The state of the vaccines

Discussion in 'Coronavirus Pandemic Discussions' started by CenterField, Aug 14, 2020.

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  1. bigfella

    bigfella Well-Known Member

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    While the head of the FDA is loudly declaring this isn't political, I have my suspicions. I wouldn't be surprised if the pressure coming from the top to announce a vaccine before the start of November is immense. Certainly that is happening in public. I don't doubt that Hahn is doing his best, but from what I understand he & his team lack the sort of political experience that might be required under the circumstances.

    I hope the right decisions are made.
     
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  2. LangleyMan

    LangleyMan Well-Known Member

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    I was barely old enough remember polio, but there has definitely been an economic price paid for that virus.
    The possible consequences aren't being conveyed effectively to the public. One would think the President's task force would take care of that as part of nationwide program of fighting virus.
    My wife and I are spending a lot less money. We were planning on visits to Europe and New York City. I haven't played a round of golf since last year.

    Trump and Senate Republicans have decided to reduce financial support for unemployed workers, taking even more demand out of the system. Trump's Federal Reserve Chairman, Jerome Powell, has twice pleaded for more government spending. We're headed for a depression if we don't do more to increase demand.

    Google "Y = C + I + G + X - M" for a macroeconomics explanation of the disaster Republicans are poised to inflict on the economy.
     
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  3. DivineComedy

    DivineComedy Well-Known Member

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    Well, that is one way to free up more for the rest of us; make them more paranoid. Like pulling wings off mentally ill flies...
     
  4. CenterField

    CenterField Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Definitely.
    Unfortunately the president is interested in minimizing the damage so that people don't blame him and he gets re-elected.

    Exactly.

    Interesting.
     
    Last edited: Aug 31, 2020
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  5. CenterField

    CenterField Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    More vaccine news:

    The Russian Gamaleya vaccine Sputinik V is an adenovirus vector vaccine. So is the Chinese CanSino one. They are based on adenoviruses that ferry SARS-CoV-2 genetic material into human cells. This is a problematic approach, in the fact that many people are already immune to certain strains of adenoviruses so if the person's immune system attacks the vaccine, the vaccine will be less effective, inducing SARS-CoV-2 immunity in just 40 to 70% of cases.

    The most common vector is the Adenovirus type 5, or Ad5. Well, it's also the one most people are immune to. And that's precisely what CanSino picked, which seems like a boneheaded move.

    The Russians from Gamaleya tried to mitigate this issue by using 2 strains of adenovirus, the Ad5, and another one, less common. They are confident that this will take care of the problem. The CanSino one, though, is just Ad5 so it's likely that it will be less effective.

    Oxford/AstraZeneca also use adenovirus vector as the method, but smartly, they picked a chimpanzee adenovirus to which humans are not immune (before you freak out, these adenoviruses are harmless).

    Johnson & Johnson's picked Ad26, a rare adenovirus strain.

    -----------

    These problems are entirely bypassed by the CoronaVac made by the Chinese biolab Sinovac, in cooperation with Brazil's Instituto Butantan. That is an inactivated SARS-CoV-2 vaccine (the killed real virus) so whatever immunogenicity it induces, it's against COVID-19, which is a reason why seroconversion so far is said to be a whooping 97.4%.
     
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  6. CenterField

    CenterField Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Another piece of news:

    Point for Moderna. This company was a bit despondent with them being small and less experienced vaccine makers; they jumped ahead first then lost terrain to Big Pharma Pfizer and AstraZeneca, and to the Chinese.

    But guess what: some sub-set of data from their phase 2 trial is showing that the immunogenicity for their mRNA vaccine remains robust across all age groups including up to 90 years old volunteers.

    This is an advantage over two of the frontrunners: Pfizer's vaccine had lower results for the elderly than for the 18-55 age group, and the same has happened to the CoronaVac from Sinovac.

    So maybe Moderna's will end up being the preferred vaccine for the senior citizens.

    It's been said that with the multiple vaccine candidates, and some of them already in phase 3, it is likely that we will end up with different approved vaccines, and some will be more favorable for some groups of patients, and others for other groups.
     
    Last edited: Aug 31, 2020
  7. DivineComedy

    DivineComedy Well-Known Member

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    The task force did nothing to minimize news broadcasts, studies, or any YouTube video by any doctor reviewing autopsies...that I know of.

    This guy is getting the stuff out there, and seems pretty smart, one of his latest vids lists almost everything in that paragraph mentioning the heart:

    https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMSsLqxqvZsNXi0Z-VjN89A

    Republicans claim to be for individual responsibility, and that is how one would find the above and other information outside of any political environment.

