Mega-Thread: Coronavirus Pandemic

[Poopymonster]

Drive-up anal swabbing?

The nasal swab wasn’t that bad lol

My first test last March, yeah, the nose was pretty bad. I felt like I should have gotten flowers or learned her name first. The second one in October wasn't that bad, they weren't trying to scrub my brainmeats that time.

[Thepersona]

So, speaking about the Chinese, why NYtimes is being so adamant in the attack of the Covid vaccine candidates that they've produced? Because, to me it smells an awful lot like pro west propaganda. (Even when i am fully aware of the lower efficacy of the Sinovac vaccine, it still prevents severe covid, and thus would lower mortality to a negligible amount).

[xenogear3]

The Norway's post-vaccination death cases have gained some more traction and are being investigated.

Are you sure it is not the vaccination killing people ?

If it is, these death shouldn't be counted as COVID-19.
The actual COVID-19 death number is much lower.

[NED funded]

https://twitter.com/AP/status/1354821438163750912

Insane stuff coming from NY

BREAKING: New York may have undercounted COVID-19 deaths of nursing home residents by as much as 50%, the state’s attorney general said.

[Easo]

Are you sure it is not the vaccination killing people ?

If it is, these death shouldn't be counted as COVID-19.
The actual COVID-19 death number is much lower.

Because if it would be vaccinations then Israel would be on full alarm right now. The actual number is lower? Proof or gtfo, it has becoming very tiring seeing those one liners being thrown around.

[Forogil]

https://twitter.com/AP/status/1354821438163750912

Insane stuff coming from NY

"BREAKING: New York may have undercounted COVID-19 deaths of nursing home residents by as much as 50%, the state’s attorney general said."

That the deaths were undercounted in the US (and NY specifically) by a lot have been known for a long time.

https://www.economist.com/graphic-de...deaths-tracker - the original article is about 9 months old by now, and as I recall included the outbreak in NY as well. Overall in the US it seems that deaths are about 30% higher than official numbers, and this article indicated that it in nursing homes the number would be 56% higher than official numbers - merely based on different reporting of covid-19 deaths (there might be additional errors as well).
It's likely that there was less underreporting outside of nursing homes as those deaths were less "normal".

The problem is not specific to the US. Some countries in Europe have done better, and some have done worse (looking at you Mexico and Russia).

[Edge-]

That the deaths were undercounted in the US (and NY specifically) by a lot have been known for a long time.

The morbidly amusing bit of this latest news, since I've already seen some of the usual suspects using this as a platform to go after NY politicians, is that this is the same crowd that's spent the past year angrily and loudly asserting that numbers are grossly overcounted and they're well, well below what they are reported.

[PhaelixWW]

So, speaking about the Chinese, why NYtimes is being so adamant in the attack of the Covid vaccine candidates that they've produced? Because, to me it smells an awful lot like pro west propaganda. (Even when i am fully aware of the lower efficacy of the Sinovac vaccine, it still prevents severe covid, and thus would lower mortality to a negligible amount).

The issue with "okay, but not great" vaccine coverage is that it quite often encourages mutation. That, combined with the false sense of security that human nature will inevitably react with, are fairly large causes for concern.

In the case of flu vaccines, we've essentially lost the fight with mutation and a relatively low effectiveness is often the best we can do, hence the yearly shots. But with COVID, we definitely have vaccines with a high enough effectiveness that we don't want a subpar vaccine being administered to a huge portion of the world's population such that it might possibly engender new, more serious, strains of this virus.

The FDA, for example, had the cutoff for acceptable vaccine effectiveness at 50%. The Sinovac vaccine has a reported 50.4% effectiveness... so far. There's also the fact that they've attempted to mislead away from that number.

Last week researchers at the Butantan Institute, which has been conducting the trials in Brazil, announced that the vaccine had a 78% efficacy against "mild-to-severe" Covid-19 cases.

But on Tuesday they revealed that calculations for this figure did not include data from a group of "very mild infections" among those who received the vaccine that did not require clinical assistance.

With the inclusion of this data, the efficacy rate is now 50.4%, said researchers.

But this isn't exclusive to China or Sinovac. Germany is now challenging AstraZeneca's vaccine for much the same reason.

An article in German business daily Handelsblatt had reported that the German government was expecting the European Medicines Agency’s (EMA) assessment to show the AstraZeneca vaccine to be only 8% effective among the over-65s, describing it a “setback for Berlin’s vaccination strategy”.

AstraZeneca instantly dismissed the reports on Monday night, saying the 8% figure was “completely incorrect”.

