Covid-19 #30: Vaccines and All That JJAZ

[DireWolfSpirit]

I did get that first jab of Pfizer thursday, 2nd scheduled for May 7th.

On the way home listening to BBC they were discussing the blood clotting and prevalence comparing clotting incidence with vaccine to clotting incidence with pregnant woman and while it was a radio broadcast citing a lot of stats, it was my impression that a pregnant woman's chances of blood clotting are many times higher than your chances of clotting from taking the AZ or J&J shots.

I wonder why the CDC hasn't called for a moratorium on pregnancies?

 

[Luzifer's right hand]

17 minutes ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

I did get that first jab of Pfizer thursday, 2nd scheduled for May 7th.

On the way home listening to BBC they were discussing the blood clotting and prevalence comparing clotting incidence with vaccine to clotting incidence with pregnant woman and while it was a radio broadcast citing a lot of stats, it was my impression that a pregnant woman's chances of blood clotting are many times higher than your chances of clotting from taking the AZ or J&J shots.

I wonder why the CDC hasn't called for a moratorium on pregnancies?

 

Maybe if there were different brands of pregnancy with less side effects avaliable the CDC would do that... 

[Fragile Bird]

30 minutes ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

I did get that first jab of Pfizer thursday, 2nd scheduled for May 7th.

On the way home listening to BBC they were discussing the blood clotting and prevalence comparing clotting incidence with vaccine to clotting incidence with pregnant woman and while it was a radio broadcast citing a lot of stats, it was my impression that a pregnant woman's chances of blood clotting are many times higher than your chances of clotting from taking the AZ or J&J shots.

I wonder why the CDC hasn't called for a moratorium on pregnancies?

 

The like is for getting the jab, lol, not for a moratorium on pregnancies.

[Padraig]

2 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

In other bad news, a second blood clot case associated with receiving the AZ vaccine has been found in Canada, in Alberta, and this time it was a 60-year old man. Not many details are available yet, just that he's been treated and is recovering.

Hmm.  Glad he is recovering.

This is a very user friendly podcast on the blood disorder thing.  If nothing else it restates the important point that all blood clots aren't the same.

7 hours ago, Clueless Northman said:

The lack of vaccines and the decision not to give them to people who got covid in the last 6 months can make sense at first sight, but they really should double-check with antigen/antibody testing: one of my aunts died yesterday because she was supposed to have caught it in Dec., but never had any symptom, so she hadn't yet got the vaccine because everyone assumed she was immune - well, obviously now, it turns out her December test was a false-positive, or she's one of the unlucky ones whose immunity merely lasts 3 months (in my sorry opinion, far bigger odds on wrong test result).

Ouch.  Really sorry to hear that.  I would have thought if they were going to skip a shot, it would be the second shot.

3 hours ago, Zorral said:

"Blame Brussels" by Jan-Werner Müller

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n08/jan-werner-mueller/short-cuts

I did read this.  I'm not sure what to make it.  There are a lot of things mentioned but its not particularly coherent (if still interesting because it touches on so many things).   The best point is that the EU's involvement makes it unclear who is to blame.  National leaders can safely point figures at the EU, even if they were responsible.  So the author isn't actually saying "Blame Brussels".  That's just the normative response.  (Personally, any story about vaccines should focus on production.  This article doesn't delve into that at all, so it misses 50% of the story).

[Fragile Bird]

Yes, surely the main story is the failure of AZ to produce vaccine doses in the EU. If AZ provided what they said they’d make, the EU wouldn’t be behind the eight ball.

And where is Curevac in all this? What’s the latest about their Phase 3?

I also understand another big issue is still the fact the US is hoarding vaccine components. They are covered by the EO export ban as well as vaccines, iirc.

[Filippa Eilhart]

Last I heard Curevac is looking at results end of April/May and approval late May/early June. When they’re going to be able to deliver doses is another question.

I don’t think that article on the EU is all that well written. For one, the EU has plenty experience in procurement, it’s just a different kind of procurement.

[Zorral]

21 minutes ago, Padraig said:

So the author isn't actually saying "Blame Brussels".  That's just the normative response.  (Personally, any story about vaccines should focus on production.  This article doesn't delve into that at all, so it misses 50% of the story).

That's editors for you.  Authors don't get to title their work for periodicals.

I think the author's mission in the piece wasn't production, but politics, and how the politics affect the economics of production.  Production wasn't centered for that reason.

I do agree though it's murky to parse out, including which location and its politics are centered: Brussels or Germany.  And is it Brussels as the EU or Brussels as capital of the country of Belgium.  Or maybe I got that mistaken.

 

[Raja]

Really concerned about Ontario, India and Brazil.

I think most people have no idea how terrible things can be inside hospitals during these surges, both for medics like me and the patients, obviously. The last surge in the UK was basically from November to February and by the end of it I was completely exhausted, both mentally and physically. I'm 10 days off work now so a chance to rest and recuperate a little but just thinking about what India, Brazil and parts of Canada will be going through for the next couple of months just makes me sad.

[Altherion]

There is a curious phenomenon in the US vaccine distribution and consumption which you can see by, for example, looking at the Distribution tab of the NPR vaccine tracker. On the one hand, there are many states which are administering vaccines nearly as fast as they can get them. The extreme example here is New Hampshire which has literally administered 99% of the vaccines it received without reserving any for the second shot. Other high-usage states are reserving something for the second shot so their corresponding rates are somewhere between 80% and 90%.

