Mega-Thread: Coronavirus Pandemic

[NED funded]

We really did skipped Xi to Omicron cuz the WHO didnt want to offend one person

[Draco-Onis]

No, copyright and patent are very different ways of protecting different forms of IP.

Basically nothing of what you says checks out.


The reality is that the US government under Biden have prevented companies from exporting vaccines (and to same extent ingredients) made in the US to the world - giving some meaning to "America First".

Obviously that may seen to look bad, and retroactively shifting the blame to someone else is always a popular idea.


Exactly. Talking about patents to hide the fact that it was the US government that blocked the vaccines.

Doesn't take a genius to see through this new patent distraction.


The obvious reason for negotiating about the patents is the money they make for the owner of the patent regardless of that is Moderna or the US government.


And you would be wrong, as it wouldn't produce the vaccines.

Making mRNA vaccines isn't easy and there are additional legal hurdles in terms of vaccines.

Take a look at the some other ones see the real problems:

BioNTech that developed the BNT162b2 vaccine called Pfizer or Pfizer/BioNTech-vaccine gave Fosun the right to make the vaccine in China.
However, that vaccine is not yet approved in China and is not yet manufactured in China; some claim because it would be seen as downgrading the Chinese-developed vaccines.

AstraZeneca were setting up vaccine manufacturing for viral vector vaccines (different type, but similar story) and had severe problems in Belgium and Mexico; https://news.yahoo.com/mexico-looks-...211659730.html . Those are the actual problems that manufacturing advanced vaccines face when the company is actively trying to help. Thinking that just having the patent would magically work is just the same old distracting populism we have heard before; and still isn't true.

All I see is a long wall of text agreeing with me including the fact that Biden is protecting big pharma so let's just say it plainly.

I don't think big pharma should have a monopoly on the most effective vaccine formulas, in order to combat this pandemic we need to use every tool we have and ignore profits in favor of saving human lives. What is your angle? do you honestly think the corporations whose entire business models is making profit over mountains of dead bodies are the best wardens of the vaccines?

[Lenonis]

I don't think big pharma should have a monopoly on the most effective vaccine formulas

they.... don't?

No one is stopping other groups from developing vaccines and treatments. Plus several of the big pharma companies waived their patents so others could manufacture treatments.

Lots of criticism to be levied at pharma companies but this shouldn't be one of them.

[Easo]

I am going to lean on the assumption that if the formula wasn't protected the entire world producing vaccines would be more than enough to accomplish this feat. I am not saying everyone would take it or be easy to distribute but step one would be accomplished which is having the vaccines.

And I have this feeling you for some reason believe some "others" would have been able to magically ramp up the production faster than it already was done.
All the big companies with actual capacity are making Covid vaccines of all sorts, from AZ to Sputnik to Pfizer, in Europe, in Brazil, in India. There are no "others" who could pick up the slack and supply Africa, Latin America or whatever.

[Forogil]

All I see is a long wall of text agreeing with me including the fact that Biden is protecting big pharma so let's just say it plainly.

Read again: Biden is protecting the US government and putting the US population first; not big pharma.
(Not saying that Trump was better.)

Big pharma is allowing manufacturing in other countries, and have no problem with exporting vaccines - so Moderna is discussing S. Korea to manufacture the vaccine (S. Korea has already manufactured a number of vaccines).
As previously stated 1 billion doses of vaccines have been exported from the EU. Who do you think made them? Hint: It starts with "big" and ends with "pharma".
They allowed manufacturing in India, Mexico, India, ...
(Although technically BioNTech and Moderna weren't traditional big pharma before the pandemic.)

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We really did skipped Xi to Omicron cuz the WHO didnt want to offend one person

There are a lot more than one person named 'Xi', and we also skipped 'Nu' to avoid confusion with the new variant.

[NED funded]

Read again: Biden is protecting the US government and putting the US population first; not big pharma.
(Not saying that Trump was better.)

Big pharma is allowing manufacturing in other countries, and have no problem with exporting vaccines - so Moderna is discussing S. Korea to manufacture the vaccine (S. Korea has already manufactured a number of vaccines).
As previously stated 1 billion doses of vaccines have been exported from the EU. Who do you think made them? Hint: It starts with "big" and ends with "pharma".
They allowed manufacturing in India, Mexico, India, ...
(Although technically BioNTech and Moderna weren't traditional big pharma before the pandemic.)