But the German government also voiced concerns about AstraZeneca’s data reporting: “It has been known since the autumn that fewer seniors were included in the trials supplied by AstraZeneca than the trials of other manufacturers.”

“According to information by Handelsblatt, the government’s doubts about the efficacy of the AstraZeneca vaccine among elder risk groups have not been dispelled. A high-ranking official within the health ministry told Handelsblatt: “A mix-up of the numbers is impossible. On the basis of the data made available to us so far, the efficacy among the over-60s lies below 10%.’”

[Thepersona]

The issue with "okay, but not great" vaccine coverage is that it quite often encourages mutation. That, combined with the false sense of security that human nature will inevitably react with, are fairly large causes for concern.

In the case of flu vaccines, we've essentially lost the fight with mutation and a relatively low effectiveness is often the best we can do, hence the yearly shots. But with COVID, we definitely have vaccines with a high enough effectiveness that we don't want a subpar vaccine being administered to a huge portion of the world's population such that it might possibly engender new, more serious, strains of this virus.

The FDA, for example, had the cutoff for acceptable vaccine effectiveness at 50%. The Sinovac vaccine has a reported 50.4% effectiveness... so far. There's also the fact that they've attempted to mislead away from that number.


But this isn't exclusive to China or Sinovac. Germany is now challenging AstraZeneca's vaccine for much the same reason.

I've read that. The only "defense" that Sinovac has that i could consider pertinent is that the Brazil trials were specifically made with high risk patients in mind, in order to put the vaccine candidate under the most grueling circunstances (as the Turkey and Phillipines trials reported higher efficacy). But either way, i agree, that ok, but not great is not the best tactic. The problem atm is that the great vaccines (Moderna and Pfizer ones) have nowhere near the production capacity necessary to supply the whole planet in under a year. The rest (Sinopharm and AZ ones) have lower efficacy, but are way easier to manufacture and transport.

[PhaelixWW]

The problem atm is that the great vaccines (Moderna and Pfizer ones) have nowhere near the production capacity necessary to supply the whole planet in under a year. The rest (Sinopharm and AZ ones) have lower efficacy, but are way easier to manufacture and transport.

Again, the production of simple mRNA vaccines (like those from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna) is actually far, far, far easier than other vaccines, including adenoviruses-vectors vaccines (like AstraZeneca's) and inactivated virus vaccines (like Sinovac's).

The big issue isn't production at all (and mRNA production is only going to get easier), it's storage/transportation, as RNA is more fragile than DNA, and thus the vaccine must be kept at a much colder temperature.

So "no" to easier to manufacture, but "yes" to easier to transport, which means there will still be a place for non-mRNA vaccines.

[Pann]

Another vaccine showing promise.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55850352

[Forogil]

Another vaccine showing promise.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55850352

Good news, but why do they persist in giving that ridiculously precise effectiveness, in this case 89.3%.

Someone did the math on wikipedia and added confidence intervals.

The posted numbers for Pfizer/BioNTech are 95.0% and for Moderna 94.5%.
If we instead use confidence intervals Pfizer/BioNTech is at 90.0-97.9% and Moderna at 86.5-97.8%.
(It would be good to have other vaccines included - assumedly we will know more about Astra-Zeneca vaccine tomorrow, but some of them have very confusing reports.)

[Gaidax]

I'll be having my Phizer in 3 days from now.

Would be glad to get this over with finally.

[Puupi]

https://twitter.com/DrDomPimenta/sta...21028300283904

"there is no second wave"

Well done clip that should make people understand what's going on. Every beep is 100 deaths.

[PhaelixWW]

https://twitter.com/DrDomPimenta/sta...21028300283904

"there is no second wave"

Well done clip that should make people understand what's going on. Every beep is 100 deaths.

I mean, it's crazy to me... the UK hit 1725 deaths yesterday.

They're 1/5th the population of the US, so to put that in perspective for those of us stateside, that would be 8600 deaths per day.

Simply staggering...

[Easo]

To put some perspective about the EU vaccine shortage and that whole spat...
In Latvia we were supposed to get 424k AstraZeneca vaccines until the end of March. We will be getting 109k, 4 times less instead. Now apply this to the whole EU.
Things have gone sideways really really badly. Basically, the whole first quarter of the year has been lost.

[Arrashi]

To put some perspective about the EU vaccine shortage and that whole spat...
In Latvia we were supposed to get 424k AstraZeneca vaccines until the end of March. We will be getting 109k, 4 times less instead. Now apply this to the whole EU.
Things have gone sideways really really badly. Basically, the whole first quarter of the year has been lost.

