rotting sea cow

Someone here suggested that Penny could say a name.

Tyrion

hahaha. I have another story from a "lady". Maybe for another thread.

Probably. I'm not a native speaker and I have a small speech disability that sometimes shows up in writing too. Specially when I haven't slept well. I had a nightmarish telecon yesterday. Besides the usual technical problems I had more trouble than usual to make understand.

Maybe they are worried about crossreactivity? Even chimp adenovirus might look similar to the immune system. It's apparently happening with COVID-19 with people having some protection because a coronavirus-caused cold.

C'mom. Random hook-ups carry their risks (and their rewards tbh). A friend of mine took a lady home, it took him a while the day after to notice that the "lady" in question stole him some money.

I hope there is a special kind of hell for the people who close the schools and keep the bars/restaurants open.

I removed the gratuitous labelling. My apologies. To the point. Broad requirements like this are not based in science but in fear and fear has never been a good adviser. Did you read the lancet article I posted in the previous thread? Here goes again https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31976-0/fulltext To be fair, it might well be that the vaccine can stop the transmission chains, it would be fantastic but we shouldn't expect that of the current set of vaccines. They will certainly protect of severe disease, so they really protect the recipient and will help to lower the burden of the health system. So, what will happen when people still infect others despite having the vaccine? Will you tell them that they still cannot visit the grandma? Or should they still use masks everywhere? What will happen when an outbreak is traced back to a Quanta flight? You cannot play with people expectations like that. They are also still unknowns regarding the vaccine (and the disease to be fair). Remember the rushed Pandemrix flu vaccine and narcolepsy in children? Furthermore, given that vaccination campaigns will take a long time, you will be creating to classes of individuals within a country. People will not accept that and it will create tension. How long until a government or local politicians get elected by promising getting rid of the "vaccination passports"? As I posted in the other thread there is already a polemic in the UK regarding the mass testing which doesn't have clear public health benefits, but it benefits certain individuals and companies. Given the erratic, irresponsible, incompetent and even corrupt behaviour of western governments in the management of the pandemic, can we really expect that they can manage the vaccine approval, the vaccination campaigns and those "public protection regulations" adequately. My answer is no. The focus should be in transparency and convincing the population, otherwise I only expect further troubles down the read.

This kind of thinking will do more harm than good. I'm telling you.

Someone should inform them that the current generation of vaccines might not prevent the infection neither that vaccinated individuals infects others. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31976-0/fulltext

Few things. Moderna, Biontech (who actually developed the Pfizer vaccine) are RNA vaccines. Those have the big advantage that can really developed and produced in short turnarounds. They haven't been applied to humans yet, but they have invested in the method for a long while already, that's why they were able to develop the vaccine so quickly. Similar is the case of the vector vaccines (Oxford, Sputnik, J&J, etc). They all had the vector ready, with some of them actually wanting to develop it as a vaccine against MERS. So, a lot of development was ready way before the pandemic. The other reason why it has taken so short is the prevalence of the disease is relatively high. Particularly they started the Phase3 just about the time the cases started to spike again in the Northern Hemisphere. There was a really worry they will have to move around the world hunting for hot spots. Had people taken precautions seriously and refused to get infected :-) it would have been much more difficult to gather the data. Yes, there is the issue of possible long term effects. I'm not very knowledgeable about that. There are other posters who might help. Sometimes I feel that scientists are missing something. It happens sometimes. From what I understand the Pfizer vaccine is giving the milder side effects. Moderna is reporting 10% of their participants getting bedridden for a day or two. It seems that Oxford is being not very transparent, I'm hearing more rumours regarding "problems". There are weird things happening in the UK. Blame Johnson and his cronies I guess. There is a polemic regarding some of the mass testing that the government is pushing through https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4440 There are wild ideas of a Covid-Passport or something like that. So, who knows what is really behind the problem with the FDA. Regarding the efficacy of the Oxford vaccine. Vector vaccines have the problem that the body might recognize the vector (a virus envelope) and attack it. It might well be that a first full dose stimulate a too strong immune response and the body "kills" the vaccine before it make its main job. A half a dose might be less strong and pass initially unnoticed by the immune system.

A very informative write up of the Oxford/AZ vaccine https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/11/23/oxford-az-vaccine-efficacy-data Yes, there is no clear word about the statistics between the 2 doses and the 1 1/2 group. One key difference that might also affect the efficacy numbers is they are using PCR to test efficacy instead of symptoms as in the Moderna and Pfizer cases. Another is their placebo group actually receive a vaccine (a meningococcal vaccine IIRC) so it's more difficult for the participants to discern whether they received the real stuff or not. This is important because you will know if you get the vaccine instead of a salty solution. This might change the behaviour of the recipients and affect the readouts.

Santa is old, fat and likely has diabetes and other non communicable diseases. He is about to visit multiple households around the time of large outbreaks. He is a very high risk individual and likely to die in case he catch it.

There is a bunch lot of people whose daily lives have suffered during this pandemic and their associated restrictions who have little to no fault in the failure to control it. From the children who cannot attend to school to the elders who may not be able to see their relatives and are going to die in complete loneness this winter. I'm starting to get madder at this constant bashing of normal people who have enough in with their lives and are just trying to go on as well as they can. Sure there are assholes out there and we, as society are unable to agree in few things, but here are the government who are the most to blame, from ignoring the threat early on to be unable to lead and try to find some society cohesion.

They disappoint me. Maybe it's my fault by extrapolating using straight lines, a common mistake. On a more serious note. Moderna reported that about the 10% of the participants are affected by "grade 3" events. That is, recipients will be bedridden for a day or two (source here: https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/11/16/modernas-vaccine-efficacy-readout) So, while the efficacy data looks good, there is still some unknowns regarding safety, as more serious events might be hidden in the tail of the distribution. Pfizer apparently compares favourably in that respect. Let's wait a bit more.