UK NHS likely to roll out CoViD 19 vaccine as early as Dec 7.

[BacktoCricaddict]

[BacktoCricaddict]

11 hours ago, MultiB48 said:

So she fainted due to the pain of a prick of the needle?

 

And what's  the explanation for the hiv false positives?

This is why companies do trials.  And this is why we must not accept any vaccine or medication that has not undergone rigorous clinical trial analysis.

 

This vaccine was pulled during Phase I clinical trials (safety trials).  So, what happened here?  The technology they were using is novel and unique.  They were manufacturing the "Spike protein" of SARS-Cov2 and directly using it as the vaccine.  The problem is that the Spike protein is a bit unstable when it is not part of the virus, so they were using small parts of another protein to stabilize it.  They happened to pick a protein from HIV as a stabilizer.  When injected, trial participants made antibodies against the HIV protein.  HIV tests are designed to test for antibody production, so although the participants did not have an HIV infection, they showed up HIV positive.  I am surprised that the company did not consider this possibility beforehand - it seems like an obvious issue, but hindsight is 20/20. 

 

Bottom line:  The clinical trial process worked.  They caught the issue in Phase I.  Although the vaccine is itself safe, it is not acceptable to get HIV false positives.  The vaccine is now abandoned.

 

Bottom line 2:  This is not uncommon in the world of medicine.  Around 95% of all drug candidates that enter Phase I do not make it to the market for a variety of reasons.  Generally public doesn't pay attention to Phase I trials.  But this is of course different!  

 

Edited December 21, 2020 by BacktoCricaddict

[BacktoCricaddict]

Check out the outstanding leadership in America.  On Sep 2, Sen (or Congresswoman...same shyte) Ernst claimed Covid 19 is a fake money making scheme.  Today, she is among the early ones vaccinated.  In what way is she "essential" to the functioning of this country?

 

 

[coffee_rules]

^^^Peddmundedu

[BacktoCricaddict]

4 minutes ago, MultiB48 said:

The virus is said to have mutated,so will the vaccine work?

It's too early to tell.  From a structural perspective, it seems like a minor change which our antibodies can still recognize.  Both Pfizer and Moderna are testing blood samples from vaccinated people to see how well their antibodies can recognize and neutralize the new variant.  Will probably be a week or two before those results are known.  

[BacktoCricaddict]

27 minutes ago, MultiB48 said:

Will they test old people and people with heath issues ?

The original trials included all these demographics.  

[Clarke]

15 hours ago, BacktoCricaddict said:

It's too early to tell.  From a structural perspective, it seems like a minor change which our antibodies can still recognize.  Both Pfizer and Moderna are testing blood samples from vaccinated people to see how well their antibodies can recognize and neutralize the new variant.  Will probably be a week or two before those results are known.  

 

It would be interesting to note the results since the mRNA vaccines are focused on the spike protein, which is said to be modified in case of the mutated virus. 

 

One of the Covaxin experts on the news sounded confident about the standard approach used in case of Covaxin development, suggesting that the immune response in such a vaccine is based on multiple factors and not entirely dependent on the spike protein.

Edited December 23, 2020 by Clarke

[BacktoCricaddict]

8 hours ago, MultiB48 said:

Yeah but they form a small percentage of the samples in the trails,when they are the ones at most risk and lot of their results are yet to be released.This is specially important since you can't sue the pharma companies or be compensated in case something goes wrong.

Pfizer

Published in NEJM:  https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2034577?query=featured_home

42% of participants were 55+

 

Moderna

Results don't seem to be in a peer-reviewed publication yet (I might have missed it), but there is a summary:  https://www.statnews.com/2020/11/16/modernas-covid-19-vaccine-is-strongly-effective-early-look-at-data-show/

Jury still out until solid numbers are available.  

 

 

Quote

Moderna vaccine appears to have been protective in important subsets of participants — the elderly and people from racial and ethnic minority groups, the latter of which make up 37% of the Moderna trial population.

“It wasn’t as if the only people who were protected were the young people. There were people in the elderly, there were people in the minorities,” Fauci said. Efficacy was “really consistent across all groups.”

.

Here is a good explanation of the liability/compensation issue:  https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2030600

 

 

[BacktoCricaddict]

5 hours ago, Clarke said:

 

 

 

It would be interesting to note the results since the mRNA vaccines are focused on the spike protein, which is said to be modified in case of the mutated virus. 

Certainly something to keep an eye on, but I think it is less dire than people are saying.  The mRNA vaccines contain the code for the entire spike protein.   Our body makes antibodies against various regions of the protein.  If you think of the spike protein as someone's arm, you can imagine that the body makes antibodies against the elbow, the forearm, the thumb, the index finger etc.  The variant's thumb may have changed, but all the other parts are still intact, so we have antibodies against all of them.

 

One of the Covaxin experts on the news sounded confident about the standard approach used in case of Covaxin development, suggesting that the immune response in such a vaccine is based on multiple factors and not entirely dependent on the spike protein.

Very true.  Extending the analogy from the previous paragraph, it is like you are displaying an arm, a leg, a face, a torso, so the combination of antibodies produced is much more diverse.  So, more viral variants are captured.  

 

There is actually another rational approach, but it can only start to be developed after many years.  It targets what are called "conserved regions" of the antigenic protein (e.g., Spike protein).  During viral evolution, it will turn out that there are some regions of the Spike protein that are absolutely necessary for the virus and will never change over the years.  You keep track of the structure of the spike protein year to year to year and eventually you will see a pattern that shows the conserved region.  This region can then be used as the vaccine.  