Same here in Poland. Everyone (except for our glorious government) is talking about vaccine crisis. Its bad enough that majority of people who get 1st dose won't be getting second for....god knows how long.

Oh and that dumbfuck that is our health minister being a genius he is thought that if 850k people got 1st shot and 150k got 2nd shot we vaccinated 1 milion people in total. Its getting hopeless.

[Gaidax]

I have no clue how the EU countries managed to fuck it up. Should have tossed that $$ at Phizer/Moderna/AZ.

Here, anyone who is 35+ or 16-18 yo can get it through app appointment and fast.

[PhaelixWW]

Another vaccine just finished trials, and this one only needs one dose.

CNN: Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine is 66% effective in global trial, but 85% effective against severe disease, company says

Johnson & Johnson's Covid-19 single-shot vaccine was shown to be 66% effective in preventing moderate and severe disease in a global Phase 3 trial, but 85% effective against severe disease, the company announced Friday.

The vaccine was 72% effective against moderate and severe disease in the US, the company said.

It's a striking difference from vaccines from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna, and it may give pause to people uncertain about which vaccine to get or when they can get one. The vaccines already on the market in the US are about 95% effective overall against symptomatic Covid-19, with perhaps even higher efficacy against severe cases.

But experts say the Johnson & Johnson vaccine will still be useful against the pandemic in the United States and around the world.

...

The vaccine's efficacy against moderate and severe disease ranged from one country to another: 72% in the US, 66% in Latin America and 57% in South Africa. This was measured starting one month after the shot.

In South Africa, 95% of cases in the trial were due to a variant known as B.1.351, which is known to be more contagious and carries mutations that may make the virus less susceptible to the antibody immune response -- including antibodies prompted by vaccination.

With that variant, "we have a lower protection against milder forms of Covid than we did in the United States, where there were more typical circulating variants," Dr. Mathai Mammen, the company's global head of research and development, told CNN Chief Medical Correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

However, even those who got moderate cases of Covid-19 in the trial tended to develop a milder course and fewer symptoms, he added.

But for Mammen, the key result was how effective the vaccine was at preventing severe disease -- regardless of variant or age group.

"Across all geographies, across all variants, we see 85% protection" against severe disease, he said. That trend increased over time, with no severe cases in the vaccinated group after day 49, according to the company.

From one month after the shot, all hospitalizations and deaths occurred in the placebo group.

The results are based on an analysis of more than 44,000 participants in eight countries, with 468 total cases of Covid-19 split between those receiving the vaccine or placebo. The results have not been published in a peer-reviewed journal, but the company said it plans to do so "in the coming weeks."

...

The Johnson & Johnson vaccine has advantages, Fauci said.

"A vaccine that's inexpensive, that's a single dose, and that has no cold chain requirements -- that's pretty good," Fauci told CNN.

Mammen said the vaccine was well-tolerated, with a "vanilla, even boring, safety data set" that included no cases of a severe allergic response known as anaphylaxis. About one in 11 had a fever, but only 0.2% were considered "Grade 3."

Fauci said the results would look even better if Janssen did not have to compete against the 94% and 95% efficacy seen in trials of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines — even though the latter are calculated from overall symptomatic disease, while Johnson & Johnson's figures reference only moderate and severe cases.

"You know what the problem is? If this were out there and we didn't have the Moderna 94-95% .... We would have said wow, a 72% effective vaccine that's even more effective against severe disease is really terrific," he said in a telephone interview.

"But now we're always judging it against 94 to 95%. Having said that, this is a vaccine that could have use particularly in developing countries to keep people out of the hospital. It has a very good efficacy against severe disease," Fauci added.

[Easo]

I have no clue how the EU countries managed to fuck it up. Should have tossed that $$ at Phizer/Moderna/AZ.

Here, anyone who is 35+ or 16-18 yo can get it through app appointment and fast.

Well, they did throw crapload of cash at AZ and others, no? Into hundreds of millions, IIRC. Supposedly not yet fully paid, but that should still be normal, payment as deliveries proceed.
You do have the special deal as basically the test bed for mass vaccination of a whole country, though, and the scale is different. Pfizer's sudden "we gotta do changes at factories" still allows the 10 million large Israel to receive enough for it, while someone like Poland alone needs 4 times as much.

But this all is going to be "fun", EU has approved export restrictions for vaccines and published the AZ contract, export more back and forth arguing.
Also, AZ vaccine is now officially approved in EU, making it the 3rd one after Pfizer and Moderna.
P.S.
I can smell the eurosceptics rearing their heads.