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There are a lot more than one person named 'Xi', and we also skipped 'Nu' to avoid confusion with the new variant.

I get the reason why we skipped Nu, the Xi one is just silly sorry

I am sure you can find more than one person called Delta. There are 116 deltas born every year (Just in the US), does it discriminate against them? :P

https://datayze.com/name-uniqueness-analyzer?name=delta

[Draco-Onis]

they.... don't?

No one is stopping other groups from developing vaccines and treatments. Plus several of the big pharma companies waived their patents so others could manufacture treatments.

Lots of criticism to be levied at pharma companies but this shouldn't be one of them.

wavering patent laws would have sped up development and deployments there are other vaccines and treatments in the work but they will take time and time is the enemy.

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And I have this feeling you for some reason believe some "others" would have been able to magically ramp up the production faster than it already was done.
All the big companies with actual capacity are making Covid vaccines of all sorts, from AZ to Sputnik to Pfizer, in Europe, in Brazil, in India. There are no "others" who could pick up the slack and supply Africa, Latin America or whatever.

And your argument against it is we shouldn't try because corporate profits must be protected, god forbid an executive doesn't get another yacht. Also it's not a feeling several countries have been lobbying for this to be blocked, while the US has stopped their opposition they haven't really put any pressure into getting it done either putting the blame on Germany.

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Read again: Biden is protecting the US government and putting the US population first; not big pharma.
(Not saying that Trump was better.)

Big pharma is allowing manufacturing in other countries, and have no problem with exporting vaccines - so Moderna is discussing S. Korea to manufacture the vaccine (S. Korea has already manufactured a number of vaccines).
As previously stated 1 billion doses of vaccines have been exported from the EU. Who do you think made them? Hint: It starts with "big" and ends with "pharma".
They allowed manufacturing in India, Mexico, India, ...
(Although technically BioNTech and Moderna weren't traditional big pharma before the pandemic.)

They are allowing manufacturing and they are exporting to those who pay giving some at "costs" and "donating" some and you are just dodging the bigger question. Biden isn't putting the US population first waving patents for COVID vaccines and other restrictions doesn't hurt the average American just corporate profits.

[Forogil]

They are allowing manufacturing and they are exporting to those who pay giving some at "costs" and "donating" some and you are just dodging the bigger question.

Some of the big pharma have made vaccines available at cost during the pandemic.

Yes, at cost - not "cost" and many countries have donated doses - that is giving them away for free not "donated", because they over-bought them.

You are just ignorant of the fact that the problem isn't big pharma, or even all rich countries.
As well as ignorant of the actual problems of manufacturing modern vaccines.
Everyone can already read the patents - the very idea with a patent is to make the information available. It's just that it's not easy to make the vaccines just based on the patent; as I have shown with actual examples of actual problems with making modern vaccines. A patent waiver wouldn't change that - it would just distract from all of the other problems.

Biden isn't putting the US population first

Wrong, Biden has been putting the US population first and hindered vaccine exports
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...about-ip-later

See this graph:

from https://www.statista.com/chart/24555...-and-exported/

That is the thing the US wants you to forget by discussing patents.
Now, after the US population is fully vaccinated (or at least the willing ones), the US is allowing some export and some donations.

[Draco-Onis]

SNIP

Are you here to have a conversation or are you going to randomly snip so you can avoid the hard questions and have the conversation you want? never mind you've already given your answer by doing this again.

[Forogil]

Are you here to have a conversation

I am here to state that patent waivers is a distraction as the new vaccines are difficult to make with or without access to patents; in contrast to what you may think.

I am here to state that many high income countries aren't hoarding vaccines, in contrast to what you stated.
I am here to state that big pharma isn't a problem (although calling Moderna and BioNTech "big pharma" is misleading), and they have no real interest in hoarding vaccines in rich countries. (It is unclear if you are against big pharma or rich countries, as if you don't see the difference.)

And to add to all the problems of making vaccines we have problems of vaccine distribution, vaccine hesitancy, and regulatory and tax issues in receiving countries.

Those are the facts. To have a real conversation you first have to accept that facts exist.

[Draco-Onis]

I am here to

Have a talk with yourself go ahead do go on far be it for me to interrupt you.

