Covid-19 #30: Vaccines and All That JJAZ

[Fragile Bird]

2 hours ago, Filippa Eilhart said:

So following our news, Luxembourg issued a temporary recommendation to restrict the use of AZ in people under 55 (unless there is no alternative available) and at the same time to open a waiting list for volunteers aged 30-55 who wish to be vaccinated with AZ ahead of schedule. I think it's a good compromise. I also have no intention of volunteering :p

Quoting again.

A story popped up on my Facebook page saying Latvia opened up vaccinations to anyone who wants AZ, to clear their backlog of supply. Long lines for the shots.

[S John]

1 hour ago, Fez said:

The peer-reviewed journal articles may just be catching up now, but all the visible evidence has been for over year that airborne transmission was the primary (and possibly only) form of spread.

In fact, the larger story for a while is how much money is being spent on "deep cleaning" when there's still barely any evidence of fomite transmission occurring.

Yea and the really annoying thing about that is it’s been found that some of the hand sanitizers (including many widely sold in the US and one that I definitely had and was using) contain toxic levels of chemicals like benzine and we’ve all been rubbing it all over ourselves for the last year.

[Padraig]

2 hours ago, ljkeane said:

They're giving them to Covax. It's not really ideal messaging to say 'we don't think this is safe enough to give to any of our population' then hand it over to covax countries though.

Yes.  Awkward.  But I suppose if other countries want it, COVAX would be the logical choice.  The only countries in the EU who could really do with it are Bulgaria and Latvia.  Their vaccination rate is way below the average (although that earlier 10m Pfizer dose deal may turn that completely around).

COVAX is not having a good run with both AZ and J&J having difficulties right now.

2 hours ago, Zorral said:

If it were convenient to get vaccinated, surely many more of the semi-reluctant sorts would do it.

That makes sense.  I do wonder whether the existence of a major shortage is one way to overcome people's reluctance though.  Make something difficult to get, and people might want it more.  But there are bound to be holes in that idea!   People wouldn't wait forever for one thing!

[williamjm]

1 hour ago, Padraig said:

COVAX is not having a good run with both AZ and J&J having difficulties right now.

It is unfortunate that the cheaper and easier to distribute vaccines are the ones having problems.

[Clueless Northman]

5 hours ago, AncalagonTheBlack said:

This does not sound good.

Ten scientific reasons in support of airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)00869-2/fulltext

 

Huh, this is obvious and pretty much common knowledge since last Summer at least. You'd have to be a complete moron to deny it, at this point in the pandemic. To be blunt, if some "expert" comes and claims that fomites is the main vector, or that airborne transmission is very limited, then you know with absolute certainty that the guy's a crank.

 

4 hours ago, Padraig said:

They should certainly be preparing for boosters.  But its very unclear when they would be required.  Pharma companies have a financial interest in emphasising the need (keep orders coming in) but all we know right now is that Moderna/Pfizer lasts at least 6 months.  I doubt protection will fall off a cliff from 6 months.

Yeah, I'd say it's Pfizer CEO talking to his shareholders. That another shot will be required to get flear of all variants and mutations is indeed reasonable if not obvious, but claiming we'll have to get yearly booster shot, "just like the flu", is horse manure. It's definitely not the flu, it's way too early to claim it mutates as fast and as widely as the flu (current variants tend to show the opposite, developing along clear lines), and shots are 95% effective, not the miserable 20-60% of the flu shot. I wouldn't be surprised if another shot is useful, 10 years from now, due to virus changing a little bit and immune system becoming lazy, but I haven't seen solid evidence this needs to be done on a yearly basis. It might, but that's far from certain.

[Which Tyler]

It was always airborn, the debate was over airborn droplets Vs airborn particles.

Fomite transmission has been a virtually dead theory since what? June? And has never been thought to be the dominant method.

[Loge]

12 hours ago, Clueless Northman said:

Huh, this is obvious and pretty much common knowledge since last Summer at least. You'd have to be a complete moron to deny it, at this point in the pandemic. To be blunt, if some "expert" comes and claims that fomites is the main vector, or that airborne transmission is very limited, then you know with absolute certainty that the guy's a crank.

What's "common knowledge" isn't necessarily scientifically proven. The above article is labelled a "comment" and is a rebuttal to an online review that claims that the evidence for airborne transmission is all flawed.

