Covid-19 #29: Gazing Into the Abyss, Again

[DireWolfSpirit]

13 minutes ago, RhaenysBee said:

I actually don’t know if I had the regular one or the British variant. Not sure how I could find out. Likely I’ll never know. But yes, the variant is definitely responsible in part for the horrid stats we have now. And of course all the irresponsible people who refuse to follow regulations and go everywhere with their mask hanging on their chin. :/ 

 

This is very interesting but kinda misleading, because it added up first dose administrations and both dose administrations. We have in total 2.8Mish doses administered. And 1.1Mish (of that 2.8) already got both doses. I wonder if this happened in every other case. 

The two percentages on the right side represent first percentage vaccinated and then the second percentage is representing the number for fully vaccinated.

The far left number represents doses administered per 100 people, that number can be above 100 (see Israel at 115) as most will need 2 doses for fully vaccinated (except for J&J which is the one and done vaccine).

[Filippa Eilhart]

Speaking of variants, Luxembourg is now at 70% UK,20% SA. In the French Moselle region SA variant is at 30% and they decided not to use AZ in the region.

[Padraig]

2 hours ago, Filippa Eilhart said:

Speaking of variants, Luxembourg is now at 70% UK,20% SA. In the French Moselle region SA variant is at 30% and they decided not to use AZ in the region.

Interesting.  There was only one limited study on AZ v the SA variant (IIRC).  You'd hope somebody is working on a more robust study.  Especially since the original study only suggested that it had very limited efficacy against mild COVID.  It could still be quite good against severe COVID.

So I can understand France's decision but there is a major information hole there.

There has been a lot of mixed results on the SA variant when it comes to other vaccines also.  Pfizer said it was close to 100% efficaious in its own limited study recently but an Israeli study suggested there was a big drop in effectiveness.  Who knows!

[JoannaL]

Interesting new  study in The Lancet

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2600(21)00160-0/fulltext

They gave patients with mild corona symptoms an asthma spray (Budesonide) or not (Control group). Significantly more people of the control group got severely sick. This is a new good peer reviewed published study and it seems they have found a useful treatment for early Covid!!!

"We have shown that the inhaled glucocorticoid budesonide, given for a short duration, might be an effective treatment of early COVID-19 in adults. This effect, with a relative reduction of 91% of clinical deterioration is equivalent to the efficacy seen after the use of COVID-19 vaccines"

And  budesonid is widely known as a asthma treatment and safe.

 

 

 

 

[williamjm]

6 hours ago, RhaenysBee said:

I actually don’t know if I had the regular one or the British variant. Not sure how I could find out. Likely I’ll never know. But yes, the variant is definitely responsible in part for the horrid stats we have now. And of course all the irresponsible people who refuse to follow regulations and go everywhere with their mask hanging on their chin. :/

I don't really know anything about how the science works but to identify which variant it is they need to do extra lab work to sequence the virus. It seems to vary a lot between countries how often it is done, Iceland apparently sequences everything while the UK is sequencing a relatively large proportion of samples but a lot of countries don't do anywhere near as much.

[Zorral]

The variants are deeply concerning, for both near and future developments of the virus and vaccines. 

In the meantime I woke this AM at the normal time, feeling as normal as I normally feel, whatever that may be!  

[Fez]

I doubt China shared the efficacy info with countries that purchased their vaccines beforehand...

https://apnews.com/article/beijing-immunizations-chengdu-coronavirus-pandemic-china-675bcb6b5710c7329823148ffbff6ef9?utm_source=Twitter&utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_medium=AP

Quote

 

BEIJING (AP) — In a rare admission of the weakness of Chinese coronavirus vaccines, the country’s top disease control official says their effectiveness is low and the government is considering mixing them to get a boost.

Chinese vaccines “don’t have very high protection rates,” said the director of the China Centers for Disease Control, Gao Fu, at a conference Saturday in the southwestern city of Chengdu.

Beijing has distributed hundreds of millions of doses abroad while trying to promote doubt about the effectiveness of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine made using the previously experimental messenger RNA, or mRNA, process.

“It’s now under formal consideration whether we should use different vaccines from different technical lines for the immunization process,” Gao said.

 

Wouldn't be surprised if the Russian vaccine has similar problems (which would also explain why Putin didn't publicly get it).

[Luzifer's right hand]

7 minutes ago, Zorral said:

In the meantime I woke this AM at the normal time, feeling as normal as I normally feel, whatever that may be!  

