Thread on testing & treatment research for COVID-19
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Key committee endorses Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, paving way for clearance by FDA and vaccinations in US to begin — USA TODAY
The endorsement paves the way for a final decision by the FDA, and mass vaccinations to begin within days.
. ICU occupancy is in the area of 70% with large teaching hospitals typically 90 % . Hospitals are pulling docs from what is typically their speciality to help with the COVID admissions . For instance my one friend is a Trauma surgeon but a hospital employee . They have pulled him off Trauma and some of his working hours are in COVID patient care .
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It was reported today that hospitals in Montgomery County Maryland are over 80% full but out of that number only one-fifth of those hospitalized are there with covid. Seemed there are a lot of hospitals that are still doing many elective surgeries and needing to keep people 4 heart-related conditions because they haven't been able to come in for the previous six months.
Sounds like the normal situation at present. When I was talking to my pulmonologist this summer, he was relaying the fact that some cardiac surgeries were postponed in the spring wave as they weren’t truly emergent / non-elective wtf . Nothing like that going on in December, but the powers to be are closely watching the numbers .
Maybe our boards supply chain guys can solve their problems. Production of Sputnik V is way down from the promised number of 30 million by years end to just two million doses. The reduction is blamed on slow to no vial caps from China, equipment fillers from Japan, reagent shortages from the USA, and bioreactors which grow and ferment vaccine ingredients from Germany, and the USA. "Scaling is a complex process" said the CEO of BIOCAD- per 12/11/2020 WSJ
Looks like the Sanofi COVID vaccine effort did not meet expectations in clinical trials.
The immune responses were similar to those produced by infection and were not very strong in older persons.
That won’t put them in the same category as the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.
I did see where Sanofi had recently acquired a company with experience in mRNA technology. Maybe they are planning to start over again with this effort.
The immune responses were similar to those produced by infection and were not very strong in older persons.
That won’t put them in the same category as the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.
I did see where Sanofi had recently acquired a company with experience in mRNA technology. Maybe they are planning to start over again with this effort.
Interesting thought from the WSJ 12/11/20 page A13. Not that it would happen , but an excerpt from A Shot (Instead of Two) at Saving Lives by Dr. Mark Segal:
The Pfizer study wasn't designed to put a number on first dose efficacy, but the data in Pfizer's "cumulative incidence curves" suggest at least 75% efficacy for two weeks after the first dose. The question is whether to use the 100 million doses on 50 million people, of whom two doses would protect roughly 47.5 million, or to give one dose each to 100 million people and protect 75 million.
States have the authority to allocate vaccines as they choose, but they are unlikely to deviate from the study protocol unless a federal authority , whether the CDC and Prevention or a corona virus "czar"-- suggests this as an option.
The Pfizer study wasn't designed to put a number on first dose efficacy, but the data in Pfizer's "cumulative incidence curves" suggest at least 75% efficacy for two weeks after the first dose. The question is whether to use the 100 million doses on 50 million people, of whom two doses would protect roughly 47.5 million, or to give one dose each to 100 million people and protect 75 million.
States have the authority to allocate vaccines as they choose, but they are unlikely to deviate from the study protocol unless a federal authority , whether the CDC and Prevention or a corona virus "czar"-- suggests this as an option.
broken record, producing a few BILLION vaccines is not something done in a couple of months. it is going to take all of 2021 to produce enough vaccine, vaccine being the vaccine itself plus all the containers, etc...and then it has to be distributed and people vaccinated. politicians are flat out lying to the public when they implied that the USA would be vaccinated a few months.
very happy pfizer vaccine got approved and it appears moderna by end of year. so at least those dosages can get out to medical and nursing homes would should drop hospitalization and fatality by 50% or more. and that also allows both those groups to continue to maximize production in every way possible. but it is going to take a long time to get the USA and the world vaccinated.
I saw a presentation about the Astra Zeneca vaccine that described how the dosage was halved for the first of the two injections due to shortages for some of the participants in the clinical trial. The unexpected thing is that the participants who received the smaller first dose had a more robust immune response overall.
And the cruel irony is that since they changed up their trial protocols, now they have to do another one, delaying their EUA.
Interesting data-point... out of 1.3 million active duty armed forces personnel there has been just one death to Covid
is it considering all the data shows that under 50 and healthy means this is like the flu. it is the older and unhealthy who are seeing the issues. and don't know really much of any old and/or sick people in the military.
I was not able to view the article, but the obvious question is why were these vaccine trial participants being tested for HIV ?
I assume when they did testing for Covid Virus that they did a complete scan for viruses with HIV being one of the virus scanned for.
I know a guy in our office just got a Covid test and they told him he was negative for COvid but positive for the 'regular' flu virus.