[JoannaL]

19 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

Okay, back to Moderna. They just cut our next shipment in half. We were supposed to get 1.2 M doses next week, a delivery that was pushed back to two weeks, then a suggestion was made it might be May.

Now we’re going to get only 550,000, I’m not sure if that’s next week or in two weeks.

Moderna hasn’t even tried to label it as a testing issue anymore, they’re just shrugging their shoulders and saying, hey guys, it’s a product in demand. I wonder if our shipment is being diverted to EU countries. Or, for crying out loud, to the UK. If there’s any country that could handle their shipment being cut, it’s the UK. 

There is now an article about Modernas problems:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/16/moderna-struggling-to-supply-promised-doses-of-covid-vaccine

 

its the usual scale up problem:

“The trajectory of vaccine manufacturing ramp-up is not linear, and despite best efforts, there is a shortfall in previously estimated doses,” Moderna said on Friday. “Vaccine manufacturing is a highly complex process and a number of elements, including human and material resources, have factored into this volatility.”

 

[Padraig]

19 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

Moderna hasn’t even tried to label it as a testing issue anymore, they’re just shrugging their shoulders and saying, hey guys, it’s a product in demand. I wonder if our shipment is being diverted to EU countries. Or, for crying out loud, to the UK. If there’s any country that could handle their shipment being cut, it’s the UK. 

https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2021-04-16/moderna-says-vaccines-to-canada-to-be-delayed-due-to-europe-shortfall

So yes, the ramp up is causing a lot of issues.  The UK is also affected.  And I wouldn't be surprised if other countries suffer eventually also.  It mentions that Moderna has brought in another company in Spain to make the vaccine because of the pressure on Lonza.   But I imagine that was always the plan.   The EU has ordered 310m doses for 2021 (IIRC).  In H1 it will get 45m.  There is a further huge ramp up required.

Edited to add: Too slow!

There has been a couple more incidents in the US of this blood disorder.   But still, 8 from 7m doses (if you can believe it) is a lot better than the European rate,.  See here.  The EMA is supposed to give an update next week but it can only say that the vaccine is fine (unless something new emerges from the US).  And then individual countries will have to decide what to do with J&J based on very little data.   

The New England Journal of Medicine has an article on these blood disorders also.  I don't think there is anything particularly new in it (although, not my area of expertise).  But one weird thing...

Quote

Additional cases have now been reported to the European Medicines Agency, including at least 169 possible cases of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis and 53 possible cases of splanchnic vein thrombosis among 34 million recipients of the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine, 35 possible cases of central nervous system thrombosis among 54 million recipients of the Ad26.COV2.S adenoviral vector vaccine (Johnson & Johnson/Janssen), and 5 possible (but unvetted) cases of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis among 4 million recipients of the Moderna mRNA vaccine; no cases have been reported thus far with the Pfizer–BioNTech mRNA vaccine.

I can't see how J&J has given out 54m doses of its vaccine.  So it's a very weird thing for a prestiguous magazine to publish.

In Ireland, they are now talking about moving from the over 60s to under 30s when it comes to vaccinations.  I'm surprised they are talking about slightly radical ideas.  There is logic to it of course.  Give it to those who are spreading the disease.  And Bloomberg has mentioned that Sweden is looking at getting Sputnik (only moderate amounts available).  Interesting.  Probably a positive sign for J&J.

[Clueless Northman]

 

I just read about Moderna. Hopefully, it's a minor issue with a 2-weeks delay, like Pfizer earlier this year, and not major troubles like with AZ... This will obviously impact all their deliveries across Europe and Canada - if not other continents as well.

  

3 hours ago, Loge said:

What's "common knowledge" isn't necessarily scientifically proven. The above article is labelled a "comment" and is a rebuttal to an online review that claims that the evidence for airborne transmission is all flawed.

You don't need to do live-testing to know that if people jump from the 15th floor, they're probably going to die. The same way, when airborne is the only way some contaminations could have happened, then it's sign this shit is airborne. We've had case studies for 12 months that showed a significant airborne effect. Anyone claiming evidence for airborne transmission is flawed is a complete idiot or a shill that just wants businesses, gyms, indoor dining or whatever else to reopen as fast as possible, thousands of deads be damned. Absence of evidence doesn't mean it doesn't happen, it just means there's not a hundred of lab-tested peer-reviewed experiments that scientifically "prove" it. At some point, logic and reasoning have to help you complement your findings.

