Covid-19 #20: Nowhere to Hide

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

33 minutes ago, VigoTheCarpathian said:

I don’t think it’s that easy to subdivide “essential” food workers, especially with stats around food deserts and big assumptions about people having the wherewithal and ability to cook for themselves.  Two relevant examples close to my experience - I know people who get their groceries from the dollar store - essential business by your standard or no?  And there are hundreds of thousands of tired hospital staff that have to eat something on shift and after work - you’re telling them to shut up and cook for themselves until this is over? Where’s your bright line on this, ser ?

First, I work at a hospital.

Second, would you agree then that labor to combat food deserts would supersede maintaining fast food chains?

Third, are you just anti-cooking? 

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And it begs the question on the food supply chain - was Trump correct in making meat-packing plants essential in your estimation to keep grocery stores supplied, even though no one needs to eat meat and they are hotbeds of infection?  

Yes, they are essential, but so is the need to regulate them. And spare me the "no one needs to eat meat" line. 

[Fury Resurrected]

Study update- I have a fever and my skin feels uncomfortably sensitive. This is a good sign this is not a placebo as I’ve never so much as had a sore arm from a tetanus shot

[BigFatCoward]

First vaccine delivered in the UK this morning. 

[Fury Resurrected]

Update again- at 1:00am my fever hit 102.4. I was in and out of sleep feeling pretty terrible but my cat (who is himself dying of cancer) curled up with me purring and now (5:00am) I only have a headache. 

[DireWolfSpirit]

1 minute ago, Fury Resurrected said:

Update again- at 1:00am my fever hit 102.4. I was in and out of sleep feeling pretty terrible but my cat (who is himself dying of cancer) curled up with me purring and now (5:00am) I only have a headache. 

I hate to be a cheerleader for your misery. But I'm very excited for you in the context that your possibly, fortunately, getting vaccinated, as opposed to receiving the placebo.

My fingers are crossed for you.

[Raja]

It's fucking remarkable that we're getting vaccines the same year we confirmed human to human transmission.

[Fury Resurrected]

9 minutes ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

I hate to be a cheerleader for your misery. But I'm very excited for you in the context that your possibly, fortunately, getting vaccinated, as opposed to receiving the placebo.

My fingers are crossed for you.

I have never had any side effects from a vaccine before and didn’t expect any this time, so I am confident I am not in the placebo group. Very exciting for me, and I’ll update in January when I get dose two on how that goes

[Pebble thats Stubby]

24 minutes ago, Fury Resurrected said:

I have never had any side effects from a vaccine before and didn’t expect any this time, so I am confident I am not in the placebo group. Very exciting for me, and I’ll update in January when I get dose two on how that goes

This in a way worries me.  If feeling a bit shit after side effects end up being very common, I can see this making people being even more hesitant to take it.  It's a common excuse with the flu vaccine.

 

I'm sorry you had side effects, pleased they are mostly past, happy they are relatively mild and it's fantastic it sounds like you have the real thing.

[VigoTheCarpathian]

8 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

First, I work at a hospital.

Second, would you agree then that labor to combat food deserts would supersede maintaining fast food chains?

Third, are you just anti-cooking? 

Yes, they are essential, but so is the need to regulate them. And spare me the "no one needs to eat meat" line. 

1. I work at a hospital as well - where are your coworkers eating lunch? Our restaurants are takeout only, and our break room/cafeteria is socially distanced, so there aren’t a lot of great options for people, who are tired and get 30-45 min for a quick bite.

2. I am all ears regarding this nation-wide plan to labor to eliminate food deserts in the middle of a pandemic, as opposed to feeding people using the existing infrastructure (even if it might be fast food).

3. Not anti-cooking at all, I prepare 95% of the food I consume - but I also volunteered at a food bank that had to suspend all in-person operations, including jam-packed classes teaching people how to cook unprepared food.  I think it unrealistic/ cruel to draw an “essential” line around food.