    First someone has to study stuff, they don't report to just a task force, some stuff is not yet peer reviewed, and the YouTuber above says so when he is quoting a study. So the task force is not the news source, would you want the task force to be the news source? Does the Task Force even have a website?

    Then there is the guy that doesn't trust the news, including news from a task force, because the news is biased and editorializing on multiple issues unrelated to the one they are telling the truth on. The intelligent guy goes to multiple sources for news, and hopefully he finds a few that aren't campaigning for their version of social and economic justice while telling us about what a virus does.

    The biggest problem with many issues is science is linked to a social view unrelated to the science the scientist wants us to believe in.
     
  8. CenterField

    CenterField Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Sorry but the president is the one who politicized the issue to start with... right at the beginning... "Democratic hoax." How do you get any more political than that???

    The study about the heart I've been referencing is perfectly peer-reviewed. So much, that the peer reviewers have requested some corrections, which were implemented (click on View Correction for this). And it's been published in the very prestigious JAMA-Cardiology, not some non-peer-reviewed aggregator.

    https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamacardiology/fullarticle/2768916

    By the way, the same issue of the JAMA-Cardiology also has a study with autopsies confirming the heart damage (in old people, though).

    It's interesting how Republicans say it's perfectly fine for Trump to tout an unproven treatment, hydroxychloroquine, to the point of dispensing medical advice while not being a physician ("You have nothing to lose... Take it!" Donald J. Trump, April 6, 2020, in a White House Press Brief, using these words not once, but actually twice - transcript available on the official White House website)... but now you say the task force should not be the news source so they shouldn't be commenting on this... I mean, when it's damaging information, let's just leave it up to the scientists and hope that the public will somehow by miracle find the article and be able to read it and understand it, right? All in the name of "individual responsibility." Great!

    Well, I did find it and I did understand it, but I'm a professional in this area. For a lay person that's close to an impossible task.

    So, if you (or if not you, others) think it's perfectly fine for the president to push people into taking a medication that was unproven at the time, and as of now has been pretty much certified by all serious agencies as useless and dangerous for COVID-19 patients (due, well, exactly, to the predilection of the virus for the heart muscle, which multiplies the already well-known cardiac toxicity of HCQ, which wasn't a big deal for lupus, RA, and malaria patients but *is* a big deal for COVID-19 patients, so, huh, people do have something to lose, namely, their lives, as some people who could have otherwise survived a bout of COVID-19, died from HCQ heart toxicity, as *proven* in studies including one that had to be aborted because patients were dying of heart arrhythmia too often), why couldn't this same president say to his faithful:

    "Look, my fellow Americans, there's been some concerning news from a study in Germany, still preliminary as it is small with only 100 randomly picked patients, but if confirmed, it could mean that a significant percentage of people, as high as 78% in this study, might come out of a bout of COVID-19 with heart damage that in a few years might cause heart failure. It happened even to younger people, even to people with no underlying medical conditions, and even in people with mild cases of COVID-19, and of course it needs to be confirmed by larger studies but just the sheer possibility that this might be going on should be reason enough for you all NOT to dismiss this virus as some "little flu" or something that doesn't deserve a lot of precaution because it only kills a small number of people.

    Do realize that it's a new virus, a new disease, and only now some concerning mid- and long-term consequences are being discovered even for the people who survive it and even for those with mild disease, so the death toll is not the whole story. Therefore prudence is warranted. I want you all, my fellow Americans, to promise to me that you will wear a mask, keep your distance from others, avoid indoors crowded spaces, wear a face shield when in situations of high exposure if possible, avoid touching your face, wash your hands often and/or use hand sanitizers, because this virus is vicious and you don't want heart complications in a few years, if confirmed. So, be very very careful until we can deliver a safe and effective vaccine. Don't panic, we're working on it, but don't dismiss the risk as a hoax or a little flu because the risk is very very real. Do like me; see, I'm wearing a mask. Be safe. God Bless America."

    That would be nice, no? It's called leadership.
     
    Last edited: Aug 31, 2020
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  9. DivineComedy

    DivineComedy Well-Known Member

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    https://www.factcheck.org/2020/04/democratic-ad-twists-trumps-hoax-comment/

    https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-coronavirus-rally-remark/

    Since he was responding to politicizing it, therefore, he didn't start politicizing it.

    If you disagree with Trump's opinion on a subject, best not to go to his task force for information on it.

    We also have a Congress, and State Governors with Legislatures, and every single one had the same news sources he had, like WHO, and if any complaint whatsoever could be made against the public for not being able to read it and understand it, or that any leader didn't do enough, the same could be said of Congress and the State Governors and Legislatures.

    https://www.foxnews.com/world/taiwa...ing-unheeded-warning-to-who-about-coronavirus
    https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/06/cor...-who-downplaying-risk-of-airborne-spread.html
     
  10. DivineComedy

    DivineComedy Well-Known Member

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    That would be nice, yes.
     
