Coronavirus 4

[red_elk]

Russia went below 5000 new cases, first time since April. It seems we merged two waves into one moderate. But people speculate about possible second wave in September.

It could have been a nice little earner but because of the rush and secrecy most reputable state healthcare won't buy it.

Yes, unless it starts clearly demonstrating effectiveness in the field.

 

[Zardnaar]

Russia went below 5000 new cases, first time since April. It seems we merged two waves into one moderate. But people speculate about possible second wave in September.


Yes, unless it starts clearly demonstrating effectiveness in the field.

Maybe. Other vaccines will be available.

Ironically because Russia hadn't shared much info another identical one could be "independently" done but if they go through the process guess what one gets picked? Assuming they're both just as effective.

If they're $15 each NZ alone would buy $50-$75 million every year.

But if you don't follow due process they'll buy it off someone else who does.

It's mostly a propaganda stunt anyway or for internal Russian use.

 

[Kyriakos]

Unless they are shown to work - have rather impressive results - in the current climate it is highly unlikely any will be sold to Eu countries.
Not that this means much. Latin America may buy.

 

[red_elk]

Maybe. Other vaccines will be available.

This year, the Chinese one may be.

Unless they are shown to work - have rather impressive results - in the current climate it is highly unlikely any will be sold to Eu countries.

Yes, in any case politics is involved and there will be negative media coverage. It would require impressive results and recognition from scientific community to overcome it.

 

[amadeus]

What sorts of steps have the Russian developers made towards getting independent verification? Again to reiterate my policy: I don’t care if it’s being done to politically advance Russia on the world stage if it works and is safe. Whatever motives Russia has in accelerating the process aren’t relevant if the vaccine has an end efficacy in line with contemporary medical research standards.

 

[red_elk]

There are talks with WHO about publishing pre-clinical and clinical trials data.
Head of health ministry said they will be published in next few days.

 

[MrCynical]

What sorts of steps have the Russian developers made towards getting independent verification? Again to reiterate my policy: I don’t care if it’s being done to politically advance Russia on the world stage if it works and is safe. Whatever motives Russia has in accelerating the process aren’t relevant if the vaccine has an end efficacy in line with contemporary medical research standards.

They have registered two clinical trials with the NIH, but neither have any results posted yet. As far as I can tell from the registration the two trials are the same vaccine in slightly different formulations (one reconstituted from a dried powder, one as a solution). Each trial contains phase 1 and phase 2, with 20 people vaccinated at each stage. Primary outcome measures being antibody level at intervals up to 42 days, and number of participants with adverse events over 180 days.

Both studies have been flagged on the NIH clinical trials site as having completed primary data collection on August 3rd. Strictly speaking this is incorrect, as from a start date of June 17th it is impossible to have completed the 180 day adverse event monitoring, which is one of the two primary measures. This would however fit with the antibody monitoring section of the trial.

They could plausibly publish results for effectiveness at antibody generation at this point. The adverse event side of things would be at best partial data (and will not complete the trial as specified in the registration documents until December). A sample size of 20 is a bit on the low side - Phase 2 usually aims at more like 50.

Curiously no discussion in the documents of the issue that this method uses two separate injections with different vectors 21 days apart? So would only be observing effects for 21 days on the second vector?

 

[Takhisis]

Nor did the pencil work as well; bits of pencil shavings in sensitive space equipment is not good.

Pencils worked well, they used non-graphite polymer based pencils in space.

(OT) But the complaint isn't about graphite, it's about shavings.

 

[FriendlyFire]

On soldiers? Mass testing and mass production is not even begin yet. I wonder where all these news come from.
90% failure rate includes phase 1-2.
Phase 3 has failure rate less that 50% and that includes cancer drugs which have notoriously low approval rates, because of severe side effects. Vaccines approved much more often.