 

For now, I can see how the mRNA vaccines are the initial tactic on the front end, followed by long-term use of the standard vaccines.  This is why we need a multipronged approach.

 

Having said all that, remember the flu vaccine is standard, but has to be re-taken year to year because the flu virus mutates rapidly enough that last year's antibodies can be totally useless depending on which flu strain takes over this year.  Luckily SARS CoV2 doesn't appear to have the same rate of mutation, so that may not be necessary.  

Edited December 23, 2020 by BacktoCricaddict

[Jimmy Cliff]

 

 

Peak 1984.

 

[Jimmy Cliff]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Jimmy Cliff]

 

[BacktoCricaddict]

Anti-vaccine disinformation is as old as ........... vaccines themselves.  Rant, rinse, repeat.  Going on since 1796

 

Victorian anti-vaccinators were very creative in their propaganda tools. Here is an envelope showing a scene similar to the Death the Vaccinator image. The envelope also has a short message written on the flap stating, “Vaccination is a process of corruption and death” and also warns that vaccinating doctors have only financial gain in mind. Utilizing envelopes allowed for a broader audience to receive the anti-vaccination message.

 

Sounds familiar, no?

 

 

[BacktoCricaddict]

@coffee_rules

 

Apropos of your Sweden question.

 

https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/12/22/sweden-coronavirus-covid-response/?utm_content=buffer64a56&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

 

Sweden’s botched coronavirus response is no longer news: Even the country’s king, Carl XVI Gustaf, admitted in his annual Christmas address that the Swedish government had “failed.” But private emails seen by Foreign Policy, some of which have been previously reported in the Swedish press, reveal that Sweden’s health authorities were resigned to mass infections—so called herd immunity—all along, and no matter the costs. Throughout the pandemic, Sweden’s health authorities have said one thing publicly and something different in private about nearly every aspect of their management of the crisis. There were repeated public denials from the government that it deliberately sought to achieve herd immunity, even though that was the strategy pursued behind closed doors. There were misleading statements on the availability of testing. There was even continued public denial (despite private acknowledgement) of how the virus spreads, part of a pattern of apparent official obfuscation that’s lasted the whole pandemic.

 

And the result has been deadly. While countries such as the United States, Brazil, and India have made headlines for recording the highest number of coronavirus-related fatalities, Sweden’s death rate of over 80 per 100,000 people is among Europe’s highest and is around 10 times as great as those of Norway and Finland, and over four times Denmark’s. COVID-19 hospitalizations are now rising faster there than in most European countries, and Sweden is caring for more patients in hospital now than it did at the height of its first wave. By Dec. 21, Sweden had surpassed the United States and all major European countries in its daily confirmed cases per million. Things have gotten so out of control in Sweden that neighboring Norway, for the first time since World War II, put troops on the border to prevent Swedes from crossing over.

[BacktoCricaddict]

^^ main point being, people like Kak are smart enough to look at context before spouting off.  He is very capable of it (I mean, if I can do it as a 2-bit ICF poster, he can too), but chooses not to do it for fear of "being wrong."  Willful ignorance.  More dangerous than real ignorance.

[coffee_rules]

33 minutes ago, BacktoCricaddict said:

^^ main point being, people like Kak are smart enough to look at context before spouting off.  He is very capable of it (I mean, if I can do it as a 2-bit ICF poster, he can too), but chooses not to do it for fear of "being wrong."  Willful ignorance.  More dangerous than real ignorance.

yes, he is usually right about most things, but human after all. His pet peeve is Big Pharma manipulating research for personal gain and draws the lockdown to the same logic. My point is data can always have different views, Covid data is not just about mortality, but logistics of treating those who didn’t die and have chances of survival. And economy consolidation is vital too. 

[BacktoCricaddict]

2 hours ago, coffee_rules said:

yes, he is usually right about most things, but human after all. His pet peeve is Big Pharma manipulating research for personal gain and draws the lockdown to the same logic. My point is data can always have different views, Covid data is not just about mortality, but logistics of treating those who didn’t die and have chances of survival. And economy consolidation is vital too. 

Quantitative thinking is required - it is not all or none. 

 

I think I posted a reply to mishra-ji in this thread (too lazy to look it up) that ~ 20% of excess deaths in 2020 are due to untreated conditions not getting proper treatment stemming from Covid over-runs.  So, 80% are directly due to Covid itself. 

 

As a libertarian, this is very difficult for me to say, but rational second level thinking will allow one to see that, during a pandemic, a strict, swift lockdown at the front end results in larger benefits at the back end by not prolonging the crisis such that people with other conditions continue to be neglected due to Covid over-runs.  A strict lockdown requires leadership - and I hate to say this, but - it requires governments to step in and provide relief to small businesses and individuals (not large corporates) directly affected, but it can be done.  But when the short-term pain was sold as anti-business, anti-mental-health etc., there is no way that people will accept it later. 

Edited December 24, 2020 by BacktoCricaddict

[Clarke]

Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine approved in UK; nod in India expected soon

 

The world's largest vaccine maker by volume, Serum Institute has already manufactured 50 million doses of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine on at-risk funding

 

 

[coffee_rules]

Immunity explained..

 

 

 

[Jimmy Cliff]

 

 

Studies have not been done but "experts" think you're likely gonna be okay anyway.  Big Pharma stooges will tell you to just shut up and "tRuSt tHe sCiEnCE". Absolute clown world we're living in.