Covid-19 #24: You Scream, I Scream, We all Scream for Vaccine

[DireWolfSpirit]

Yeah I think it's wishful dreaming that Israel can achieve herd immunity when tens of thousands unvaccinated (non citizens) workers are going to and fro from the occupied territories daily. Israel is not giving the vaccine to the workers in their occupied territories, as I posted the NYT article up thread.

 

 

Palestinians in Israel: Crossing Borders

Nearly 50,000 Palestinians officially work in Israel, while around 30,000 cross the border illegally every day from the West Bank to work. Israel does not make it easy for either group.

[JoannaL]

I am really wondering about the Chinese. they now restrict travel for the new year festivities:

https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/china-lny-travel-new-dst-intl-hnk/index.html

"But this year, the largest annual human migration on Earth has been put on hold, following the Chinese government's call to avoid "nonessential" trips during the holiday period to prevent a resurgence of the coronavirus.

That is a lot to ask. The Lunar New Year, also known as Spring Festival in China, is the most important holiday in the Chinese calendar -- the equivalent of Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Eve combined"

 

BUT they have three different vaccines, which they sell all over the world, while not even their most vulnarable are vaccinated yet.

So either the vaccines dont work, so they sell it away (which should lead to the rest of the world being angry), or their vaccines do work , then the Chinese should be angry for not getting it.

[rotting sea cow]

7 hours ago, Padraig said:

I have to wonder.  What were they trying to achieve with this test?  Were people seriously worried about mild/moderate COVID?   AZ are still saying they expect it to have an effect on severe COVID.  But now people are worried and we have to wait for results against severe COVID (whenever that happens).

If I understand things correctly, these are the measures of efficacy set as endpoints of the trials. The reduction of hospitalizations and deaths comes with a plus, but given the numbers involved are harder to measure. Remember the trials have at the most a few hundreds of infected in their cohorts, of which a small percentage ends in the hospital.

If you are familiar with the plots of infections vs time for the vaccines, this is - allegedly  - what they found.

https://twitter.com/whippletom/status/1358471432762781696/photo/1

Comments elsewhere point out that of the many vaccines expressing the spike protein, the Oxford team chose to use the 'wild' type instead of the stabilized one.

 

[rotting sea cow]

1 hour ago, JoannaL said:

I am really wondering about the Chinese. they now restrict travel for the new year festivities:

https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/china-lny-travel-new-dst-intl-hnk/index.html

"But this year, the largest annual human migration on Earth has been put on hold, following the Chinese government's call to avoid "nonessential" trips during the holiday period to prevent a resurgence of the coronavirus.

That is a lot to ask. The Lunar New Year, also known as Spring Festival in China, is the most important holiday in the Chinese calendar -- the equivalent of Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Eve combined"

 

BUT they have three different vaccines, which they sell all over the world, while not even their most vulnarable are vaccinated yet.

So either the vaccines dont work, so they sell it away (which should lead to the rest of the world being angry), or their vaccines do work , then the Chinese should be angry for not getting it.

They do not have - yet - a big covid-19 problem. They have successfully squashed the outbreaks, so as e.g. N. Zealand they do not need the vaccines as urgently as other countries. So, it's high time to make political deals. Notice they have vaccinated more than 30 millions, a drop in the ocean, but it might prevent outbreaks at the edges.

[rotting sea cow]

2 hours ago, KalbearAnon said:

We dont have great data on how infectious people are who have vaccinated. That isn't frivolous. It very much changes your ideal strategy if the vaccine is useful in stopping people from spreading or just stops people from getting too sick. 

Pretty much. We cannot and shouldn't speak of herd immunity until this has been clearly assessed. If vaccinated individuals are still infectious, it's matter of time until the virus reaches the unvaccinated population or those that the vaccine didn't work.

That's also why vaccines shouldn't be the only focus. We need therapeutics too.

Nevertheless, once the most at risk population is vaccinated, we should expect that the health emergency is relaxed, shouldn't we?