Yesterday you said no manufacturing but today Health ministry says its started manufacturing ?
So phase 3 is going to be tested on the general population in 2 weeks time ?
Best of Luck to you guys with this

Coronavirus update: Russia starts manufacturing vaccine as cases near 1 million
Russia has started manufacturing its new vaccine for COVID-19, the Interfax news agency reported, citing the health ministry.
Russia has said the vaccine, developed by Moscow's Gamaleya Institute and the first for the coronavirus to go into production, will be rolled out by the end of this month.
Some scientists said they fear Moscow may be putting national prestige before safety

Russia reported 5,061 new cases of the novel coronavirus on Saturday, bringing its nationwide tally to 917,884, the fourth highest caseload in the world.
Russia's coronavirus crisis response centre said 119 people had also died over the last 24 hours, pushing its official death toll to 15,617.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08...-russia-starts-manufacturing-vaccine/12562298

 

[Arwon]

NZ election delayed from September to October after the opposition requested it, due to the present lockdown.

Note that it wasn't absolutely due til November and there's no fixed terms or dates in NZ, just a time limit for the election to be called. It's the government's prerogative when to set it, and the date is established well in advance there (in late January it was called for September) only by a convention which is I think unusual even by Westminster standards.

 

[Zardnaar]

NZ election delayed from September to October after the opposition requested it, due to the present lockdown.

Note that it wasn't absolutely due November and there's no fixed terms or dates in NZ, just a time limit for the election to be called. It's the government's prerogative when to set it, and the date is established well in advance there (in late January it was called for September) only by a convention which is I think unusual even by Westminster standards.

The date was September 19. The prime minister gets to call it basically whenever she wants although she has to do it by November.

The opposition tried to pull a Trump type stuff but their pill my plummeted.

They got 46% last election, polling 25-32% and falling.

She's learnt to shut up though, every time she opened her mouth they bleed out at the polls.

The ACT leader is the best opposition leader atm. And the polls are rewarding him 0.5% up to 5-6%.

The cut off us 5% so yeah he might pick up 4-7 MPs.

The public supported the delay, not exactly fair to the other parties.

Labours demolishing them though we might have 3 parties left post election and Labour winning an absolute majority.

Labour+Greens usually sitting on 60-65%.

Things so bad for the opposition that businesses are preferring labour so they're bleeding support everywhere.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Schools are starting up with a lot of precautions but sports seem to be continuing as normal. The football team is starting 2-a-days this week. Seems smart.

My kids' football season was canceled. They are still trying to start school in delayed/staggered fashion using what they're calling a "hybrid" model, whereby the students attend in-person 2 days a week and attend remotely the other 3 days.

It doesn't make much sense to me so I'm thinking I'll pass and opt instead for 100% remote, which we are also allowed to do.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Likewise they are planning the hybrid method here as well (school on Monday and Tuesday or Thursday and friday, depending on the first letter of your last name....but only for grades 7+. Grades 6 and below will go to school every day. You can choose the 100% virtual option, which my wife wants because she is super paranoid of the virus, but I dont because I'm the one who will suffer for it, explained below.

When our high school kid told me about it we thought the younger kids were doing the same as the older, and we were forced into the group that had school thursday/ friday, which is the complete opposite of what I wanted. Monday and Tuesday morning I'm coming home at 4AM. Want to nap a couple hours, send the kids off to school and go back to bed, not spend all morning helping with homework and setting up their zoom classes.

May have to do that anyways if situation gets worse and they close the schools again.

 

[Zelig]

My kids' football season was canceled. They are still trying to start school in delayed/staggered fashion using what they're calling a "hybrid" model, whereby the students attend in-person 2 days a week and attend remotely the other 3 days.

It doesn't make much sense to me so I'm thinking I'll pass and opt instead for 100% remote, which we are also allowed to do.

This seems pretty smart to me, the marginal benefit of in-person attendance decreases with additional days, so I'd guess kids get a lot of the benefit of in-person attendance with only two days a week. (I've worked two days a week in the office for the past several years based on this premise.)

And if the two days are consecutive, median incubation period is 4-5 days, so if there's competent testing and contact tracing there isn't a ton of opportunity for uncontrolled spread.