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Can't say I'm surprised we have confirmed cases in the UK. Other than the vaccine, we've handled the entire thing shockingly badly.

Boris Johnson tightens rules on travel and mask-wearing over Omicron concerns

This is going to be a complete shit show all over the world, people are tired of COVID-19 in general any indication that we are going backwards is going to be met with backlash. Hopefully this new variant isn't as bad as initially thought people are on edge enough as is.

[Easo]

And your argument against it is we shouldn't try because corporate profits must be protected, god forbid an executive doesn't get another yacht. Also it's not a feeling several countries have been lobbying for this to be blocked, while the US has stopped their opposition they haven't really put any pressure into getting it done either putting the blame on Germany.

You are making shit up. Stop. What profits, where? I never mentioned them yet they seem to be your headcanon.
Reading your other posts it looks like you have a hate boner for "big pharma" and tendency to go "West is baaad". Get your imaginary issues out of your head. Even Baltics are donating vaccines now. And guess what - countries have obligation to their citizens first.

I repeat - there is no magical production and logistics capacity which can do what you want it to do.

[Forogil]

Have a talk with yourself go ahead do go on far be it for me to interrupt you.

So, I bring facts and you bring baseless inconsistent accusations, and when exposed you react like that.

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You are making shit up. Stop. What profits, where? I never mentioned them yet they seem to be your headcanon.
Reading your other posts it looks like you have a hate boner for "big pharma" and tendency to go "West is baaad". Get your imaginary issues out of your head. Even Baltics are donating vaccines now. And guess what - countries have obligation to their citizens first.

Yes, and the reality is that "big pharma" and "the west" is helping to save the world faster than normally envisioned when the pandemic began; both with vaccines and also with new anti-viral drugs (and, of course, with PPE etc as well).

Not alone, the production and development in India, China, and production in many other countries (including S. Korea) has also helped the world. Even if Chinese vaccines seem less effective they still mean that billions of people have a better protection against the virus than would otherwise be possible.

[PhaelixWW]

Wrong, Biden has been putting the US population first and hindered vaccine exports

See this graph:

That graph is wildly misleading.

It's only talking about doses that were manufactured in and then exported from the country. It has nothing to do with the country's government. Quite obviously the US isn't going to be mass producing the vaccine for export, because it's extremely cost prohibitive and just doesn't make sense.. Instead, the US government has purchased and donated doses manufactured elsewhere, with drastically lower shipping costs to their destination. In fact, the US government has already donated and shipped some 265 million doses of a planned 1.1 billion total donated doses. That includes more than 86 million doses just in the last two months.










And back in September, it wasn't even a close comparison:




And how about a newer graph? This one is more recent, but only shows COVAX donations, which doesn't include the full amount of US donations:





So kindly take that bullshit elsewhere.

[Tuor]

So, this thread, that has nothing to do with chauvinism, turned into a chauvinistic discussion... People never stoped amazing me.

[Rasulis]

As usual I listened to UCSF podcast on our bike ride this morning. The panel members did not seem to be too concerned about the impact of Omicron on the Bay Area. They think that the Bay Area, especially San Francisco has high enough level of hybrid immunity to blunt the impact of most new variant.

Hybrid immunity is a combination of natural immunity and vaccine-generated immunity. Either by getting Covid followed by vaccine, or getting a breakthrough case. I link three studies below which show hybrid immunity is much more robust and longer lasting than just from the vaccine or getting infected. More robust as is 10 to 30 times more powerful antibodies than from double vaccine alone, with enhanced b-, t- and c-cells development.

Hybrid immunity versus vaccine-induced immunity against SARS-CoV-2 in patients with autoimmune rheumatic diseases

Longitudinal analysis shows durable and broad immune memory after SARS CoV-2 infection with persisting antibody responses and memory B and T cells

The Texas Coronavirus Antibody REsponse Survey (CARES) seeks to understand the human antibody response to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

So what percentage of San Francisco's population posses hybrid immunity?

We know that San Francisco is highly vaccinated – 77% fully vaccinated & 84% with at least one dose of vaccine.

A seroprevalence study conducted in March 2021 indicated that as of the end of February, 30 to 35% of San Francisco population had been exposed to Covid. Using conservative estimate, around 25% of San Franciso population already had hybrid immunity in the early stages of the vaccination process.