4. Tell me how the standard of “essential to eat meat” is different than “essential to eat fast food”.  Both are arbitrary lines about what is essential based on a value system.  And I would hazard a guess (google is failing me finding a recent stat) that a significant part of this  “essential” meat-packing industry relies on supplying fast food chains.

I’m not meaning to be antagonistic, but I think it’s not a feature in our system to be able to chop food services into “essential”/“non”, and  realistically enforcing it would be a nightmare.

[Fragile Bird]

7 hours ago, Fury Resurrected said:

Study update- I have a fever and my skin feels uncomfortably sensitive. This is a good sign this is not a placebo as I’ve never so much as had a sore arm from a tetanus shot

Some of the Pfizer filings for their emergency use application have been released and they clearly show that protection starts to kick in after 14 days. How do they know? The chart tracking the placebo group and the vaccine group starts to diverge in terms of people getting Covid-19. 
 

I had read elsewhere that the effect is strongest in younger people (younger than 65).

[Fury Resurrected]

4 hours ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

My dad always says the worse your side effects are the better protected you are, because it’s your immune system giving a strong reaction and activating.

I’m so happy you were able to get into a trial!! I signed up to volunteer, but apparently they had their quota of middle-aged white women. 

I almost wanted to speak to a manager about that.....(kidding, I’m kidding).

Ix told me that the worse the side effects, probably the worse your reaction to the real virus would be, too. I’ll take feeling very not good for a few hours over the alternative

[williamjm]

9 hours ago, Raja said:

It's fucking remarkable that we're getting vaccines the same year we confirmed human to human transmission.

I remember there being some scepticism when there was a prediction of a vaccine within 12-18 months but they've managed to beat the 12 month target, at least for the first vaccinations.

[Zorral]

So, it's likely most? many of us aren't going to start the vaccination process here in the US until June.

There is not a single possibility of fucking us for which he's not gone all in. Including killing as many of us as he can, and making the rest of us sick in every possible way, including destroying the economy and having people die of homelessness and starvation.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/08/trump-pfizer-vaccine-coronavirus

[Zorral]

2 hours ago, williamjm said:

I remember there being some scepticism when there was a prediction of a vaccine within 12-18 months but they've managed to beat the 12 month target, at least for the first vaccinations.

This is why:

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/12/moderna-covid-19-vaccine-design.html

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You may be surprised to learn that of the trio of long-awaited coronavirus vaccines, the most promising, Moderna’s mRNA-1273, which reported a 94.5 percent efficacy rate on November 16, had been designed by January 13. This was just two days after the genetic sequence had been made public in an act of scientific and humanitarian generosity that resulted in China’s Yong-Zhen Zhang’s being temporarily forced out of his lab. In Massachusetts, the Moderna vaccine design took all of one weekend. It was completed before China had even acknowledged that the disease could be transmitted from human to human, more than a week before the first confirmed coronavirus case in the United States. By the time the first American death was announced a month later, the vaccine had already been manufactured and shipped to the National Institutes of Health for the beginning of its Phase I clinical trial. This is — as the country and the world are rightly celebrating — the fastest timeline of development in the history of vaccines. It also means that for the entire span of the pandemic in this country, which has already killed more than 250,000 Americans, we had the tools we needed to prevent it....

Regarding the discussion as to what / whom qualifies as an essential food worker -- does Taco Bell?  Take out and delivery, delis, are ALL as essential as the meat packing workers.  So many people do not have facilities to even make a cup of coffee.  Here I am not speaking of the millions who just won't cook and hate even more the clean-up cooking involves.  I mean people without actual homes, and those who live in substandard housing, of whom there are millions.  Also people who cannot cook due to mental problems -- like my across the hall neighbor -- and physical disabilities.

Unless one lives in a society with a government willing able to step up administratively, financially, organizationally, to distribute food to all these people every single day, you must have Taco Bell for take out.