Were fomites the main source of infection, I would've caught it a year ago; considering how I behave, how often I touch my face, mouth and nose included, there's just no way I could make it through 2 huge waves without getting sick - even if I wash my hands regularly nowadays, I don't do it 50 times a day.

Meanwhile, the claim that the bulk of nursing homes have been vaccinated and things are fine there is mostly correct, but we're still far from perfectly safe situation. 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).

[Fragile Bird]

2 minutes 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).

My sincere condolences.

[Zorral]

EU hits and misses with vaccines, viewed through the political / economic lens. This is seriously pay-walled, but often the Short Cuts are allowed through once per month or something w/o a subscription.  The London Review of Books has never been affected by tl;dr, thank goodness. This further means the LRB is the great-grandmother of multi-section pieces -- which made the New Yorker Magazine's long reads look superficial in comparison. This means doing a pull quote that doesn't need the context isn't always so easy.  But this, being a "Short Cut" is less than 3000 words.

"Blame Brussels" by Jan-Werner Müller

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

Quote

 

. . . . Today Europe trails behind Israel, the UK, Chile, the US and Bahrain in terms of vaccine doses administered. Little more than 10 per cent of the population has received a first dose, and France and Germany are re-entering lockdown. What went wrong? In retrospect, it’s easy to see that the commission had little experience of procurement. The business of the EU as a whole is business, but the commission exists to regulate it, not to engage in whatever-it-takes spending sprees. As the journalist Wolfgang Münchau reminded us recently, European integration began with a Franco-German cartel for coal and steel, which means that fixating on prices is what it does, and so is balancing French and German interests (which in 2020 meant Sanofi and BioNTech). Contrary to those who would celebrate the venture capitalist Weltanschauung of Kate Bingham, Boris Johnson’s vaccine tsar, the problem is not Brussels’s ‘distant bureaucracy’, but the priorities of this bureaucracy, which would have been laudable under normal circumstances: ensuring the liability of vaccine producers (in the face of large anti-vax movements in France and Italy) and negotiating low prices (in response to the Eastern Europeans’ understandable desire for cheap jabs).... 

....The question of how to make what happened during the pandemic subject to democratic politics remains unsolved. After all, no conflict in a democracy explains itself; parties need to stage it. With the financial crisis, it was easy to identify the characters: either greedy bankers or spendthrifts taking out mortgages they couldn’t afford, depending on where you stood. One way to politicise the pandemic would seem to be to make a contrast between competence and incompetence. But that’s misleading: politics is always about choices and priorities (who will live and who might die). The premier of Saxony claimed recently that government policies haven’t been unjust; rather, ‘the virus is unjust.’ But no politician simply follows the science; what’s significant is one’s underlying theory of justice – and whether one avows it.

Democratic politics presumes the existence of a proper opposition holding governments to account and offering alternative policies – the very thing which, infamously, does not exist at EU level. As there cannot be opposition within the system, there only remains opposition to the system (primarily in the form of anti-EU parties). True, von der Leyen – now known in Brussels as ‘the minister for self-defence’ – was hauled in front of the European Parliament to account for the missing vaccine doses. But, just as in Germany, the grand coalition controlling the Parliament will perpetuate a culture of impunity....

....The EU took on a task that should have brought it popularity, but for which it was ill-prepared; in the end, it performed, to quote the German finance minister, in a ‘shitty way’. As with the common currency and the refugee crisis, the union acquired features of a state – but in an incomplete and ultimately incoherent way. The Euro couldn’t function without a common fiscal policy; the shared border has lacked a unified asylum policy. And, as so often, the commission over-promised: ‘l’Europe qui protège’ ended up protecting free trade at least as much as the lives of citizens. National leaders, even when deeply implicated in the shitty performance, continue the game they have always played: blame Brussels...

 