[Filippa Eilhart]

Re: Israel there has been speculation out there about how much they paid, I think the consensus was around 1,5 times the amount the EU did?

It's a small country, so getting them enough doses to vaccinate all adults was not a problem (as opposed to getting enough doses to vaccinate all of the EU or US). And the data is very valuable. I see no conspiracy there

 

[Padraig]

2 hours ago, rotting sea cow said:

If I understand things correctly, these are the measures of efficacy set as endpoints of the trials. The reduction of hospitalizations and deaths comes with a plus, but given the numbers involved are harder to measure. Remember the trials have at the most a few hundreds of infected in their cohorts, of which a small percentage ends in the hospital.

If you are familiar with the plots of infections vs time for the vaccines, this is - allegedly  - what they found.

https://twitter.com/whippletom/status/1358471432762781696/photo/1

Comments elsewhere point out that of the many vaccines expressing the spike protein, the Oxford team chose to use the 'wild' type instead of the stabilized one.

If I was going to test how bad the variant was, I would have focused on the over 50.  That is what I mean.  Even if this trial had gone well, people would still be wondering does it perform well against the more vulnerable?

I'm sure there is a reason for what they did, I just don't know it.

The other thing in that twitter thread that seems concerning "African scientists explicitly say that immune pressure, due to high levels of immunity, caused it to favour escape mutations".   Yikes.  A couple people previously mentioned here that there may be an advantage in individual countries getting close to 100% asap, as it avoids these sort of pressures (rather than trying to vaccinate the world more equitably).  The logic didn't really sit well with me but clearly escape mutations are an issue.

[Clueless Northman]

I had read a few times that Israel paid double the price of the typical Pfizer dose to get it early. Though there also was a gamble aspect to it, being first in line without much data about side-effects, looks like it was a sound and wise investment.

[Filippa Eilhart]

also re: South Africa. I don't think they're saying they're not going to use AZ ever. They were going to start vaccinating medical workers first so they're going to use either Pfizer or Moderna for that (I forget which) and will adjust their vaccination strategy to use AZ otherwise. Hence the delay.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

90 minutes or so until I get my first jab. I'll post every few hours afterwards to give people an idea what the side effects are like.

[Padraig]

3 hours ago, Filippa Eilhart said:

also re: South Africa. I don't think they're saying they're not going to use AZ ever. They were going to start vaccinating medical workers first so they're going to use either Pfizer or Moderna for that (I forget which) and will adjust their vaccination strategy to use AZ otherwise. Hence the delay.

I think its Pfizer and J&J but they don't have deliveries of either of those options yet.  While AZ had just been delivered.  Its very unfortunate.

[rotting sea cow]

3 hours ago, Padraig said:

If I was going to test how bad the variant was, I would have focused on the over 50.  That is what I mean.  Even if this trial had gone well, people would still be wondering does it perform well against the more vulnerable?

There is still a question how the AZ vaccine perform in older adults against the wild type (not the new mutants). Their data there is so sparse that led to many countries to recommend the vaccine only to people younger than 55 years old.

I truly don't know what went wrong with Oxford/AZ, but there seems to be a stream of problems in an otherwise promising candidate. Or they need to fire the whole PR department.

 

3 hours ago, Padraig said:

I'm sure there is a reason for what they did, I just don't know it.

The other thing in that twitter thread that seems concerning "African scientists explicitly say that immune pressure, due to high levels of immunity, caused it to favour escape mutations".   Yikes.  A couple people previously mentioned here that there may be an advantage in individual countries getting close to 100% asap, as it avoids these sort of pressures (rather than trying to vaccinate the world more equitably).  The logic didn't really sit well with me but clearly escape mutations are an issue.

Yes, it looks bad and the Brazil variant looks worse. SARS-Cov-2.1 and 2.2 anyone?

Coming down to an orderly vaccination campaign to prevent new upgrades. Not going to happen. In Europe will be politically impossible and elsewhere countries will fight claws and teeth for the vaccines. Plus others will use the available supplies for further advance geopolitical goals.