The covid dashboard indicates that positive test results this summer peak at 310 per day. Just under the winter peak of 373. Here is where it gets interesting. The ratio between new cases among the unvaccinated and breakthrough cases throughout Delta never exceeds 2 (scroll down the dashboard). Whereas other counties in the US the ratio is between 6 – 10. San Francisco is the only county in the US where breakthrough cases outnumber cases among the vaccinated. Remember that in San Francisco the vaccinated/partially vaccinated outnumbers the unvaccinated by fourfold. Infact the actual number of breakthrough cases in San Francisco is probably two to threefold higher than the official number because most asymptomatic & mild cases were likely never tested.

The actual number of cases during the summer peak was likely twice as high as the winter peak. Maybe even more. The panel estimated that at least 70% of San Francisco population have hybrid immunity. Maybe even as high as 80%. For San Francisco, with its high level of vaccination, Delta was a gift. The variant has a very high transmissibility but relatively low mortality. You could not ask for a better way to grant the majority of the population with hybrid immunity.

In San Francisco, the majority of the breakthrough hospitalization and mortality occurred at the start of Delta. San Francisco has not seen any breakthrough hospitalization nor death since September. San Francisco has not seen any under 75-year fully vaccinated death throughout Delta. San Francisco does not have the lowest case per capita. However, it does have the lowest Covid mortality per capita of the largest US 100 cities, and the lowest Covid mortality per capita case number of all US counties. Even if you ended up with severe Covid, your survival rate is much higher in San Francisco. At no time during the pandemic did UCSF and San Francisco General ever had to deviate from one nurse/one ICU bed protocol.

[Egomaniac]

I get the reason why we skipped Nu, the Xi one is just silly sorry

I am sure you can find more than one person called Delta. There are 116 deltas born every year (Just in the US), does it discriminate against them? :P

https://datayze.com/name-uniqueness-analyzer?name=delta

"Xi" was skipped because it is a common last name...not a first name. It's basically the same as skipping "Smith" (If "Smith" were a Greek Letter).

[Rasulis]

South African doctor who raised alarm about omicron variant says symptoms are ‘unusual but mild’

Dr Angelique Coetzee noticed otherwise healthy patients showing unusual symptoms and worries how the new variant might hurt the elderly.

The first South African doctor to alert the authorities about patients with the omicron variant has told The Telegraph that the symptoms of the new variant are unusual but mild.

Dr Angelique Coetzee said she was first alerted to the possibility of a new variant when patients in her busy private practice in the capital Pretoria started to come in earlier this month with Covid-19 symptoms that did not make immediate sense.

They included young people of different backgrounds and ethnicities with intense fatigue and a six-year-old child with a very high pulse rate, she said. None suffered from a loss of taste or smell.

“Their symptoms were so different and so mild from those I had treated before,” said Dr Coetzee, a GP for 33 years who chairs the South African Medical Association alongside running her practice.

On November 18, when four family members all tested positive for Covid-19 with complete exhaustion, she informed the country’s vaccine advisory committee.

She said, in total, about two dozen of her patients have tested positive for Covid-19 with symptoms of the new variant. They were mostly healthy men who turned up “feeling so tired”. About half of them were unvaccinated.

“We had one very interesting case, a kid, about six years old, with a temperature and a very high pulse rate, and I wondered if I should admit her. But when I followed up two days later, she was so much better,” Dr Coetzee says.

Dr Coetzee, who was briefing other African medical associations on Saturday, made clear her patients were all healthy and she was worried the new variant could still hit older people – with co-morbidities such as diabetes or heart disease – much harder.

“What we have to worry about now is that when older, unvaccinated people are infected with the new variant, and if they are not vaccinated, we are going to see many people with a severe [form of the] disease,” she said.

South African demographics are very different from those in the UK. Only about six per cent of the population are over the age of 65. This means that older individuals who are more vulnerable to the virus may take some time to present.

[Hypasonic]

2 cases and we are back to 2020 again. Sigh, its getting beyond a joke now. I wont be adhering to mask mandates at this point, "I'm exempt" Thank you very much much.

[Twdft]

2 cases and we are back to 2020 again. Sigh, its getting beyond a joke now. I wont be adhering to mask mandates at this point, "I'm exempt" Thank you very much much.

Just stay at home and you never have to wear a mask.