 

[Socrates99]

My kids' football season was canceled. They are still trying to start school in delayed/staggered fashion using what they're calling a "hybrid" model, whereby the students attend in-person 2 days a week and attend remotely the other 3 days.

It doesn't make much sense to me so I'm thinking I'll pass and opt instead for 100% remote, which we are also allowed to do.

They did decide to just cancel it last week as cases continue to rise. Theres 11 at the local hospital right now. One of our cardiologists is in bad shape and was admitted at a bigger hospital down state. He's one of the nice ones too. Good to the nurses, took them out to dinner a couple times.

 

[EnglishEdward]

Last email I had the school said it planned a full return 5 September 2020.

I don't think I quite believe it.

 

[r16]

so , they have supposedly tracked the virus to 2012 , with 6 Chinese miners cleaning a cave , full of bat droppings . 3 dies , all 6 needed ventilators and of course the specimens were secured in a lab in Wuhan . Expertly turns the British Vaccine around , it was Commies who had all this time to develop a cure !

new Turkey restricts 65 and olders in many cities , after big companies had some tourism income .

 

[Samson]

Sailors furnish first evidence that antibodies protect humans against re-infection

A massive COVID-19 outbreak on a US fishing boat spared crew members who already had antibodies against the new coronavirus, providing what scientists say is the first direct evidence that these antibodies protect people against being reinfected.

After a viral infection, the immune system makes compounds called neutralizing antibodies that can attack the virus if it invades again. But previous research had not determined whether such antibodies can shield humans from SARS-CoV-2 reinfection.

Alexander Greninger at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle and his colleagues tested the crew of a US fishing vessel for SARS-CoV-2 and for antibodies to the virus (A. Addetia et al. Preprint at medRxiv http://doi.org/d6qm; 2020). Just before the ship’s departure, the researchers tested 120 of the 122 crew members and found that all were negative for SARS-CoV2, but an outbreak hit the ship soon after it left shore.

Post-voyage testing showed that 104 members of the 122-person crew were infected. None of those who were infected and had been tested before embarking had shown neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2.

But all three crew members who did have such antibodies before departure escaped infection, providing statistically significant evidence that neutralizing antibodies acquired during SARS-CoV-2 infection protect against reinfection, the authors say. The findings have not yet been peer reviewed.​

The pandemic appears to have spared Africa so far. Scientists are struggling to explain why

Although Africa reported its millionth official COVID-19 case last week, it seems to have weathered the pandemic relatively well so far, with fewer than one confirmed case for every thousand people and just 23,000 deaths so far. Yet several antibody surveys suggest far more Africans have been infected with the coronavirus—a discrepancy that is puzzling scientists around the continent. “We do not have an answer,” says immunologist Sophie Uyoga at the Kenya Medical Research Institute–Wellcome Trust Research Programme.

After testing more than 3000 blood donors, Uyoga and colleagues estimated in a preprint last month that one in 20 Kenyans aged 15 to 64—or 1.6 million people—has antibodies to SARS-CoV-2, an indication of past infection. That would put Kenya on a par with Spain in mid-May when that country was descending from its coronavirus peak and had 27,000 official COVID-19 deaths. Kenya’s official toll stood at 100 when the study ended. And Kenya’s hospitals are not reporting huge numbers of people with COVID-19 symptoms.
​

 

[Hrothbern]

Just before the ship’s departure, the researchers tested 120 of the 122 crew members and found that all were negative for SARS-CoV2, but an outbreak hit the ship soon after it left shore.

Perhaps it would be better to use faeces as test material instead of poking in noses.

This is much more reliable because virusses show up in faeces before they can be detected in your nose.

The only negative is that after you are healed from Covid you can still measure for some weeks virusses in faeces.
Meaning that if the feaces test is positive you have to do a nose test as well.

 

[red_elk]

That's just another bat **** crazy theory about coronavirus origins.

 

[Hrothbern]

That's just another bat **** crazy theory about coronavirus origins.

Turkey is among the countries with the highest amount of conspiracy theories.
I actually like it... keeps your mind more agile.