Covid-19 #25: The Prisoner’s Dilemma

[Consigliere]

30 minutes ago, Padraig said:

J&J is 57% against the South African variant.  If you view that as more than halving the amount of people in hospitals, that's still a big win (and probably stopping anyone from dying).

South Africa is going to use the J&J and Pfizer vaccines. Vaccination of healthcare workers already started on Wednesday using the J&J shot. We only received a small number of doses (80,000) but will receive batches of 80k doses every week with 500,000 doses expected to be delivered by the end of next month. Pfizer is expected to deliver 500,000 doses next month as well with 7 million doses expected to be delivered by June. Our initial vaccine rollout was relying on Oxford/AZ but that was suspended and the 1.5 million doses we received from the Serum Institute of India has been offered to the African Union.

[Padraig]

35 minutes ago, ljkeane said:

I don't think people were worried.

Fair point.  Bad choice of word on my part!  What you said is more accurate.

[Filippa Eilhart]

the Politico article is an interesting read. I remember in the middle of the fight BBC claimed that the EU promised an advance payment but never delivered - implying (or even outright stating) that they have no right to claim they financed the production of the vaccine. This article confirms that the EU actually paid 2/3 of the order as a down payment, and only the remaining 1/3 remains to be paid - after the doses have been delivered.

I always considered the BBC to be quite impartial but they took a clear side in the AZ row  

[DireWolfSpirit]

Pony up motherf()/ers!!

Here are the countries with the world's biggest economies. 

https://www.investopedia.com/insights/worlds-top-economies/

It's time they collectively agree to pay for the rest of the Worlds vaccine supply so we can defeat this virus.

Just vaccinating ourselves is not going to cut it. The virus gives no fucks about borders.

[BigFatCoward]

Just now, DireWolfSpirit said:

Pony up motherf()/ers!!

Here are the countries with the world's biggest economies. 

https://www.investopedia.com/insights/worlds-top-economies/

It's time they collectively agree to pay for the rest of the Worlds vaccine supply so we can defeat this virus.

Just vaccinating ourselves is not going to cut it. The virus gives no fucks about borders.

Isnt the oxford vaccine £3? Apart from the absolute poorest countries, surely most countries can afford this to save their population? 

I'm not saying they shouldn't help out. But it's not like its 3 grand a pop. 

[DireWolfSpirit]

6 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

Isnt the oxford vaccine £3? Apart from the absolute poorest countries, surely most countries can afford this to save their population? 

I'm not saying they shouldn't help out. But it's not like its 3 grand a pop. 

I hope your point is correct, I don't want to be reading a thread like this in 2 yrs about the need to get the countries with less resources inoculated yet.

[Fragile Bird]

4 minutes ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

Pony up motherf()/ers!!

Here are the countries with the world's biggest economies. 

https://www.investopedia.com/insights/worlds-top-economies/

It's time they collectively agree to pay for the rest of the Worlds vaccine supply so we can defeat this virus.

Just vaccinating ourselves is not going to cut it. The virus gives no fucks about borders.

I really don't want to buy vaccine for any country not on that list with huge militaries and even nuclear bombs. Canada's military is using 40 year old planes and ships and helicopters because it spends money on other things, like contributing to COVAX.

[rotting sea cow]

48 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

Isnt the oxford vaccine £3? Apart from the absolute poorest countries, surely most countries can afford this to save their population? 

I'm not saying they shouldn't help out. But it's not like its 3 grand a pop. 

I was thinking about the same lines. I'm not sure why the president of Ecuador is complaining. Just using basic arithmetic, it's clear they can afford to go shopping and buy the vaccines by themselves without much a dent in their budget.

Of course, they think in saving some bucks, but usually what the cheapest turns out to be the most expensive. And gifts tend to be poisoned. Just ask Victarion.

[rotting sea cow]

BTW: Apparently a  communication offensive has started in Europe to defend AZ vaccines. There are articles nearly in every country mostly saying that the mistrust is misplaced.