The looks like something someone under the influence of a mind control chip would write! :p

[Zorral]

16 minutes ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

looks like something someone under the influence of a mind control chip would write! :p

Ha!  You don't even know I'm really the Easter Bunny! Ha! 

~~~~~~

In the meantime, I'm seeing this around today, and do not like:

"Official Admits Chinese Vaccines Have Low Effectiveness as Country Explores Mixing Shots"

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/04/official-chinese-vaccines-low-effectiveness-mixing.html

 

Quote

 

The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention is well aware of the existing problems with the country’s coronavirus vaccines and is exploring the option of mixing vaccines to improve them. The vaccines that have been manufactured by China “don’t have very high protection rates,” the director of the China Centers for Disease Control, Gao Fu, said at a conference on Saturday. The remarks amounted to a rare instance of a Chinese official acknowledging questions about the effectiveness of the country’s vaccines that have been broadly distributed abroad.

In order to deal with the problems, China is “formally considering” whether it should mix vaccines in order to improve the effectiveness. Another possible solution could be to change how the doses are doled out and the space between each shot. China had previously tried to raise doubts about the new vaccines, such as the one by Pfizer and Moderna, that use the new messenger RNA technology. But now China is working on its own MRNA vaccine.

Gao’s words spread quickly on social media but were later censored. “It is the first time . . . a government official publicly admitted that the protection rate is a concern in the vaccination drive,” Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, tells the Financial Times. None of the Chinese vaccines have published phase 3 trial data, leading to questions about transparency even as it sells millions of doses abroad. A recent study of the Sinovac vaccine in Chile found that the efficacy rate of one shot of the vaccine was only 3 percent, compared to 56 percent with two shots. The country’s Sinopharm vaccine claims to have a 79 percent efficacy rate after two shots.

After his statement spread quickly around the world, Gao tried to do some damage control by claiming his words were misconstrued. “It was a complete misunderstanding,” he told China’s Global Times newspaper, which is aligned with the Chinese Communist Party. “The protection rates of all vaccines in the world are sometimes high, and sometimes low. How to improve their efficacy is a question that needs to be considered by scientists around the world,” Gao said. “In this regard, I suggest that we can consider adjusting the vaccination process, such as the number of doses and intervals and adopting sequential vaccination with different types of vaccines.”

 

 

[DireWolfSpirit]

9 hours ago, RhaenysBee said:

I actually don’t know if I had the regular one or the British variant. Not sure how I could find out. Likely I’ll never know. But yes, the variant is definitely responsible in part for the horrid stats we have now. And of course all the irresponsible people who refuse to follow regulations and go everywhere with their mask hanging on their chin. :/ 

 

This is very interesting but kinda misleading, because it added up first dose administrations and both dose administrations. We have in total 2.8Mish doses administered. And 1.1Mish (of that 2.8) already got both doses. I wonder if this happened in every other case. 

Are you referring to Serbia?

By that chart it's saying 17% of Serbs are fully vaccinated (2 shots for most vaccines except Johnson and Johnson). It's also saying 24% have had at least one shot, or in most cases are partially vaccinated.

Further the chart is saying that 2 836,000 doses have been administered to Serbs and that 41 doses have been administered per 100 of the Serb population.

At full vaccination for all of a population taking Pfizer the chart would say 200 doses per 100 population of said population. However since some population will be taking a mix of the drugs (either Pfizer, Moderns an AZeneca(2shot)  or J&J one shot) the chart has to measure it as (partially, fully and shots per populous) to be inclusively accounting for a one or two shot vaccine.

At least that's my take on why they are expressing it that way. Maybe it seems convoluted, just not sure how else they could do it?

[Clueless Northman]

1 hour ago, Fez said:

I doubt China shared the efficacy info with countries that purchased their vaccines beforehand...

https://apnews.com/article/beijing-immunizations-chengdu-coronavirus-pandemic-china-675bcb6b5710c7329823148ffbff6ef9?utm_source=Twitter&utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_medium=AP

Wouldn't be surprised if the Russian vaccine has similar problems (which would also explain why Putin didn't publicly get it).

Sputnik is way closer to J/J and to AZ (heck, was mocked as being a hacked copy of AZ) than to Sinopharm or Sinovac. I would assume its efficacy to be halfway between main Chinese vaccines and Moderna / Pfizer.

 

Great news about the asthma treatment. Odds are that it will work against nastier variants as well (even if not at 90% efficacy).

[Padraig]

 

22 minutes ago, Zorral said:

In the meantime, I'm seeing this around today, and do not like:

"Official Admits Chinese Vaccines Have Low Effectiveness as Country Explores Mixing Shots"

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/04/official-chinese-vaccines-low-effectiveness-mixing.html

Interesting.  Chile has used Sinovac extensively.  Chile has also had a recent surge in cases, despite its very significant vaccination program but that dichotomy in performance between 1 dose and 2 doses probably partly explains it.  A lot less people have had 2 doses.  Brazil has also looked at the efficiacy and reported similar figures.  But it did note that the efficacy rose to almost 100% against serious cases.

This is probably paywalled but talks about Chile

If Sinovac hits 50%+ effectiveness but close to 100% for serious cases, that's not a bad vaccine.  Especially if they do well against variants.