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  11. CenterField

    CenterField Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    These are good points. But as the leader of the nation he could have taken the high road and said "despite their politicizing, I'm telling you all, this is serious and I'll need everybody's help to get our nation to prevail over this new enemy."

    Oh, by the way, in my posting I've said I blame the governors too, both Democrats and Republicans, I blame some mayors, and on top of all I blame we, the people. We've been going about it extremely stupidly, unlike many other smarter countries. It's a shame as we used to be a beacon of light for the world, and now we're the country with 4% of the world's population and 22% of the world's COVID-19 cases and deaths (last I checked).

    And where there is credit to be given, I praise the president too (for the Warp Speed initiative, for securing remdesivir for the use of American hospitals, for sending navy hospital ships to New York, for strong-arming 3M to beef up the domestic production of N95s threatening them with the Defense Production Act, and other good things he did.

    I do not suffer from TDS. But I do not fail to criticize him for what he did wrong.

    This said, I recognize that many other governments in other countries also made mistakes, and I recognize that this virus is too formidable an adversary to be easily conquered. Not all of the situation we're in is Trump's fault, but some of it, is.
     
    Last edited: Aug 31, 2020
  12. CenterField

    CenterField Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    In any case, we're veering off-topic. We should go back to the topic of vaccines.
     
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  13. CenterField

    CenterField Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Oh wow, I said, let's go back to topic, and then I just saw this:

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-embraces-fringe-theories-protests-115828861.html

    So now Trump is saying that we had only 9,000 COVID-19 deaths because the others had underlying medical conditions or were old!!

    Talk about denying and minimizing!

    Of course the majority had underlying conditions... because we are a country with two thirds of our population with some sort of underlying condition - 40% obese, 100 million hypertension, etc...

    But just look at the Excess Deaths stats, comparing with the same period last year. These people were NOT about to drop dead when they died of COVID-19, if they hadn't contracted it.

    Those are contributing causes of death for sure, but not THE cause of death, which IS indeed COVID-19, for the vast majority of well-written death certificates (I don't exclude that in some fringe cases there were mistakes made; a tiny minority that is dwarfed by the uncounted cases especially in the beginning when we didn't have tests and just wrote down "presumed viral pneumonia" as cause of death).

    Look at this:

    Two guys are running to reach an underground shelter with a tornado bearing on them. One is obese and runs slowly. The other is fit and runs fast. The fit guy reaches the shelter in time and survives. The fatso gets caught by the tornado, is thrown around, and dies of a traumatic brain injury.

    Would you say that the cause of death is obesity? Of course not! It's traumatic brain injury caused by a natural disaster. Obesity was a contributing factor. That same obese guy could have survived 20 more years if he hadn't encountered that tornado. Get it?

    So, Trump tweeting this, is outrageous, and again goes contrary to controlling this outbreak because his followers will say, "see, Trump is saying, there is no need to be worried, let's go out and party."

    It's extremely irresponsible.

    We may end up with a huge chunk of our population facing some pretty severe organ damage down the road.
     
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  14. Bowerbird

    Bowerbird Well-Known Member

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    University of Queensland (Aus) has come a step closer with their vaccine

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08...ndidate-safe-and-working-on-hamsters/12594726

    UQ developed the HPV vaccine
     
  15. Bowerbird

    Bowerbird Well-Known Member

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    YouTube

    less reliable than a used car salesman in a recession

    Generally I do not rely on you tube as you have no real way of validating who they are and what they are saying Like centerfield I prefer to do my own research but that is not an easy thing to do unless you have a background where you have learnt to do so
     
    Last edited: Aug 31, 2020
  16. CenterField

    CenterField Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Actually, Bowerbird, I would almost always agree with what you said, but this particular guy, Dr. Hansen, does seem to be actually legit as far as I can tell. He is a Pulmonary Medicine / Critical Care specialist and he does dispense sound advice, also with good production values and interesting videos. He is doing a service to public health. I wish more people would engage in educational campaigns like the ones he puts out there. In a sense, my posting here has a similar goal: to dispel misinformation and to nudge people in the right direction.