 

[Padraig]

The bigger problem is access.  Not price.  Although I did read a few days ago that South Africa paid twice the price for the AZ vaccine compared to the EU.  There are many countries poorer than South Africa but not a great precedent.

5 hours ago, Filippa Eilhart said:

I always considered the BBC to be quite impartial but they took a clear side in the AZ row

Right.  I think its difficult to trust any media outlet these days.  They may mean to be impartial but cost cutting is king, people are sloppy verifying claims etc.  And of course, sometimes they are happy to spin things.

As an example of the latter, yesterday the BBC said the following.

Quote

The research indicates that with three months between the first and second dose there was an overall efficacy of 81%, compared to 55% for a six-week interval.

The first dose offered 76% protection in the three months between doses, according to the University of Oxford research published in The Lancet.

Any semi-careful reading of that quote would tell you that it is inherently contradictory.  Now I imagine they just took it out of a press release and didn't think much about it but not thinking is a problem.  They reported the same thing a month ago and it was no more accurate then.

[ljkeane]

15 minutes ago, Padraig said:

As an example of the latter, yesterday the BBC said the following.

Any semi-careful reading of that quote would tell you that it is inherently contradictory.  Now I imagine they just took it out of a press release and didn't think much about it but not thinking is a problem.  They reported the same thing a month ago and it was no more accurate then.

It is accurate. That's what the study says.

[Padraig]

3 hours ago, ljkeane said:

It is accurate. That's what the study says.

I was more questioning why they would publish something that seems obviously contradictory.  For the second time, they grabbed a few lines from the press release/abstract (or whatever) and went with that.  I would think journalism would demand more.  Maybe if you are an epidemiologist you could quickly figure out why the results were what they were.  But given the audience is the general populace, I found it a little lazy.

I did have a quick look at the paper.  Pure curiosity.  It seems there were statistically significant differences between these groups, which might explain the results (or it's a confidence interval issue).  But as I said, my main query is about how it is being reported and not the data itself.

[Altherion]

10 hours ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

Pony up motherf()/ers!!

Here are the countries with the world's biggest economies. 

https://www.investopedia.com/insights/worlds-top-economies/

It's time they collectively agree to pay for the rest of the Worlds vaccine supply so we can defeat this virus.

Just vaccinating ourselves is not going to cut it. The virus gives no fucks about borders.

I'm reasonably confident that vaccines will eventually be provided for everyone simply because the price of doing so is much, much smaller than the damage that a variant that escapes existing vaccines can do to the world as a whole and remains smaller even after accounting for the probability of such a variant developing. The developed world has bought way more vaccines than are needed for its citizens precisely because it's known that the only way to defeat such a thing is to defeat it globally. The only caveat to this is that those who can't pay will only get the vaccines after those who can no longer want any.

[ljkeane]

7 hours ago, Padraig said:

I was more questioning why they would publish something that seems obviously contradictory.  For the second time, they grabbed a few lines from the press release/abstract (or whatever) and went with that.  I would think journalism would demand more.  Maybe if you are an epidemiologist you could quickly figure out why the results were what they were.  But given the audience is the general populace, I found it a little lazy.

I did have a quick look at the paper.  Pure curiosity.  It seems there were statistically significant differences between these groups, which might explain the results (or it's a confidence interval issue).  But as I said, my main query is about how it is being reported and not the data itself.

Given the nature of the study I wouldn't assume the numbers on efficacy are exactly right (I don't think it really matters) but are they obviously contradictory? I wouldn't know but I'd assume the people who wrote the paper probably would and they seem fine with it.

I'm not sure what the BBC are supposed to do though. They're accurately reporting what the research paper says. I suppose they could qualify it by saying there's quite a large confidence interval involved but I don't think it really makes a difference to the relevant points of the paper.