So far, so good... but on the other side of this distribution you have states like Alabama and Mississippi which have only administered 64% and 65% of the vaccines they've received respectively. And it's not that they're reserving more second doses because they also rank dead last in people who have received at least one dose. Thus, they're either very inefficient at distributing the vaccines or the people there simply don't want as many as the people in other states. It'll be curious to see how long the federal government is going to tolerate this before saying that states have to use some fraction of vaccines that they've already received before getting any more -- it doesn't make sense for the low-usage states to simply sit on millions of vaccine doses which can be quickly used elsewhere.

[Mindwalker]

The Jacobin has an interesting podcast on why the USA and the UK and Cuba have been so successful with vaccine rollout, while the EU and Canada have not. (Well, they forgot to mention Biden's baan on exports, but apart from that.)

Spoiler alert: Free market it was not...

 

[Zorral]

1 hour ago, Raja said:

Really concerned about Ontario, India and Brazil.

I think most people have no idea how terrible things can be inside hospitals during these surges, both for medics like me and the patients, obviously. The last surge in the UK was basically from November to February and by the end of it I was completely exhausted, both mentally and physically. I'm 10 days off work now so a chance to rest and recuperate a little but just thinking about what India, Brazil and parts of Canada will be going through for the next couple of months just makes me sad.

You should put the US on the list too.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/17/health/us-coronavirus-saturday/index.html

particularly, at this moment, the state of Michigan.  It's really, really bad.  Also a variant. The health care people are exhausted, physically and emotionally.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/14/opinions/michigan-covid-surge-and-vaccines-sepkowitz/index.html

 

 

We've been here before with many states, but being USA, freedom from masking and to pack into spaces and eating burgers is all we care about.

[Mindwalker]

In Germany, doctors say that important surgeries (cancer etc.) have to be postponed because of the amount of covid patients.

[Raja]

13 minutes ago, Mindwalker said:

In Germany, doctors say that important surgeries (cancer etc.) have to be postponed because of the amount of covid patients.

Yeah, we did that here to in the UK. There is no way around this when you have covid in the hospital. The only thing that works is stay at home orders/ lockdowns like the one we're just getting out of here in the UK.

Governments can avoid it for some time, but then you will get to a stage where there is no other choice.

18 minutes ago, Zorral said:

You should put the US on the list too.

Yeah, I lived in Michigan so certainly thinking about the folks back over there. The difference between the US and all the other places I have mentioned is the access to vaccines, but given the surge in Michigan is right now and protection takes 10-14 days, it will be tough there too.

[Fragile Bird]

37 minutes ago, Mindwalker said:

The Jacobin has an interesting podcast on why the USA and the UK and Cuba have been so successful with vaccine rollout, while the EU and Canada have not. (Well, they forgot to mention Biden's baan on exports, but apart from that.)

Spoiler alert: Free market it was not...

 

I’ll listen to that later tonight, but I expect a stupid hit job on Canada, per the usual.

[Mindwalker]

Yeah, problem is that after the first wave (which was dealt with very well), our state and federal politicians have ... sucked. They are caving in because we'll have elections this year, and they are afraid of the right-wing/ q/ nutcases movement. Federal government is finally trying to do something, but our very own Rand Paul threatens to take it to the Supreme Court because liberty. And freedom. And liberty.

PS: Hit job, really?! Didn't sound like it to me.

[Padraig]

I feel bad for Uruguay.  It has woeful stats.  Having a huge neighbour with rampant COVID made it really difficult for it.  (Although, it is doing ok from a vaccination point of view).

2 hours ago, Filippa Eilhart said:

Last I heard Curevac is looking at results end of April/May and approval late May/early June. When they’re going to be able to deliver doses is another question.

Right.  I haven't seen anything about what it will have manufactured before the end of June.  It probably doesn't know, given how complicated the process is, but it isn't reassuring.  It has involved some big pharma companies at least.

We should hear its Phase 3 results over the next few weeks though.  They've tried to test it against some of the variants, so it will be very interesting to see how it has done.

I'd have thought Novavax would be approved in the UK by now also.  Although, it is very unlikely that the EU will see doses in Q2 from that producer.

2 hours ago, Zorral said:

I do agree though it's murky to parse out, including which location and its politics are centered: Brussels or Germany.  And is it Brussels as the EU or Brussels as capital of the country of Belgium.

Brussels stood for the EU.  But you are right, it was focused as much on Germany.   But what I meant was how politics affected production.  Admittedly, I can see why he'd shy away from that.  Double the length of his article!

By the way, this goes into the US's data problem with J&J.  I don't know how it will solve that.

[Kalbear]

THIS MOTHER FUCKING COUNTRY

 

 

[Mlle. Zabzie]

I went to a mom’s event (outdoor rooftop) for my son’s class on Thursday.  Everyone was vaccinated but one mom.  She stated that she will not be vaccinated; nor will her son.  My child will not be playing with her son.  I hope the school decides to require vaccines for in-person once they are available for the age group.  If everyone had been vaccinated I would have taken off my mask.  As it was, N95 the whole time.

[Fragile Bird]

2 minutes ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

I went to a mom’s event (outdoor rooftop) for my son’s class on Thursday.  Everyone was vaccinated but one mom.  She stated that she will not be vaccinated; nor will her son.  My child will not be playing with her son.  I hope the school decides to require vaccines for in-person once they are available for the age group.  If everyone had been vaccinated I would have taken off my mask.  As it was, N95 the whole time.

Was she at least masked?

[Mlle. Zabzie]

19 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Was she at least masked?

No!!!!  Other moms took off their masks.  I did not.   I stayed because I am more than 2 weeks after my second shot, and I was wearing my N95, and it was WONDERFUL to sit and chat with people.