In very cramped circumstances I spent the first 4 hours today cooking -- and cleaning up.  Later I shall have to more cooking, so there is rice to go with the beans -- not from a can, that soaked overnight for about 16 hours -- and the other items I made for us and am sharing part of with neighbor -- who also actively dislikes the kind of nutritious fare that we do eat, such as brown rice and New Orleans style red beans.

Getting food to people is a lot more complicated than some seem to realize.  Children often need to eat differently too, than adults, not to mention food allergies, and the rest.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

But then -- there is this -- and they should all be closed: inside or outside for they have made outside be inside too.

https://nypost.com/2020/12/07/nyc-steakhouse-seared-over-outdoor-dining-set-up/

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Any sidewalk seating must “leave an 8′ clear path for pedestrians,” according to city guidelines. Restaurants are allowed to use tents — as long as they don’t fully enclose the seating area “or obstruct clear paths.”

This kind of situation is everywhere, including where I need to walk all the time.  And most of these places aren't leaving any 8 feet for pedestrians either -- more like 8 inches.

One of more of this insane nation's insanity that thinks it can reconcile the unreconcilable.  You cannot halt the virus and do this too.  You. CANNOT.

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...they were posted by a deputy editor at the New York Times earlier Monday with the caption, “I’m sorry, this is legal?!”

“It’s your choice: get hit by an Amazon delivery truck in the street, or get COVID in here,” one person commented. [And for the pedestrian inside these places it's also the chance to get hit by a biker, skateboarder, scooter -- not to mention having to walk through all those spewed aerosols.  Number one spreader sitch is a restaurant, after private party - dinner - whatever, churches, etc.]

New Yorkers who spotted the tent later in the day were also steamed.

“That’s garbage! You can’t have a walkway here that’s closed,” passerby Leo Dacres said.

Emily Cole, 25, who works nearby, called the setup “ridiculous” and blasted the city for not enforcing the rules.

A manager at the restaurant, who gave his name as Alex B., said the eatery wasn’t aware it was stepping over the line — and that no one from the city had told them so, either.

 

[The Anti-Targ]

Rather a cutting editorial about the early emergency authorisation of the vaccine in the UK by one of our microbiologists who has been prominent in our media during the pandemic.

I'm disappointed she got political and ideological towards the end of the article. While she may be 100% right from my and many other's perspectives, the fact you get political in an otherwise technical and educationally oriented article means the eyes and ears of many people who would benefit from learning about some of this stuff will be shut. If you want to have a rant about the dismantling of public health systems and poor pandemic response, then write a second article. Try to stick to the science, regulatory practices and checks and balances in the system when attempting to educate the masses. Good science communication needs to be as apolitical as possible to reach the largest number of people effectively.

https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/04-12-2020/siouxsie-wiles-britains-emergency-rush-to-a-vaccine-rollout-explained/

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Does the emergency use authorisation mean the vaccine works then?

Not necessarily. Lots of experimental treatments have been given emergency authorisation use, especially in the US, only to be found not to work. ... examples like that have the potential to put people’s health and safety at risk as well as erode trust in our regulatory institutions.

What’s really important is that the data the regulatory institutions are using to make their decisions is made available for everyone to see. The data from the Phase I and II trials of the Pfizer vaccine has been published (see here and here and here) but the Phase III data hasn’t yet. Apparently, this is currently under review, but it would have been good if they had made it available to the research community as a pre-print while the formal peer-review process was happening.

Wait, so does that mean the vaccine might not work?

Possibly. Though another way of phrasing it would be that it might not end up working as well as we need it to or better than another vaccine. One big problem with emergency use authorisations in general is that they basically come at the expense of clinical trials. Once a medicine is granted emergency use authorisation, less people will want to be involved in a trial in case they end up in the placebo group and not receive the medicine at all. The less people in the placebo group, the bigger the risk that we end up with not enough data to really establish important long-term outcomes, like safety, or in the case of vaccines, how long protection lasts and whether it prevents infection or just the disease.