The Russian vaccine gets much more kudos because Lancet published an article praising it.  Now there are still questions about manufacturing ability and whether the trial was to the required standards but in theory, it could be fine too.

That lead me to look at cases worldwide.  Most countries in Europe have seen falling numbers over the last week (with some notable exceptions).  So much so that Uruguay is now the worst country in the world for cases (thanks Brazil!).  A number of different European countries have played that role for months.  Although, Hungary is still the worst country in the world for fatalities (if getting slightly better).

[Zorral]

We're determined to give that rating a good old USA Yes We Can run for the money, you betcha!  We are numero uno in All Of It!

[Altherion]

On 4/10/2021 at 3:36 PM, Clueless Northman said:

US and UK should be considered selfish asshole countries that decided that the rest of the world could just die and barely mattered. Why every other vaccine-producing country decided to export half the production is of no interest. What is of interest is that every other vaccine-producing country did the right thing (and in this case, everyone should note that even bad guys Russia and China are doing that right thing), and that US and UK leadership showed their true colors and basically said to the entire rest of the world: "fuck you, eat shit and die".

All of the leaderships showed their true colors and I think according to basic democratic values, the US, UK, Israel and others who managed to get more vaccines for their populations come out of this looking better than the rest. The leadership of a democratic country is elected by the people of that country to represent those people -- and not the world as a whole. Thus, as long as there is a need for vaccines in a given country, it is not a good thing if the vaccines are being exported elsewhere.

That said, what the US said to the rest of the world was actually "Wait for your turn." We can and we will export a whole lot of vaccines once every American who wants one has had it... but the people living in the US come first. The leaders of the EU and some others have made a different choice and decided that their citizens will wait while the vaccines produced on their territory will be shipped elsewhere. In some places, this is morally defensible because if the virus is not a problem, then the vaccine is merely a precaution. In others, this is blatant disregard for the welfare of one's fellow citizens to score points abroad.

[Mlle. Zabzie]

My husband and I are now two weeks past our second shot (Moderna).  I had a very sore arm after both, was terribly tired after the second shot, and had the moderna rash on my arm for about 5 days.  He had weird headaches both times.  The relief I feel is palpable.  My life won’t change that much, but, for instance, yesterday we saw my best friend and her family for a hike.  We were all outside and masked (they are also vaccinated but the kids aren’t, obviously), and it felt AMAZING.  I might schedule a massage.  Our 15th wedding anniversary is coming up and we might (gasp) go to a restaurant (but will probably sit outside).  It changes the risk calculation for everything.

I’m now watching the pediatric trials closely.  My kids will get jabbed as soon as they possibly can.  We are starting to see more people we know getting Covid, even if they were careful (I assume B.1.1.7).  Vigilance continues...

[Padraig]

1 hour ago, Altherion said:

The leaders of the EU and some others have made a different choice and decided that their citizens will wait while the vaccines produced on their territory will be shipped elsewhere. In some places, this is morally defensible because if the virus is not a problem, then the vaccine is merely a precaution. In others, this is blatant disregard for the welfare of one's fellow citizens to score points abroad.

I believe the EU didn't realise it was a race between countries/regions.   Its very structure means it doesn't feel the country state is paramount.  Countries co-operating is the norm. 

Moreover, it felt it had a lot of vaccines on order and it didn't feel it needed to keep all the doses produced in its territory for itself.  This was a worldwie problem after all.  But then, AZ ended up underdelivering hugely and things got complicated.

Anyhow, i'm not sure the average 25 year old would feel blatantly disregarded if they were told that a 90 year old would be vaccinated in some other country before them.

[Prince of the North]

@Mlle. Zabzie I had the exact same experience with the Moderna vaccine (except the rash).  And our two kids are definitely getting vaccinated ASAP, too!

[Zorral]

Later today I noticed the injection site is red -- not very red -- and hot.  Have been doing icing.  But otherwise, beyond sore and stiff in the upper arm, I feel quite 'normal.'  As we all know These Days we are no longer sure what 'normal' is, but I cooked, cleaned, did all the normal things that drive Partner insane when we are even more confined due to Rain, Rain All Day.

In terms of US and vaccine allocation, right here in the US states that are Hot Spots currently, like Michigan, are requesting a larger allocation to contain.  At this point it seem the Federal powers are saying we can't do that because we are trying to be very fair and allocate vaccines according to population.  

 

[DireWolfSpirit]

Yeah even though I'm on the Michigan border area here, I do not think chasing the hotspots makes sense and that the govt should stick to allocating according to population.

It potentially becomes like chasing your tail in circles if multiple waves of hotspots breakout in different regions and your always chasing the next hotspot in hindsight. Probably best to stick to the current formula imo.

[Filippa Eilhart]

so France is starting legal proceedings against AZ. I'm not well versed enough in French law to tell you what exactly it means :p But they definitely decided they are able to take legal action

Quote

Une mise en demeure immédiate a été adressée au laboratoire pour enclencher une procédure juridique si ce dernier «ne corrige pas les choses».

https://www.lefigaro.fr/politique/astrazeneca-pour-clement-beaune-le-laboratoire-s-est-moque-des-europeens-20210411