    For a change, a YouTube video seems to get it right. Now, this said, I only watched fragments of what he is saying and I can't vouch for the entire content. I did spot one aspect that I don't agree with; he establishes as the maximum vitamin D level, 39 ng/ml (weird number to pick; why not 40, LOL?) and I wouldn't put it this low. I'd say, it's perfectly safe to go up to 75 ng/ml and actually around 50 it is more optimal than around 40, and specifically in the COVID-19 pandemic that are those who recommend much higher, up to 150 ng/ml, but I'd stop at a maximum of around 70 to avoid overshooting and running into calcium deposits in arteries and organs. So maybe not all that he says is right, but I do think that he means well.
     
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  17. CenterField

    CenterField Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    More vaccine news:

    The Oxford/AstraZeneca American phase 3 trials start tomorrow (adenovirus vector). The goal is to enroll 30,000 people. Preliminary results might happen by Thanksgiving. The first test site will be at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It is likely to enroll several college students. This is the third phase 3 trial underway in the United States (other sites exist in other countries for these, and for other vaccine candidates), the other two being Moderna/NIH and Pfizer/BioNTech (both mRNA).

    Johnson & Johnson is planning the largest phase 3 trial, so far; 60,000 people.
     
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  18. Chrizton

    Chrizton Well-Known Member

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    If surviving the virus only gives one a few months protection, it is unlikely that anything they manufacture will have any lasting effect. So, how many times are you folks willing to be injected per year?
     
  19. Bowerbird

    Bowerbird Well-Known Member

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    Yeah

    I amended a little when I did spot who it was but I did not really have time this morning (my time) to look at the video

    like you as a general thing I often shudder when I see a YouTube link because more often than not it is some anti-vaxxer quack warning people about the dangers of demon sperm :p

    Sometimes I really really want to run a contest on the “worst science” video but really there would be too much competition. Do you know there are members on this board who got cross when they found out this is tongue in cheek because they thought it was real https://www.dhmo.org/facts.html
     
    Last edited: Sep 1, 2020
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  20. Bowerbird

    Bowerbird Well-Known Member

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    Okay still hoping our home grown effort comes through :p

    https://advance.qld.gov.au/vaccine

    Forgive us for cheering the home team ;)
     
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  21. DivineComedy

    DivineComedy Well-Known Member

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    Well, I always look for the link to the actual source, there was none, not one at all, there, but it was from the New York Times. He has more than one Twit account, so without a link I have no desire to go searching the so-called "retweets."

    This for example:

    The title:

    "In a Twitter barrage, the president advanced conspiracy theories claiming that protests are an organized coup and that the virus death toll is inflated."

    Clearly there says, "the president." Pay attention.

    "One of the most incendiary messages was a retweet of a program from the One America News Network, a pro-Trump channel that advances extreme theories and that the president has turned to when he feels that Fox News has not been supportive enough. The message he retweeted Saturday night promoted a segment accusing demonstrators of secretly plotting Trump’s downfall." https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/30/us/politics/trump-protests-violence-coronavirus.html

    “According to the mainstream media, the riots & extreme violence are completely unorganized,” the tweet said. “However, it appears this coup attempt is led by a well funded network of anarchists trying to take down the President.” Accompanying it was an image of a promo for a segment titled: “America Under Siege: The Attempt to Overthrow President Trump.”

    https://twitter.com/OANN/status/1299045185758703616

    Pay attention, that is NOT Trump.

    It is a tweet from One America News, from their Twit account, and not Trump's retweet as FAKE NEWS clearly implies.

    Anyway, Trump can't stop the spread, and a "mask mandate" (Called for by Cuomo, in your link) from any president would be no different than the Wall, or DACA, it could be thrown out by a judge.

    So yeah, get back to the vaccines, because the death toll won't stop until we get them.
     
  22. Bowerbird

    Bowerbird Well-Known Member

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    no Trump can’t seem to stop the spread because he does not have the organisational thinking, the leadership or the intelligence to do what has to be done
     
  23. DivineComedy

    DivineComedy Well-Known Member

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    I do not "rely" on YouTube either, but he does have findable credentials. And he is a lot easier to listen to than one guy that is doing it that would put anyone to sleep.

    YouTube is used by many, who probably just go there to watch Squirrel Catapults...instead of CNN, and a few good doctors doing their thing gets the message out to more people who aren't doctors or scientists like you.
     
  24. DivineComedy

    DivineComedy Well-Known Member

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    I almost blew my head off in the store yesterday, so quickly I couldn't react to cover my face, how exactly is organizational thinking, leadership, and intelligence going to stop such a sneeze or "stop the spread?" Well, excuse me I was wearing a KN95 mask, but still, it was a really big sneeze.

    Stop the Spread, the only way to do that is with DEATH of it or us. That is why I want a vaccine.
     
    Last edited: Sep 1, 2020
  25. CenterField

    CenterField Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    LOL, very funny. Agreed.
     

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