The take away for me is that while we are less certain about the efficacy and safety than we would normally like to be for a new vaccine, esp a new vaccine technology, there is still reasonable confidence that there will be a benefit and small risk of severe side effects.

Personally I prefer to wait for a vaccine that is based on tried and true vaccine methodology until we are a year or two down the road and we have a very good idea of the longer term benefits and side effects of the mRNA vaccines. I live in a country that can afford to wait on mass vaccination since we really only need it to open up borders, which means we only really need it for people wanting to come into the country, and not for people already here. We don't even really need it for people leaving the country, unless they want to get back in without having to go through quarantine. Of course all workers who come into contact with incoming people before their quarantine ends need to get vaccinated ASAP as that creates a buffer to better protect the rest of the population. I think our vaccination roll out is set for March/April, so we'll have some safety data from vaccine rollouts in the UK, USA and other countries, as well as the full package of Phase III data to give some more assurance to our at risk people. So, thanks in advance to the people around the world who are going to be taking a slightly riskier step with vaccination so that others can proceed later with more confidence (we hope).

[Fury Resurrected]

I woke up thinking I was fine other than a headache but I threw up as soon As I started walking around. Called in to work, went back to bed, stayed there until 5pm (20 hours!), now I am fine and went to Target

[JoannaL]

6 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Rather a cutting editorial about the early emergency authorisation of the vaccine in the UK by one of our microbiologists who has been prominent in our media during the pandemic.

I'm disappointed she got political and ideological towards the end of the article. While she may be 100% right from my and many other's perspectives, the fact you get political in an otherwise technical and educationally oriented article means the eyes and ears of many people who would benefit from learning about some of this stuff will be shut. If you want to have a rant about the dismantling of public health systems and poor pandemic response, then write a second article. Try to stick to the science, regulatory practices and checks and balances in the system when attempting to educate the masses. Good science communication needs to be as apolitical as possible to reach the largest number of people effectively.

https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/04-12-2020/siouxsie-wiles-britains-emergency-rush-to-a-vaccine-rollout-explained/

The take away for me is that while we are less certain about the efficacy and safety than we would normally like to be for a new vaccine, esp a new vaccine technology, there is still reasonable confidence that there will be a benefit and small risk of severe side effects.

 

This article seems to imply that there is not a whole Phase III study for the Biontech vaccine. This is wrong, all the data is there and its analyzed at the moment by the European agency (and I think the FDA as well) for normal and  NOT emergency authorisation. that the British decided to go a month faster and do an emergency and not a normal authorisation does not mean that the data is not there (they just wanted to go faster and not analyze it all). For them it was just a question of speed. But the phase III data is solid -or if not , we will know soon - and there will be or wont be an authorisation because of full Phase III data at the end of the month in Europe. I think it is worth the wait.

[DireWolfSpirit]

 

On the same day we learn President Trump could have bought more doses of vaccine and didn't, we also learn that by Trump pulling the U.S. out of the World Health Organization, we now don't have access to 9 other vaccines that the rest of the world does...  (end quote)

Foisting an asshole leader onto the rest of world earns your citizenry consequences.

[Fragile Bird]

Here we are one day after the Pfizer vaccine rollout and we already have new information. People with a history of severe allergies should not get the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine because of reactions to it. Two health workers who received the vaccine have had more severe reactions. In fact, the UK authorities have said giving the vaccine “should only be carried out in facilities where resuscitation measures are available”.

By severe they mean people, for example, who carry an epi pen.

[Crixus]

I also read about 4 people getting temporary facial paralysis (Bell's Palsy) post jab. That's 4 out of 20,000 - all these were confirmed to have received the vaccine, not a placebo. At the same time, the FDA said that is a normal %, as annually they see about 20-30 cases per 100,000 of Bell's Palsy. 

Not sure whether this also affected people who already had severe allergies, or was random.