 

~~~~~~~~~~~

In the meantime my sister is having a melt-down.  They still can't go on a cruise to Spain because Spain isn't allowing cruises -- or Americans US!!!!!! -- yet.  And their Alaskan cruise is still iffy, and even if it ever sails the ocean seas, has all these rules and regulations, including mask wearing.  "Cruises are supposed to be fun," she screamed.  "Not about rules! This isn't fun!"

So, they are jumping in the car and driving around the country to see all their kids and grandkids they haven't seen since they did this last summer -- BEFORE vaccinations -- and after which the two families who live in other states told them not to come for Thanksgiving, because, you know, dangerous.  Which infuriated them both so much they'd probably have cut off the sons, at least temporarily, but you know, grandchildren.  Besides, it was surely not their boys who think like this, but their wives.

I was mean.  I responded that denial to her entry to Spain wasn't because she was from the US, where the virus is surging and raging, but because They knew both she and her husband were born in North Dakota.  Everybody is is always mean to North Dakota.  Including me. Ha!

 

[Fragile Bird]

Well, there won’t be any cruises to Alaska without a stop in Canada, to satisfy the US statute that requires a stop at a foreign port in order to be able to use foreign workers on a ship, whatever it’s called, I forget.

If it were up to some provinces they’d cheerfully let Americans in, but fortunately it’s in the hands of the federal government. There’s a certain amount of talk about not letting anyone in the country until we achieve “vaccine parity”, in other words, long after Americans are chomping at the bit. If it were up to me I’d close down the right to fly into the country as well. 

[DireWolfSpirit]

22 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Well, there won’t be any cruises to Alaska without a stop in Canada, to satisfy the US statute that requires a stop at a foreign port in order to be able to use foreign workers on a ship, whatever it’s called, I forget.

You might be thinking of the Jones Act. It's an rule that protects domestic workers in the shipping industry with rules like all work on U.S. combat ship construction has to be by U.S. citizens for example.

I like the provision, if these projects are using U.S. taxpayer money, I prefer U.S. workers gain the job building it.

 

Bird-

 

If it were up to some provinces they’d cheerfully let Americans in, but fortunately it’s in the hands of the federal government. There’s a certain amount of talk about not letting anyone in the country until we achieve “vaccine parity”, in other words, long after Americans are chomping at the bit. If it were up to me I’d close down the right to fly into the country as well. 

ENDQUOTE

 

I understand this completely. One thing I've found shocking and inexcusable during this pandemic has been how they have let people fly around the globe a little too casually. Those planes would've been grounded unless they had life or death ramifications for their flight were it up to me. 

The global Daily New Cases is right back up to over 800,000 a day. The virus is still kicking ass and taking names right around the globe. We are still a long, long way from winning.

[Fragile Bird]

35 minutes ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

You might be thinking of the Jones Act. It's an rule that protects domestic workers in the shipping industry with rules like all work on U.S. combat ship construction has to be by U.S. citizens for example.

I like the provision, if these projects are using U.S. taxpayer money, I prefer U.S. workers gain the job building it.

The point is cruise ships couldn’t operate without their staffs from around the world, like every part of Asia and Eastern Europe. Americans will often quit within weeks of signing on, from what I’ve heard from staff on cruise ships.

[DireWolfSpirit]

3 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

The point is cruise ships couldn’t operate without their staffs from around the world, like every part of Asia and Eastern Europe. Americans will often quit within weeks of signing on, from what I’ve from staff on cruise ships.

Yeah my experience with the statute is more with shipbuilding than manning, it's a broad act with a passle of rules. Like many things there's the good with bad probably.

[DireWolfSpirit]

It is so frustrating trying to quote and having the quote look just like your comments after the editor does it's sorcery, and don't even get me started on auto (un)correct and it's butchery.

[Zorral]

As far as cruise operators coming out of the lower US to Canada -- the big ones do have to make port in Canada first.  The big cruisers have a lot of rules and regulations to follow that the small, independent operator does not.  I don't know if that does or does not include stopping first at a Canadian port.

Have never done a cruise and have never wanted to.  Horror is my first response when asked.  Partner has been requested to be a lecture-resource on some cruise ships that operate(d) in the Caribbean.  Partner's horrified recoil at the very thought is even greater than mine.  Plus, who in the world would want to be trying to get people like my sister and her husband interested in anything one has to say?  They love Caribbean cruises thus they already Know Everything There Is To Know about it.  Though the names of the capitals of the countries they stop into, the language spoken by the people who live there, are evidently not matters worth knowing, nor is the music, the history, the flora, the fauna, or even the food, etc.

 

[Fragile Bird]

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. More details later today, perhaps.

https://calgary.ctvnews.ca/alberta-doctors-find-2nd-case-of-blood-clot-linked-to-astrazeneca-vaccine-in-canada-1.5391531

[Zorral]

Totally normal side effects from second injection: both Pfizer and Moderna.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/04/covid-vaccines-why-the-second-shot-makes-you-miserable.html#comments

I don't know why I'm so interested in other people's reactions, also where they got their vaccinations, how they got their appointments, and which vaccine.  But I am interested.  Extremely so.