vaccines, as much as possible, and as soon as possible. With the greater stability of the Astra Zeneca vaccine, plus the large manufacturing capacity in India, this third vaccine would make a valuable contribution.

 

[TLS Guy]

It's easy to agree that the Astra Zeneca vaccine is more stable. But this says nothing about it's efficacy.
So far, there is no statistically significant clinical trial data that tells us the efficacy of the Astra Zeneca vaccine. There is only data from much smaller groups of immunized people that suggests good efficacy, but not from large enough groups of people to allow useful, statistically valid, conclusions. The data presented to UK drug regulators for their approval of this vaccine has, to my knowledge, not been made available to the public. When Astra Zeneca completes it's US clinical trial, this data will be made available to the public as it is reviewed by the FDA.

Although there is some scientific data that suggests the Astra Zeneca vaccine can have similar efficacy as either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, there is no clinical data that directly answers the question – is the Astra Zeneca vaccine as effective as the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines? The only valid way to do this comparison would be in a randomized, double-blind, 3-arm clinical trial directly comparing these 3 vaccines in the same population of people. I doubt if it would be a good idea to perform this trial now during the pandemic emergency. Instead it would be wise to use all available vaccines, as much as possible, and as soon as possible. With the greater stability of the Astra Zeneca vaccine, plus the large manufacturing capacity in India, this third vaccine would make a valuable contribution.

In a situation like this, you have to take the word of reliable individuals. Professor Jonathan Van Tam, the UK chief scientific advisor, has seen all the data. He and the chair of the regulator say that off all the people who have had at least one dose of the active vaccine, only two developed clinical illness. They developed their illnesses within 48 hours of receiving the vaccine. So they were infected before immunization. There were no other cases, hospitalizations or deaths in the immunized groups. So, in effect the vaccine is actually 100% effective, as are the others. However those mRNA vaccines are going to require expert administration, and you can bet there will be inadvertent errors in administration, and failure on that account. On the other hand scores of non medical personnel can be trained, and will be trained, to administer the Oxford vaccine. So more than anything else it comes down to practicality. With these new far quicker spreading variants, there is no longer room for delays. We need a route to herd immunity as fast as possible, or the death toll will be simply awful. This is to say nothing of the long term effects from this virus. One thing I am really scared of is that will be seeing a dreadful epidemic of premature dementia in survivors. I say this as we know most people do have brain lesions. This is because of the vascular infection. This is causing leakage, of blood and or protein in the the interstitium of the brain. It seems to be this may very likely have the same effect as repeated head trauma.

There is increasing suspicion in the UK that the strain there is actually worse. It is infecting a younger age group, especially teenagers. The death rate among people with no risk factors in increasing in the UK and Southern California.

UK modelling shows a much faster route to herd immunity with a 90 day interval between vaccine doses. I fully support that recommendation. In this I have to say I disagree with Tony Fauci. I think the UK scientists have called this one correctly.