This article from The Guardian explains it pretty well. It has to do with a protein used as a "molecular clamp," which locks in place the synthetic version of the COVID-19 spike protein used in the vaccine. The protein in question are fragments of the glycoprotein 41 protein, which is also found in HIV. There was some concern that using this protein would cause an HIV immune response, so that's why it was being monitored in the trial.
University of Queensland Covid vaccine: the government's pulled the plug so what happens now?
An order for 51m doses has been cancelled with researchers ‘devastated’ after a trial returned false positive HIV results
One of the newer PCR tests does test for both covid and the seasonal flu variants.
Thanks for the Guardian article.This article from The Guardian explains it pretty well. It has to do with a protein used as a "molecular clamp," which locks in place the synthetic version of the COVID-19 spike protein used in the vaccine. The protein in question are fragments of the glycoprotein 41 protein, which is also found in HIV. There was some concern that using this protein would cause an HIV immune response, so that's why it was being monitored in the trial.
University of Queensland Covid vaccine: the government's pulled the plug so what happens now?
An order for 51m doses has been cancelled with researchers ‘devastated’ after a trial returned false positive HIV resultswww.theguardian.com
It reads like the creators of the vaccine knew this could happen and it does appear that the antibody response to the GP 41 protein could be differentiated from that seen with an actual HIV response if the test could be specific enough.
Maybe the work should continue on this as a “ second generation “ COVID - 19 vaccine.
Tom, I get the sense you know something about this subject. My chief concern with any sort of vaccine that uses nucleic acids is that it could result in the incorporation of the segment into nuclear DNA. People have said that this is extremely unlikely and not possible with mRNA. However, I have read that within the last decade data has shown what appears to be evidence of reverse transcription in human cells.
If this could happen, It seems like the main risk to humans would be if a vaccine nucleic acid fragment ended up in germ cell nuclear DNA. This would appear to be mainly a risk for younger males. Maybe it is an incredible longshot, although if these vaccines end up being given on a regular basis, it would seem that the odds of this would go up.
Any thoughts, or do you think this is crazy ?
I do have some knowledge of this subject. That said, reverse transcription was never a focus of mine, so there are many that are better situated to allay concerns than am I. @Art, any chance you could run this past your oldest? I'm sure he's more qualified than I am to respond.
Reverse transcription does take place, in certain conditions. It's part of the sneaky way that HIV gets around the body's defenses. That said, my understanding is that there is no way for the mRNA used in Pfizer or Moderna's vaccine to be incorporated into the body's DNA.
Thanks for the headache, Tom. Without going into details, Fils 1 confirms your understanding.
Here are a few Covid conspiracy theories that took hold and really hurt our ability to most optimally (I mostly blame the media, which is mostly made up of people like this story is referring to):
- This virus might be the only virus in the history of world where we don't have immunity to it upon contracting and recovering from it.
- Anyone contracting Covid is bad (cases going up is necessarily a bad thing).
- Building strength against the virus via natural herd immunity (contracting/recovering) means more people would die.
- Herd immunity only benefits the population if the population reaches the herd immunity threshold.
- Masks don't do anything, they're just the government trying to control us.
- If only more people would wear masks, we could be in a much better place with regards to this virus... Or put another way, we're seeing so many cases because there isn't enough mask compliance.
I could go on. The conspiracy theories that came out of this pandemic - and the critical mass that they gained in the population - are downright frightening.
We really need to force feed STEM on not only our children, but the entire population. We can't let this happen again.
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No problem. My understanding of retroviruses is now beyond where I thought it would ever be.
Pfizer to start shipping vaccines Sunday . 2.9 million doses this week and hopefully 25 million by the end of the month .
apple.news
Pfizer’s Covid vaccine is now shipping. Here's how the U.S. plans to deliver it — CNBC
The FDA just cleared the first Covid vaccine for emergency use. Within hours, FedEx and UPS will begin shipping 2.9 million doses across the country.
Boulder, we still don’t have a good idea about the durability of the immunity people develop after infection.
This pandemic is less than a year old. I know with the four common cold type Coronaviruses, I have read of an average figure of 40 weeks. It’s hard to imagine this number is consistent across the four different types and all the health and immunity variables in populations.
We also know that with SARS and MERS, immunity appears to last for at least a decade after infection.
I was talking with my cousin who worked for Merck and was involved in vaccine development. She said that some of the people in the field with whom she maintains contact say that people will need to be vaccinated annually for SARS CoV- 2.
Have you read this article yet, 83?
Immunity to the Coronavirus May Last Years, New Data Hint (Published 2020)
Blood samples from recovered patients suggest a powerful, long-lasting immune response, researchers reported.
Consistent with what I have seen in travel in 11 states in last few months.