[rotting sea cow]

Apparently better than good data is coming from Israel. I cannot find a link that summarize the data in a clear way, but they are claiming over a 90% reduction in the PCR detected cases after vaccination.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/02/19/1019264/a-leaked-report-pfizers-vaccine-conquering-covid-19-in-its-largest-real-world-test/

I'm sure there will be soon more clear data and a lot of discussions how to extrapolate in that or the other direction, but in my experience when you have such clear signal, things hold. You really can expect over 80% protection against infection, symptomatic or otherwise.

 

[Padraig]

3 hours ago, ljkeane said:

Given the nature of the study I wouldn't assume the numbers on efficacy are exactly right (I don't think it really matters) but are they obviously contradictory? I wouldn't know but I'd assume the people who wrote the paper probably would and they seem fine with it.

I'm not sure what the BBC are supposed to do though. They're accurately reporting what the research paper says. I suppose they could qualify it by saying there's quite a large confidence interval involved but I don't think it really makes a difference to the relevant points of the paper.

Right.  I keep trying to say that the paper itself is almost certainly fine.  The audience for that paper is probably well used to that structure and can interpret things appropriately.

But given the BBC's audience, a reporter should be happy that such an audience will understand what they are saying.  So yes, noting that there is quite a large confidence interval would help.  It would change the message since it would highlight the degree of uncertainty around some parts to it.  (But, it wouldn't change the message that efficacy seems to improve, with this wider gap between doses).

This is not a big point.  Its just something I find unusual.

[Winterfell is Burning]

The Health Minister of Argentina has resigned after it was revealed he set up a VIP vaccination scheme, to give powerful people who wouldn't be in eligible access to early vaccinations.

Meanwhile, in Brazil, there's been dozen of cases reported of people getting shots of air, meaning the health professionals only pretend to give the vaccine to the elderly, but not actually giving them, presumably to sell those vaccines in the black market and/or to give them to family and friends.

 

[rotting sea cow]

6 minutes ago, Winterfell is Burning said:

The Health Minister of Argentina has resigned after it was revealed he set up a VIP vaccination scheme, to give powerful people who wouldn't be in eligible access to early vaccinations.

In Peru was a similar case. The vaccine-gate they called it. Some politicians "volunteered" to take part in the Sinopharm trials with the conditions they get the real deal. More or less.

 

6 minutes ago, Winterfell is Burning said:

Meanwhile, in Brazil, there's been dozen of cases reported of people getting shots of air, meaning the health professionals only pretend to give the vaccine to the elderly, but not actually giving them, presumably to sell those vaccines in the black market and/or to give them to family and friends.

This is beyond scummy.

[Zorral]

Among all the eff-ups and failures the USA has committed in Not Dealing with the pandemic here, evidently planning, finally, to roll out a massive vaccination effort in FEBRUARY was a stupid idea, particularly for a vaccine that needs a fair bit of special handling and storage.

Supply and distribution and not, well, lets say, to quote Bill Gibson's observation of when the future arrives, not evenly distributed. 

New York literally has no doses now, after this polar vortex event paralyzed most of the US, for instance.

Also, those who should know say we simply CANNOT even schedule, much less administer, vaccinations to our population in any kind of organized, unified, simple to access manner because the country itself doesn't have a unified health system in any shape or form -- no more does New York state, or New York City.

Thus, here we are:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/21/world/fauci-face-masks-2022.html

Quote

 

"Fauci expects Americans could still need to wear face masks in 2022."

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser for Covid-19, said on Sunday that Americans may still be wearing masks outside their homes a year from now, even as he predicted the country would return to “a significant degree of normality” by fall.

 

 

[DireWolfSpirit]

5 hours ago, Winterfell is Burning said:

The Health Minister of Argentina has resigned after it was revealed he set up a VIP vaccination scheme, to give powerful people who wouldn't be in eligible access to early vaccinations.

Meanwhile, in Brazil, there's been dozen of cases reported of people getting shots of air, meaning the health professionals only pretend to give the vaccine to the elderly, but not actually giving them, presumably to sell those vaccines in the black market and/or to give them to family and friends.

 

Smh, such disappointing behavior.